An Open Letter On The CoronaCrisis
Martin Armstrong may be the most brilliant man you’ve never heard of.
He began his career as a currency trader but quickly realized that currencies fluctuate in cycles.
In the early 1980’s Martin followed his intuition, building an artificial intelligence that applied various cycles against each other to predict capital flows: the movements of money in an out of economic sectors driven by confidence.
Armstrong’s model is insanely predictive as it accurately called the 1987 stock market crash, 1990s currency crises and 2007-2008 housing collapse. His track record led to the US government bringing him in as a consultant several times in during the 80’s and 90’s (not that they listened to him).
And of course, your 401(k) is thankful if you rotated out of stocks prior to his Economic Confidence Model’s January 18th turning point.
And Now For Something Completely Different
The COVID Panic has the world in uncharted territory. For the first time in human history we have mandated a coordinated global slowdown of economic activity.
Whether you believe it is justified or not– I definitely am a skeptic–an extended slowdown poses severe and long lasting threats to the economy and the people who rely on it to survive. I’m not just talking money and jobs, though it is getting ugly on that front.
The real danger is if/when we come out of the quarantine we’ll find we can’t just flip a switch to restore the global supply chains that keep food, medicine and the other physical goods we need flowing around the world. If we stop a disease that infects all while killing a few only to cripple an economy which leads to widespread death and turmoil, then what did we gain?
Martin Armstrong’s asking the same question, sending an open letter to American political leaders:
President-Donald-Trump-Letter-April-13-RF26 JAN 78 The Great Lakes Blizzard
It was a lot of fucking snow.
A birthday spent under the threat of a blizzard? That’s the joy of living in Chicagoland.
But Not Our First Brush With Disaster
For the none of you keeping score at home my family had been through one war, one war scare and a hurricane.
Even at a young age, I knew we were prepared for a blizzard or at least I wasn’t afraid. Mom treated disasters as little vacations, making sure we could stay occupied- a busy mind doesn’t have time to be afraid.
A Late Birthday Present
The snow started coming down early evening of the 26th, we were fortunate to sleep through most of it without incident.
The Most Insanest Snow Evar
Did I mention the snow? Well over a foot of accumulation with 4-6 foot drifts. The picture below is from Indiana after the same storm. It’s representative.
When I first opened the front door I was confronted with a wall of snow towering over me- with two strategically-placed divots.
Mom came up behind us, saying that Dolly Parton had fallen into the snow bank and it almost made sense before she confessed to using the snow as a field-expedient wine chiller. Mom’s such a goofball 🙂
The aftermath of being buried in snow didn’t lodge strong memories. Knowing Illinois back then we probably missed no more that a day or two of school….not like today when kids get days off at the drop of a hat.
Some Ground Rules
Here are your Terms of Service:
- This belongs to me. You can read it. You can ignore it. I don’t care. I’ve disabled comments because I’m not interested in a dialog, pro or con. After watching the internet since the world wide web emerged in the mid 90s I know that disembodied typing is a poor substitute for face-to-face conversation.
- Prepare to be offended. This blog is for free-thinkers. Audience members who know me understand that I’ll follow any chain of thought to the end. I’m comfortable with ignorance, holding multiple viewpoints at once and looking at broad issues through multiple lenses. If you can’t handle that, reread the bullet above.
That’s it. Seriously.
I’m not here to antagonize but I know folks enjoy getting butthurt over perceived offenses involving “controversies” that don’t involve them. If you are incapable of opening your mind enough to entertain different points of view, then Zuckerberg awaits you in Facebook’s banal vision of hell.
Coming of Age
Does your life have pivot points?
Moments or sequences you can point to knowing how the person you are is shaped by what happened then?
Recently, I’ve dwelled on the nine years between 1977 and 1986, specifically between my ninth and eighteenth birthdays- I’ve been luck to have big events happen on birthdays. I don’t really understand why it works out that way but no use in denying it.
But the easy-to-identify pivot from childhood to adolescence is Star Wars. The movie was a revelation to me- I was a Star Trek and Planet of the Apes junkie but none of that sparked the imagination of a nine-year old boy like the one and only time I sat in a theater to watch an epic space fantasy unfold before my eager eyes.
A little over two and half minutes in, I was hooked:
I was blown away by the whites and grays, the strange rectangular blisters protruding from the walls… the differentness of it. A lifetime of seeing science fiction depict smooth, sleek technology never prepared my eyes for this image. And yet there’s a sense of the ordinary about it, too.
Everything Changed
We all know the release of Star Wars changed everything pop culture and I’m not here to catalog the ripples of cultural change triggered by that one big Star Wars rock.
But I can tell you about some the events that echo Star Wars and the times when I saw it. And with the benefit of hindsight I see the events of those days as I did then and now.
So buckle up: Mike is not in Kansas anymore- or again.
The Reset
The COVID-19 shutdown has been one of the best happenings I could dream of.
Working from home full time as a data analyst isn’t without challenges but the opportunities are nearly boundless.
Not wasting three hours a day in commutes and preparation (Goodbye, Pants!) gives me time and energy to work on high leverage projects which promote personal growth. I won’t be able to tackle all of them but I can knock a few out: keto diet, rebuilding the home network, paring down on the “stuff” I have that has me…
and writing a blog.
And who knows, maybe I’ll get good at some of these things.