Todd’s Life

Ok, the funny story will come first today.  This happened at the end of the day or close to the end of the day.  I had to catch a bus today, so I hop on the bus and lo and behold this band is playing their traditional, for lack of word, “The Mission” soundtrack music.  It was actually pretty good.  I thought it was a pleasant way to enjoy a bus ride.  I guess here in Chile you can just walk on the bus and play whatever you want.  The reason I say whatever you want is because I had to catch a bus back from where I was at.  So I get on the bus back and there is this guy playing some kind of wood flute really loud and really high pitched.  It wasn’t pleasant.  I was thinking of walking up to him and saying, “te pagare solo callarte” which I think means I’ll pay you just to shut up, please.  He had this penchant for playing the highest, chalkboard scratching notes the loudest and then afterwards he went around asking people for money because after all he was doing us a favor by sharing his talents that would scare a cat to death in a dark alley.  Anyway, that was the funny, unique thing about Chile.

Work has been very busy lately as I’ve been the main project lead on this project, which is nameless for obvious reasons.  It is nice to try and balance everything.  I enjoy project management so far.  Only time will time if I enjoy it long term, but I have a penchant for being able to manage people and projects.  I’ve just never done it formally this much.  I’ve got to work a little bit later because tomorrow I’ll be going to Los Angeles Chile for New Years Eve, so I want to get some stuff done tonight for an hour or so.  The people at worked enjoyed the Hawaiian candies very much.  They want me to go back to the US to pick up some more.  We also had a nice New Years lunch today at a Japanese sushi place that plays latino music.  This sushi place is to die for though.  It is so good, but it is in a weird part of town which reminds me that the secret to most businesses is location, location, location.

And then tonight I went on a long run.  I can tell that I gained weight in Portland.  That’s what tons of chocolate, food, and no exercise will do coupled with 40 hours of sitting in airports and planes.  That, my friends, is the sedentary man’s heaven, but it certainly isn’t the best way to live on this earth.  This life was meant to be lived on the run.  It was meant to experience movement, so make sure you move a little bit more today than yesterday.  Anyway, it was a good day filled with work, sunshine, running, some weird moments, and of course some good news that I can work from home on New Years Eve and the day after New Years which means I can go down to Los Angeles and enjoy the pool, sun, and see my friends and their family.  It is nice when days like this happen.  They don’t happen often, but it is nice when they do.  Life is full of lots of crap and clouds, but it is nice when the sun shines occasionally.  Whether this is God’s doing or just plain luck is beyond me, but I will thank him when the good times happen and try to thank him when the bad times happen as well and when the really bad times happen (which they do for everyone), try really hard not to get mad at him and still be grateful.  Isn’t life a mystery though.  Most of the time you never know when He blesses your life or challenges your life.  He just expects you to be grateful through it all.  I suppose that is part of the mystery of God.  He can’t be too open and too obvious in any person’s life because then free agency or the ability to choose one’s direction in life is impeded.  It’s better to have him in the shadows.  It might not always be easy, but I think it is better if He works in mysterious ways.

And of course, here is your reading assignment for today.  I found these two articles on www.dailyreckoning.com, a site I go to for my financial advice, and I had to share them with you.  I posted them on my other site, so I’m just going to give you links to them.  Read them and learn something about economics and politics.  It really is clever writing and very informative. 

