finances

Chris Knight's avatar

This is probably an issue I should have addressed ten or so years ago.  It angered me then but now, it’s absolutely infuriating.  Not that I actually expect anything proactive to be done, of course.  But hey, avalanches start with one pebble rolling into places that a pebble doesn’t belong.  So who knows?

It’s about Google’s AdSense program.  And how it’s impossible to regain monetization if you so much as look at a YouTube video the wrong way.

For a few years this blog took part in the AdSense program.  And it made a little bit of money.  Enough that I used it to purchase my first iPad.  AdSense was very easy to implement and it really livened up the blog, which was the main reason I wanted to take part in it.

So it was a pretty good relationship, I thought.

And then, a little over a decade ago, ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

“Armageddon” is the word that Tiger Management founder and chairman Julian Robertson says the United States faces for its economy if countries like Japan and China stop purchasing American debt.

“If the Chinese and Japanese stop buying our bonds, we could easily see [inflation] go to 15 to 20 percent,” he said. “It’s not a question of the economy. It’s a question of who will lend us the money if they don’t. Imagine us getting ourselves in a situation where we’re totally dependent on those two countries. It’s crazy.”

(snip)

“We’re in for some real rough sledding,” he said. “I really do think the recession is at least temporarily over. But we haven’t addressed so many of our problems and we are borrowing so much money that we can’t possibly pay it back, unless the Chinese and Japanese buy our bonds.”

Mash down here for more observations from Mr. Robertson...

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Chris Knight's avatar

I’ve never liked mandatory seat belt laws. For one thing, it should be a matter of personal preference whether one chooses to wear a seat belt or not. In my mind such legislation embodies all the worst aspects of the “nanny state”. I understand that statistically, seat belts do tend to save lives. But I have also known plenty of people for whom seat belts are physically uncomfortable, because of medical conditions or something similar. My grandmother, f’rinstance. Whenever she got into a car she simply looped the belt around her shoulder and rode like that (something that I’ll admit to doing every so often as well 🙂

And then there are those who have argued that seat belt laws have nothing to do with safety at all: that they are designed to be reliable revenue streams for the states that have them. That case is certainly bolstered by the ...

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Remember all that talk of “hope and change” during the past election cycle? What happened to it? Because now President Barack Obama is sounding like the dire opposite of Franklin Roosevelt, warning that if the “stimulus” bill isn’t passed…

“This recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.”

Not even three weeks into the job and the man’s already done did a “malaise speech”.

Dear President Obama: if you seriously want to stimulate the economy across the board, you cannot do it with more spending! That might seem to buy some time in the short term, but what is really needed is to cut taxes and CUT SPENDING!

That may not win Obama any early accolades, but posterity would ultimately ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Ever since this blog began five years ago, I have very often broken bad on George W. Bush. Because he has consistently proven himself to have been the worst President of the modern era (and quite possibly the worst ever). There have been a few times when I have not hesitated to praise his actions, but those have been few and far between. It will be decades before the damage that he has done to America can be fully repaired, if at all.

But don’t think that The Knight Shift is going to be a safe harbor for pro-Obama sentiment either…

This blog and the admittedly off-kilter guy behind it do not cotton to any ideology. If anyone enters my dojo with the sad notion that I should admire or fear them because they are a self-styled “conservative” or “liberal”, then they are wrong… and I won’t hesitate to land ...

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