Well I said there would be no weekend posts, but there probably will be, because writing is my ultimate sanity preservation/stress relief tool, and my workload is really catching up to me, and so I been writing more and more. For people who subscribe via RSS or email, apologies if I'm overstuffing your inbox/RSS reader, though I hope some at least find it useful in some way.

Anyway. A few things:

1. Here's a picture I took on a telephone pole near my apartment. HR 1955 is a hugely destructive piece of legislation (should it get passed) that, like every other hugely important piece of information, gets ignored by the all-encompassing corporate media more interested in news anchors in short skirts talking about celebrities and sex crimes (though don't think I'm hatin' on short skirts, am definitely a fan ). But as this sign illustrates, there are those of us who are awake -- and as this post illustrates, the Internet and other digital media technology enable us to transform the tools of the surveillance society into tools of liberty and free expression. Out of darkness comes light.


2. Absolutely killer post from the always insightful Stefan Karlsson on the coming return of inflationary conditions. I'm still not ready to enter more short dollar trades (meaning trades where I speculate that the dollar will fall against other currencies) with the exception of the Japanese yen, which I've been buying against the dollar since November. Overall my trading account is doing reasonably well, marked to market I'm up about 20% on the year. If you have money, consider getting it out of dollar-denominated assets and into foreign currencies and precious metals (gold and silver). I've been saying this since 2006 and I maintain that it is only going to get more urgent -- probably more so for you than for me, as you probably have more money than I do (admittedly not a very challenging task). What happened in Iceland this year and in Argentina in 2001/2002 is, in my opinion, very likely to occur here. What happened was significant currency devaluation, which lead to protests, riots, huge increases in crime, and the inability to afford anything as the currency has lost its value.

3. Along these lines, if you're interested in learning about the economy but don't really understand what is going on, I highly recommend the video below, which is a compilation of video clips of economist/investment advisor Peter Schiff explaining things. Schiff is a great teacher and communicator, he uses simple analogies to explain things. The only intelligent rebuttal to Schiff that I've ever seen is this post from Mike Shedlock; note, though, that both agree on quite a bit (both are bearish on US stocks, bullish on gold, but diverge in forecasts on the US dollar; Schiff is a dollar bear [meaning he believes dollar will go down in value], Shedlock is more bullish on the US dollar).

Here is the video that is a compilation of analogies Schiff uses to explain the economy.


4. Working on a song for Peter Schiff. It's pretty much done in my head, I just need to figure it all out on guitar and get the lyrical concept into words. Will probably be my last song for 2008. It will put me at 30 original songs written solely by me for the year (not including a few remixes I did, alternate lyrics, cover songs, or stuff I wrote before 2008 but did not record until this year). My most productive songwriting year since 2002, which I was not expecting in the least. Will do a full recap at some point in the coming weeks.

Phew. Glad I got this post out of my system. I feel a bit better now. Hope you do too.