Santa brought me a dreidel for Kwanzaa and now I'm confused

Let's start this one with America's most urgent question: are you coming out to Tim's Wine Market on Orange Ave. on Thursday 12/12 evening to join me for my holiday party?  Because if not, I sincerely hope that your favorite band surprises you with a love song they wrote exclusively for you while that one celebrity you super-duper want to get with strolls out from behind the world's largest chocolate fondue fountain with a rose in his/her teeth then whispers "I've wanted you for so long" in your ear while handing you tomorrow's winning lottery ticket.

Because that is literally the only thing better than hanging out with me at Tim's.  Literally.

A nuclear accord was reached between Iran and essentially everyone else recently.  I seriously thought that the media would have made a bigger deal out of this, but no.  Good news doesn't sell advertising space.

Tokyo has been awarded the 2020 Olympic Games.  For the very VERY few of you that know what I'm about to say, Akira is coming true.  #WeddingGiftForTJ

"What does the fox say?" was a thing.  That doesn't necessarily bode well for our society.  I guess it's our dumb answer to "Gangham Style".  But technically we participated in that too.

Jean Claude Van-Damme did a split between two moving Volvo trucks to demonstrate how awesome Volvo trucks are at not killing idiots who do stunts in order to save their careers because they are aging action movie stars who didn't make the "Expendables" cut.  But it was still a pretty wicked split.

Amazon has launched a new branch of their business intended to use helicopter drones to deliver packages bought on the internet.  They're calling it SkyNet.

In light of BitCoin's success, I am coming out with a currency of my own: GregBucks.  For the low, low price of $50 USD per GregBuck, you can be the proud owner of a made up currency that will likely also be banned from Chinese transactions.  Soon thereafter I will be releasing G-Cheddah which will work on a similar concept only this one is exclusively for the purchase of guns, drugs, alcohol, bling and other awesome gangsta-related merchandise.  Word.  Also probably not okay with the Chinese.

Pope Francis has earned Time Magazine's 'Person of the Year' award, and I fully support that decision.  This guy has taken his newfound Popelitude/Popeliness/Popeosity and has launched a full frontal assault on all corruption, rigidity and inaccessibility of Catholicism.  Given that the last pope just kinda sat there waving and had increasingly sunken eyes, this is a huge step forward for the Catholic faith.

Someone audited the Pentagon and discovered that there's 8.5 trillion (or $8,500,000,000,000.00) in un-accounted-for funds since 1996 (the last time they got audited).  That seems cool.  I mean, military stuff needs some Jason Bourne kind of crap that happens off the books.  I get it.  Lots of fun crazy people with guns running about.  Makes sense to me.  Yaaaaaay America's tax dollars at work.

Nelson Mandela died.  That's no fun.  He was a good dude.  Then Kanye West came out and said that he will (I kid you not, he definitely said this) soon be a bigger cultural and civil rights icon than Nelson Mandela.  Then a herd of lions sent by an angel ripped him asunder in a bloody spectacle while everyone within eyeshot cheered.

I made up that last sentence but if the universe had any semblance of justice in it, that's how it would have ended.  Kanye West sucks.

The post of Fed Chairman will soon be filled by a Fed Chairladyfolk.  Janet Yellen is the next in line for the top spot concerning monetary policy in the United States.  She is seasoned, aggressive and prepared to take on the massive task of unwinding the extreme policies that brought the global economy to the brink of disaster.  Some chick is taking over General Motors as well.  Good on you, gals.  Way to earn that 75% of your male contemporaries' pay.

Housing statistics have shown incredible volatility, causing all the news networks to have "Has the Housing Market Lost its Luster" and "Holy Mother of Everything Holy, Sell Your Children and Tiny Dogs and Spare Kidneys and Invest Everything in Real Estate AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" headlines back to back.  Makes for confusing times.  But real estate is actually doing pretty good lately.  Rising rates (yup, the general trajectory is still up) aren't really crimping home price appreciation too badly.

Speaking of rising rates, in my humble but accurate opinion the whole phenomenon is all a big over-exaggeration of the impact that the 'tapering' back of the government's present bond-buying program will have.  Let's be clear: rates need to go up.  Bond prices at present levels aren't a good thing long-term for raising profitable debt.  But the extraordinary measures utilized to drag us back from the precipice of international catastrophe are not easily unwound, nor will their removal be akin to ripping the band-aid off.  It's going to be slow.  And the market is reacting as if it's going to be fast.  And we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Completely separate from that is the institution of "QM" rules (standing for qualified mortgages) that are going into place at the beginning of 2014.  While these regulations are aimed at simultaneously reducing the risk of newly originated loans while shielding banks from liability, the bottom-line effect is that guidelines on loans that qualify for these new standards are going to tighten up.  Until the bomb drops, no one has a damn clue as to how good/bad it's going to be.  Stay tuned.

So the ObamaCare website's rollout was basically the worst case scenario.  Impressively awful.  Fox News was 100% correct on something for once.  Let the right-wing drink deeply of this failure.  Considering this is likely going to become some gigantic issue shortly (after all the sugar-plums and champagne have digested and 2014 rears its ugly head) I will save it for later.

