Ahhhh....

Well, the update for the website is done for the week and now it's time to get things ready for tomorrow to go back to w...

Uh oh. No worky on Monday. Not on any Monday from now on - what a weird feeling. Though my last day as a software engineer was three days ago, it hadn't felt like retirement around here until just an hour or so ago when the email went out to subscribers informing them that the weekend update had been posted.

The radical change made last week (no, not to my investment portfolio, to my career) still hasn't really sunk in yet because weekends around here have been a flurry of activity over much of the last year to finish off the weekly update, then get something ready for the blog so it can be proofread at 6:30 AM PST Monday morning and then posted at the blog.

Now, a completely different schedule will be developed with significantly more time to do many more things other than writing software, reading other people's technical documents, and participating in code reviews. Those activities will not be missed, but many of the people will.

Time will be available to read some books finally - they have stacked up here over a foot high with little chance of the pile going down in recent months from them being read. It's been more a matter of creating more, smaller piles as the weeks have gone by.

Two just arrived in the mail in the last week or so. Peter Schiff's Crash Proof and Michael Panzner's Financial Armageddon both showed up and are ready to go.

When you write a blog with a name like this one, publishers send you titles like these at no charge hoping that you'll have a look and say a few nice things about them.

Not having cracked either of these book's backs, I can only offer a brief description that is also available over at Amazon.com:

Crash Proof: A provocative and insightful examination of our difficult economic future and what investors can do to protect their wealth

The economic tipping point for the United States is no longer theoretical. It is a reality today. The country has gone from the world's largest creditor to its greatest debtor; the value of the dollar is sinking; domestic manufacturing is winding down-and these trends don't seem to be slowing. Peter Schiff casts a sharp, clear-sighted eye on these factors and explains what the possible effects may be and how investors can protect themselves.

For more than a decade, Schiff has not only observed the U.S. economy, but also helped his clients reposition their portfolios to reflect his outlook. What he sees is a nation facing an economic storm brought on by growing federal, personal, and corporate debt, too-little savings, a declining dollar, and lack of domestic manufacturing. Crash-Proof is an informed and informative warning of a looming period marked by sizeable tax hikes, loss of retirement benefits, double digit inflation, even-as happened recently in Argentina-the possible collapse of the middle class. However, Schiff does have a survival plan that can provide the protection that readers will need in the coming years.


Financial Armageddon: According to Michael Panzner, the US is less than two years away from "financial Armageddon." When the stock market bubble burst in March 2000, the collapse that followed wiped out over two-thirds of the value of the technology-laden Nasdaq Index and decimated the hopes and dreams of millions of Americans.

Now, imagine not one, but four such disasters looming on the horizon. Four key elements--Debt, Derivatives, Government Guarantees, and the Retirement system--are quickly unraveling, and because they are so intricately connected, there will be an unremitting domino effect. With time running out, this is a disaster-in-the-making on which every American must be informed so they can protect themselves, their families, and their economic well-being before it's too late.

A book about inflation in Weimar Germany currently rests at the top of the pile and will receive attention first, but a look at the two tomes above will soon follow and some sort of a review will appear here.

While I can't really argue with the characterization of the world economy implied by these titles without first having read the books, it should be noted that, around here, the situation is simply considered to be a "mess".

Aside from reading more books, it's hard to say what will change around here. As for the blog, there is sure to be a different cadence of postings and there will be time to do more than just cursory research during the week for the blog.

We'll see how things go.

For now one word and one feeling take precedence over all others.

Ahhhh....