It Surely Will Hit The Fan But When?

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A lot of investors are not sanguine and have not been for a while.  The question is when will it hit the fan, not whether it will.   You cannot continue to spend what is not earned for ever. (Se 1 below.)
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A little ethnic HAIKU! (See 2 below.)
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The Presidents’ Day banquet is our major fundraiser to help take back America starting with the 2014 mid–term elections. This is to solicit your attendance at the Plantation Club Ballroom, Feb. 17, 2014(6:00 to 7:00 pm reception, 7:00 to 9:30pm dinner). Can you join MaryAnne and me at one of the tables I am reserving?

The cost is $125 per person for this semi-formal fundraiser and gourmet dinner. (A $150 ticket gets you a pre-dinner cocktail reception at 530pm to meet our keynote speaker Star Parker.  

 

She had a recent op ed on her conservative position (included below) and is not afraid to take on Obama and the liberal establishment.

Can we count on your support for this key fundraiser?  If so, respond to this email, tube or mail me a check for the amount (made out to SIRC), and I will coordinate the seating.

Mike Walters
SIRC Board Member; Editor, SIRC Newsletter
8 Pineside Lane, 598-0351

Commentary: Politics is no substitute for personal morality;  January 10, 2014

By STAR PARKER
It’s too early to predict where N.J. Gov. Chris Christie’s “bridgegate” scandal will lead.

But whichever players in this horrible game of political vindictiveness are implicated, there is an important lesson.

Despite our obsession with political systems and processes, the quality of our lives ultimately flows from the behavior of individual human beings and not from any meticulously designed political system.

The best any political system can do is to assure political freedom. But it cannot assure what individuals choose to do with their freedom and the values that will define their lives.

The more we believe that politics alone can make our lives better, and that moral standards are just private matters with no import on the quality of our national life, the deeper we will dig the hole in which we are burying ourselves.

We just marked the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s declaration of “an unconditional war on poverty.”

But Johnson’s lofty political language and who the man actually was and how he lived is a study in contrasts. Johnson biographer Robert Caro said, “I’m trying to explain how political power worked in America in the second half of the 20th century, and here’s a guy who understood power and used it in a way that no one ever had. In the getting of that power he’s ruthless — ruthless to a degree that surprised even me, who thought he knew something about ruthlessness. But he also means it when he says that all his life he wanted to help poor people and people of color, and you see him using the ruthlessness, the savagery for wonderful ends.”

But is it possible for a ruthless, vindictive and immoral man to achieve power and use that power to make the world better?

I think the “war on poverty” itself answers this question.

The end has been expenditures, by some estimates, of some $20 trillion dollars and a poverty rate today hardly different from where it was when Johnson declared his war 50 years ago.

In 1965, about 70 percent of white adults were married compared to 55 percent today. About 60 percent of black adults were married, compared to 31 percent today. In 1965, 25 percent of black babies and 5 percent of white babies were born to unwed mothers compared to 72 percent and 29 percent today.

Johnson’s promotion of government as the source of life’s answers, and his split between politics and personal morality, contributed mightily to the breakdown of the American family.

Politics and political rhetoric is no substitute for personal morality. Worth keeping in mind as we watch the scandal unfold in Chris Christie’s regime in New Jersey.

Star Parker is president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education.

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Dick
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1) Jim Rogers: Investors May as Well Fiddle While Rome Burns

By John Morgan

International investor Jim Rogers says central banks around the world are arranging deck chairs on the Titanic, but if he had to recommend where to invest in stocks in 2014, two of his top picks would be Japan and China.

Rogers said the global environment of ultra-loose economic policies, characterized by nations that run huge government debts while printing gobs of money, will lead eventually to a massive world hangover.

“When it pops, when this artificial sea of liquidity dries up, it’s not going to be fun,” he told Reuters TV. “But I don’t see any reason why it will stop anytime soon.”

In suggesting where an investor could put money in stocks this year, Rogers noted the Japanese stock market is still 70 percent off of its all-time high (while the U.S. is currently hovering around an all-time high), and that a new law in Japan makes it tax-free to invest in stocks.

“I’ve been investing a long time, and every time a country does that, people invest,” Rogers said.

He predicted blue-chip stocks in particular will do well in Japan for the time being.
In emerging markets, Rogers said China is a very attractive choice for equity investments.

Since the Chinese government has said it intends to sink significant resources into cleaning up pollution, railroads and healthcare, he predicted related stocks that focus on those areas will do well.

But what about the backdrop of unfettered government fiscal policies? “It’s a good party while it lasts,” Rogers said.

If stock markets tumble by 20 percent in the face of monetary tightening, he predicted governments will offer up the same overheated leftovers.

“Then the central banks will get scared. These guys are just academics and bureaucrats. Then they’ll start printing money again and the whole thing will get more and more elevated and more artificial.”

In a weekly commentary, mutual-fund owner John Hussman of the Hussman Funds, a stock market analyst who correctly predicted the 2008 economic meltdown, also said it may be premature to abandon stocks even though central banks are foolish.

“The stock market is hovering in what has a good chance of being seen in hindsight as the complacent lull before a period of steep losses.

“I view (central bank) quantitative easing not as some novel and permanent form of economic and financial levitation, but as a reckless distortion that has no mechanistic relationship with either the economy or stocks. The painful resolution of this distortion, like the dot-com bubble, the technology bubble, and the housing bubble, is yet to unfold.”

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2) 

On Passover we

Opened the door for Elijah.

Now our dog is gone.



Jewish Buddhism:

If there is no self ,

Whose arthritis is this?



Beyond Valium,

Peace is knowing one's child

Is an internist.



Today I am a man

Tomorrow I will return

To the seventh grade.

The same kimono

The top geishas are wearing:

I got it at Loehmann's.

Sorry I'm not home

To take your call. At the tone,

Please state your bad news.

Is one Nobel Prize

So much to ask from a child

After all I've done?

A lovely nose ring,

Excuse me while I put my

Head in the oven.

Be here now.

Be someplace else later.

Is that so complicated?

Wherever you go, there you are.

Your luggage is another story

The journey of a thousand miles

Begins with a single Oy.

Zen is not easy

The Tao does not speak

The Tao does not blame.

The Tao does not take sides.

The Tao has no expectations.

The Tao demands nothing of others

The Tao is not Jewish.

The Torah says, Love your neighbor as your self .

The Buddha says there is no self .

So, maybe we're off the hook.

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