Just picked up a $20 off the ground. TWUP.

Here’s a new way to think about the U.S. government’s epic borrowing: More than half of the $9 trillion in debt that Uncle Sam is expected to build up over the next decade will be interest.

More than half. In fact, $4.8 trillion.

Source:
http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/19/news/economy/debt_interest/index.htm

When I turned on the news this morning the water cooler question of the day was, “should school nutritionist cut out chocolate milk from school lunches and only serve plain milk?”  This made me think.  Chocolate milk is much better than soda or most juices, but it is still chocolate.  Overall I think I would be in favor of keeping the C. Milk because it could be the only way you can get students to drink the calcium rich dairy product.  If they see a spike in soda consumption in the schools we will know why.  I think I always had Apple&Eve juice boxes as a kid.  What did you drink?

******************

Onto the food!

Superfood breakfast!

~1/2 cup mixed oats and oat bran, 1 cup h20, banana (1/2 mixed in 1/2 on top), scoop of Amazing Grass Superfood Meal, pomegranate arils, small amount Uncle Sam, 1tbs almond butter.

This is hugely filling!  I think I have to pack up the second 1/2 to bring to work!

Goooooo Superfoods!

Green is good

Happy Friday everyone!

While waiting for clay to dry,  I got a couple of signs painted for Stanley & Uncle Sam.  People stop and take their photos,  so why not with them?   

Then I got carried away and started making beads.  Then bigger beads…. and a heart.  I’ll show them IF they turn out.  Keeping my fingers crossed.

I added a photo of the Flying Pig I’m  working on.  It’s on the Tutorial Page.  I thought you might want to see her with wings and that tail.  She is gonna be a fat thing.  Not sure what her name is,  but Franny keeps popping up.  Got any ideas/suggestions?  I really like old fashion names, especially two names.  Tomorrow I’ll start gessoing, then painting.  Can’t wait.  She is huge. 

Thanks for dropping by.  If you have time… leave a comment… it makes my day. xoxo PJ

The DOs and DON’Ts in the Land of Uncle Sam
Security, stability, growth and enormous pool of opportunities await all U.S. immigrants. These are all the reasons why U.S. remains on the top rank among the best countries to live, work and study.
Read More

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Gold is soaring to record high prices, and guess who has the biggest stash?

The U.S. government.

The Treasury Department has 261.5 million ounces of gold in its reserves, representing about a third of the gold stockpiles held by governments around the world. With gold selling at about $1,100 an ounce, that means Uncle Sam is sitting on $288 billion worth of the shiny stuff.

Treasury’s gold sits in vaults across the country. It holds about 25,000 bars in a vault five floors down, 80 feet below street level, in the New York Federal Reserve in Manhattan. The majority of the nation’s gold reserves still reside in Ft. Knox in Kentucky.

But rather than sell it, the government is hanging onto its bullion.

So are other global central banks. In fact, as the dollar continues its downward spiral, many countries are even buying up gold.

Last week, the International Monetary Fund offered up 400 metric tons of gold, and the Reserve Bank of India bought 220 metric tons of it. Sri Lanka bought 5.3 metric tons in the auction as well. In the second quarter, central banks were net buyers of gold for the first time since 1997.

“Gold is gold,” said Nathan Lewis, author of Gold: The Once and Future Money. “There’s no real change in gold’s value. Only the value of paper currency declines.”

Gold has come in and out of fashion with investors over the years. In times of economic instability or inflation, gold demand and prices have trended higher. Despite wild price fluctuations over the years, gold has maintained its purchasing power for about the past 750 years.

“From the mid-14th century until now, you can draw a relative straight line in the purchasing power of gold, and every central banker in their heart knows that,” said Judy Shelton, an economist and director of the National Endowment for Democracy. “Gold is universally recognized as a store of value. That’s important because it denotes price stability.”

Gold had been the standard currency for international trade for centuries. In fact, the Federal Reserve vault in New York has compartments for different countries. When one country would trade with another, a “sitter” would simply move bars from one compartment to another, according to David Girardin, spokesman for the New York Fed.

Gold’s inherent value is buoying its resurgence in popularity. The comeback also raises important questions about the United States’ own reserve position and the government’s ability to maintain demand for U.S. Treasury bonds as the world catches the gold bug.

Governments’ dependence on gold has waned over the years, but they still hold 848 million ounces of it, down 29% from the 1965 peak of 1.2 billion ounces, and just 10% from the 942 million ounces they held 50 years ago, according to the World Gold Council.