The NSA has come under quite a bit of scrutiny since the whole Edward Snowden "thing".  Well, as it turns out, every guy's nightmare is true: the NSA has been watching you while you watch porn.  A bunch of guys have come forward stating that the NSA has blackmailed them by threatening to release their web browser history in order to discredit any radical views they may have.  So consider this a warning fellas: the next time you're feeling lonely could be the undoing of your grand plan to promote Cthulhu's rebirth.

J.P.Morgan made the huge mistake of having an open forum discussion after their involvement with the IPO of Twitter.  The plan was to attract young commenters and have a discussion about the present job market.  What actually came were young commenters who wanted the big bank to know how badly they were hated.  My four favorite comments are as follows:

#4:  Trophy wives: worth it or too big of a headache?

#3:  What will next Thursday's LIBOR rate be?

#2:  How much blood do your executives consume on a monthly basis?

#1:  Does the sleaze wash off with a regular shower or do you have to use something special like babies' tears?

Congress may actually have a budget proposal together that will make us not argue about it for two years.  Fingers crossed.

You’ve been good to me this year.  I appreciate it.  I hope each and every one of you close this year out just how you want to.  You deserve it.  Happy 2013, y’all.

Political theatre does thrill me so

Well, Armageddon has once again been averted at the last minute by our crack team of elected officials (ironically the same crack team that started the damn problem in the first place, but let's try to focus on the positives).  And once again I am going to have a lot of looting and public nudity charges to deal with in the aftermath of the world not ending.

Yup.  The debt ceiling has been raised.  The Bill passed by Senate earlier today has just been passed by the House and our President is more than eager to sign it into law.  Let us all pat ourselves on our communal back as we authorize our grandiose solution to the number one economic superpower in the world's financial problems: Borrowing more money.  'Murica.

I don't claim to fathom even an inkling of the multitudinous waves of red tape that the political process creates, nor do I claim to know the full scope of issues that are awash in this mess.  Nor would I openly and honestly voice those opinions because god (or God, depending on your point of view) only knows that I know enough crazies on either extreme of the political spectrum that would absolutely leap at the opportunity to bulldoze me with an endless barrage of partisan BS. 

Nor do I care.

The fact of the matter is that we appear to be a whole gaggle of geese that can't get themselves in a line.  Fitch threatened a downgrade of the creditworthiness of our sovereign debt.  China got a neat little opportunity to crack the verbal whip across our backs by making sure we "protect their investments."  We furloughed an incredible amount of government employees considered to be 'non-essential', basically giving a major part of the workforce that keeps this machine running a kick in the teeth right before holiday season.

And for what?

The opportunity to hold ourselves hostage and attempt to force hasty decisions on the entire financial strategy we have adopted?  We came across to the global community looking like a 4 year old holding her breath because she couldn't get what she wanted. 

Well, the relief rally is upon us as we enjoy our post-stressor endorphin rush.  Stocks stuttered, now they stand strong.  Rates climbed, now they enjoy a relaxing dip.  The needless and self-fabricated volatility has left the building. 

I imagine this is exactly how Al Gore feels after every hurricane ends.  You know.  Because according to him those things are our fault.  Ha ha.  Environmental humor.

Anywho.  If I were you I would maybe cancel that order for bomb shelter installation in your back yard and get back to business as usual.  That is, until we run into the next critical deadline that demands we address the underlying issues of our creeping financial insolvency.

And assuming all of our elected officials can quit caring about their respective crazy constituencies and actually move towards a balanced and unified approach to handling our nation's pocketbook in less than four months then we'll all be fine.

...maybe don't cancel that bomb shelter.

The United States government has shut down. NOW IS THE TIME TO STRIKE, COMRADES!!!

Well, another summer has come and just about gone.  Fall is upon us, which can only mean one thing for us Floridians: it is still holy-hell hot outside every damn day.  Every.  Damn.  Day.  We get three seasons of summer and one season of "catch your breath buddy, because summer is right around the corner".  At least Sam Adams Oktoberfest is out.  That's a plus.

I suppose it wouldn't be right to NOT to start by recognizing the 800 pound gorilla in the room: our government is so mad at itself that it decided to shut down in a glorious blaze of self-defeatist and blinded-by-partisan-ideologies glory.  Take THAT you hard working and completely not at all to blame government workers who are likely going to have their paychecks delayed at best or ended indefinitely at worst.  That'll teach you to... pay your taxes and consequently employ jack-offs who end funding to your paychecks. 

Now you go home and think about what you've done. 

On the bright side, the federal government has concurrently not tried to stop the state-by-state legalization of marijuana.  So, soon we'll all be too high to notice our craptastic and dysfunctional government chopping off our collective nose to spite our face.  That's fun.  In related news, I'm going to invest heavily in the Taco Bell and blacklight-poster-related stocks.  The frightening fact is that this circus sideshow represents only a pale prelude to the Defcon 5 conflict expected concerning the debt ceiling. 

