Pause for Thanksgiving

I am not sure I’ve ever had as many people tell me that Thanksgiving is their favorite holiday as I have this year.  I usually don’t ask them why they feel that way.  I guess I like to imagine the reasons.  Or maybe their expressed sentiments just launch me into thinking of my own Thanksgiving experiences and I become too mentally preoccupied to ask.

 

As a child Thanksgiving granted me a short week at school.  It meant turkey (I really think that was the only time of the year I ate turkey in any form), cool days to play in the backyard with my brother (when we weren’t fighting), romping in the leaves we had raked, and swinging on the rope swing our dad had hung in the big tree.

 

Such simple pleasures.  And they stand in stark contrast to what Christmas has become.  It’s almost trite now to say Christmas has become too commercialized; it’s so obvious.  It’s a mad rush, with so much pressure to finish the shopping, pick the right gift, not forget anyone, write Christmas cards (I don’t think I’m the last one that does that), and bake.  To businesses, Thanksgiving has just become the gateway to Black Friday, the annual Christmas shopping days countdown, and their push to make us spend money we don’t have.  They pretty much ignore Thanksgiving otherwise.

 

And I’m okay with that.  This holiday is golden to me, and I don’t want them to touch it because they’ll turn it into dross.  Let them go straight from Halloween to Christmas rush.  Leave Thanksgiving to the rest of us.

 

Joshua Rogers, a writer and attorney who lives in Washington, D.C., wrote a poignant essay about Thanksgiving this week.  He related his own experience growing up without a father and being embarrassed and ashamed by having to get free lunch at school each day because he was poor.  But he ended the essay powerfully as he recalled just what Thanksgiving meant to him and should mean to us:

 

I wonder who might be sitting around your Thanksgiving table this year being blessed with more than turkey and pecan pie. What kid — young or old — is finding solace in that moment where they finally belong? You never know what’s going on in people’s minds and hearts around the Thanksgiving table, but it can be a sacred space.

Thanksgiving is a holiday where the gift is the presence of people who welcome you, whether you’re related to them or not. There’s no price to be paid, no expectation that gifts must be given. No matter how out-of-place some of us may feel the rest of the year, if we get Thanksgiving right, it’s an invitation to enjoy free lunch, to feel loved without feeling any shame.

Whatever your financial situation, slow down right now.  Don’t let the Christmas rush sweep you up in its tide.  Let the Thanksgiving spirit continue, and savor the often overlooked most valuable things in your life.  Rich or poor, a spirit of thankfulness is a tonic, an antidote to materialism and the temptation to measure all things by money.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Roger

“When you become successful, don’t say ‘I’m rich and I’ve earned it myself’.  Instead, remember that the Lord your God gives you the strength to make a living.” Deuteronomy 8:17, 18 CEV

Fake News

I’m not altogether certain why there is such a fuss about “fake news” these days.  The National Enquirer has been around for years, and that publication is my definition of fake news.  But I would agree that news can be spun in such a way that it elicits either a positive or negative response from the hearer/reader and, more to the point and purpose of the publisher of the news, causes the audience to continue giving attention to it.

 

I did not suspect fake news when I read the banner across the cover of the November issue of Money magazine: “This crash signal just flashed red”.  As soon as I had the opportunity I turned to page 36 to get the scoop on what the Money editors were seeing that caused them to think a stock market downturn and/or recession was imminent.  I found a surprisingly short article—one page, ten column inches, a graph, and a picture of stock traders that appears to be from the 1930’s.

 

The brief article explained the Sound Advice Risk Indicator, an index overseen by Sound Advice newsletter editor Gray Emerson Cardiff, that purports to predict stock market crashes.  The measure compares the level of the S&P 500 stock index to the national median price for new houses, and when the Risk Indicator level rises above two (and we are there now), a downturn is around the corner.

 

According to Money the last time the Sound Advice Risk Indicator reached this level was in 1998 before the dot.com crash.  It did the same before the big stock market declines of 1906, 1928, 1937, and 1965.

 

But here is where the reader needs to draw on his own knowledge of history and recall facts that are not in this article.  For example, there was a big crash around 2007/2008.  Remember that one, The Great Recession?  Why didn’t this index predict that?  Why didn’t it predict the recessions of November 1973 to March 1975, or the one in July 1981 to November 1982 when unemployment hit 10.8%?

 

And how about that supposed foretelling of the dot.com crash?  The Indicator hit “two” in 1998, but the crash didn’t occur until nearly two years later.  As Money quoted Cardiff acknowledging, “Stock prices often stayed high for many months, sometimes even a couple of years.  However, in all cases a major decline or crash followed, pulling down stock prices by 50% or more.”

