Category: Observations

For the anniversary of D-Day. Written in 1942 by Irving Berlin, I Paid my Income Tax Today supported the country’s income tax collection efforts during World War II.

The rights  are stilll owned by the Internal Revenue Service which distributed the song widely on its publication.

Proclaiming the patriotic virtues of paying taxes, this zippy little tune makes being “squared up with the USA” sound positively delightful. Clearly, the  national dialogue surrounding taxes, especially in  credit unions, has gone in a different direction.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIT3xnYbmzQ&t=8s)

America’s Rising Generation at its  Best

The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Wimoweh)

To spark your day. The Young People’s Chorus of New York City sing at the Lincoln Center in 2021. These  are the future of the country.  Feel the joy and see the promise. I love the conductor’s enthusiasm.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erCq44KSEHQ)

An Encore

How Can I keep from Singing

Performed at the 16th Annual Anabaptist Choral Festival 2023 of Shenandoah Christian Music Camp (VA).  

The choir covers their faces to represent the text which speaks of darkness closing in around us: “What though the tempest loudly roars, I hear the truth, it liveth! What though the darkness ’round me close, Songs in the night it giveth.”

And the words of hope: I hear tne bells of freedom ringing; how can I keep from singing? 

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw-ycev482k&t=9s)

A number of credit unions already partner with crypto exchanges enabling members to purchase and store crypto.  More are considering the service. The fees can be attractive with apparently little risk.

But should this be a credit union endorsed activity? That is a question that arises in other contexts. For example other activities some might perceive as outside core purpose include  supporting state authorized cannabis banking,  interval vacation home ownership or various forms of legal betting.

Crypto issuance and lighter regulation are a priority for the Trump administration and for his family’s personal investing.

Yesterday substack columnist Jared Brock published his analysis of the pros and cons of  crypto currencies.  Following are excerpts from the article.

Can Bitcoin Save Us?

One model of currency creation is to let everyone privately create money and let the market decide.

This is where Bitcoin comes in.

Cryptocurrencies are pseudo-money built on a blockchain, which is a trustless, decentralized, encrypted digital spreadsheet.

Anyone can privately create one.

And boy, do they.

As of this morning, there are over 16,560,000 cryptocurrencies and tokens, with 57,335 new ones coming online just yesterday.

Nearly 100% of these are straight-up scams.

Allowed unbridled private money creation has all sorts of challenges:

1. Obviously, it leads to a proliferation of fraud. Why would we want to put our young people, old people, unintelligent people, and vulnerable people at further risk of exploitation? . . .
2. Market instability. It’s hard for people and businesses to plan and budget effectively when there are millions of currencies all whipsawing in price.
3. Inequality. Rich people and rich corporations have more resources to create and promote their currencies, even if they’re inferior products. This further concentrates economic power and grows economic inequality.
4. Transaction costs. Mastercard, Visa, Stripe, and the rest of the payments processing ilk already rob a huge percentage of our money, not unlike the moneychangers that Jesus drove out of the temple. With tens of millions of currencies in circulation, virtually every purchase would require several currency exchanges.
5. Monetary policy. When all money is created privately, democracies lose the ability to direct the economy toward national goals and objectives like ending poverty.
6. Currency wars. When there are millions of currencies fighting for customers, it incentivizes all of them to undermine and devalue their competitors to gain an advantage.

You don’t have to believe me.

You can just look at history.

America used to do private money creation.

At one point, nearly every city in America had its own city bank that issued its own currency.

Each value of each bank’s money was based on its reputation and financial stability.

It was the Wild West, and it led to endless bank runs, millions of bankruptcies, untold suicides, and the creation of the fraudulent, quasi-government (but actually private) money monster called the Federal Reserve.

Can you hear the Bitcoiners howling?

“Yeah, but Bitcoin has a limited supply!”

Right.

Bitcoiners have an autistic obsession with the fact that Bitcoin has a limited supply.

“Only” 2.1 quadrillion satoshis will ever exist.

My note: this is where I do not understand Brock’s logic.  This is the stated limit for bitcoin creation- 21 million. Is he speculating about infinite computer creation?)

How very impressive.

That’s 2,100 trillion.

That’s 2.1 million billions.

That’s 2.1 billion millions.

That’s more than 10 times all the money currently in existence.