The Federal Reserve's most recent open market committee meeting was the one widely expected to herald the onset of the much anticipated taper of Quantitative Easing's monthly 85 billion dollar bond purchase.  Talking heads were firmly convinced that it wasn't an issue of if, it was purely and issue of how much.  And in fine Big Ben Bernanke style, the Fed came out and announced no taper whatsoever.  The reason?  Well, they said it much more eloquently, but essentially the feeling was that Congress can't get their heads out of their own tailpipes long enough to put together a stable tax policy to ensure this fledging recovery continues.  Hence, the Fed can't afford the risk of tightening monetary policy and exacerbating the possible aftermath of dumb political gridlock.

Home prices continue to powerfully rebound nationally as home sales show choppy but resilient gains.  Bond prices have suffered extensive volatility, with the 10 year spiking above 3% before settling down after the Fed's remarks.  The long-term upward trend of rates implies that home price appreciation may slow or take a pause in early 2014.  While job growth remains consistent it also remains sub-par, strengthening the argument for continued easing measures.  This is the boring and informative paragraph to remind you that I do in fact know what the hell I am talking about.  I hope you enjoyed it.

Syria decided that it'd be super cool to use chemical weapons on its own citizenry, which is probably not a thrillingly reasonable course of action.  This put our fearless leader Obama in a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.  On the one hand America doesn't want to appear remotely tolerant of such a flagrant human rights violation.  On the other hand, starting another money-pit war probably wouldn't go over so well with anyone.  Of course our good friend Vladimir Putin swooped in to save the day by getting Syrian leaders to agree to a dismantling of all their chemical weapons in order to avert chaos.  So yaaaaaaay Vladimir.  Thanks for making us look like we're incapable of solving our own problems.  ...again ...after the whole Snowden thing  ...which now we're evidently making a movie about.

And this brings to light a very peculiar parallel: Why is it that we were so eager to wage a military strike against Syria when we have a boatload of evidence surrounding North Korean human rights violations on their own citizenry and yet do nothing?  Is it due to the chemical nature of the Syrian attacks?  The powerful diplomatic link between China and North Korea?  The fact that North Korea wields at least one nuclear weapon?  The comparable instability and strategic value of the nations surrounding Syria?

Much like the coveted number of licks that it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know.

Senator Ted Cruz recently went on a marathon filibuster against ObamaCare in a shockingly similar fashion as Wendy Davis' Texas filibuster over access to abortion.  I find the parallel between blocking women's denial to abortion rights and the umpteenth attempt at blocking the Affordable Care Act to be, well, kinda silly.  Maybe I'm alone on that one.

George Zimmerman (aka the gift that keeps on giving to the news) has reared his ugly head once again, this time threatening his wife Shellie and her father with a gun.  Shellie called the police, stating "I don't know what he is capable of" which I find hilarious because literally everyone else in this country knows exactly what that man can do with a gun.  And she isn't pressing charges because, well, he seems to be pretty good at beating gun-related charges.

Water has just been discovered on Mars.  Any of you want to take bets on which company will be bottling and selling it first?  My money's on Zephyrhills (purely because I'm a sucker for a hometown favorite).

Iowa has made the sound decision to issue gun permits to blind people because to do otherwise would be "discrimination".  This is absolutely true.  You can't make this stuff up. 

The Peabody, our very own iconic duck-centric Orlando hotel has been bought by Hyatt and the ducks have just been "retired".  Across their throats.  With a meat cleaver.  And then they've been stuffed with a chicken before themselves being stuffed into a turkey.  Because there is no better way to have Hyatt celebrate the end of an Orlando icon than with fresh turducken.

Seriously though.  No more ducks.  In memoriam, I hope you'll enjoy this link to the duck song:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtN1YnoL46Q  I promise it's wholesome.  Except the duck is kind of a jerk.  But in a wholesome way.

Honestly I can't think of a title and it's late and I'm tired

I'd like to open this one up with a word of thanks to you.  I'll spare you the details, but recently my family ran into a situation that had the potential to go significantly more sideways than it did, and it put me in that post-apocalyptic overly-pensive mode that got me all doughy inside.  Come January 2014 it'll've been a full decade that I have been professionally slinging crippling sums of home-ownership debt to people just like you.  And a large part of that success is owed to all of you with your personal business, encouragement, referrals, love and friendship.

But mainly just your personal business and referrals.  Keep that stuff coming.  Friendship is nice, but for some reason Verizon has a problem with me trying to use pictures of me hugging my iPhone to pay my cell phone bill.

And yes, I used "it'll've" because I am a southerner and we make ridiculous contractions.  Deal wit' it, ch'y'all.

Sappy stuff over.  I've been lazy and I've got some serious ground to cover.  Let's get to it.

Being a native Floridian, I can't help but start with George Zimmerman's acquittal.  That definitely helped me divide my Facebook friends into two groups: Those who constantly discussed the trial while it was going on (and for two weeks afterwards) and Those who are still my Facebook friends.

