Category Archives: Uncategorized

Reversion to the mean…

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If you frequent news sites or have a passing curiosity about real estate or investing, it’s hard to miss the hand wringing stories about mortgage interest rates. Phrases like “soaring” or “crashing up” or any kind of alarmism you can think of are the order of the day for financial reporters. 

Maybe it’s because I’ve reached a certain age and have started recognizing cycles and trends from living memory, but none of it fills me with alarm or dread. Twenty years ago, when I was buying my first place, I was thrilled to get a mortgage in the 7% range. The number stuck in my head is 7.25%, but that’s without spending an hour trying to find my original paperwork from way back when.

Mortgage interest rates ranging from 2-3% over the last few years are, frankly, and aberration to what could be considered normal at any time in the last 30 or 40 years. The 2.9% rate I refinanced the current homestead into was a fluky gift of history rather than something I expected to be able to do at any time indefinitely into the future. Even as I was signing the papers, I didn’t expect to ever be able to get a mortgage that cheaply again in my lifetime. 

The problem, it seems to me, is that we collectively have an absolute shit capacity for anything beyond short term memory. Because of that, when conditions revert towards the historic average or swing past that mark in the other direction, there’s a tendency to think the sky is falling. Like most things, the trick is to not buy into the hype. 

Timing, as they say, is everything. We just lived through what could easily be a once in a lifetime interest rate environment. There are a metric shit ton of people who want to tell you exactly what will happen from here. Maybe one of them will get it precisely right.  All I can tell you is interest rates will increase, then they’ll decrease, and then they’ll increase again. If you’re in the market, the most you can ever be expected to do is figure out the math, know your budget, make the best deal you can, and find the best rate available… and maybe try not to get tied up with one of those “exotic” mortgage options that can blow up your life if the most minor thing doesn’t go exactly as planned.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I’m not in the market for house right now, but casting the current environment as the end of the world is just a little bit disingenuous and a whole lot short sighted.

Running out the clock…

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With three days left in this grand 16 day weekend, I guess you could say the only thing I have left to do is run out the clock.

With a bit of a sore throat and a touch of post nasal drip, but no other signs or symptoms of crud, COVID, or anything else catching, I’ve laid in groceries and have no further plans besides three days of proper hermiting before work raises its ugly head and demands my time again. It’s celebrating this long stretch of days off by doing that which I most enjoy.

These last two weeks seem to be ending with more a whimper than a bang, but I’m not exactly complaining. Being holed up with the animals, rooms full of good books, food to cook, and vast quantities of tea and gin hardly sounds like a disaster. Who knows, I might even get crazy and watch something on Netflix or Hulu instead of just using the television as background noise.

All while in the back of my head rumbles the warning that Monday is coming. I don’t think any amount of time off will ever change how I feel about that.

Maybe I could offend everyone…

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For the last few weeks I’ve been pondering on the idea of a new limited series of posts. Maybe six or twelve posts here, expanding on my view of all the controversial stuff that seems to preoccupy our every waking moment.

I’m thinking here of abortion, voting and voting rights, free speech, LGBTQ issues, the Second Amendment, the environment, healthcare and the social safety net, and fiscal responsibility (or lack thereof). I’m sure offhand I’m missing some of the key topics that make people do the crazy.

It feels like good mental exercise to a) Refine my own thinking a bit and b) Likely offend, anger, annoy, or otherwise agitate every single person who reads the blog or follows me on social media over the course of two or three months. I mean with goals like that, what could really go wrong?

So, aside from anything I’ve already thrown out, what are the other grand controversies of the day just begging to be given the once over?

Scorn and Derision or: The Importance of Knowing Your Amendments…

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For the entirety of my lifetime, the 1st, 2nd, 4th Amendments* have gotten somewhere around 95% of the total air time of anyone discussing the Constitutional Amendments in any context. The other five percent is given over to the taxation is theft crowd, celebrating the repeal of prohibition, and everything else. The last three years, something of a historical outlier, have also included not insignificant discussions of the 25th Amendment as well. 

After listening to President Trump’s claim that “When somebody is president of the United States, the authority is total,” it appears that we’re going to spend some amount of time in the near future pondering the Tenth Amendment.

