I'd like to see more coverage of the misallocation of capital that happens because of our credit addiction and reckless US monetary policy. The USA spends $4T in health care EACH YEAR and yet we're the unhealthiest on the planet. Covid 19 was canary in the coal mine. Africa saw far less death from Covid. According to one study 88% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy. Related to health is food. We waste 40-50% every year and 71% of all food sold in the USA is ultra processed. https://ebm.bmj.com/content/26/1/1
Joel, you guys are doing a great job! Keep up the good work! Here's my 2 cents:
I have ZERO interest in crypto currency as an investment.. Some here are interested, but I don't give a damn! If you never mentioned Bitcoin again, I would not care. But I am interested in the future of a digital currency here and in the rest of the world and its effect on me and my family.
I love the personal stories of you, Bill, and others -- keep them coming! Makes my day reading them.. Bill is especially very talented in story telling.
Continue the focus on energy and possible investments in this area. IMHO, energy shortages caused by incompetence will be the major world issue in the coming decades, providing excellent investment opportunities.
Continue with your excellent analysis of present and future economic trends. As a caregiver for my wife, I have limited time to try and keep up with the important economic stuff and depend on BPR to point out possible earthquakes and train wrecks coming my way.
Not too much politics, please! Just when needed to explain what's going on in the economic world. I don't know what your politics are (guess mostly toward the right), and don't really care that much. The comment section provides plenty of space for us to vend out our political opinions. If I need more politics, I will go to other Substack forums.
One complaint -- your FRED graph axes are almost impossible to read on my computer. Can you make them bigger (separate window?)?
If I recall correctly, your spouse in a classical teacher or scholar. Perhaps, from time to time, she could write a small passage sharing the wisdom of the past as it relates to our current misadventures.
I believe you are correct and she writes a substack that Joel once linked. I checked it out and it was very good, though I can't remember what it was called.
After reading this passage, βOn which note, in addition to family and health, poetry and jet fuel, malbec and Brahms and thick cut bacon, we propose a toast of thanks to you, our Sunday Sesh community... for your readership, your patience and your feedback.β I thought about this passage spoken by Maurice Strong, former co-chair of the WEF and mentor of Klaus Schwab, βIt is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle classβ involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work place air-conditioning, and suburban housing β are not sustainable.β
What a contrast! I much prefer autonomy, A/C, and bacon over whatever the WEF prefers.
Thanks for all the wisdom, fun, and good advice. It has really helped us out.
About the topics that you could cover in a future edition...
What I (and probably many subscribers) would be interested in, is your (the whole team) take on Bitcoin (and all the other crypto stuff).
From what I have read and remember:
Bill: Always in doubt :) From what I read, he thinks it is just another mania, but he doesn't totally rule it out.
Dan: Just doesn't say anything about it (disappointingly not even mentioning it in the dollar report)
Tom: Once made a big bet and made lots of money while still getting out too early. Now doesn't recommend it - just 1% as compared to betting heavily on gold.
Joel: In one of your articles I think you seemed quite positive about it.
Not sure if I got those observations correct, but would be very interesting to know about all of your takes on it.
Some questions to discuss could be:
- Is there any technological breakthrough at all, that might have meaningful future implications? If yes, what?
- Bitcoin Vs. Crypto/Blockchain technology/other altcoins
- Bitcoin Vs. gold
- Bitcoin Vs. Dollar
- Recommended Allocation: Why 1%, why not 0%, 10% or 30%.
PG. I think cashless is pure evil. No privacy plus they can control where and how fast we spend our money. Consider if they down the road made all transactions cost $1. Then $2 then maybe $10 or $20. How could you opt out? What if they said you can't buy gold with it. Or maybe you bought too much gas this month. Really bad idea we ALL must resist.
If enough people have your attitude, it will happen. Everywhere I went I resisted the masks are. I will resist this as well. I truly wish you would join us in this endeavor. Should they try to force us onto this.
I love SA, Chile and Argentina are great; would like to participate in expatβs lifestyle.
It is predicated on the dollar. It was especially nice in 1970 when I traveled all of SA West countries and Argentina.