Edward Snowden blew the lid off of the NSA's massive surveillance state, hauled ass from country to country, recently got asylum from Russia (who we CERTAINLY could use some additional tension with because why not?), and basically made the American government look like a bunch of dumbasses.  Meanwhile, the UK is working towards blocking internet porn.  I don't know about you guys, but I think we got the better end of that deal.

Speaking of the UK, baby-junior-who-gives-a-damn got born to Kate Middleton and the better looking of the two princes.  Everyone in the British media hailed Kate as "brilliant" (which is a real compliment if Harry Potter is any indication) because her first born is a son.  Because evidently England has yet to accept Mendelian genetics as truth and instead thinks that Kate somehow chose to birth a son.

 ...awesome.

Asiana Flight 214 crash-landed in San Francisco, which nobody loved long time.

DOMA got overturned, marking a historic landmark in the movement toward marriage equality.  Thus far none of my neighbors have married any goats which leads me to believe that Fox News sold me on a false bill of goods concerning the inevitable dystopian repercussions of this Supreme Court verdict and that my $50,000 investment in the web start-up goatlovers.com was likely a poor choice.

And on the subject of poor choices, Russia has taken an open and institutional anti-gay stance right before they are scheduled to host the 2014 Winter Olympics, meaning that the figure skating competition is going to lose about half of its power players.  Because the other half are women.

Iran's new president Hassan Rouhani, who rallied for "rationality and moderation" has been voted in to replace Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  "Death to America" was nowhere in his inauguration speech so, you know, at least that's encouraging.

Home values have increased sharply enough to draw a ton of flippers back into the market.  Recent Case-Schiller home price index readings tell the story best, clocking in at a whopping 12.1% appreciation year over year for their 20-city index.  Do I think that now would be the time to drunkenly run outside firing a gun randomly into the air screaming "THE GOOD TIMES HAVE RETURNED!!!" while nude?  Probably not.  I mean, let's not rule anything out though.

It does however lead me to believe that the home valuation rebound is going to be a very bumpy ride.  Lots of high highs and low lows ahead.  But I don't think I can find one of you out there that can look me in the eye and tell me homes won't have higher value five years from now than they do presently.  And that, ladies and gentlemen, represents a consensus that home values will trend upwards once again.

You like how I just assumed all of you agree with me and then called it a consensus?  Abusive logic is fun.

Rates are headed up.  That is happening.  Already's started.  It is purely an issue of how quickly and at what level of volatility.  Based on the aggregated predictions of most noted experts (at least the ones I follow) we have already surpassed the rate increases that were predicted for 2013.  The entire process has been largely fear-driven, sophomoric choppiness.  'Shoot first and ask questions later' kind of attitudes.  Meanwhile, stocks seem to have blown past all-time highs with a quiet yawn.

If you ask me, something about that whole equation doesn't quite sit right.

BOOOOOM!!!  Left you with a CLIFFHANGER.

I am a Believnankier. And no amount of impartial data can convince me otherwise.

Avid fans of Justin Bieber (a person who is relevant to you only if you're a girl under the age of 14 or if you frequent websites targeted towards girls under the age of 14) are referred to as “Beliebers".  Well I am whatever the Ben Bernanke (the head honcho of the Federal Reserve) equivalent of Belieber is.  Believnankier.  Yeah.  I'm that.  I think Ben was literally the only guy in the world with the cojones to say "Whoa guys, we need to start easing monetary policy at a borderline stupid rate NOW" and despite their initial resistance everyone else in the world followed suit within the next 24 months.  He is the man.  I don't doubt this in the least.

But boy oh boy is there a ruckus in the henhouse these days.  Ben had the esteemed privilege (and I use that term quite sarcastically) of speaking in front of Congress to explain the state of the economy as it relates to our presently super-loose monetary policies.  Sadly, a combination of understandable ambiguity in Ben's speech and the release of the minutes of the previous Fed meeting (revealing that many Fed governors have been considering unwinding the bond-buying program that has been facilitating these crazy-low interest rates as soon as July) provided just enough catalyst for everyone to panic and haul ass towards the bomb shelters.

The screwy thing is that the dissenting Fed governors may not be too far from the truth.  Although inflation has remained contained (which would be the first thing hawkish governors would jump on) job growth, while not outstanding, has been trending up.  GDP isn't too shabby compared to other developed nations.  Home price growth is starting to roar back into relevance.  All good reasons to see if this fighter can keep punching without its government-issued steroids.

Here's the problem: the folks that assured us that they wouldn't screw with the programs that are keeping rates low and money easy are suddenly changing course.  Without any warning.  That doesn't do a hell of a lot of good for the confidence global investors have in the "promises" our governmental officials make.  And without confidence, baby, we got nothing.

What does that mean at the ground level?  Every violation of global confidence is going to drive our interest rates up.  Between that and the general consensus by most financial analysts that rates are rising this year, I have all I need to be pretty concerned about any of you that are thinking about refinancing and haven't gotten things moving yet.  Nowadays, time is quite literally money.