Article 1

Article 2

I arrived in Santiago this morning at about 9 am after 18 hours of travelling.  Surprisingly I didn’t feel too bad.  Luckily I had 3 seats in a row on my way down from Atlanta to Santiago so I got to stretch out a bit.  I caught a cab from the airport.  I’m sure the guy overcharged me, but I didn’t care.  I got home.  That’s all that mattered.  I went right to work.  I worked from home today.  I had a lot of things to do in order to get ready for a meeting that I had later in the day.  I ran the meeting today.  Noone else was around.  Talk about baptism by fire.  It is interesting trying to coordinate all this stuff.  I took about an hour break today to go run in the heat of the day.  I didn’t exercise at all while in Portland and I could tell.  I think I gained 5 pounds of chocolate weight alone.  I was hurting today, but the heat could have had something to do with that as well.  I’m not sure.  I also received my sister’s package from the States for Christmas.  It was full of goodies and candies, just like my moms.  Now I’ve got to find a way to get rid of all my chocolate without eating it all, although I certainly love chocolate.  That’s pretty much my day.  I travelled 6000 plus miles, ran in the heat of the day, and worked until about 8:30 tonight, then studied a little spanish.  Somehow I need to fit that in.  I’d encourage you all to read this Thomas Sowell article here.  It’s important to get another perspective at this crucial time in our history.  Freedom is the answer to what ails us.  More government is the problem that is causing us all so much pain.  Think about this.  Does the government ever shrink during a recession or times of trouble.  Often it actually grows.  So if the government never shrinks then it must grow and grow and grow at the expense of everyone who is not tied directly to it.  It’s no wonder that so many jobs are leaving America for other lands.  We just can’t afford our bloated, do-nothing, get rich off the people governments anymore.  How long it will take the average Joe to realize they are being played by Bush, Obama, and every other weasel politician is beyond me, but hopefully it is soon.

Today will be a day of travel.  I’m not really looking forward to it, but at least it will be as short as it possibly could be.  It’s only 16 hours of total travel.  I fly to Atlanta, wait for 2 hours there, then go directly to Santiago.  It will be nice to leave the cold and will be nice to step off the plane to warmth in Santiago.  As usual, I’ve enjoyed spending time with my family.  It was short, but it was sweet.  My body never fully adjusted to Portland time.  I wish that I had done some more things outdoors, but I wasn’t feeling well so I thought it wasn’t smart to push it. 

Today was spent shopping and relaxing.  I have been feeling a little bit sick, so I decided that I needed to just rest so that I can make the long flight back to Chile tomorrow.  We went to Old Navy, Barnes and Nobles, and Target.  I couldn’t believe the cheap sales that were at Old Navy.  I got 3 pairs of pants and 2 polo shirts for $50.  You can’t beat that.  I never intended to get so much stuff while here, but I bought for the future because it was so cheap.  I definitely don’t that many pairs of pants and shirts and shoes that I bought.  Then I bought a bunch of Spanish grammar and verb books.  I happened to have $60 in Barnes and Noble gift certificates left over.  Other than this, I’ve spent the rest of the day just resting so that I can make this trip back successfully and not get much sicker.  I really wanted to go with the family to my cousin John’s for dinner, but thought it would be better if I just rested at home.  I don’t want to be sick for this flight tomorrow morning.  Time has sure flown by fast.  Where did the time go?  Now it is time to go back and work hard and see where my life in Chile takes me, etc.  I’ve decided that I need to open myself up to more experiences while there and take a few chances while I am there.  It basically boils down to whether or not I’m committed to living there for a lengthy period of time and I’ve decided that I need to live like I am.  It is such a big change to be in a foreign country where you don’t speak the language.  I think that often people that I am around forget this little fact and so they fail to go the extra mile to help me out.  They just assume that life is normal.  So I’ve got to step out of my comfort zone a bit while I am there.  I’d like to play some soccer, basketball, maybe take a dance class, etc. while I am there.  Anyway, I’m going to rest.  I just finished packing.  I think that I’ll read my scriptures or something for a few minutes, then watch some football.  My batteries are recharged in the USA and now it is time to go back to Chile.  I’m hoping that that girl that I’d like to date will be available when I get back.  We’ll see if they are really broken up or not. 

Today was an extremely lazy day.  It’s just too cold to be doing too much outside.  I did walk around the corner today with  my Mom to go shopping at Fred Meyers.  They had some incredible sales.  I ended up buying 5 pairs of shoes, just because they were so cheap and I figured that I could buy them for the future.   The strange thing was that there weren’t that many people shopping.  It was calm, no lines, no nothing.  I guess the economy must be hurting.  That is what happens when people get into too much debt.  There comes a time when they can’t take out any more debt.  Why Americans thought that wealth came from debt is beyond me.   I guess they were deceived by the people that make money off of debt, banks and the Federal Reserve.