 

So here’s what I take away from the article: The Sound Advice Risk Indicator can predict a big stock market crash—or not.  It often misses.  And when it does flash red, the crash could still be a year or two away; and that’s half an eternity in the investment world. 

 

It reminds me of an episode of the 1960’s television comedy, The Beverly Hillbillies.  Granny, a self-proclaimed mountain doctor from the backwoods of Tennessee, talked up her cure for the common cold.  All you had to do was take the tonic and in a week to ten days you were better.  This investment tonic is about as useless, in my opinion.  I go back to one of my favorite quotes, one from economist Paul Samuelson:  “The stock market has predicted nine of the last five recessions.”  A crystal ball that is right by accident and not always prescient is not a crystal ball at all.

 

The bottom line for anyone reading any “expert” advice on investing or on money matters in general is to apply common sense and his own knowledge to make judgments of what he is reading.  All that’s published is not fit to read.  Sometimes, like a National Enquirer headline, there’s just enough there to make a salacious headline, but the whole story is quite different.

 

Until next time,

 

Roger

 

“Do not call conspiracy everything this people calls a conspiracy; do not fear what they fear, and do not dread it.” Isaiah 8:12 NIV®*

 

*Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV®

Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™
Used by permission.  All rights reserved worldwide

So, what are you doing for Doomsday?

Unemployment is the lowest in decades, the stock market flirts with record levels (and if the recent big one-day losses there spooked you, keep it all in perspective by looking at the indexes now compared to ten years ago), and the economy is humming along.  So what does that leave the rich to talk about when they get together socially?  Why of course, “What do you plan to do for Doomsday?”

 

Bloomberg reported recently that over the past two years seven Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have purchased survival bunkers and had them transported to New Zealand.  There, they are buried 10-12 feet underground with a carefully disguised entrance that most anybody would walk past and not realize it was there.

 

I guess you chalk this up to one of two things: these folks have more money than they know what to do with; or they have so much money that they’re worried something is going to happen to it or someone is going to harm them to get to their money.  Having oodles of money and everything you want that money can buy does not add up to a carefree life.

 

So why New Zealand?  As a manager at the bunker manufacturer told Bloomberg: “New Zealand is an enemy to no one.  It’s not a nuclear target.  It’s not a target for war.  It’s a place where people seek refuge.”  And a nice faraway destination that you can charge big bucks to ship your bunkers to.

 

I wouldn’t be one bit surprised to find a savvy entrepreneur across the Pacific who knows these millionaire bunker owners are not likely to come around to check on their property and is renting the bunkers for weekend getaways.  “They’ll never know!”

 

One rich and prominent venture capitalist allegedly spelled out his big plan to friends.  He has a motorcycle in his garage with a bag of guns hanging from the handlebars.  When the Doomsday clock strikes midnight he’s going to bypass the traffic jams on his Harley, warding off thieves and zombies with the guns as he heads to his private plane which he will pilot to a landing strip in Nevada where a jet sits waiting in a hangar for the sole purpose of taking him and four billionaire friends and co-owners to New Zealand.

 

Really?  I can see a number of ways that plan could go awry.  As the article pointed out, an asteroid strike in the Pacific could cause a tsunami capable of swamping even the highest point of New Zealand. And there’s a small hint of potential trouble down the road in the fact that New Zealand lawmakers in August banned foreigners from buying homes.  It seems they may be tiring of serving as the bailout hideaway for the desperately rich.  So one more potential glitch in the Doomsday plan: an envious construction worker who helped bury the bunker gives the location to his unsavory friends who head there to shake down the millionaire the day after Doomsday. 

 

But on that day will the money do those thieves any good?  Will it do the rich any good?  Economists say we do a great job at planning for the last recession.  In other words, we learn from our economic mistakes and implement means to prevent them and head off the next recession; but the next crisis comes from an entirely different direction, and like the last one, no one is prepared.  It’s likely to be the same way if and when there’s a Doomsday.  It will come in ways unexpected and defying our plans and charts and timelines.

 

I’m not about stockpiling food, building a survival bunker, or having an elaborate escape plan beyond having two ways to exit my house in a fire.  I try to live a modest life, give to charity, and not hoard more than I need now or far in excess of what I need to fund a decent retirement.  I’m trying to live by faith that Doomsday won’t be all the bad, at least in the end.  Hopefully I won’t be worrying about money.

 

Until next time,

Roger

 

“Wealth is worthless in the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death.” Proverbs 11:5 NIV®*

 

*Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV®

Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™
Used by permission.  All rights reserved worldwide