Internationally, we are reaffirming our clear moral preeminence in the global landscape by our humanitarian habit of force-feeding our captured (and not legally convicted, mind you) prisoners of a pretty damn ambiguous war on terror  to respond to their hunger strike demanding fair trial.  This process, while gruesome, requires two doctors per inmate to administer.

A unique way to create jobs.  Touche, Obama.  You're more gangsta' than you originally let on.  Hope, change, and WE GONNA SHOVE BABY FOOD DOWN YO' THROAT THROUGH A TUBE UNTIL YOU ADMIT TO TERRORIST ACTIVITY THAT YOU MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE BEEN INVOLVED IN suckaaaaaaah.  Because, you know, America cares.  I can only hope its Vegan baby food.  So those poor, abused cows aren't exploited anymore.

You see what I did there?  I took big values and compared them humorously to small values to provide contrast.  If you don't like it, go cry to your Yoga instructor.  No one cares that you're Vegan.  Cows are dumb and delicious.

Equities have enjoyed a solid and seemingly unshakable rally as of late.  Despite multiple events that have disrupted global stock markets, ours have remained pleasantly tepid and consistently growing.  Domestic companies have posted good earnings and growth potential seems widespread.

I don't have a joke for this.  Stocks kinda kick ass these days.  I have no clue as to how grounded this rally actually is.  But for the time being, we seem to be sitting pretty compared to most others.

The IRS has decided to unnecessarily over-scrutinize fundamentalist Republican groups, most notably anything associated with the Tea Party.  And, considering the problems the initial tea party caused (my chamomile tea has been over-priced due to those schmucks throwing all those boxes overboard back in the 1700's) I say that the IRS has made the right decision in isolating one social group of Americans and charging their taxes more onerously.

I am of course joking.  Whoever masterminded this dumbass operation needs to be slapped across the face with a 4x4 by Charleton Heston and sat down in the infamous empty chair to be berated in front of a live studio audience for no less than a half hour.  Regardless of how you feel about the issue, you will doubtlessly be amused.

On a bright note, I friggin' love this new pope that we have now.  First and foremost, he publically denounced the "cult of money", referring to the international banking system and its strangle-hold on the global economy.  And you have to admit, the hypocrisy of a Catholic bashing a system that vacuums money out of innocent peoples' pockets in order to create enormous buildings is pretty hilarious in and of itself.  Although I suppose I can't blame him, considering the "cult" isn't predicated on the concept of salvation, just the concept of a comfortable retirement (which these days seems equally distant).

But THEN he comes out and essentially says that everyone is saved (in the Biblical sense) so long as they strive towards goodness.  Pretty awesome.  Uuuuuuuntil the Vatican came behind him and politely corrected the infallible voice of God by stating that, per the doctrine, non-Catholics are still pretty screwed in the afterlife department.  Bummer.  Looks like it's back to expecting a long stint in hell for me with, I dunno, 98% of the people reading this.  At least I'll have company.

Colorado continues to pioneer new marijuana  legalization horizons.   Governor John Hickenlooper has recently signed into law many historic measures to implement recreational marijuana legalization, calling the law's verbiage "common sense".  That's funny, considering common sense amongst stoners involves Funyuns (which are of course delicious) and Shaun White for president (which, considering his radical snowboarding career makes total sense... are you gonna eat that?... where am I again?)

And just for funsies, I'd like to point out that Kim Jong Un hasn't done a damn thing since my last newsletter (despite his mighty armaments), the Boston marathon bomber has already exited your consciousness despite his obvious craptasticness (not to mention his personal deadness and his buddies' accusedness), and my own son's bigness is super-big for a 9-month-old (which I think is totally appropriate to mention alongside the statuses of a despotic dictator and an amateur terrorist.)  Liam is actually in the 90th percentile of bigness for his age.  Yup.  Just for fun.  I got a big kid.  

So a North Korean, a Canadian and a Frenchman walk into a bar...

I for one am already starting to miss the seemingly endless onslaught of warmongering shenanigans coming out of North Korea's barely post-pubescent leader and his crack team of 60-year old generals wielding, nay, BRANDISHING MOST VIGOROUSLY technology that looks like it came straight out of the mid-1990's.  Basically when Korea's biggest ally China came out and publicly suggested that Kim Jong Un cut it out with all the "I'm gonna nuke anything that moves" routine, it took a big bite out of Kim's ability to threaten us.  Go figure, China appreciates us buying all their crap and we appreciate them lending all that money right back to us via massive bond purchases.  Yaaaaay synergy.

But in the meantime our domestic situation has kept everyone on their toes.  Between the Boston marathon bombings (and subsequent lockdown/manhunt), the Texas fertilizer plant explosion, Ricin suddenly making a comeback as a fun expression of political dissatisfaction AND Futurama being cancelled by Comedy Central, it's been one nightmare after the next.

Thankfully, a new hero seems to be rising from the darkness.  And by darkness, I mean Aurora Borealis.  And by hero I mean Canada.  Their law enforcement has thwarted an Al Qaeda attack aimed at derailing a train.  Sooooooo Canada, for one brief and shining moment, looks more badass than America.  Way to go guys.  We're getting shown up by Canada.  Big, sarcastic pat on the back for us.  In our defense, it was a train that ran between Montreal and New York.  But still.  They did all the work.

