Podcast 324

Winter and The Donner Party. Updates on the big stories for your weekend. Yeah, it’s cold people, but can we at least use the real temperature rather than wind chills? Was it really -41 in Bemidji, Minnesota the other day, or did just feel like -41? What does -41 feel like? Now of course comes the cavalcade of idiotic financial media stories about the ‘deep cold’ of 2015, and the ‘economic effects’ of people not being able to get to their jobs. In New England? Vermont? Massachusetts? Minnesota? These people, of course, have no experience with such economy killing cold, right? Another economic fairy tale that has died a horrible death is the idea that cheap gas ‘acts like a tax cut’. In reality it appears that the cheaper price of oil isn’t just due to increasing production, but to slackening demand, which ought to cause some concern. A new economic fairy tale is the idea that increasing minimum wages at Wal-Mart (announced as a Public Relations gimmick) will somehow create ‘wage inflation’ which will be good for the economy. Doesn’t seem to be any decrease of wages at federal agencies like the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS currently boasts over eighty thousand employees, and wants to add ten thousand more, ostensibly to do work related to Obama Care taxation enforcement, except only some 400 new employees will be doing that work. What will the others do? Order out for lunch. Buy new chairs. Go to expensive conferences during the winter in Las Vegas. Whatever. Everyone agrees that green and yellow smoke spewing smokestacks, and rivers that explode into flame are bad; We used to call things like that ‘pollution’. These days apparently there is so little pollution that amateur astronomers are complaining that there’s too much ‘light pollution’, they can’t see the little dipper, even with a telescope. Go ahead, tell me to turn off my front porch light. Demand the IDS turn out the lights at night. Hell, go ahead and turn out the street lights. Just don’t call it ‘Light Pollution’. Because when you do that, we call it ‘Mouth Pollution’ as in, SHUT IT! All the talk is that the new iWatch isn’t enough, Apple is going to build a car. The story has been all over the financial media that last few days. Finally someone has debunked it. Find out why in this podcast. So, it’s cold. We know it’s cold. Just imagine you are a pioneer taking the road less traveled in 1847. You come to a wonderful spot high in the Sierra Nevada’s. You say, “This is good. It’s late fall. It’s nice here. Let’s stay and rest up before we head down into the place that will someday be known as the Golden State”. 4 months later half your party is dead, you’re eating Dad for dinner and you realize … You’re the Donner Party! It’s one of the enduring stories of conquering the west, and it should make all of us happy we have hot coffee, steaks in the freezer and ‘Game of Thrones’ to watch. Sponsored by Baklund R&D. 

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Podcast 298

Heavy Stories. In the first of two podcasts for the weekend of January 23rd, 2015…the heavy stories. Lots of talk about the State of The Union, whether or not a Republican Congress can govern, factions forming in the House, and all the other static. These stories have obscured for the time being, discussions of the effects of the price of oil. The low price of gas is almost always celebrated by the media as a ‘good thing’ since ‘reductions in the price of gas, act like a tax cut on the economy’. While it is a pleasurable to experience to fill up your tank for less than thirty dollars, throw in a car wash and come away with change from your fifty, we still have a long way to go before the ‘tax cut’ experience kicks in. Suddenly though, the story line has changed. Media outlets and pundits who enthusiastically endorsed lower oil prices as ‘acting like a tax cut’ are suddenly decrying ‘deflation’ in the economy, and writing stories about how deflation can only lead to ruin, and ‘something’ must be done. Meanwhile, the price of beef, milk, cheese, rice and other staples at any store, whether it is a Walmart or a ‘Whole Paycheck’ aren’t ‘deflating’ very quickly. And since wages have not kept pace with even moderate inflation, Americans will need to see further reductions in the rate of inflation (Disinflation) before the celebration begins. And what about those media outlets? Why they have found a new story line … horrible and giant oil companies that are suddenly laying of noble workers in North Dakota and Texas. What will happen when companies start laying people off, due to reduced pricing power? (Editor’s Note: They don’t mention that energy price inputs for companies are also getting cheaper.) Why is the specter of deflation terrifying? Because as money becomes worth more (lower prices mean you can buy more) if you are in debt, it makes paying back the debt that much more difficult. And, the world’s central banks are carrying a lot of debt. So are companies and individuals, and your good old Uncle Sam. Moreover, this nonsense about the United States being economically decoupled from the rest of the world is being exposed. If the rest of the world slips into recession because of bad economic policy and bad monetary policy, and bad political leadership, why would the United States escape the pain, since our policy and political leadership is just as bad as say, Europe, if not worse. This — and many other issues — will also be discussed this weekend at the SD-61 Chili Dinner AND CONTEST in South Minneapolis. Come on out! Sponsored by Mycompletebasement.com.  (Editor’s Note: 06:38 Hours: Well, I just google mapped Midland Texas and characterizing it as in the Dallas metro, is a bit of a stretch, in fact it’s more like the splits. Midland is west of Fort Worth, close to Odessa so it really isn’t as to Dallas as Plymouth, Minnesota is to Minneapolis. I seem to remember a trip to Dallas, seeing an exit for Midland and it seemed a lot closer than it looks on the map.)

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