What do you do when the well runs dry, the dollar worthless. Does Bill pay in gold? What is your alternative. Bitcoin would be nice. I read that over 30% of Argentinians use it.
All other central bank currencies seem to be worthless and going in the same direction.
Itβs not like 1920 when Hemingway lived in France and travelled to Germany; now, that was living!
How about a discussion of your thoughts about the problem of getting more current & future generations into taking interest in the trade professions (vs the increasingly uneconomic college path)?
As a peripatetic Aussie (presently actually living in Australia), I enjoy your Sunday Sesh musings immensely. Of course I read them on a Monday here & they form an echo, a resonance, of my own Sunday Sesh on the Gold Coast the previous day. Although Thanksgiving is not such a thing here, more & more people use this North American tradition as a time of reflection, a time of communion with friends, a time to recognize that, in spite of our fierce tribalism, we are all human beings regardless of all our cultural & linguistic baggage.
I am an early subscriber (a charter member, I suppose) to BPR, and I enjoy your Sunday Sessions along with all of the other great stuff Bill and his team put out.
This might seem quite a bit off the subject, but I would appreciate your recommendations as a longtime resident of Buenos Aires. It's all the same if they are added to a future Session or if you have the time and inclination to email me directly.
My wife and I will be flying to Buenos Aires on December 15 to board a cruise ship on December 20 that will carry us around the Horn and back up the other side to Santiago, Chile, with stops along the way including the Falklands/Malvinas and a "drive-by" of Antarctica.
We will be therefore spending four or five days in B.A. just touring around since it's our first trip below the Equator to South America. So, anyway, we would appreciate it if you would share with us (and perhaps our fellow readers) the names of any of your favorite attractions, restaurants, cafes, museums, etc.
Thanks in advance for any information you could provide.
Your Thanksgiving dinners remind me just how universal some things are; and how extraordinary America and our founding documents truly have been in making America the country it is today.
Perhaps, we need you, more than ever, to help us focus on those principles - and how to preserve them. For I fear that the only way to get people to see the bottom line - the individual of John Locke versus the collective, controlled by the centralized 'state', tried by many over the course of history - is to get past the toxic, and corrupt (irredeemably) political state we are wallowing in. I believe if really given the choice most Americans and Western peoples will choose freedom!
As someone who has, at various times throughout my 79 years, found himself in desperate need of scorn and ridicule, I have β in retrospect, also become aware of perhaps a more desperate need. The βneedβ for deserved praise.
Nowhere, at least in my judgment, is this more evident than with respect to the body of work of Rand.
Yes, she was an Atheist β that unforgivable choice open to all which, once made, condemns one to seemingly both βscorn and ridicule,β as well as the worst kind of condemnation β i.e., silence! She apparently represents the one βcowβ that is to be βslaughteredβ β not because of the sacred, but of the profane!
I remain hopeful that Bill (and his βteamβ) shall continue their incisive, hilarious, and yes β profane observations of Americaβs and Western Civilizationβs decent. A descent into yet another of the tired, worn, tyrannies of carnage, brutality, and injustice, that so characterizes much of recorded history.
As you/they continue to uniquely do so, I would like to see the occasional recognition for those who demonstrate that they understand the cause(s) of such evil and have tried to inform the rest of us β for decades.
As an example of a "target-rich environment, it seems to me that Randβs profound insight that she termed the βsanction of the victimβ offers a vast and fertile garden for Bill and his teamβs delicious prose! While, of course, should they elect (no pun intended) to do so, giving credit where credit is due.
Paraphrasing the hero in her seminal novel, Atlas Shrugged, βbrother you [we] asked for it!β
Yes, she was a human being like the rest of us. What I am suggesting is that unlike most of the rest of us, she provided us with unprecedented ideas with which to exercise our distinctly human faculty.
What I shall also suggest, PV G, is that we focus on IDEAS - not people! Focus on the latter has, in large measure, invariably "punched the ticket" necessary for this dreadful journey we are now on!
It is ideas that move humanity forward. The idea of individual freedom and responsibility, together with acceptance of the consequences for the exercise of both, has resulted in what we, most especially in America, have now come to take for granted.