The rest of the day was spent indoors just relaxing.  I felt a little short throat coming on and I felt a little sick, so I need to be careful because Sunday I fly back and I don’t want to be sick.  I’ve had a great time spending time with my nephews and family here.  Sammy and I colored in his coloring book yesterday.  Joshua is so cute and so much fun too hold.  He is such a happy baby.  We haven’t done too much on this vacation, but that wasn’t necessary.  It’s just nice to spend a little time with family before I head back to Santiago.  Oh yeah, and I beat my brother twice in Scrabble.  We’ll have to go for three in a row today.

Well, I made it to Portland Oregon only 2 hours late.  I was suprised that it all went so well.  I was a little worried because of the storms that they have been having up in the Northwest.  It was their worst snowstorm in 40 years up here and many flights were cancelled the days before I arrived and there was a threat that my flight might be rerouted to Seattle, but thankfully I made it through.  It was a long 24 hours of travelling.  But it is good to be here and hard to believe that in a little over 48 hours I will be heading back.  I’m glad I came though.  It was nice to see my family and my little nephews.  They are so cute. 

I can’t believe that tomorrow I’m heading back to the States.  Sure I’m excited.  I’m excited to just be in the States for a while, eating some good old American food, and seeing family, and of course celebrating Christmas.  Today, I held my first meeting with a client of ours.  I wish I could tell you who they are, but that wouldn’t be a good thing.  I was a little worried about it because after all I’ve only been with the company for 3 weeks now.  But it went fine.  There are so many things to know with this job, but luckily the people that work in this company are very helpful.  What’s interesting is that most people in the States work from home.  It is interesting working for a virtual company that isn’t like any other that I’ve been with.  It’s actually pretty nice.  It was a long day.  I got very little sleep last night because I watched some football and then got up early to go run because I knew today would be a long day.  In to work at 10:30 and done at 7:30.  I guess that isn’t too bad.  Tomorrow, I’ll catch a taxi to work because I’m going straight from work to the airport and so I have to take my luggage with is half full with treats from Chile.  Finally, I read this great Thomas Sowell article the other day.  Read it here.

I also had an interesting conversation with a lady at work.  She wanted to know if things would get worse in the US.  I just laughed.  I said that Obama is going to make the same mistakes that FDR made and recited verbatim the propaganda that we all learned in public high school, that FDR was the savior, and that it was because of him that we got out of the Great Depression.  I just laughed at that one.  First, wasn’t the Federal Reserve created in the 1910s to make sure that we didn’t experience recessions.  And look what happened 20 years after the creation of the central bank.  We had the Great Depression.  We’d never had one before and strangely we have one now.  Second, FDR meddled heavily in the economy, great trade barriers were created, instituted tax hikes during a recession, etc.  Sounds like a cause of the Great Depression, not a cure.  Anyway, the truth never mattered to a central government who wants people to believe that they are the friend.  I told her that she needed to read www.dailyreckoning.com to see what is really going to happen.  She wanted so much to believe that Barack would be different.  She didn’t want to hear any bad news.  Yeah, and I’d love a million dollars today.  Listen, we can all live in fantasy world, but it doesn’t mean that reality will stop just because we want to live in the fantasy world.  I think it is rather amusing the hope that people have in politicians.  I think it is rather childish to believe in a person who generally lies for a living.   

Santiago is so quiet today.  I think that half the city left for vacation or not many people go out on Sundays.  it really is a ghost town.  It is so much different than on the weekdays where the streets are packed.  I heard that January really is a ghost town because that is when people generally go on vacation.  I walked to church this morning.  At church I sat next to this guy who’ve I’ve never met.  We ended up talking a bit.  He was an inactive member who doesn’t come to church that often.  He talked about how sometimes this ward isn’t too friendly and I had to agree with him on some points.  Most members just tended to ignore him, which I thought was kind of ironic because that’s definitely a way to drive someone away.  I think sometimes, as members, we forget that our primary goal or job or whatever you want to call it is to be friends with people, not just to fill callings, etc.  The primary goal of the gospel is to be friendly and to help people along there way and probably the first thing that one has to do is to show interest and be friendly.  Anyway, this guy works as a doctor at a vet NGO in a rich area of town.  I will invite him over when I get back from my vacation.  Everyone needs a friend in the church if people are expected to stay active.  A friend, a calling, and the good word is what I remember President Hinkley saying.  Another funny thing about church that I noticed today.  In our elder’s quorom, I’m one of the few people that brings their elder’s quorom manual.  I actually read the lesson now before Elder’s quorom.  Isn’t that funny?  The gringo reads the lesson and most likely the only other person who reads it is the teacher.  But I can’t really comment too much on it, because my words would just mess it up.  So I just listen.  They must think I’m this shy guy, but they don’t realize it is nothing more than a language barrier.  I’m grateful for the few people there who have stepped out of their comfort zone to show me what classes to go to.

