A visitor

Photograph by Allan Murphy

A bird of unrecognized species appeared on the ledge just outside the window. He had a large seed in his beak, which it didn't look like he could swallow, but he probably knew what he was doing. The cat, Cosette, spotted him and went crazy as cats do in the presence of birds. Cosette tried to attack and knocked her head on the window glass, the bird regally ignoring her.

The ancient Romans, clever as they were at engineering, war, and law, attached great importance to divination through birds (among other things). Type of bird; pattern, height, and direction of flight; where the bird would alight to rest; pitch of the bird's call -- the augur, or reader of omens, would take them all into account. Despite the odd skeptic like Lucretius and Cicero, Romans were ridiculously superstitious.

But it's understandable to me that they would find birds to be significant as signs. Birds seem to have an importance that exceeds their size. Especially when there is something unusual about them, like our visitor.

After the bird had strutted around for a bit and left for parts unknown, my wife went online to identify him. It turned out to be a tufted titmouse, described as follows:

A little gray bird with an echoing voice, the Tufted Titmouse is common in eastern deciduous forests and a frequent visitor to feeders. The large black eyes, small, round bill, and brushy crest gives these birds a quiet but eager expression that matches the way they flit through canopies, hang from twig-ends, and drop in to bird feeders. When a titmouse finds a large seed, you’ll see it carry the prize to a perch and crack it with sharp whacks of its stout bill.

Let's take our little avian as a good omen for all of us in 2012.

A happy new year to you.

Post-Euroland: We'll stop your money from leaving, and while we're at it, we'll stop you

European go home!

"UK prepares emergency measures for euro collapse to prevent an influx of people and money," reports the Daily Mail.

Ministers are considering draconian plans to prevent a flood of money and people heading to Britain from Europe if the ailing single currency collapses.

Welcome -- er, no, you're not welcome if you're well off -- to the United Kingdom in the run-up to the euro's code blue. Her majesty's strange, hybrid Marxist-corporate state happily ushers in so many Third World, especially Muslim, immigrants that no one knows how many are in the country; they qualify for no end of government benefits. But if the prosperous have eyes to re-settle themselves or their wealth, it's "stop in the name of the law!"

Some countries are expected to ground all flights and effectively seal their borders to prevent the flight of people and money. British officials are said to be considering contingency plans to seal the UK’s borders in a worst-case scenario – although any attempt to prevent the free movement of people is illegal under EU law.

U.K. permanent economic refugees enlisted
to turn back temporary economic refugees.

Britain isn't the only country drawing up contingency plans to thwart refugees from the euro.

Other EU countries are also drawing up contingency plans. Earlier this month reports in Portugal said the country’s borders would be temporarily sealed if the country drops out of the single currency. Strict limits would be imposed on cash withdrawals and euro notes would be stamped with an escudo mark until the new currency was printed and distributed.

The EU currency union, installed with great fanfare celebrating Europe as one big happy family (and the undeclared but widely understood purpose of ensuring that Germany's economic success would never again give it undue power and influence), looks like this on its deathbed. The free movement of peoples within the Union ends in borders being defended against immigrants from other EU states. The politicians desperately implore Germany to save the one-currency folly. As irony goes, it doesn't get more delicious than this.

A few good Muslim warriors

Defense department agrees to allow
Muslim cadets to wear hijabs

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) announced today that the Department of Defense will begin allowing Muslim and Sikh students who wear an Islamic head scarf (hijab) or a turban to participate in the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC). ...

In October, the Washington-based Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization wrote to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta after a 14-year-old Muslim student at Ravenwood High School in Brentwood, Tenn., was forced to transfer out of a JROTC class when her commanding officers told her she could not wear hijab while marching in the September homecoming parade. CAIR requested constitutionally-protected religious accommodations for the girl and for future Muslim JROTC participants.

The DoD has also released artistic renderings of a new officers' dress uniform designed to "stimulate the morale of U.S. Muslim soldiers by recalling their gallantry against the armies of Richard the Lion Heart in the Crusades," said another press release from Allahu Akbar, the newsletter of the American Muslim Military League, the official spokesperson organization for Army Muslim affairs.

"Diversity is our strength," said the League in a statement. "Our struggle is your struggle."

A deep but dazzling darkness

Dear night! this world's defeat;

The stop to busy fools; care's check and curb;

The day of Spirits; my soul's calm retreat

               Which none disturb!

     Christ's progress, and his prayer time;

     The hours to which high Heaven doth chime.

          God's silent, searching flight:

When my Lord's head is filled with dew, and all

His locks are wet with the clear drops of night;

               His still, soft call;

     His knocking time; the soul's dumb watch,

     When Spirits their fair kindred catch.

          Were all my loud, evil days

Calm and unhaunted as is thy dark Tent,

Whose peace but by some Angel's wing or voice

               Is seldom rent;

     Then I in Heaven all the long year

     Would keep, and never wander here.

          But living where the sun

Doth all things wake, and where all mix and tire

Themselves and others, I consent and run

               To every mire,

     And by this world's ill-guiding light,

     Err more than I can do by night.

          There is in God (some say)

A deep, but dazzling darkness; as men here

Say it is late and dusky, because they

               See not all clear;

     O for that night! where I in him

     Might live invisible and dim.

— Henry Vaughan (1621-1695), The Night

Everything but cash is trash?