The accepted moral ideas, ideas that had remained unchallenged as far back in history as we can "go," are responsible for said history. Until the rise of reason but a few centuries ago, human beings lived in 1500AD almost identically to how they lived in 1500BC!
The "window" provided by Reason, Rand has since turned into a magnifying glass! ONE of the results of Reason is the inescapably dramatic leap in human well-being and flourishing that has taken place in what amounts to a "wink of the eye" in human history!
Rand's "magnification" of Reason will prevail in spite of what we must endure to finally discredit those ideas that still haunt mankind. Ideas that had sentenced mankind to misery, squalor, and injustice, for over 3000 years!
It is ideas that move the world. It is people who distract us from them.
I applaud the subtle morphing in the "tone" of your response, though owing to time and space I choose to abdicate in defining such things.
We likely share far more to agree with than not. I would sum my response by arguing that we each have the responsibility to be "nice" respectful, thoughtful, and "rational." Because we have such responsibility and rights, we also may choose, in the exercise thereof, to be an asshole! What we may NOT do - whether asshole or "nice," is violate the responsibility and rights of another. Coercive attempts to deal with the assholes, while alleging to do so in the name of virtue is, at the most foundational of levels, the cause of our demise.
Rand, however "harsh, disrespectful, thoughtless, or thought "wrong," recognized the source of the evil with which we must deal. Her ideas result from its identification, analyzation, and her application of Reason to them. Her philosophy - specifically the morality that drives her politics, should be discussed and debated - NOT dismissed out of hand because it defies thousands of years of tradition or "faith."
About Rand, you write: "Being atheist left her without purpose in life. I prefer to take Pascalβs Wager." That first sentence is simply untrue, unless you mean that her purpose(s) you find uncongenial. And regarding Pascal's Wager, you seem untroubled by what I consider a withering criticism of it--namely, that any God worth worshipping would not reward you for resorting to such a crassly opportunistic gambit.
Thanks for the chuckle. You know nothing about my religious beliefs, or lack thereof. Nor do you know my opinion of Rand. I used her here to point out the carelessnessβindeed, fallaciousnessβof your presuming that atheists can have no purpose in their lives, a presumption that flies in the face of the millions of atheists whoβve lived purposeful lives, and in many cases admirable ones.
You write: βLife can be cruel unfair unjust and absurd so belief in the Everlasting gives us hope meaning discernment and purpose. Otherwise its all greed avarice debauchery cruelty followed by nothingness. Pointless.β That βOtherwiseβ gives you away. Youβve essentially begged the question, making of your position little more than a tautology. But perhaps of more consequence is the snarkiness of your response, characterized by your βNot worth respondingβ and of a piece with your put-downs of other posters with your insufferable smugness--e.g., βREAD! YOu sign up by emailing them at the email address they provided! and btw, do NOT post your email here, it can be abused. TAKE IT DOWN. Nor your full name.β Iβll give you this much: it makes sense for YOU not to use your full name.
I did lol at the end of your post! He can come off as you describe but I do think he he brings a lot to the table here. I do mostly enjoy his posts. But that was funny!
I'd like to see more coverage of the misallocation of capital that happens because of our credit addiction and reckless US monetary policy. The USA spends $4T in health care EACH YEAR and yet we're the unhealthiest on the planet. Covid 19 was canary in the coal mine. Africa saw far less death from Covid. According to one study 88% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy. Related to health is food. We waste 40-50% every year and 71% of all food sold in the USA is ultra processed. https://ebm.bmj.com/content/26/1/1
Joel, you guys are doing a great job! Keep up the good work! Here's my 2 cents:
I have ZERO interest in crypto currency as an investment.. Some here are interested, but I don't give a damn! If you never mentioned Bitcoin again, I would not care. But I am interested in the future of a digital currency here and in the rest of the world and its effect on me and my family.
I love the personal stories of you, Bill, and others -- keep them coming! Makes my day reading them.. Bill is especially very talented in story telling.
Continue the focus on energy and possible investments in this area. IMHO, energy shortages caused by incompetence will be the major world issue in the coming decades, providing excellent investment opportunities.