And with that, there’s much else to say about the day, other than, can you believe the Cowboys lost at home in the final game of Texas Stadium.  Talk about not putting forth much effort.  I guess money can’t buy all the talent in the world.  When push comes to shove, it’s usually the one with the most heart and desire that wins the game.  I’ll see some of you in a couple of days.  I can’t wait.

And finally, I just read that Joe Biden will be the working family’s czar.  He is charged with raising the standard of living of the working family.  First of all, I didn’t know we lived in Russia.  As I remember, the communists overthrew the Tsar or Czar, but it is actually kind of appropriate that he is calling himself the czar, because day after day we seem to be ceding more and more control the the government just like the Russians did.  Second, what exactly is a working family.  Don’t all families work in some way or another?  Third, how does creating class warfare by arbitrarily dividing us into working and non-working class families unite America?  Most people who are not considered working class by Joe Biden and others like him are self-made people.  Through there own sweat and some luck, they became rich.  Why Joe Biden and others like him wish to punish these people is beyond me?  Fourth, and finally, it is rapidly becoming clear that America has lost her compass, lost her way, and the federal government will soon begin declaring war upon prosperity and those who earn their money to fulfill some kind of progressive or socialist mandate to redistribute wealth which is really nothing more than a back door attempt to centralize power and put it in the hands of those who want that kind of power because ultimately they believe they are smarter than the rest of us.  And does anyone believe that the federal government can raise the standard of living of any group of people?  Ha.Ha.  That is a funny one.  Last time I checked, the government has been running the show for decades now through taxation and regulations and we are getting poorer by the minute.  Jokes on us I guess.  You gotta love change, especially when it is change to communism or whatever form of collectivism these next bunch of jokers are bringing into office. 

Looking back on today, what did I accomplish.  I’d have to say that today was full of lots of accomplishment.  Sure it is life, but I did the things that I spent part of my day pursuing my dreams, part of it just relaxing, some of it serving, and the rest of it writing and reading and studying Spanish.  It was a full day.  It started off with a run.  I didn’t want to run the hill this morning.  It was my first week not running that hill at all.  Life definitely changes when you start working again.  I guess this is what will happen when I get married and have kids.  There just isn’t as much energy or desire to run hills.  I should have done it, but I wanted to do other things today.  After that, I took a taxi to Jumbo, which is the equivalent of Costco.  I wanted to buy some Chilean candy to take with me back home.  I know that you guys will love the stuff that I’m bringing back.  I think my suitcase will be half-full with Chilean sweets.  I had a couple of great conversations with taxi drivers today.  I took 3 taxis today to do various things.  It gives me a chance to practice some Spanish, at least spoken Spanish.  They were all very friendly.  We parted friends, although I don’t suppose I will ever see any of them again.  I came home and had to do a little worked.  I promised my boss I’d get some work to her by the end of the week and I did.  I believe that this job will lead to more freedom in the end, because I should be able to do it from wherever.  It’s the wave of the future.  Then I read some of my book, “The Road to Serfdom” by F.A. Hayek.  If you want to learn what is going on in the world right now, you need to read two books by F.A. Hayek.  The first is called “The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism” and the second is listed above.  I’m not quite sure how someone can see so clearly and express themselves so well, but I imagine that it has everything to do with studying this stuff for a lifetime and the pieces fitting together.  I really enjoy his books and Ludwig von Mises’s books.  After a little reading, I headed to the fruit market to buy watermelon and grapes.  I both 2.2 pounds of grapes for $1.60.  You can’t beat that price, can you?  When i got home I rushed over to the temple to catch the last endowment session in Spanish of course.  And now I’m home just relaxing, working on my website, and reading and studying Spanish.  I think I’m watching some music with the Rock and they’ve dubbed it in Spanish.  I’m not sure what it is, but it’s in Spanish so I’ll watch it.  I consider it my Spanish study.  I had an interesting conversation with my Spanish teacher the other day.  He said that Latinos are different from Caucasians in one important way.  Caucasians make lists and accomplish those lists.  Latinos make lists, but don’t accomplish them.  They enjoy more of the journey.  I’m sure that both types of people are needed in life.  One is neither better than the other.  I guess you could say that I’m more of the first, but life to me is about accomplishing things and I can’t deny my nature.  it is what I am.  There is no point in trying to be something that I am not.  And with that, I’m going to watch this pointless movie so I can listen to Spanish.  I’ve included two links to two great book excerpts that i read recently from my book.  Study them, digest them, and pass them on.  They explain well what they explain.  And remember when you read them, liberalism used to mean what conservatism means today.  As Confucius said, “When words lose their meaning, people lost their liberty.”