Curiously, Treasury still values its gold at $42.22 per ounce. Congress reached that figure in 1973, two years after the the post-World War II Bretton Woods gold standard, which had valued gold at $35 an ounce, was scrapped.

With gold selling at prices 26 times that amount, why doesn’t the Treasury, and by extension, the Fed, realize those gains on their balance sheets by displaying the market value of their holdings? Or, with the gold standard abandoned, why doesn’t the government sell off its reserves to put that money into the economy or pay off debt?

There are lots of reasons, ranging from the psychological to the practical.

“If we started selling gold from our official reserves, it would be recognized as a sign of weakness for the dollar,” said Jeffrey Nichols, managing director of American Precious Metals Advisors and senior economic advisor to Rosland Capital. “America’s relatively large gold holdings provide some psychological benefit to our currency.”

Many gold experts and economists agreed that even though the gold standard has been abandoned for nearly 40 years, the world is still cleaving to its gold because it is a tangible asset.

Another reason for Treasury to hold tight is gold’s fluctuating price. Just ask British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. When Brown was the nation’s chief finance minister a decade ago, he decided that gold had become relatively useless to the government — without the gold standard, it was just an inert metal, and it was expensive to store.

Brown sold off 400 tons, or 60% of the United Kingdom’s gold, between 1999 and 2002. Brown’s problem: Gold was selling at a record low inflation-adjusted average of $275 an ounce at the time. It turned out, had he waited 10 years, the U.K. would have made four times what it hauled in from the sale.

“Geithner doesn’t want to be the Treasury secretary that sells gold at $1,100 an ounce and next year it’s at $2,000,” said Shelton.

Furthermore, a sale of all the country’s gold wouldn’t make much of an impact. With the nation’s annual deficit at $1.7 trillion, a $787 billion stimulus package and a $700 billion bank bailout, $300 billion is kind of puny in comparison.

“The Fed has plenty of tools to pump money into the economy; it doesn’t need to sell gold to do it,” said Lyle Gramley, a former Fed governor. “The government has its gold by historic accident, but there’s no reason why they’d sell it — there’s no motivation.”

But most of all, a sale of the government’s gold would be especially poorly timed now, since foreign central banks are lining up to add gold to their reserves. As a result, experts say a mass-sale of gold would mostly end up in other nation’s coffers.

That could spell disaster for the U.S. government, which is trying to finance its economic rescue packages by selling record amounts of debt to foreign countries in the form of Treasury securities. As gold holdings take up a larger percentage of foreign reserves, Treasury holdings could be reduced.

Shelton, who believes that paper currency should have ties to hard assets, said the resurgence of gold buying should be unsettling for the government. The trend indicates that some foreign countries would rather hold onto an inert metal than Treasurys that pay interest. Treasurys have long been viewed as a riskless asset, because they are tied to the dollar and are backed by the U.S. government.

“If the trend continues, that could reduce the demand for Treasury securities and bonds’ book value would go down,” said Shelton.

amcasının kucağında otururken ne kadar da mutluydu küçük yumurta..

en çok amcasını severdi. çünkü amcası ona en güzel hediyeleri alır, en güzel filmlere götürürdü. ayrıca amcası gerçek bir sihirbazdı.. tek bir el çırpma ile ortalığı toz dumana katabiliyor, birşeyleri yok edebiliyordu.!

ayrıca gezgindi de.. dünyayı dolaşır ve her gittiği yerde çocuklara hediyeler dağıtırdı.

onun seyehat hikayelerine de bayılırdı küçük yumurta..

hatta bir keresinde, yetişkinlerin bile küçük olduğu bir ülkeye gittiğinden bahsetmişti.. yetişkinler bile küçükse , çocuklar küçücük olmalıydı! şimdiye kadar çocuklara dağıttığı hediyelerin en büyüğünü oradaki çocuklara verdiğini anlatmıştı..

yeryüzünün en küçük insanlarına, yeryüzünün en büyük hediyeleri..

amcasının kucağında otururken ne kadar da mutluydu küçük yumurta..

amcası ona kötü adamlardan da bahsetmişti.. çocukları kötü adamlardan nasıl kurtardığından..

amcası bir sihirbaz, gezgin,

ve kahramandı.

kucağında otururken küçük yumurta,

amcası komşu mahallenin çocuklarına hediyeler dağıtıyordu..

Good Morning!  I can’t wait to sleep in tomorrow morning!  Nick is still tucked away in bed because he decided to skip the gym this morning, and I am jealous.  I guess he stayed up too late watching MNF.  I don’t even know who won!

