Odds and Ends
Typically, on a week such as this, I take time off to recalibrate but not this week. Main reason being that we are in a full fledged bullrush in equities. It’s like you can’t stop the freight train and people keep jumping on.
Remember I have been bullish all year long and I remain so. I am not saying you should cash in those Starbucks Gift Cards you got and put it into some ETF or Apple. I think most people are fully where they should be by this point and only the drink day traders should be out there now buying and selling. The year is done in my mind and it was a pretty good one.
I will take a short victory lap and start thinking about next year.
Not today though.
It’s a random thought kind of day and my first random thought goes to Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general. There is no news flash here but I still am not in the crypto camp and most likely will never be in that camp. I am not going to go over all of the warning signs that things might not be what they seem but suffice it to say, this is one dance I will sit out. Forever.
Take my negative opinion out of the equation and the crypto seems like it may be the story of 2024. The Fed? The Election? Naw, secondary noise to the potential of bringing Bitcoin and it’s spawn into the mainstream. A Bitcoin backed ETF? Is it even possible? This will be an amazing year coming up for Bitcoin and I will be sitting the whole thing out.
I am going to put this out there and you can think on it a little. The idea and the promotion of Bitcoin is mostly a generational thing. A certain generation believes that this will be “their” thing. I know it sounds dumb but just look at everyone and everything involved and how it has progressed over the years.
It is a concept that most people from the “Boomer” generation don’t fully understand. We don’t embrace it because even with all it’s warts, the status quo in economic commerce still works pretty damn well. When something works well, why change it?
However, apparently, the present fiat currency system does not work. Not sure where or why this militant group feels that way but whatever. So, some really smart people came up with a new type of currency (which is dubious because it accounts for .0000023% of commerce) that has no home. It is based in some algorithm and can be created instead of earned.
The creation instead of earned concept is typical of the generations that have followed the boomer generation. Hard work and getting ahead on performance and hard work seem to be an alien concept to these Gen whatever they are. It’s the participation trophy syndrome. You show up, you earn it. Instead of earning 1,000 dollars, lets create a currency that we say is worth a 1,000 dollars and if enough people believe it, it might be worth more. Where is the work ethic?
There are certain believers that are from my generation but they are few and far between. The concept of creating wealth by stringing more and more computers together is foreign to most people.
Sure they will trade it for fun but you would be hard pressed to find a 55 or 60 year old person buying a new Samsung LED 60” with Bitcoin.
Younger readers of this column are already put off so I am going to jump in with this: The advancement of the Bitcoin/Crypto environment to me seems like a generation trying to advance something can call their own. We are not our parents, we use a made up currency that has more risks than anything seen in over 100 years. Yup. Thats us.
Before I move on, I cannot guarantee that I won’t rant about this again in the New Year. Even if this Bitcoin mania runs the price past it’s all time high, I am still going to fight the good fight.
The war in Gaza is becoming a nightmare of untold proportions and I don’t see it ending anytime soon. The protests in the United Staes have gotten bigger and occasionally more violent as supporters of a Free Palestine and backers of Israel have clashed.
College campuses have become hotbeds for debate and most of these pillars of educational excellence have looked stupid.
The conflict has always had the possibility of become a much larger one with the United States being involved and potentially escalating into something no one wants.
We have lost too many American lives in places that are just not worth it, yet we are ready to do it again.
I know that keeping the shipping lanes open and making sure that commerce flows where it is intended is a major mission of the US. I totally understand that and I really have no problem with the US Navy putting a hurt of Somali Pirates or Yemeni Bedouins. Putting troops on the ground though, that is a tougher pill to swallow.
Backing Israel is also something I think is needed as well. Our greatest ally in the region needs to remain so.
However, there is a part of me that looks at the humanitarian cost to the Palestinians in Gaza. I, in my heart, do not believe that the Israelis want to decimate a population. It is not in Jewish scriptures and you never hear even the most radical Jews ever say that all Palestinians must die. Unfortunately, Hamas knows this and they use the civilians to hide which makes it incredibly more difficult to route out these terrorists without causing massive civilian casualties.
Everyone seems to have an opinion and an answer to this problem and yet here we are. There are still over 100 hostages somewhere in Gaza and there are still roughly 35,000 Hammas fighters still looking to inflict damage on the State of Israel. In addition, you have the Iranians supplying everyone in the Middle east with weapons and intelligence.
I do not know how this will end. My guess is that at some point, the damage will be just so overwhelming that the Palestinian people will start giving up intel to the Israelis and they will finally get the hostages back, hopefully all alive.
The complex nature of the Middle East is something, we as Westerners can never truly understand. These people have been in this area for thousands of years and the hatred that boils here is something Americans can never grasp. This is a hatred that is not only directed at the Jews but the Sunnis hate the Kurds who hate the… You get my point. Societies that are based on hatred stay like that for millenniums.