Distractions and self-ass saving...

"With the onset of spring weather and the cheez doodles and monster truck rallies and NASCAR tailgate barbeques and the drive-in beer emporiums all beckoning, can the public public shift its attention from these infantile preoccupations to saving its own ass?"

Well, no. Wondering what the new normal will look like?  Me too. Hopefully, some of the things that Kunstler discusses on Whiskey and Gunpowder will result in some creative destruction. For example, he points to the home building industry and describes their plight...."Are we expecting more asteroid belts of new suburbs carved in the loamy outlands of Dallas and Minneapolis, complete with new highway strips of Big Box shopping and Chuck E. Cheeses? Go to banking’s intensive care unit and inquire (if you can) among the flat-lining production home-builders and the real estate investment trusts on life support when they expect to rev up the heavy equipment." Since the only way to get homeowners who want to sell liquid is to reduce inventory, this might be a good thing, so long as the guys no longer building Gallo Chalets and McMansions are put to work rebuilding infrastructure. Prices on homes will rise as supply and demand move toward equilibrium. That's how it works -- scarcity, price high; shortage, price low.

Of course, the price only goes up and the market only reaches equilibrium if somebody has money to buy something. Until then, I'm guessing things won't get better. I hope that someone, someplace with the authority to limit the excesses of the "marketplace" wakes up and smells the plutonium. I see nothing to make me feel good about my stocks and mutuals -- yet, the market is going up. On what exactly? The market is going up on going up; it's going down on going down. It's absurdity, and since the middle of the Clinton years, any restraint is gone. Jim Creamer says everybody should feel good about Amalgamated Hernia Belts and Restuarants and people buy the shit. And, then they buy more of the shit. My Mutuals look better than they did six weeks ago, but they're still down 28 and 26 percent from a year ago. Did I think about moving them to T-Bills or Cash. Of course, but I wasn't paying enough attention. I'm a value-investor at heart; I buy stocks or funds that I think have a clue, and let the money sit there. I hung on to Vanguard for too long, and regret it. But, things still can go south without trouble.

Here are some of the numbers for Amazon.com. Look at them with jaundiced eyes. Seriously, if this looks really good to you, get jaundice. It's a quicker death than that of exposure and starvation, and maybe you family can harvest some organs from your corpse and sell them to the guy who sold them to you.

The Price to Earnings Ratio (total cost of all shares today if bought today divided by the net earnings of the last reporting period, or the last 12 months -something of an incredible amount of difference, of course) is 52.91. Which means that the stock is selling for almost 53 times what it's earning! To a certain extent, Amazon is a value -- you can establish a ratio between price and sales. The Journal doesn't do that for GM. Earnings are so low that you can't get a ratio, or else the ratio is negative.

Continues with more discussion, but I think he nails it so that the remainder is anticlimax. "Since it is that time of year, and I am haunting the gardening shop, one can’t fail to notice the many styles of pitchforks for sale. My guess is that the current mood of public paralysis will dissolve in a blur of blood and spittle sometime between Memorial Day and July Fourth, even with NASCAR in full swing, and the mushrooming ranks of the unemployed lost in raptures of engine noise and fried cornmeal. It doesn’t take too many determined, pissed-off people to create a lot of mischief in a complex society."

Comments

[Bucket Trucks]

It is great that people are thinking about the environment and working to make the world a safer place. Not only the materials that you are using on your home are safe for the environment but dump trucks have come a long way since the earlier models. We are learning and expanding and coming up with a wide range of safer more effective vehicles for the work force. I think it is great that many auto manufacturers are turning to hybrid vehicles to protect the environment and now they are even using hybrid dump trucks.

[Crusader AXE]

I'm trying to connect Bucket Trucks comment, fascinating tho it is, with what I wrote...and, I'm lost. Little help here folks, please?