Month: August 2011

After four games, we will know whether the Mountaineers will go undefeated this year.  Here’s what to look for.

Game One.  If WVU has 30 plus points by half time, that’s one of four markers.

Game Two:  If Norfolk State has zero points at half time, that’s marker two.

Game Three:  If Maryland fumbles three times and gives up two interceptions, that’s marker number three.

Game Four:  If WVU comes from behind to beat LSU in a close game then we will go undefeated.

Now, we won’t play for the national championship because of that stupid strength of schedule component of the BCS but, no mind, the ‘eers and the Dana Holgorsen era will have arrived!

 

As Mark Twain once said, “Always do the right thing.  It will please some people and astonish the rest.”

 

When my generation starts to retire, some will experience the empty horror of “crackberry withdrawal.”  Right now, the ever present Blackberry or iPhone constantly has business related messages all day long.  Now some people even put the thing on vibrate and can’t resist checking it each and every time it wiggles.  Now when this largely irrevelent barrage stops when these people retire, these folks will freak out.  They will feel alone, isolated and no longer worthwhile because no one is communicating with them.  Therapist will start treating this new disorder.

Do you think we are experiencing a gold bubble?  No one seems to be talking about that but the price just seems to go up and up without end.  Sound famiiar?  Real estate always goes up.  Remember that?  If interest rates every go back up to five or six percent for certificates of deposit, the gold bubble will “burst” big time.  After all, gold doesn’t pay a dividend, gold doesn’t pay interest, gold doesn’t represent a work force or assets.  Gold is basically valuable because we think it is.  You sure can’t eat it or use it to heat your home or power your car.  So don’t be all that surprised when the price of gold drops and tons of folks lose millions of dollars.  It will happen.

 

First of all, if you know any political history at all, the supposed “unprecedented” divisions within the American body politic is absolutely nothing new.  It happens all the time.  If you think vitriol and hyperbole are something new, check out the Truman presidential years – “Who lost China?”, “Dewey Defeats Truman“, the Korean War, sacking Douglas MacArthur, McCarthyism…

If you want a real example check out the Civil War!

But one good thing may be happening in the background and under the radar as the debt ceiling crisis, the credit downgrade, joblessness and so forth is “boiling on the front burner.”  If you lend some credence to the observation that government can no more control and manage the economy than a coach can control the outcome of a sporting event then the abject failure of government to do anything positive for the economy may have a good result.  The American people (business and labor alike) may now stop waiting for the government do correct the problem.  They now see that is not going to happen. So, instead of sitting on their hands, wallets and ideas hoping the “turn around” will begin with the next government move, slowly but surely folks are figuring out that they need to move forward and start making their own way out of this mess. 

To the extent that means individuals start thinking for themselves and quit waiting for “the government” to figure out what happens next, the economy (which after all is the composite of millions of individual decisions every day) may start to improve.