updates

Max and I want to see a puppie after having seen some border collie/lab mixes at humane society in St Cloud that were all taken the first day. We found similar at Milaca on a farm that is a dog shelter.

Dexy is a sweet girl. She is tan and white and seems smart. You can see the border collie in her dominate as she heard's Reid.

We've had her a few weeks now and she is doing a little chewing and digging, but she seems happy since we take her running/walking often. She is getting closer to being house trained, but we have to find a way for her to let us know it is time to go outside. Time to get the bell hanging from door.

Caught a 6 pound walleye back on Father's Day with Butch, we only had 2 bites in 2 hours, but just as we were coming in, it hit. After it stayed down Butch mentioned it could be a dogfish, but as I pulled it up, I was glad it was the nice walleye. Happy Father's day indeed.

Max is doing great. We are working more with him on math work-books and he really gets math! He is getting tutored 2 times a week for the summer which really helps. And Max is getting better at ball throwing and hitting. T-ball has been fun for us.

Reid is talking more. He is starting to say small full sentances even if it is hard to understand sometimes. He is a joy. People mention all the time that he is always running around smiling.

Work is work. My boss got fired last week so it will be tough for a few weeks as we adjust.

Oh, and I have spent an inordinant amount of time on this silly web game, Evony. War game has been addiction recently, but i can see getting bored with it soon.

The Market Ticker

This guy might sound like doom and gloom, but he seems to me to know what he is talking about. Should I take all our money and put under the mattress?

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/1212-Morning-Madness-Economic-Fundamentals.html

"
Let's take the basics: We had a $14 trillion economic (GDP) in 2008, of which 70% is consumer spending. The rest is government and exports.

The consumer has spent two decades pulling forward demand via credit - that is, through the chimera of extracting home equity and charging up the credit cards. After the 1981 recession this really started to accelerate; prior to that point most Americans lived largely off their paychecks, rather than pulling out the "magic plastic card" any time they wanted to buy something. Checks were common as was good old-fashioned cash.

In 1981, US GDP was $3.1 trillion dollars.

In 1992 it was $6.3 trillion, a double.

In 2005 it was $12.4 trillion dollars, another double.

Doubling in roughly 12-13 years. Not bad, right?

Let's look at it a different way, this time in "current" (not inflation-adjusted, since GDP isn't) dollars.

In 1981 the per-capita income in the US was $8,476.

In 1992 it was $14,847, a 75% gain.

In 2005 it was $25,036, a 69% gain.

Notice anything?

Its not really that subtle, is it?

GDP slightly more than doubled in each of those above periods, but per-capita income lagged, and the lag rate is increasing.

How's that possible, since consumer spending is 70% of GDP?

We haven't been spending income - that is, human productivity. We're pulling forward demand to the tune of 25-30% of income through the use of credit and as we have continued to do it we have started to pay interest on interest; ergo, the amount of debt being taken on has exploded in an exponential spiral!
"


And also ran across this nice pinball machine article:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/07/fixing-the-past-the-art-of-collecting-pinball-machines.ars

Solar cell analysis

Fellow MN'er has a nice analysis on solar cell install.

http://www.frozennorth.org/C197109377/E20080427143258/index.html

I was sure there was fraud in the markets, but wow.

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/authors/2-Karl-Denninger/P2.html

This guy is good. And this simple expose of yesterdays news seems to be clear. The people with money are manipulating as always.

A shame because capitalism should be more fair to all.

Vasaloppet

Max did the miniloppet on Sat, he did great with the 4K!
We hosted 6 nice folks this year. Had a nice evening and morning.
I doublechecked my 7K trail section on Sat and then double-poled the inside classic track on Sun am before the race. Then in afternoon I did the 13K race in 1:06. The weather was beautiful and I really liked the race. I think I will try the 35K next year.

Broken Economy

On Thursday, at about 11 o'clock in the morning, the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous drawdown of money market accounts in the United States to a tune of $550 billion being drawn out in a matter of an hour or two... The Treasury opened up its window to help. They pumped $105 billion into the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks... They decided to close the operation, close down the money accounts, and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account so there wouldn't be further panic and there. And that's what actually happened... If they had not done that their estimation was that by two o'clock that afternoon, $5.5 trillion would have been drawn out of the money market system of the United States, would have collapsed the entire economy of the United States, and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed.

At 2:20 in the video -->
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NMu1mFao3w

I've seen the above in a few recent forums. It is scary. No one actually knows how to solve this problem. We don't know what is next... except lots of new lost jobs and major debt.

My house could be worth 50K or MORE less then when we bought it 3 1/2 years ago. And we live far from any hot real estate market. We can't even move or refinance.

Good thing that Tam has a gov job. And good thing that I am super busy with work. But our company is worried just like all the others.

This is really scary stuff.