Continue with your excellent analysis of present and future economic trends. As a caregiver for my wife, I have limited time to try and keep up with the important economic stuff and depend on BPR to point out possible earthquakes and train wrecks coming my way.
Not too much politics, please! Just when needed to explain what's going on in the economic world. I don't know what your politics are (guess mostly toward the right), and don't really care that much. The comment section provides plenty of space for us to vend out our political opinions. If I need more politics, I will go to other Substack forums.
One complaint -- your FRED graph axes are almost impossible to read on my computer. Can you make them bigger (separate window?)?
Their politics is generally Libertarian
Dear Mr. Bowman:
If I recall correctly, your spouse in a classical teacher or scholar. Perhaps, from time to time, she could write a small passage sharing the wisdom of the past as it relates to our current misadventures.
Regards/ con cariΓ±o,
urbina
https://classicalwisdom.substack.com
I believe you are correct and she writes a substack that Joel once linked. I checked it out and it was very good, though I can't remember what it was called.
Joel?
Classical Wisdom...very good, as you say.
After reading this passage, βOn which note, in addition to family and health, poetry and jet fuel, malbec and Brahms and thick cut bacon, we propose a toast of thanks to you, our Sunday Sesh community... for your readership, your patience and your feedback.β I thought about this passage spoken by Maurice Strong, former co-chair of the WEF and mentor of Klaus Schwab, βIt is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle classβ involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work place air-conditioning, and suburban housing β are not sustainable.β
What a contrast! I much prefer autonomy, A/C, and bacon over whatever the WEF prefers.
Thanks for all the wisdom, fun, and good advice. It has really helped us out.
Hey Joel.
About the topics that you could cover in a future edition...
What I (and probably many subscribers) would be interested in, is your (the whole team) take on Bitcoin (and all the other crypto stuff).
From what I have read and remember:
Bill: Always in doubt :) From what I read, he thinks it is just another mania, but he doesn't totally rule it out.
Dan: Just doesn't say anything about it (disappointingly not even mentioning it in the dollar report)
Tom: Once made a big bet and made lots of money while still getting out too early. Now doesn't recommend it - just 1% as compared to betting heavily on gold.
Joel: In one of your articles I think you seemed quite positive about it.
Not sure if I got those observations correct, but would be very interesting to know about all of your takes on it.
Some questions to discuss could be:
- Is there any technological breakthrough at all, that might have meaningful future implications? If yes, what?
- Bitcoin Vs. Crypto/Blockchain technology/other altcoins
- Bitcoin Vs. gold
- Bitcoin Vs. Dollar
- Recommended Allocation: Why 1%, why not 0%, 10% or 30%.
...Just some ideas. :)
Schizophrenic.
PG. I think cashless is pure evil. No privacy plus they can control where and how fast we spend our money. Consider if they down the road made all transactions cost $1. Then $2 then maybe $10 or $20. How could you opt out? What if they said you can't buy gold with it. Or maybe you bought too much gas this month. Really bad idea we ALL must resist.
If enough people have your attitude, it will happen. Everywhere I went I resisted the masks are. I will resist this as well. I truly wish you would join us in this endeavor. Should they try to force us onto this.
Yep, they have mentioned it here and there and all of them are strongly against a CBDC.
What I mean is more a thorough discussion about Bitcoin and the viability of a decentralized currency as a global reserve in the future.
And how does it translate to potential current portfolio allocations.
I would like to hear their opinions and way of reasoning about it.
Write about investing in Argentinaβreal property and securities. Thank you.
Iβve owned Cresud and Irsa for a long time. Theyβve done terribly but I still have hope.
I love SA, Chile and Argentina are great; would like to participate in expatβs lifestyle.
It is predicated on the dollar. It was especially nice in 1970 when I traveled all of SA West countries and Argentina.
What do you do when the well runs dry, the dollar worthless. Does Bill pay in gold? What is your alternative. Bitcoin would be nice. I read that over 30% of Argentinians use it.
All other central bank currencies seem to be worthless and going in the same direction.
Itβs not like 1920 when Hemingway lived in France and travelled to Germany; now, that was living!
Also, just writing about some of your thoughts about cultural differences in countries you lived in... Australia, Taiwan, Argentina etc.