Friggin' maple syrup eating, overly polite, hockey playing, can't-pronounce-the-word-'about'-correctly Canadians.  With your dumb hats.

The fabled fourth horseman of the apocalypse AKA the sequester has been around for over a month and I have yet to sell my kidneys online or start a meth lab out of my garage like most Floridians do for extra money.  The geniuses who put the bill together made it into more of a progressive downward slide into austerity as opposed to a sledgehammer to the dome of spending cuts and tax hikes.  So in its full effect this situation would be ugly, but right now it's more of a glorified slap on the wrist.  Congress inevitably has the power to pull the plug on the whole operation should things get too uncomfortable for the voters that give them their jobs.  So no need to worry.  If Americans know how to do anything, they know how to avoid their real problems by simply acting like they don’t exist (re: obesity, poverty, immigration, national budget, entitlement programs, any social issue whatsoever that has a dissenting Bible passage, etc.)

The Federal Reserve governors are one-by-one breaking ranks from their previously unanimous support of the ultra-loose monetary policy that has entrenched itself as our new norm since the 2008 collapse.  While one of the hallmarks of Ben Bernanke's reign has been a solemn guarantee of continued rock bottom rates for months (if not years) to come, the sentiment that our economic fuse may have once again been thoroughly lit is gaining a lot of justifiable momentum.  The job market has been slowly but steadily improving.  Home prices (the holy grail of all real estate indicators) has caught tread (albeit with a choppy grip).  I even saw a lemonade stand that was able to accept debit cards via an iPad app.  That's gotta count for something.

What does all of this mean to us common folk down here at the ground level?  The low rate party may be coming to an end.  Everyone with even the flimsiest grasp on economics knows that the game we are presently playing with ri-donk-ulously low interest rates is not a romance that is built to last.  And though the intoxicating scent of all that freshly printed money gets us feeling all happy and gooey inside, our elected officials are going to have to cut us off early purely to mitigate the unavoidable hangover.  It's for our own good, but we'll probably still be pretty pissed off about it when it happens.

The Associated Press Twitter feed was hacked and falsely posted about two explosions at the White House and Obama being injured.  Stocks took a sharp dive and had an almost immediate comeback, which leads me to ask who the hell actually pays legitimate attention to Twitter anymore???  Seriously, George Takei and Will Ferrell's feeds are pretty great, but that's about it.

Gold prices suffered a noteworthy whack in recent weeks.  I mention this for two reasons:

1)  Because gold is a bellwether of international fear in the economies that investors would otherwise be investing in (hence its value drop is indicative of a growing confidence in the global economic recovery which I interpret to be an encouraging reaction from the open market) and

2)  Because I remember the Glenn Beck commercials pushing gold and I SO BADLY want to get in his face and ask "Where is your 'faith in gold' now, you tubby douche?"

France has legalized gay marriage and adoption (as if France somehow needed to reaffirm how gay it is).  Not that I'm against that in any way, I just think it's funny.

The opposite of 'pro' gress

We will start this one with a little story: On October 9th 2012 my wife celebrated her 30th birthday. However, given that there was a 1-month old in the mix, not much celebrating happened.  Since Erin is quite the enjoyer of birthdays she has decided to throw a ’30 and a half’ birthday party to make up for lost fun.  So, please join us at Carrabba’s in Altamonte Springs on Tuesday, April 9th for some adult beverages, food and frivolity!

Europe continues to be the metaphoric dumb kid in math class that always makes you feel better by comparison.  Italy’s recent election made the Floridian miscount Gore v. Bush debacle seem almost trivial (I am fairly sure that the Tooth Fairy captured at least 15% of the popular vote over there and she doesn’t even exist).  Cyprus (which I just learned is a country) just got approved for a bailout in­volving (for the moment at least) mandatory depositor contributions.

This is basically like watching some show and seeing a commercial where a guy says “Our country needs money, so we’re gonna go ahead and nab a few hundred out of your account to make it happen.  So... yeeeaaaahhhh.  Now back to Judge Judy.”  And then that actually happens.

Speaking of Europe: Austerity.  Remember that?  The series of hardcore budget cuts and tax hikes that swept Europe about a year ago which caused rioting in the streets and damn-near eviscerated the Euro­zone?  Guess what cupcake: it also just happened here.  We renamed it ‘the sequester’ which is cool because it has the letter q in it.

The entire idea behind the writing of this time-bomb of tax hikes and spending cuts was that everyone at the time agreed that ‘despite our differences, none of us would be so moronic as to allow our coun­try to slip into this proposed hellscape of a scenario.  Surely our dividing lines will wane and give birth to a new, UNITED States of America.’

NOPE.  Screw the other side of the aisle, we’ll see you in the afterlife.