The president is right that we do need to develop a plan for putting the country back to work. Sooner or later, we’re going to have to start opening up the economy. Great Plague or not, there’s a limit to how long people are going to tolerate sitting home, watching their livelihoods crumble, and seeing no obvious end in sight. Beyond the statement of fact that the economy needs to be opened, his argument that it’s a decision to be made by the federal executive branch alone is, in a word, wrong. Other words that could have been used here are: asinine, nonsense, bunk, hokum, or bullshit.

Just as the timing and decision to curtail all but essential business was made by state governors across the country, the governors will also establish the timing and criteria by which business is allowed to reopen. It may be done in conjunction with advice from the federal government, it may be backed up with federal resources, but the decision on timing and “how to” resides with the governors.

Given the 10th Amendment’s reservation of powers not delegated to the federal government to the states, there simply isn’t a lawful mechanism by which the president may issue a blanket decree that state and local government, businesses, and educational institutions are open for business. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. Anyone who insists that the president does, in fact, have this authority, is attempting to empower the executive branch far beyond anything envisioned under the Constitution – and deserves the scorn and derision of those who have grown and prospered under that protection of that great charter. 

Constitutional Amendments Quick Reference Guide:

  • 1st Amendment – Freedom of speech, religion, and the press
  • 2nd Amendment – Right to keep and bear arms
  • 4th Amendment – Freedom from unreasonable search and seizure
  • 10th Amendment – Reserves powers not granted to the Federal government to the states or the people
  • 16th Amendment – Allows Congress to levy a national income tax
  • 21st Amendment – Repeals prohibition
  • 25th Amendment – Clarifies the rules of presidential succession

Birthright…

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For most of the history of the republic there have been three main pathways to citizenship. You could be born to parents who were American citizens (citizenship by blood), or born physically inside the territorial boundaries of the United States (citizenship by soil), or you could go through the process of naturalization by renouncing your allegiance to a foreign country and swearing allegiance to the United States. That seems simple enough, right?

Except, of course, nothing is ever that simple. Maybe it was once, but from our seat here in the 21st century, when every aspect of government has been bureaucratized and politics has been almost weaponized, it’s not as simple as it seems. Or perhaps it’s not as simple as it even should be.

The complexity arrives in the form of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which says, in part, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States…”

At first glance, it’s straightforward enough. If you’re born or naturalized in the United States, you are a citizen. Except maybe not. The argument here rests on what the phrase “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means. Is the physical act of being withing the boarders of the United States sufficient to meet the threshold of being subject to the jurisdiction? Does it apply only to those who find themselves lawfully within the jurisdiction (green card holders, for example)? If you are in the country illegally does that in itself create a situation where you have placed yourself, by definition, in a position of being not subject to the jurisdiction by virtue of not abiding by the laws and statutes governing immigration.

Among the many things I’m not is a constitutional scholar, but I am an avid student of history. The president, it’s reported, intends to test the limits of the 14th Amendment with an Executive Order. Since the court has been silent on this particular constitutional detail for the last 120 years, the administration seems to feel the time is ripe for a test case. Sure, it will cause both sides of the political spectrum to lose their minds even more than usual, but the discussion of constitutional merits by people who can manage to keep their heads will be fascinating.

For years studying history and politics all I heard was “how could you do that” or “oh, it’s so boring.” It’s 2018 and if you’re bored by politics do you even have a pulse?

I know Jack…

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I want to like Amazon’s new series about the life and times of Jack Ryan. In fact I didn’t just want to like it. I wanted to love it. I wanted to wrap myself in the well-known and comfortable embrace of the Cold War. I have a long history of being willing to read or watch anything if you slap Tom Clancy’s name on the package and this new show isn’t an exception.

The problem isn’t really with the show per se. If you’d have called the lead character Bob Smith it would have made compelling television if you’re a fan of the terrorist hunter genre. My real problem is I’m steeped in the Jack Ryan backstory. Where they’ve changed it to fit this new universe feels jarring – Like the young Ryan having an economics degree and coming out of a big city financial firm instead of a history degree and landing at the CIA by way of a professorship at the Naval Academy or Cathy being an infectious disease specialist in Washington instead of eye surgeon at Hopkins. They’re messing with details I’ve lived with in book and film for decades now.

For me, Jack Ryan and the universe he inhabits are and ought to be products of the Cold War. He should be fighting Commies instead of tracking terrorists through every third-world hell hole we’ve ever seen on the news.

Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan is a fine show. I’m going to watch it and probably enjoy it instead of shunning it like some kind of disgruntled fan boy. Good as it may be, though, it’s not the Jack Ryan I’d hoped to see on the small screen.

Deflated…

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I went to bed last night thinking that this week was the run up to the long holiday weekend for Labor Day. I was halfway through the morning before I realized my math was wrong about that. I was happily tucked into this alternate timeline where it was just Telework Monday, three days in the office, and then a 4-day weekend. Needless to say discovering the error of my ways has led to a decidedly deflated feeling this afternoon. It’s a level of disappointment I wasn’t in any way prepared for today and I’m afraid it’s flavored everything I’ve done today (including turning in this utterly lackluster blog post for the day).

I’d say the tone for the week is firmly set. There’s just no coming back from that kind of letdown on a weekday.

If you think you need to go…

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I’m going to see my favorite band again in concert on Friday night. This will be the 5th or 6th time I’ve seen them over the last decade, although the music of Counting Crows has been stuck in my head far longer than that. I knew their songs in high school, but it took a girl with a guitar on the 5th floor of Cambridge Hall to secure their place permanently at the apex of just about every playlist I’ve ever made. Most music seems to wash past me like a stream, but these guys, well, they get in my head and just rattle around.

I wish I could tell you exactly what it is that makes this band speak to me particularly, but I’m sure it isn’t just one thing. Their music is sweet and sad and funny and has this timeless quality that I can’t quite explain. I’m also going to just sit here and pretend it’s in absolutely no way an effort to stay in touch with the version of me that’s still half my age. It’s definitely not that.

So off I’ll go again to willingly wade into a crowd that under just about any other circumstance would agitate every single nerve I have. For this one night only I’ll not just endure it, but embrace it. I suppose that’s how you know I’m a real fan. Of course it also helps knowing you have a seat away from the rabble and there’s a very comfortable shuttle waiting to expedite your exit from the venue and back to a delightful old hotel. Just because you’re going out into the crowd doesn’t mean you have to be part of them, after all.

Sigh. These next three days are going to be interminable.

AMA: On POTUS and Russia…

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I’ve been staying away from the POTUS/Russia topic not so much because it feels unimportant as because it feels a lot like whole choruses of “yes he did” and “no he didn’t.” I don’t follow the daily news as closely as some people think – much beyond checking the traffic and weather while making my morning coffee. Beyond the sound bites, I haven’t taken much time to separate fact from fiction and am operating on the assumption that the truth lies somewhere between the extremes of a President who claims to never have talked to a Russian and a opposition party taking to the airwaves accusing the President of being the most effective deep cover agent in the world’s long history of espionage.

My best guess is what we have is a President who spent his entire adult life not studying global geopolitics, but operating in the morally and ethically gray space of construction and real estate development. By way of contrast Vladimir Putin *has* spent his life studying geopolitics. global finance, international intelligence gathering, and has built a historically unprecedented criminal enterprise disguised as a sovereign country. Given the discrepancy of experience, I can only speculate that it would have been relatively easy for a figure like Putin to find both the ways and means to exert influence, if not directly on the candidate then potentially on those around him. The Russian government would certainly have that capability.

The kicker here, of course, is that nothing that’s being reported in the media constitutes actual evidence of conspiracy, or collusion, or whatever crime of the day is being exhorted. The shrill dog whistles from both the liberal and conservative media make it particularly challenging to determine fact from fiction. Evidence isn’t what’s reported in the media. In it’s most legalistic definition evidence is facts and information laid before the court – or in limited cases laid by the House of Representatives before the Senate sitting in judgement.

For me, today, the simple fact is I’m just not following that closely because while a whole universe of things may be true, no one has demonstrated that truth outside of the media circus that has become what passes for political discourse in this country. Once we’re talking about actual evidence that’s not being presented through the filter of shouting pundits, I’ll probably give it a little more consideration. Until then, well, the Trump presidency hasn’t really been bad for me on the all important personal level – I’ve got more cash in my pocket due to the tax cut, my retirement accounts are plumping up nicely, my employer’s budget hasn’t been slashed, and a host of political issues that are a priority to me are effectively being left alone or marginally improved upon. For now, he’s the devil I know.

Note: This post was written by request as part of my ill fated July ask-me-anything. Thanks, Mike for making me think about something I probably should have been paying more attention to long before now. If anyone has a question or topic you’d like to see given the treatment, fire away and I’ll do my best.