It"s always interesting! :)
How about a discussion of your thoughts about the problem of getting more current & future generations into taking interest in the trade professions (vs the increasingly uneconomic college path)?
The Rule of Law
There is a rule in the game of pool -
One foot must always contact the floor
No standing on a chair nor laying on the table -
That is your base and that is your core
That my dear friends was the reality -
To be anchored or tethered to the base
Otherwise it would totally change the game -
Then we would no longer recognize its face
The dilemma arises amongst politicos and academia -
Those pointy-headed so called intellectuals
All busily occupied with obtuse angles -
Meanwhile ignoring established ideals
The Congress, Court and Administration abuse the law -
Illusions become normal then spread far and wide
Complications, regulations leave the people confounded -
American fundamentals have now basically died
Verse by: Ramon the Poet - βPoet in our Midstβ
As a peripatetic Aussie (presently actually living in Australia), I enjoy your Sunday Sesh musings immensely. Of course I read them on a Monday here & they form an echo, a resonance, of my own Sunday Sesh on the Gold Coast the previous day. Although Thanksgiving is not such a thing here, more & more people use this North American tradition as a time of reflection, a time of communion with friends, a time to recognize that, in spite of our fierce tribalism, we are all human beings regardless of all our cultural & linguistic baggage.
Hello Joel!
I am an early subscriber (a charter member, I suppose) to BPR, and I enjoy your Sunday Sessions along with all of the other great stuff Bill and his team put out.
This might seem quite a bit off the subject, but I would appreciate your recommendations as a longtime resident of Buenos Aires. It's all the same if they are added to a future Session or if you have the time and inclination to email me directly.
My wife and I will be flying to Buenos Aires on December 15 to board a cruise ship on December 20 that will carry us around the Horn and back up the other side to Santiago, Chile, with stops along the way including the Falklands/Malvinas and a "drive-by" of Antarctica.
We will be therefore spending four or five days in B.A. just touring around since it's our first trip below the Equator to South America. So, anyway, we would appreciate it if you would share with us (and perhaps our fellow readers) the names of any of your favorite attractions, restaurants, cafes, museums, etc.
Thanks in advance for any information you could provide.
Sincerely,
Emmanuel
Thanksgiving Message
From Plymouth Rock to the Revolution -Β
All that wasΒ gained, in ourΒ evolution
Giving thanks for that we have received -
Precious FreedomΒ the Founders conceivedΒ
Pray that we shall keep it forevermore -
The Pursuit of Happiness which we adore
God Bless us all,
R T Poet - βPoet in our Midstβ
Your Thanksgiving dinners remind me just how universal some things are; and how extraordinary America and our founding documents truly have been in making America the country it is today.
Perhaps, we need you, more than ever, to help us focus on those principles - and how to preserve them. For I fear that the only way to get people to see the bottom line - the individual of John Locke versus the collective, controlled by the centralized 'state', tried by many over the course of history - is to get past the toxic, and corrupt (irredeemably) political state we are wallowing in. I believe if really given the choice most Americans and Western peoples will choose freedom!
As someone who has, at various times throughout my 79 years, found himself in desperate need of scorn and ridicule, I have β in retrospect, also become aware of perhaps a more desperate need. The βneedβ for deserved praise.
Nowhere, at least in my judgment, is this more evident than with respect to the body of work of Rand.
Yes, she was an Atheist β that unforgivable choice open to all which, once made, condemns one to seemingly both βscorn and ridicule,β as well as the worst kind of condemnation β i.e., silence! She apparently represents the one βcowβ that is to be βslaughteredβ β not because of the sacred, but of the profane!
I remain hopeful that Bill (and his βteamβ) shall continue their incisive, hilarious, and yes β profane observations of Americaβs and Western Civilizationβs decent. A descent into yet another of the tired, worn, tyrannies of carnage, brutality, and injustice, that so characterizes much of recorded history.
As you/they continue to uniquely do so, I would like to see the occasional recognition for those who demonstrate that they understand the cause(s) of such evil and have tried to inform the rest of us β for decades.
