Category: Money Matters
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Are You Ready for Hyperinflation?
Here. Hope for the best while preparing for the worst. Temper optimism with prudence. And do what you can to drive the fiscally irresponsible from office.
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The Measure of Seriousness
Money is the measure of seriousness. And for most the only measure and the only seriousness. I tell myself to avoid misanthropy, but it is a moral challenge. (I tend to alliterate even when I am not trying to: money, measure, most, myself, misanthropy, moral.)
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When We Have Gold We are in Fear . . .
. . . when we have none we are in danger. (English proverb) A proverb whose pertinence is proven by recent developments.
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Skeptical and Credulous
By turns we are too much the one or the other. We find it difficult to balance doubting and believing. Properly deployed, doubt is the engine of inquiry, but it can also become a brake on commitment and thus on living. One cannot live well without belief and trust — but not when they become…
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Gray Flannel and the Matter of Money
Sloan Wilson's The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit appeared in 1955 two years before Jack Kerouac's On the Road. I never finished Gray Flannel, getting only 80 or so pages into it. It's a book as staid as the '50s, a tad boring, conventional, and forgettable in comparison to the hyperromantic and heart-felt rush of…
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The Politics of Gold
The price of gold has topped $1300 an ounce. And this while inflation is low. The upswing is driven mainly by the fear of inflation. In order to handle otherwise unsustainable levels of debt, the government will resort to 'monetizing' it, i.e., printing money and causing inflation. By counterfeiting its own currency, a government steals…
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On Budgets
I have never made a budget in my life. Never having made one, I have never had to adhere to one. The budgeter is involved in a negative enterprise: he essays to control and curtail spending. He allocates so much money for this, and so much for that, and strives to stick to his limits.…
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The Bitch Impecunia
Many are the goddesses that tempt the young, the romantic, the idealistic. Time's alchemy will cause the masks of some to slip and reveal the bitch Impecunia. Cirmcumstances straitened by devotion to one's art or one's cause are better tolerated in the days of youth. I do not advise that you abandon your high aspirations:…
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Sans Souci
The renter builds no equity In exchange his abode is sans souci. Me I'd rather own something real And leave it to my stoicism to adjust how I feel.
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How to Become Wealthy Overnight
John Blofeld, Beyond the Gods: Buddhist and Taoist Mysticism (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1974), p. 153: For the sake of wealth, people already well above the poverty line slave all their lives, not realising that withdrawal from the rat-race would immediately increase rather than diminish their wealth. Obviously anyone who finds the full satisfaction of…
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Sophocles on the Root of All Evil
Via Mike Gilleland, we read in Sophocles, Antigone 295-301 (tr. Hugh Lloyd-Jones): There is no institution so ruinous for men as money; money sacks cities, money drives men from their homes! Money by its teaching perverts men's good minds so that they take to evil actions! Money has shown men how to practise villainy, and…
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Radix Omnium Malorum
One often hears that money is the root of all evil. But this cannot be true, since money is an abstract form of wealth, wealth is a good thing, and the root of all evil cannot be something good. Perhaps it is the love of money that is supposed to be the root of all…
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Liberty-Conscious Investing
It is not clear to me why liberals have proprietary rights in the phrase 'socially-conscious investing.' Someone whose investment choices reflect a concern for individual liberty is of course also interested in the nature of the society in which he lives, and is therefore also 'socially conscious.' A champion of individual liberty wants a society…
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California Grabs Ten Percent More in Withholding
One of the defining characteristics of liberals and leftists is a deep-seated quasi-religious belief in the benevolence and efficacy of big government, the bigger the better, and this despite repeated demonstrations of government incompetence, inanity, mendacity, and trickery. This from the Associated Press (emphasis added): SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California wage earners will soon notice a little…
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Some Principles of a Financial Conservative
(Written 11 October 2008) A correspondent with whom I disagree pretty thoroughly on financial matters e-mails: An interesting poll of IFP's (Independent Financial Planners) reported today on Kuldow's MSNBC programme that 85% don't believe investors over 55 should be in equities at all. AT ALL, because the 10 year recovery horizon is dubious. I agree.…