http://www.ideasaboutamerica.com/viewbookexcerpt.php?id=206

http://www.ideasaboutamerica.com/viewbookexcerpt.php?id=205

Not much to say about today, but I’m sure I can find something to say… Ha.Ha.  Let’s see.  I got up a little bit late today and didn’t go running.  That is never a good idea.  No matter how tired I am or lazy, I should at least go out for 30 minutes and run.  The day always starts off better than it otherwise would, but I just went back to sleep instead of getting up.  There were a few earthquakes here over the last few days, nothing major.  I guess Santiago sits on some kind of fault line.  I was in bed this morning, when the bed started shaking just a little bit.  It was much milder than the earthquake we had in Hawaii a couple of years back.  I think my apartment is pretty solid.  It’s an old build built with super thick concrete walls and is only 4 stories tall and I’m on the 3rd story, so I’m not going to worry too much.  Then I went to work and there is always a ton to do there.  I’m learning slowly what I’m supposed to do.  It is basically just tons of project management.  The folks at work gave me a hard time because they had a party the night before and I declined to go because I was exhausted after a full day of work and spanish lessons.  I should have gone because they are nice people, but I just didn’t feel like it.  Next time I will go.  I believe there is a bigger collectivist mentality here in Chile than in the US judging by their continual needling of me for not going.  It’s almost a kind of shaming process or something like that.  It was mildly irritating, so I just put on my headphones and focused on work for a few hours.  It reminded me of why I often hate office work, because there is just so much crap not related to the actual work that needs to be done.  I would just rather focus on the work and not have to worry about all the other stuff, such as keeping people happy, doing activities outside of work, etc, etc, etc.  A couple of guys from work and I are going to play basketball next week or after Christmas.  One of the guys used to be on the Bolivian Junior national team.  He’s over 50 now, but he loves American basketball.  The Spurs are his team.

Speaking of work activities, we went to celebrate Christmas for work at this Italian restaurant.  It was great food.  That is one thing that you can find here in Chile, plenty of great food, which reminds me I need to go to Jumbo to go shopping.  Jumbo is equivalent to Costco.

After work, I had my spanish lesson with Boris.  We studied subjunctive tense, which is the tense or are the tenses that you use to express emotion, feelings, etc.  These are always the most difficult tenses in any language because this is where the subtleties come in and where you can’t translate directly back and forth.  Just a slight change in a word gives it a completely different meaning.  Well, that was pretty much my day after that.  I’ve got a full day ahead of me tomorrow being that it is Saturday and the last weekend before I head home for Christmas, so I need to go shopping.  Good night.

And here’s a great Bill Bonner article from www.dailyreckoning.com.  It just reminds you of what is real and what isn’t.

THE BRIGHT SIDE OF CATASTROPHE
by Bill Bonner

Who can honestly say he isn’t enjoying this financial crisis? It has unhorsed cavalier fund managers …it has turned the masters of the universe into servile waiters…it has made Nobel Prize winners look like morons. The rich…the proud… the pompous…the vain…the incompetent…Wall Street – surely there is a God…an ‘invisible hand’…giving them all a whack on the head!