I feel as if I should rename myself (or more accurately, my son) to Collateral Damage.  Because that’s all I feel like lately.  And the kick-me-while-I’m-down element of this whole thing is that in the face of  what all of politico is touting as a huge problem, the stock market is roaring to all-time new highs.  Though I can’t bash equities investors’ enthusiasm as of late.  In just our most recent jobs report the anticipated job creation of 167,000 got blown away by 236,000 actual net jobs created, complete with a lowered unemployment rate of 7.7%.  Housing statistics, while not uniformly positive, are hinting at the nationwide emergence of a seller’s market.

In the face of this trend towards improvement (assuming our legislative branch can get their heads out of their asses soon enough to amend this whole sequester thing) then it provides a pretty convincing argument for the Federal Reserve to begin thinking about pulling the punch bowl from the party.  And that means the massive efforts by our central bank to keep interest rates low may begin to unravel sooner as opposed to later.  The money printers may be running out of ink.

Hugo Chavez is dead.  I don’t really care, but it happened since my last newsletter and I figured it de­served a sentence.

Kim Jong Un (who isn’t dead yet, despite some assassination attempts) continues to fire missiles all over the place for no good reason making everyone increasingly mad at him.  However, he was able to find a new best friend in Dennis Rodman which makes me hope with all my might than Kim Jong Un will soon be getting some lip piercings and copious sums of tattoos.  That would at least make him a funnier looking despot.

While new Pope Francis still had his new pope smell about him, he openly likened gay adoption to child abuse.  Because having a loving family who happens to be gay is WAY worse than spending one’s days in the throes of a cold, relatively inefficient, bureaucratic system that offers neither stability nor genuine, individualized love.  Thankfully, the Catholic elite are on the case.

And since when did the Catholic Church become an authority on child abuse?  ...oh wait.  Nevermind.

The New York Federal Reserve has recently released Bank of America from all liability arising from losses incurred from mortgage-backed securities they sold to AIG that sparked the massive bailout of 2008.  So, a branch of our central bank has gone ahead and swept what many tout to be an openly fraudulent multi-billion dollar transaction under the rug because (I can only assume) the Sith lords running Bank of America have grown stronger in their mastery of the Force.

But seriously people: Carrabba’s on April 9th.  Here’s the link.  Be there.  Show Erin the love.

The Smartest Thing You Have Read All Week

Guess what this one’s full of? Nothing useful.

Enjoy.

The Pope (and I have gone this far without memorizing his ridiculously long name and I’ll be damned if I’m going to start now) has decided to stop being the Pope for Lent. Good for him. Or Him. I don’t know if I am still supposed to capitalize his pronoun.

The State of the Union address is happening as I write this. It is absolutely delightful to watch how partisan the vigorous clapping/astoundingly begrudging non-clapping of our elected officials is. Gives me a heaping helping of non-hope for any resolution to pertinent issues in the foreseeable future.

Speaking of non-hope, the sequester is coming! Which is a whole lot like the zombie apocalypse, except it is actually imminent and no amount of ammunition hoarding nor e-mailing your senator can stop it. We are actually going to have to consider our country’s financial future in a pragmatic and realistic way.

OR WE CAN TOTALLY JUST KICK THE DUE DATE DOWN THE ROAD BY A FEW MONTHS AND BUY A BUNCH OF CHAMPAGNE FROM OUR ARTIFICIAL STOCK MARKET GAINS!!! WOOOOOOT!!!!!! PROCRASTINATION IS THE BEST!!!!!

I am not joking in the slightest. We the People are so screwed.

Monopoly is replacing the iron token with a cat, finally buckling and appealing to their primary consumer base of cat people who play Monopoly with their cats and always let Mittens win. Because Mittens is the cutest huggin’ wumfy little snuggle bear of them ALL.

North Korea fired a nuclear missile recently. Didn’t hurt anyone, but boy oh boy did it piss everyone off. Potentially including China. And if you make China angry, man, you’ve got some low standards. I’m saying you have people that have participated in some messed up stuff in response to their one child policy (and I’m not going to mention it but you know exactly what I am talking about) and THEY are mad at you? Seriously North Korea. Re-think your decisions in life. Damn.

The Grammy’s happened. I didn’t care either. I hear Chris Brown was rude. I’m not even sure if I am supposed to put an apostrophe in Grammy’s but I’m too lazy to check. Makes me think someone’s grandma started the whole fiasco.

The Die Hard series has barfed up another episode called a Good Day to Die, which Bruce Willis’ career probably should.

The Super Bowl suffered a surprise power outage. Oh noes! We should totally criticize and draw negative attention to a part of our country that single-handedly withstood a hurricane of historic proportions without proper federal support! Despite the fact that these brave and resilient folks have rebuilt their lives from the ashes of what once was, we should mock and bitch at these people who delayed our big game for 34 minutes which we spent catching up with the drunk people we were (at that time) hanging out with. They should seriously feel bad. Damn Cajuns.

Wrestling has been officially pulled from the 2020 Olympics. So if you want to see two sweaty guys grappling on TV you’re just going to have to subscribe to the pay channels like the rest of us.