So let me get this straight — you hate U.S. bankers for creating $21.86 trillion out of thin air… but you’re okay when someone else creates 96Xs more money out of thin air? Are you demented?

Bitcoiners insist they’re different, but it’s actually just more of the same — economic injustice and exploitation for all. . .

And what are all these Bitcoiners doing with all their hoarded Bitcoin?

They’re just hoarding it.

They’re lending it out on decentralized finance platforms for interest.

Millions of Bitcoiners have zero plans to ever sell or spend a single Bitcoin. The plan is to lock it in digital vaults as a reserve currency, then create digital Bitcoin-backed tokens that they can lend at interest.

In other words, they want to be the new central banksters, the new monopolistic overlords of finance who decide who gains access to money and who gets shut out. . .That’s the problem with all these Bitcoin-worshippers.

They still love money; they just call it by a different name. . .

Conclusion

Obviously, everything has costs and benefits.

I’m not against Bitcoin. . .

I’m against monopolization. I’m for sharing.

And frankly, millions of Bitcoiners are far-right libertarian rules-free-market hyper-individualist sociopaths. I wouldn’t want to be forced into using a single currency on their terms any more than on central bankster terms. . .

Thus, why I prefer sovereign money — democratic, accountable, safeguarded, fair, just, non-exploitative, accessible, nation-building currency.

I want honest money.

What do you think?  Is this a valid analysis for credit union’s contemplating facilitating crypto purchases?

 

Walking in the neighborhood yesterday.  New skills for a new generation. A full day?

 

 

 

As the US economy  continues to react to various Trump fiscal initiatives,  some still hope interest rates will fall to the levels of the first Trump era.

That extremely low interest rate period, begun in response to the financial problems of 2008/9, was itself unique.  This analysis from yesterday’s Marketplace’s Daily Wrap suggests why that may not occur again.

As the GOP spending bill winds its way through Congress, the trajectory of U.S. federal debt, now 100% of GDP , is in the balance. What Congress and the president do with the finances of the U.S. government will seep out into the rest of the economy. Specifically, if the government must borrow a lot more, it affects the cost of borrowing for pretty much everyone else. Recall the period before the pandemic when interest rates were super low. Where people were “borrowing money at 3 and 4% for commercial real estate transactions or a house,” said Alice Frazier, president of the 154-year-old Bank of Charlestown in West Virginia. “The low interest rate period was not a normal period.” It was a dream, and we’ve woken up from it. Rates were low back then for many reasons. Inflation was not an issue. Also, after the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve started keeping short-term rates low and working hard to push long-term rates down. And investors around the world were traumatized by the crisis and particularly interested in safe assets, accepting low rates for that purpose. All of that has now changed. Inflation awoke, the Fed raised rates and, over time, international investors were less accepting of lower yields. . . Would-be homeowners started to think twice about that mortgage. “And on the business side there were investments, but our borrowers were much more measured, and this is operating type companies — landscapers or manufacturers,” sai d Frazier. This is generally what happens when interest rates in the economy go up. “Everything that the firm or the private sector would contemplate doing gets a little bit harder to do,” said Jesse Schreger, an associate professor at Columbia Business School. Higher rates haven’t been fun, especially if you’re a buyer trying to get a mortgage, a startup trying to lure investors, or a struggling restaurant chain trying to stay afloat. But so far, the economy as a whole has been strong and able to handle it. . . “If you take a look, for instance, at consumers, at households, you know, we think they’re in a very sustainable place. Balance sheets are relatively healthy. The use of credit and leverage does not appear unsustainable,” said Josh Hirt, a senior U.S. economist at Vanguard. . . But the question right now is whether borrowing costs across the economy, after going up a notch since the start of the pandemic, are going to go up another, perhaps more unpleasant notch — and not just for the private sector. “I think that really is gonna come down to the key question: how are we going to manage our fiscal situation in the U.S.,” Hirt said.

 

7:19 AM  Patient is in the operating room.

Reply STOP to Johns Hopkins Medicine to opt out.

          A recollection on Memorial Day

The Vietnam War was a divisive period in American society.  Duty called people in many, often differing diections.

The pictures below are of Solid Anchor a combined Vietnamese US Navy base on the Cua Lon river at the very tip of the Ca Mau penisula.  This stage of the war was relatively quiet.  The Seal team’s primary role was to gather information about threats from Viet Cong or North Vietnamese presence in the area. These pictures are from January and February 1971.

