Both Sides Now – October 16, 2014 I have a relative who works in Santiago Chile but his job takes him all around the world. He sometimes stops to see me on his way back to Chile, staying overnight at my home just outside of Dallas, TX. I was recently talking to him and in the course of the conversation he mentioned that he was due to go to the Ukraine recently but decided to cancel the trip. Days later the rebels shot down the commercial air liner. Then he asked me how close I was to the hospital where the Ebola patient was. I did not give it much thought until I got off the phone. My wife and I used to travel each year taking about 3 weeks for a road trip. We often stayed in motels unless of course there was a relative that would put up with us and then we would stay there. Due to my COPD, we have not traveled for the past two years. Just recently I was able to qualify for a portable oxygenator. The whole idea was to be able to travel again, especially to higher altitudes where the air is thinner. But now times have changed. A couple of years ago the ‘MOTEL’ scare was bed-bugs; now however who can be sure what disease might be hanging around in those sheets. Are these fears rational? No they probably are not rational. In 2001, two planes flew into the twin towers and about 3,000 people died; that’s 3,000 out of say 319,000,000 or .0009%. Your chance of dying in a terrorist attack is very, very, low. Still as soon as our talking heads talk of the possibility of an attack we scramble the jets and began another war. We are facing the same kind of irrational fear on Ebola and yet there is a good chance that as the number of Ebola cases grow in this country, the fear will grow as well. The question then becomes how many people will decide not to fly over the holidays. How many will shop online instead of in a brick and mortar establishment. Will less people be going out to eat? If we have a less than stellar holiday season, will our economy be affected? Speaking of the economy, the stock market has really dropped this month. Why do you suppose that is. Could part of it be a reaction to the Ebola outbreak? They say it is because of the slowing economies in Europe and China. That may be but it could also be because unemployment is coming down. The Federal Reserve has kept interest rates artificially low. They were charged with the goal of bringing down unemployment. They did this by keeping interest rates low and investing in Treasury bills. That is coming to an end and so you can expect both higher interest rates and higher inflation in the year ahead. It is said that the ‘market’ leads the economy by about 6 months. Does this mean we are heading into recession? The song by Simon and Garfunkel says the “The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, and tenement halls. They whisper the sounds of silence.” youtube/watch?v=4zLfCnGVeL4 Today our prophets seem to be the talking heads and the 24 hour news cycle. Be afraid they write. ISIS will get you! Ebola will get you! The Republicans, whose popularity is at an all-time low, are going to retake the Senate because we have a Black man in the White House. The words “and the people bowed and prayed to the neon God they made” seems to ring out LOUD AND CLEAR. Well for me I hope the words of the Prophets written on the walls are about restoring our Democracy and supporting our middle class. What say ye?
Posted on: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 22:06:23 +0000
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