Last night Food INC got me just a relied up as last time.  I wish I had it to show my dad.  I think it would make him understand more about where I am coming from with my food politics.

Vote with your fork!!!

Onto breakfast!

I haven’t have pumpkin oats in a very long time and it was high time I revisited an old friend before it is gingerbread oats season!

Not the prettiest picture, but certainly delicious!  How do you make brown pretty?

In my bowl: 1/3 cup oat bran, 1/3 cup h2o, 1/3 cup almond milk, 1/3 cup pumpkin, 1 tbs pumpkin butter, 1 tbs almond butter, pumpkin pie spice and a handful of Uncle Sam for a texture change.

Sometimes the nastiest looking things are the most delicious!

Sicily was not invited to breakfast today…she was too interested in her own bowl of kibble.  Hmmm Uncle Sam kind of looks like people kibble

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood!  Too bad I will be in a cube all day.

I know I had mentioned peppermint patty oats, but I changed my mind when I looked into the fridge this morning.

I can’t remember the last time I had a yogurt mess and an almost empty Chobani container was calling my name!  Sicily was excited for it too.

Don’t worry, she didn’t eat any, just making sure it was safe for me to eat.  She does not eat people food and I plan to keep it that way.

Almond butter, banana and jelly yogurt mess.

Along with the ab, jelly, yogurt and banana there was 1/2 a cup of Uncle Sam and 1/2 cup of Kashi H2H with a side of Sissy snifs.   I think she was after the yogurt, but again she did not eat any of my breakfast.

OK time to head out the door!

Happy Monday!

TRUE UNCLE SAM OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

PUREENERGY312

HOW DO YOU DEFINE SUCCESS?

I WILL START…

FAILURE AND PAIN IS SUCCESS BUT NOBODY WANTS TO TAKE THE CLASS.

 I WOULD VERY MUCH LIKE TO HERE YOUR IEDAS.

THANK YOU

SAMUEL DANIEL LOVELESS

S.D.L.

PUREENERGY312

TRUE UNCLE SAM OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

I really want to make a book. Maybe a memoir (though, I’m not quite old enough yet). I want to make a book that talks about the State: how it initiates its power and then simultaneously maintains itself – basically summarizing its methods – and its efficiency/inefficiency. Then a part of the book would be about The Alternative. Which, is basically pretty obvious (anarchism).

Maybe an existentialist book, also. Stuff like that.

So I found a website called Wordclay, which allows you to publish your own books.

Anyway, apparently there still hasn’t exactly been service group. Though I guess there was an improvised service group today. Abe was there, and we were both assigned to work on the same canned food drive poster, which was pretty awesome. Well, did my best to get close to him! Very inconspicuously.

We were laying on the floor, and his legs were under a seat, so I put my legs in there, and rolled around a bit, feeling him against my back. Apparently, he didn’t notice.

When we were leaving school, he yelled out my name and said bye to me when we split ways and I was already halfway home. Which made me feel good. It makes me feel like a friend.

Apparently Fer-fer knows about my bisexuality, or thinks I’m homosexual, and knows what my feelings may be towards Abe, but he never really brings it up. Today I found out this because I said I was part of the Geography Club, referencing the book by the same name.

But, on Thursday, I had Cross Country. What had surprised me for the most part was the fact that, well, there were only four people present. The rest of them I buried alive so that I would be the best runner! No, really, I have no idea what happened. It’s as though some mass amnesia that there was Cross Country had happened where only a few were saved.

It was quite fucked up, since it felt way too peaceful.

Anyway, apparently the coach wanted us to drop unconscious, and, thinking that punching us a bloody nose in the face was too conspicuous, he decided to run laps for 20 minutes. Because I am pretty fast – or just because the coach wanted to push us further – I ran quite a lot of laps on that time, non-stop.

Not even to scratch my pubes.

And guess what? I saw these two girls from the wack sucky annoying stupid-ass afterschool I had to go to so my mom could keep me busy and she didn’t have to worry about my horrible presence and civil disobedience when she tells me to get off the computer. And when I was running, out loud, they said the following.

Girl1: “I want to fuck you!”

Girl2: “If you were homework, I would do all you all night!”

They noticed they were saying these things in front of my coach and quickly withdrew the comments, like the S.B. (Smart B*tches) they were. Though more like S.O.F. (Slow Obscene Females).

Thought I felt a surge of power and prowess when they said that and some images flashed, I would never go out with an obnoxious girl that shouts obscene things out loud. Shouting, shouting; shouting, shouting. You wanna fuck me? Well,

Srsly.