Leaving the USS Windham County (LST 1170) to go to Solid Anchor.

Passing an Island on the way

Large swaths of vegetation and lowlands destroyed by agent orange spraying.

The river front at the base dredged from the  lowland.  The river patrol boats at the dock.

The water front, an  artificial peer from sand filled 40 gallon drums.

A patrol boat disabled by a mine.

VIew from a base watch tower, manned 24 hours.

Joint command flags. Base main office with chow hall and for paying troops with military pay certificates (MPC) not dollars.

The Seal team’s hooch, Happiness is . . .  The boy with snake had found a Viet Cong cache of 200 grenades.

Sunset at helo pad with two gunships always ready to lift off at the first sign of trouble.

Dawn on helo pad.

Day after some incoming. Bunkers and metal for airstrip. (January 9, 1971)

At setting sun down main street.

Heading to Saigon with another huey close by to return all left over MPC which was being replaced with a new issue.

A straight canal on way to Saigon.

A Coast Guard ship  deployed  with our LST.

Heading to homeport after being gone for over six months.

Waiting for dads’ return atYokosuka Naval Base, Japan.  Lara in yellow rain coat and Alix on the way.

 

Posted on the door leading to the main office:

This is part of what is inside:

What does your Welcome sign say?

Yesterday was the anniversary of Victory in Europe (VE Day) for the Allied forces.

It is important to remember that WW II was begun by two countries, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany jointly invading Poland in September 1939.  This was followed in November by the Soviet Union’s attack on Finland.

The two countries had signed a secret agreement in August 1939, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Officially it was a Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Also known as the Hitler–Stalin Pact, a secret protocol established Soviet and German spheres of influence across Eastern Europe.

How America Spoke of Victory

Two leaders’ words capture this country’s spirit of grace, humility, sacrifice and gratitude in that immediate moment  of May 8, 1945.

General Dwight Eisenhower issued a Victory Order   to the troops that read in part:

The route you have traveled through hundreds of miles is marked by the graves of former comrades. From them has been exacted the ultimate sacrifice; blood of many nations – American, British, Canadian, French, Polish and others – has helped to gain the victory.

Each of the fallen died as a member of the team to which you belong, bound together by a common love of liberty and a refusal to submit to enslavement.

No monument of stone, no memorial of whatever magnitude could so well express our respect and veneration for their sacrifice as would perpetuation of the spirit of comradeship in which they died.

As we celebrate Victory in Europe let us remind ourselves that our common problems of the immediate and distant future can best be solved in the same conceptions of cooperation and devotion to the cause of human freedom as have made this Expeditionary Force such a mighty engine of righteous destruction.”

In this History Channel VE summary, the remarks at the end by FDR (at 6:50) are as meaningful now as they were then: The spirit of man has been awakened for a good (“love of liberty”) beyond his brief span.

May it ever be so.

)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKIsvh59Bj4&t=329s)

 

Most people have  doubts about the Easter events at the core of Christian belief.  From early childhood to our senior years, everyone asks, Did It really happen? The story seems nonsensical.

Our  questions  and skepticism are the same as on that first morning.  No one believed the women’s initial accounts of an emply tomb or of some brief, unusual experiences shared.

But then life intervenes for us.  Real joys, sorrows, tragedies all mingled with deep love by those around us.  Somehow this example of divine goodness in human life comes into our view.

And when we are scared, uncertain or even comfortable sitting on the sidelines of life, we summon the courage to assert hope in a belief that our future can be better than what we face now.

Here is an example from yesterday of this miracle  in one of the most difficult circumstance of life.  The news story captures this fundamental human hope, grounded in a love, that never dies. And the desperattion of those still waiting for their miracle.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFff3ADgCKI)

The Mystery of Faith

If a more ordered explanation of why so many have this Easter hope, here is a plain spoken talk on this continually evolving journey of belief.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCq6bgGVgcY)

Happy Easter Monday.   Know there is more to come. As we see hope in others, it will rekindle  our own faith that life’s possibilities are more than what we see today.

If you need another living example of this faith, here is one leader’s belief in the future:  Evil has its hour, but God has His Day. 

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu9Nqn8HQy0)