Long time no see
Been about a month between actual entries, once again life gets busy and there hasn’t been too much time to stop and actually write something down. Had a good trip out west, will have to write about that with some pictures when I get around to it. Meanwhile life goes on I suppose, I’m getting pretty tired of the daily grind, especially when lately it seems like its much ado about nothing at all. Its an ongoing struggle seeing and learning one thing in school, and then seeing the opposite at work, sometimes vice versa, either way it can be either uplifting or discouraging. The study of law is a different animal, in some ways its hyper theoretical, studied in a vacuum, just like other ivory tower disciplines. In other ways its quite real and hard hitting, when it comes to basic procedure and due process. At the same time work has the theoretical process on how work is supposed to go, contrasted with the imperfect reality of how things play out and how people actually interact. I have to say that I’m quite proud of how I’ve been able to balance both day work and night school, so far neither has really intruded into the other one in a negative way, mostly because there has been so much overlap between the two. It is discouraging sometimes when it feels like I’m the only one that really sees it though.
In the meantime I’m cautiously keeping an eye on the world markets and talk of credit crisis in the international banks going hand in hand with the ongoing housing crash. Amazingly there are people I know that are actually jumping for an opportunity to buy, citing lower prices than a few months ago, and of course that old famous phrase, “its always a good time to buy.” For me I’d have to think long and hard before locking myself down to any large asset, especially going into a huge amount of debt as well. The more I read about the market conditions makes me think that liquidity may be the way to go for the short term at least.
This is especially in recent times where even going grocery shopping I have started to notice more and more the reality of inflation - it used to be just classroom term, or a short paper topic for economics at KCC, but now its glaring me in the eye every I go to the grocery store. You don’t have to be ultra price conscious to notice that the dollar doesn’t buy as much as it used to. Just as no market boom or investment rule of thumb lasts forever, and really no job sector is really as stable as we would hope to be. Obviously as things start slowing down more the service sector and retail sectors will start to tighten up, but eventually so will governments, local, state and even the federal levels. Is this the calm before the storm?
I’ve also been a little disturbed at how calm or nonchalant some people are about everything. I’ve heard from more than one person that they think that the powers to be will not let things get too bad, they won’t let the dollar crash too much. While I don’t deny that there must be very powerful forces out there that would be hurt from a shock to the US dollar, I’m not so optimistic that they haven’t already hedged their bets to profit from a dollar crash, and when it all hits that all of the rest of us will be left holding the bag. Thats usually how it is. I really hope I’m wrong, but my gut isn’t comforting me very much.
There is something worth mentioning that my generation has been the beneficiary of the one of the longest bull markets, by some estimates since 1982, meaning that we’ve never had a period of economic slowdown, never had a tough period for finding jobs, never had anything major barriers to access to credit. Both have contributed to a decent and increasing quality of life, either from actual income, or more perceived quality of life from cheap credit at low interest rates. As businesses start tightening their belts and laying people off, as banks stop giving out loans without ample capital or credit ratings, this will ultimately result in a shift in the American way of life as we currently know it, a shift that I wonder we are all adequately prepared for, both financially and psychologically.