My bad for neglecting the blog. I've been consumed with our new business. We are starting a custom malting operation. (Malt, as in the stuff you make beer, whiskey, malted milk balls, malted milk shakes, malt-o-meal, and Grape Nuts cereal out of.) We are finally getting our malting equipment up and running and should be producing in commercial quantities early next year.
As for the markets and world events, I follow them regularly and have a few thoughts. Corruption is killing us. We have seen it in Benghazi, the IRS harassment of certain groups, the NSA spying on everyone, fraud in the mortgage markets etc., etc. There is no regard for the Constitution any more, nor the inalienable rights of citizens. We have situational ethics and an attitude that the strong and powerful can do as they please. It is just part of the decay of a country and something that is sad to watch and difficult to have any effect on stemming the tide.
Being self employed I have seen something of late that makes me think 2014 could get real interesting. I see the potential for an epic decline in consumer spending coming. Why? In my own case, the "affordable" health care act will cause my health care insurance costs to climb from $7500 per year to $15000 per year and my max out of pocket for other health costs to rise from $10,000 to $12,000. If others are impacted even half as much as I am they are going to have a lot less disposable income and spending will tank.
I would be interested in what impact others are seeing from the 2000+ page piece of trash that they had to pass to see what was in it.
Wishing all of you the very best. CWIX
I find it interesting that the administration is talking about the cost of health insurance under ACA is coming in lower than expected. Of course they are comparing to estimated costs that were done back when the beast was hatched. These estimate were in no way connected to actual costs that people were paying or are paying currently. It's like saying I thought the home you were going to buy from me (with a real value of $150,000) was going to cost you $1,000,000 but you're going to be better off because I'm going to let you buy it for only $950,000 and tell you how much better off you are...sucker!
ReplyDeleteHey Cwix I'm glad you opened a new comment and happy to hear that your new business is progressing well.
DeleteI'm not sure how the new health insurance laws will affect me, I'm a wage slave at a medium sized corp and haven't paid any attention. Hopefully I'll have less pain than your almost 10k of potential spending.
We may not have to wait until 2014 for things to get interesting though. Looks like sales are slowing up some already, (I guess from the shutdown) and this year Thanksgiving is really late, 6 days later than last year so 6 less Christmas shopping days which should mean crappy November numbers for retailers.
Good to see you back Kev. I am getting tired of the fear mongering that Washington pulls. There is no reason for the current situation to result in a default UNLESS it is done intentionally. The US has only one "obligation" and that is to pay the P&I on our treasury debt. All other spending is optional. There is far more revenue coming in than it takes to pay the P&I on the debt so once again we have known lairs out there trying to scare everyone. I couldn't help feeling deja vu'ish as the Sec of the Treasury was calling for "tanks in the streets" to CONgress. I could have sworn it was right out of Hank Paulson's play book when he did the same thing in 2007. Too bad memories are so short.
ReplyDeleteI loved the 300 point ramp on the DOW today on the HOPE that something was going to happen. We truly are heard animals with reptile brains.
Maybe your company was one of those that was allowed to opt out of Obama Care. I know some companies are eating a larger share of the hit for their employees but I also know a number of small businesses that are taking it on the chin.
With Yellen in charge we can expect infinite accommodation via QE 4eveah. Assets will continue to inflate while those holding cash or non-favored assets will get the shaft all the while your wages relative to costs will continue to decline.
I think we are past the event horizon and it is just a matter of time before we are ripped to shreds by the black hole of wisdom that exists in Washington. Until then I guess we just keep dancing.
Good morning Cwix, I don't think my company is exempted, they usually announce the health insurance changes right before the new year so I'm guessing I'll find out in a few months.
ReplyDeleteYes the scare them with "tanks in the street" never seems to get old for them. I've been enjoying the shutdown so far and all the whining from the msm.
I'm also expecting Yellen to print like crazy but to constantly talk a little tightening just to keep things from getting out of hand.
Have a good one
Hey Cwix, I did some checking at work and though the rumors are big changes coming to our health insurance in the new year, nothing has announced or published. I believe my company is still shopping/negotiating next years plan.