Seriously – they could’ve just whispered it in my ear or something.

But, hey, that’s how it happened.

In the laps, I felt a resurgence of strength also, not because of the girls, no, but it seems after I finished the more difficult maps my legs started adjusting. They felt just a bit hot and numb and less strained. So, I think I’ve built my legs up a bit already.

Abe is so kawaii. Too bad we likely won’t be romantic friends. But, we’re friends.

I also read the memoir I’ve been working on at Writing Workshop in class – out loud, and it was supposed to be recorded, but my memoir was too hilarious (being about having a phobia of taking a crap) that the audience could not stifle their laughter, so they had perturbed the recording.

This weekend, I’m going to have to finish all of my applications for HS admissions. I hate this whole process, because as a procrastinator, I’m not good with deadlines. Now I shall post the relevant pictures, like I always do:

There is growing intelligent dissent to the administration’s stimulus policy.  Critics argue that recent growth is the result of market principles.  Edward P. Lazear wrote Monday in the WSJ, that he forecasted a return to growth without stimulus spending.  He goes on to argue, along with others, that  housing programs have had questionable results.  Lazear said that Uncle Sam is fibbing about job growth as well, reporting job retention as if it where job creation.  John Irons of the Economic Policy Institute agrees.  The administration has an incentive to report positive unemployment numbers- the most popular, but also misunderstood indicator.

Unemployment is only part of the overall picture.  Other improving indicators reported this week tell us that the economy is turning around-but for whom? It depends on how you define growth.  A technical definition says that growth is positive GDP.  That means little to most people.  Real growth, theoretically, is an improvement in living standards for the entire country.  That’s why Main Street understands the unemployment rate.  Accordingly, the media use it as the sole judge for growth.  The problem is, as Lazear mentioned,  job growth is the final component of recovery- behind financial stability and GDP growth.  Unemployment lags years behind an actual recovery.   If unemployment is a lagging indicator, Lazear cannot empirically link failed stimulus policy to persistent unemployment.  He says that the administration is ignoring job losses while inflating job creation numbers.  Isn’t he doing the same thing by ignoring market stabilization and GDP growth? 

BEA Released GDP Data This Week 

According to the BEA, GDP is up for a number of reasons.  Look closely at the report.  Exports rose 14 percent over last quarter and consumer spending rose 3.4 percent.  Market Watch reported that positive numbers where in part due to stimulus spending, but as I argued in the past, these gains are only temporary.  The purpose of the stimulus is to stabilize the economy so that private markets can function again.  There is no wider conspiracy.  The government will roll back stimulus as soon as it sees the return of private investment.  There is evidence of this already: government spending actually slowed by 3.5 percent.

Not all the news was good.  Personal income fell and prices rose.  Hopefully this is a temporary trend based on slight price increases and high unemployment.  However, as long as export growth remains positive, I see no need to fear 70s style stagflation.  

Savings and Long-Term Growth

According to the old Solow Model, a country’s savings rate is positively related to long-term growth.  Today, personal savings is around five percent, that’s up from around one percent just four years ago.  This bodes well for long-term growth in the US.  And now is a great time to invest.  As private investment (including people’s savings) replaces public spending in the next few years, markets will rebound.  Private investment will power an upswing in the business cycle, spark growth and reduce unemployment. The sooner the government rolls back stimulus, the better.  In the mean time, citizens can take advantage of great opportunities in real estate and other deflated markets.  This transfer of savings from a stock to a flow will jump-start the economy in way no stimulus could.  It would take tens of trillions of dollars in government spending to match the power of private investors.

Thomas J. Powell

GREEN PORTAL - IT'S ALL ABOUT THE APPROACH.

 IT’S ALL ABOUT THE APPROACH.

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE APPROACH.

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE APPROACH.

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE APPROACH.

Anyone else feeling a cold draft?

Hey there Loyal Readers and Newbies alike!!

I promise that I have not forgotten this blog.  Far from it, in fact.  I am working on a few things and am really looking forward to the future!  Don’t worry… I am still the same snarky former Company employee… there are plenty of good times to come.

I appreciate everyone still hitting my site, even though my posting has been lagging.  I get hits mostly from people still wanting a definition to “Inculcate” or Running with the Bulls [shrugs]. I will do a full review of awesome (and bizarre) search engine terms shortly.

In the meantime, I would love for all you lurkers (and very vocal commenters) to come out from hiding and let me know which Hell Blog story has been your favorite!  Enquiring minds want to know!