And there are the regulators too! Under their very noses the biggest scams in history went unnoticed. America’s SEC alone – to say nothing of the countless other cops on the financial beat – had 3,371 employees playing the piano in 2006. If you can believe it, not a single one of them noticed what was going on in the back room. Even after rummaging through Bernard Madoff’s back office twice in the last three years, they still didn’t know. They must have been like pets watching an orgy…with no idea what to make of it, but wagging their tails and vaguely wanting to get in on the action.

Between Tuesday and Wednesday of last week, Madoff’s managed accounts were thrown into a “spiral of horror” said one fund manager. Tipped off by his own sons, the feds went to Madoff’s apartment. They gracefully asked if there was perhaps a misunderstanding. No, replied Madoff, “there was no innocent explanation.” And so, they put the cuffs on him and acted as though they had Lucifer himself in custody.

Bernie Madoff is a giant in his field. He out-Ponzied Charles Ponzi. He out-Princed Chuck Prince. He could have taught the Egyptians how to build pyramids. In the history of high-stakes grifting, he out did them all. A Robin Hood with Alzheimer’s; he stole from the rich. If he’d only remembered to give to the poor he’d be a hero!

Madoff’s charm was that he out-foxed the foxes and out-scammed the scammers. How hard was it to give away new houses to people who didn’t have any money…or get people who didn’t speak English to sign toxic mortgage documents? Child’s play, really. And the executives with their millions in bonuses… and humbuggers like Richard Fuld – their marks were mostly ordinary stock market investors; low hanging fruit compared to the coconuts Madoff plucked. Rather than go after the widows and orphans, he swindled the smartest money in the world…money managed by family offices…the old Jewish money from New York and south Florida…London’s Man Group…Switzerland’s Union Bancaire Privee. He even flim-flammed the hedge funds – including Fairfield Greenwich for $7.5 billion. And Tremont, a fund of hedge funds, put in more than $3 billion. How cool is that?

And he was remarkably democratic about it; he took money from his own tribe, his own clan, and his own golf club buddies. Billions of it. Even more impressive, he did it not with hyperbole, but with relative modesty. He produced only about 10% per year – which didn’t seem like much during the Bubble Epoque.

How could he guarantee steady 10% per year returns from stocks? Like so many of the conceits and delusions of La Bubble Epoque, it was absurd on its face. How come the SEC, with its legions of accountants, didn’t notice that the numbers were fraudulent? And how could the entire financial industry – with its Nobel winners and it business school graduates – not have noticed what was even obvious to us feral economists here at The Daily Reckoning ? For years, we warned that the whole thing was a scam, a fraud and a delusion. And The Daily Reckoning is free!

And now, historians look back and wonder: how could people have been so stupid? The answer is simple: in a bubble, it pays to be stupid. You buy something at a lamebrained price…and it goes up. Not only did stupidity pay, it paid well. Running a bank paid better than robbing one. Hedge fund managers got paid more than contract killers or stick-up men.

“When the tide goes out, you see who’s been swimming naked,” says Warren Buffett. We haven’t seen the tide so low in many years; the view is nauseating…hideous…but never before have we seen so many skinny dippers nor had such a laugh. More than $15 trillion has been lost…so much that it threatens to turn the lights out on the entire world economy. The investment banking industry has disappeared. Regular banks have been nationalized. The auto industry is broke. Investors stagger. And mobs break shop windows protest.

Historians will try to make sense of it. But all historians lie. Not intentionally. It’s a professional requirement. They look back and think they see a plot. From then on, every circumstance is bent, greased and wedged into the story line. The basic facts are the same any way you look at it; the dramatis personae don’t change. But the historian can make readers laugh or cry. He can turn it into morality play or an amoral farce. He can focus on the struggle of the masses or the failures of leaders, the triumph of a caste…the defeat of a class…or the perfidy of an entire profession. Already, they’re telling their tale: the system failed…now, we need to fix it. We need more regulation; another Nobel Prize winner, Joseph Stiglitz, says so in the current issue of Newsweek Magazine .

Too bad they can relax and enjoy the elegant mischief of capitalism. In the space of 6 months, it has scratched 10,000 Porsches…destroyed more monuments than Cromwell…and squeezed the rich harder than Mitterand. It would have taken an army of dreary Bolsheviks decades to redistribute so much wealth; and it wouldn’t be half as much fun.

Enjoy your weekend,

Bill Bonner
The Daily Reckoning