ReplyDeleteBy the way Fredw is still plugging away at his blog, http://fredw-catharsisours.blogspot.com/
Have a good one,
Kev
Hey Cwix, thanks for refreshing the blog ;-)
ReplyDeleteI'll add Ovaltine to your list of products made with malt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovaltine
from wiki : Developed in Switzerland, originally Ovomaltine (from ovum, latin for egg and malt,
which were it's originally it's main ingredients.
cheers, NW
Hey NW! Good to hear from you. You've been MIA for a while. I drop in on Fredw's site every now and then. Nice to see he is keeping up the good work.
ReplyDeleteNow that the "shut down / default" bogus scare tactics are over life is nice and calm again. We can all go to sleep until they decide it's time to scare the heard again. I can't believe that we put up with the kind of attitude that the gov shows towards we the people. People were getting kicked out of their homes because they were on federal property and yet no one was asking why the president was still allowed to stay in his home that is on federal property. The simple fact is that they look at the citizens as the servants of the government rather than the other way around. They were passing out fines for people going into federal parks or lands that are unattended even when the gov is funded. That we continue to put up with these clowns is a poor reflection on the quality of the average citizen.
In Seattle they have banned the use of the word citizen from public speak. They have replaced it with "resident" so we don't offend those who aren't citizens. The madness is expanding at an exponential rate.
CAT was a big miss on earnings. The fact that a world wide supplier of heavy equipment is contracting should be a dead canary in the coal mine if anyone is paying attention. Japan is swirling near the bottom of the toilet bole. I don't know how much longer they are going to be able to hold out before they start devaluing big time. We should be right behind them when they do. Wealth confiscation like we've seen in Greece will probably get moving about that time. It is the end game before complete economic collapse. The last convulsions of a dying empire.
At least I should have plenty of malt to chew on. Another malt based drink I like is called INKA. Cheers.
Greetings fellow global residents ;-)
ReplyDeleteOct 23 '13 was the one year aniversary of the X1.8 solar flare that hurricane Sandy followed.
http://www.solarham.net/top10.txt
During that one year period ,there were only four X class flares,all of them in May '13.
According to this article, this is the quietest solar cycle in 190 years :
http://iceagenow.info/2013/10/quietest-sun-dalton-minimum-190-years/
NW
Interesting stuff to be sure. I worry more about cooling than warming. There are ways to deal with getting too much sun energy. The ways for dealing with too little are much more limited. Back in 2004ish National Geographic put out a chart showing the last 500,000 years of global temperatures. On average out of each 100K years there was about 90K years of very cold temps and about 10K years of warm temps. We are in the tail end of the latest warm period if these cycles continue to repeat. (all dates have a +/- range that is far beyond the normal human life span). (This is memories from 10 years ago so I may be off by a bit)
DeleteYes, our being on the planet does affect the weather, but I think there are bigger cycles that may have the power to trump anything we are affecting.
Here is a link to the health care premiums for all states that don't have their own exchanges. Nice to see that in most states you can get a family gold coverage plan for only $5000+ per month. If this doesn't wipe out any remaining disposable income that people have then I don't know what will... that is if they sign up. At least now people can see what they will pay before they register.
ReplyDeletehttps://data.healthcare.gov/dataset/QHP-Individual-Medical-Landscape/ba45-xusy
Wow that's crazy. I wonder how many people actually clear $5,000 a month.
DeleteHow's the rocket stove Kev ? What type of design did you use ?
DeleteI like the design of the rocket stove in the greenhouse floor to keep the soil warm,it's on youtube.
DeleteAnother good design would be to be able to switch the wood gas to the intake of an electrical generator,pretty easy with a couple of valves ;-)
NW
Cooler winters would prompt increased hot beverage consumption,'ere's a product idea with malt included...
ReplyDeleteMMMM yuMMMMy! New Minty Malted Mocha Mix,,, MMMM yuMMMMy ,, I want some of that ;-)
Add to coffe or by itself, it's MMMM yuMMMMy,,,LOL
cheers NW
Well, tomorrow I go to the doc to get a checkup. I haven't been for 7 years and probably wouldn't go now if I wasn't planning to drop off the medical insurance treadmill in January. I simply can not afford to pay the premiums for everyone in the family. My wife and daughter are the big healthcare users and even they don't typically hit the deductible limits in any given year. I see it this way, if something big hit me I'm bankrupt, if not I survive financially. If I go the insurance route I go bankrupt for sure (it might take a little longer but it will happen) and there is no possibility I survive financially. I still need to look into the credits that might be available if I do some fancy manipulations which might make the insurance possible but I'm not counting on it for the moment. I am so thankful that I liked my former plan and my doctors and will get to keep them... uh, I guess not, my current plan has been cancelled and I don't think my doctors are on the plans the exchanges offer. Oh well.