As an example of a "target-rich environment, it seems to me that Randβs profound insight that she termed the βsanction of the victimβ offers a vast and fertile garden for Bill and his teamβs delicious prose! While, of course, should they elect (no pun intended) to do so, giving credit where credit is due.
Paraphrasing the hero in her seminal novel, Atlas Shrugged, βbrother you [we] asked for it!β
Respectfully.
Dave Walden
Yes, she was a human being like the rest of us. What I am suggesting is that unlike most of the rest of us, she provided us with unprecedented ideas with which to exercise our distinctly human faculty.
What I shall also suggest, PV G, is that we focus on IDEAS - not people! Focus on the latter has, in large measure, invariably "punched the ticket" necessary for this dreadful journey we are now on!
Wow. Talking about proving my point.............
It is ideas that move humanity forward. The idea of individual freedom and responsibility, together with acceptance of the consequences for the exercise of both, has resulted in what we, most especially in America, have now come to take for granted.
The accepted moral ideas, ideas that had remained unchallenged as far back in history as we can "go," are responsible for said history. Until the rise of reason but a few centuries ago, human beings lived in 1500AD almost identically to how they lived in 1500BC!
The "window" provided by Reason, Rand has since turned into a magnifying glass! ONE of the results of Reason is the inescapably dramatic leap in human well-being and flourishing that has taken place in what amounts to a "wink of the eye" in human history!
Rand's "magnification" of Reason will prevail in spite of what we must endure to finally discredit those ideas that still haunt mankind. Ideas that had sentenced mankind to misery, squalor, and injustice, for over 3000 years!
It is ideas that move the world. It is people who distract us from them.
I applaud the subtle morphing in the "tone" of your response, though owing to time and space I choose to abdicate in defining such things.
We likely share far more to agree with than not. I would sum my response by arguing that we each have the responsibility to be "nice" respectful, thoughtful, and "rational." Because we have such responsibility and rights, we also may choose, in the exercise thereof, to be an asshole! What we may NOT do - whether asshole or "nice," is violate the responsibility and rights of another. Coercive attempts to deal with the assholes, while alleging to do so in the name of virtue is, at the most foundational of levels, the cause of our demise.
Rand, however "harsh, disrespectful, thoughtless, or thought "wrong," recognized the source of the evil with which we must deal. Her ideas result from its identification, analyzation, and her application of Reason to them. Her philosophy - specifically the morality that drives her politics, should be discussed and debated - NOT dismissed out of hand because it defies thousands of years of tradition or "faith."
About Rand, you write: "Being atheist left her without purpose in life. I prefer to take Pascalβs Wager." That first sentence is simply untrue, unless you mean that her purpose(s) you find uncongenial. And regarding Pascal's Wager, you seem untroubled by what I consider a withering criticism of it--namely, that any God worth worshipping would not reward you for resorting to such a crassly opportunistic gambit.
Thanks for the chuckle. You know nothing about my religious beliefs, or lack thereof. Nor do you know my opinion of Rand. I used her here to point out the carelessnessβindeed, fallaciousnessβof your presuming that atheists can have no purpose in their lives, a presumption that flies in the face of the millions of atheists whoβve lived purposeful lives, and in many cases admirable ones.
You write: βLife can be cruel unfair unjust and absurd so belief in the Everlasting gives us hope meaning discernment and purpose. Otherwise its all greed avarice debauchery cruelty followed by nothingness. Pointless.β That βOtherwiseβ gives you away. Youβve essentially begged the question, making of your position little more than a tautology. But perhaps of more consequence is the snarkiness of your response, characterized by your βNot worth respondingβ and of a piece with your put-downs of other posters with your insufferable smugness--e.g., βREAD! YOu sign up by emailing them at the email address they provided! and btw, do NOT post your email here, it can be abused. TAKE IT DOWN. Nor your full name.β Iβll give you this much: it makes sense for YOU not to use your full name.
I did lol at the end of your post! He can come off as you describe but I do think he he brings a lot to the table here. I do mostly enjoy his posts. But that was funny!
PGV: You can dish it out but you can't take it!
What would I like to see?....BPR teams up with Doomberg and Quoth The Raven for a USD$300 per year βsuper-subscriptionβ