 

James Kostohryz, described as a "proprietary investor/trader," is interviewed at Seeking Alpha on his investment recommendations for 2012. Are you ready for this? His advice is ... go to 100 percent cash. Yes, 100 percent. No stocks or bonds.

One of the first commenters says, "This is the most contrarian article one has encountered." It may be the most contrarian article of investment advice two have encountered, me being the second.

Almost all advisers and financial planners recommend keeping some cash equivalents (money market funds, TIPS, etc.) in a portfolio as a cushion and to take advantage of unexpected opportunities. However, it takes a brave man to advocate selling out of every position. (In response to some of the scoffing comments, he clarifies that he's not saying 100 percent cash forever, just until the financial permacrisis affecting almost every Western nation, as well as some non-Western ones, is resolved or cools off.)

Some of his points:

By studiously avoiding bear markets, investors will be more financially and emotionally equipped to purchase stocks when the herd is selling, valuations are cheap and long-term expected returns are optimal.

... A successful investment strategy for most individuals must place a primary emphasis on avoiding bear markets. This implies being willing to take profits during bull markets and leaving potentially illusory gains “on the table.”

At present time, economic and financial risks are at historic dimensions. I believe that cash is by far the best investment at this time on a reward/risk basis. High cash positions will enable investors to avoid huge risks and potentially take advantage of enormous opportunities in 2012.

... Some might argue that the value of the USD [U.S. dollar] could fall relative to the value of other assets. The overwhelming risks are just the opposite. The world is on the verge of experiencing a severe bout of asset price deflation. The prices of everything from stocks, to real estate to commodities are poised to collapse relative to the value of the USD.

Many people believe that holding cash can only result in a deterioration of wealth. This is false. Holding cash in a time of asset price deflation will make you wealthy. Your net worth will rise when measured in units of productive wealth generating assets.

Kostohryz's recommendation is a useful counterweight to what he correctly perceives as the financial industry's self-serving propaganda in favor of trading or at least being fully invested. Most people do not think of simply holding dollars as a kind of investment, but it is not unreasonable to recognize cash as an asset class, with its own advantages and disadvantages.

It is smart to hold a substantial amount of your potential investment money in reserve to lower the volatility of your overall portfolio and somewhat dull the pain of severe market sell-offs. And you want to have a reserve to deploy when good investments get cheaper.

But I can't go along with his thesis in its extreme form. Here's why:

1. Diversification is the first principle of wise investing. A single position, even if it is cash, is not diversified.

2. If the market fizzles badly, having no open positions will seem like brilliance in retrospect. But as of now, it's no more than betting on a particular future, a turn of the wheel. Sure, there are plenty of reasons to be pessimistic about the world financial picture, but markets aren't rational. They can go up (or down) for no obvious reason and contrary to what common sense would dictate. Today's markets -- unfortunately -- are also heavily influenced by government and central bank interventions.

Finally, lots of corporations are doing very well, even if we, mere citizens or employees, are not. Investment money will still flow to them, and their stockholders will benefit. It's nothing to celebrate that many people who work hard but can't afford to buy equities scrape by while stock owners, especially those with large positions, reap the profits. But in the context of investment strategy, don't confuse across-the-board financial and social health with investment returns.

3. The invisible tax, inflation, gnaws away at cash. Kostohryz believes that deflation is more likely than inflation, which will make cash more valuable. Hell, I don't know, but I think the opposite is more likely and cash will lose at least some value. I don't favor betting the farm on a money loser, even if the losses could be small.

For all that, Kostohryz makes a case worth pondering, and many of his commenters -- as usual at Seeking Alpha and unlike those at, for example, Zero Hedge -- sound sane and can even write decently.

Slurred speech

 

How to dress your daughter like a pop star.

"Editor ousted over racial slur against Rhianna," the Associated Press tells us.

The editor of a Dutch fashion magazine has been fired after using a racial slur referring to Barbados-born Rihanna that set off a social media furor and prompted an outraged response from the singer.

Eva Hoeke, editor of "Jackie," and the magazine's publisher said in a joint statement on Facebook that Hoeke's use of a racial slur — "although without malicious intentions" — was cause for her departure after eight years on the job.

Hoeke said she was unaware the word was so loaded because "you hear it all the time on radio and TV." It was used in an article on how to dress your daughter like a pop star.

What was the "racial slur" that led the editor to be sacrificed to appease the anti-racism industry? It was something so terrible that the AP dares not even mention it.

Curious, I did a Google search. Rolling Stone, that pillar of the anti-Establishment Establishment, is a little more forthcoming.

In a brief item that was apparently meant as humorous praise, the magazine Jackie called Rihanna "the ultimate ni**abitch," saying, "She has street cred, she has a ghetto ass and she has a golden throat."

As a footnote to the end of civilization, this will do. It is now ("apparently") humorous praise to describe an entertainer as "the ultimate ni**abitch" who has "a ghetto ass."

Rolling Stone, too, has its sensitivities, unable to spell out "ni**abitch," but it has no qualms about printing Rihanna's rejoinder:

"I hope you can read English, because your magazine is a poor representation of human rights!" Rihanna tweeted in response. "You put two words together, with the intent of abasement, that made no sense . . . Well, with all respect, on behalf of my race, here are my two words for you . . . FUCK YOU!!!"

Rolling Stone adds that "Jackie's publisher says the magazine will invite Rihanna to comment on the incident in its next issue."