ReplyDeleteHey cwix, I hope the checkup went well. I'm actually going to get extra time off because of Obamacare, I'm in accounting and we got the word that the company is increasing the amount of PTO time we get next year. It's a decent size company that is pretty tight with a buck when it comes to employees so I had to ask my boss why. Well he didn't know the numbers but evidently our health insurance increases are so large that they felt like they needed to do something for the employees, I can't wait for next month when they unveil the new health plan, not. I'm carrying myself and my 2 teenage daughters and while I'm sure I'm nowhere near the hit you are taking I bet it hurts me a lot. I just cancelled cable TV and the home telephone (using google voice and Obi100/hulu/netflix) a few months ago, easy savings there just not enough.
DeleteIf you are going without healthcare you should investigate some of the alternative medicine sites, here's an interesting one I found recently, http://healthwyze.org/index.php/component/content/article/633-everything-about-colloidal-silver.html
Hopefully your plan will be reinstated since the O said that they could. Somehow doubt it though. Good luck and keep us posted.
Okay just in case someone stops by, my Ocare hit wasn't as bad as I feared. Cost up only $45/month but... deductible and out of pocket doubled and in network coverage dropped from 80% to 70%. So as long as we don't need it we will be okay :)
DeleteHe Kev, We did some fancy footwork with our budget and made it so we could afford to keep insurance on all family members. Even with that our premiums went up substantially. We were paying about $1900 per quarter for 3 of us and now we are more like $2850 per quarter for 2 of us. Persons working for companies that offer insurance weren't hit hard this year. Their turn comes next year. It should be interesting seeing how this all plays out.
DeleteSorry I haven't been on the blog much. Very busy with the malting business, taking care of aging parent, and other sick family members. I am officially CFO of the company but do all the purchasing, grain cleaning & sorting, some plumbing and electrical, raising capital, all regulatory compliance, shipping, receiving, etc., etc. That's just the way it is in a small company; lots of jobs to be done and very few people to do them. Anyway, tax time is upon us and I have been busy with that too. Christmas would have been better if the whole family and all visitors hadn't come down with a nasty respiratory infection. Knocked me down for a week. I'll check back in after the taxes are all filed.
Hey cwix, I hope everyone is well. Yes you do sound busy but making malt is a worthwhile endeavor, so many good things come from it. :)
DeleteI missed the Rocket stove question from a long time ago, I didn't use it much because my 45 degree feed pipe didn't allow gravity to slide the stick to the fire. They do put out a lot of heat for small amount of wood so I will try to make another with a vertical feed pipe and hopefully won't to have to baby sit it all the time. I have seen some vertical feed pipe stoves on youtube and the fire just seems to go sideways. Maybe I will look for plans versus winging it :).
Yes I expect Ocare to really hit me hard next year assuming there is still a healthcare system. Between the current threats of war and what seems to me to be an economy on it's last legs next year seems like a long way off though.
Take care, Fredw is still blogging at http://fredw-catharsisours.blogspot.com/ and NW even drops a comment now and again. I'll try to stop by more over here.
Cwix here. Crap.. I just typed in a long reply to you and lost when I hit the publish button. Anyway, I'll just let you know I'm here and will try to redo the reply later. Got to get off the computer and on to other things at the moment.
ReplyDeleteI hate when that happens. :)
DeleteHelloooooooo out there,,,,, Fred's blog died, it's terrible !!! Is there a replacement blog ?
ReplyDeleteNW
Hey NW Fred is back, I missed a good bit of the outage because I was at the beach. I hope all is well.
ReplyDeleteKev
HI Kev,
ReplyDeleteI've been reading Fred's blog since he's been back but I haven't been able to post comments.
Not sure if it's on my end or with blogger or what,,,
NW
Hey guys,
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year, I hope you guys are doing well.
Kev