I hear the Northeast is snowy. I think about these things whilst tanning outside. Sucks for them.

Lean Cuisine apparently had glass shards in some of their meals, which tosses an ironically humorous spin on every person who resolved to lose weight this year. You want to be healthy? Bleeding esophagus for you!!!

Rates went up. I don’t have the energy to justify my statement. Just do me a favor and be afraid. And refinance out of that fear. For me. And my baby.

The housing market is no longer your enemy

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is attempting to throw another prophylactic over the al-ready shrink-wrapped big-swinging mortgage industry (yes, that was a dick joke). New regulations will provide stricter rules on loans with teaser rates, negative amortization, and a world of other features that basically no one does anymore. They will also be offering a legal “safe harbor” that will bar any consumer lawsuits against the banks writing these loans so long as they are compliant.

You hear that? If we play by Uncle Sam’s new rules you can’t sue us. It’ll be like mooning the lions at the zoo. They want to maul us but the bullet-proof 6-inch-thick plexiglass says otherwise. And those dumb, furry cats thought they were at the top of the food chain. Invent an iPhone and we’ll talk, Puddy-Tats.

For nine straight months, home prices have been moving up. And the moves appear to be getting bigger and bigger. Am I shocked? Nope. Considering home values have been a drag on the economy for quite some time now, it’s about time my industry started adding to GDP. Stocks have enjoyed a sizable rally since their lows. Global economic health has stabilized and, to this author’s knowledge, no one is trying to nuke anyone else at this time. It’s about damn time that people started realizing the greatest investment on earth is earth itself.

Pretty awesome line? You betcha. And I totally stole it from someone more eloquent than me.

Bank of America (which is the establishment that I am quite sure will serve as the breeding ground for the Anti-Christ) has embraced an 11.6 billion dollar settlement in penance for the misdeeds of the former Countrywide. Evidently arbitrarily deciding African-Americans and Hispanics should pay higher rates than everyone else is for some reason frowned upon. Go figure.

Yes. Massive sarcasm is implied. Racism is stupid. If you legitimately subscribe to that kind of mindset, please promptly unsubscribe and go start playing banjos in the bayou. Hopefully a crocodile eventually has his way with you.

Beyonce lip-synched the national anthem for Barack Obama’s re-inauguration. Clearly when we want to honor this president, a regurgitation of past performances is sufficient.

“Yo Obama, Imma let you finish, but Reagan was the best president evah”- Kanye West totally said this and I am not making this up for the sake of a joke in the slightest, pinky swear times five.

It’s funny because conservatives want to support Reagan but simultaneously hate Kanye. Enjoy the catch 22, right wing.

That being said, WOO-HOO!!! the guy who “took out Osama Bin Laden and passed sweeping health care reform and snatched our economy out of a nosedive and has the middle name ”Hussein” and hasn’t suicide bombed anyone” is back for another four years! I didn’t need my gun anyway! Yay for our country slipping into a totalitarian regime where Uncle Sam not only knows best, he also is the only guy with the ammunition to justify his stance amidst opposition!

By which I mean the zombie apocalypse is coming in the form of democratic regulations and you are totally justified in digging bomb-shelters in your backyards despite the obvious fact that most of Florida has a super-high water table and it’s likely that you’ll drown while awaiting imaginary liberal-government-induced Armageddon.

That was all one sentence.

The current super-duper low rate environment is beginning to show signs of cracking. Every time our federal reserve comes out with a statement that doesn’t support continued ingestion of peyote (OR zero-percent interest rates coupled with massive bond-buying programs… basically the same stuff) then mortgage rates whip-tail higher.

Lemme level with you: what’s happening now is not maintainable. It’s only a matter of time before laissez-faire economics kick in (if you don’t know what it is, look it up) and our interest rate environ-ment reverts back to the rates necessary to draw investor attention. Which are way higher than we have now.

So, please don’t come to me in two years bitching and moaning about how you missed the boat. I told you. I FRIGGIN’ TOLD YOU. I don’t make this stuff up. We are living in an artificial environment right now. And if you have the wherewithal and the capital to seize the opportunity, then mazeltov. If not, then I hope your landlord is a nice person.

Because not all of them are.

Bungee jumping off the fiscal cliff gives me one hell of a rush

In my last exciting installment of newsletter angst I said that congress would come to a half-assed conclusion to the fiscal cliff crisis just before we went over it so that they could all look like they really cared about their political party’s respective platforms while still stopping our communal death-dive.

Well everyone: I was wrong. They didn’t come to a conclusion before we went over: they came to one afterwards. Only in America can we allow our elected officials to let our country fall over a set-in-stone deadline then vote for a baseless and essentially impotent stop-gap measure to prevent tax-mageddon from occurring and then BACKDATE it to retroactively apply BEFORE the deadline because “everyone was too hung over on the 1st of the year to notice anyway”.

Funny, because when my wife discovered that I had made a drunken text to my ex-girlfriend on New Year’s Day and I attempted to verbally “backdate it to before we were married” I did not yield such positive results. Clearly my wife has something to learn from the forgiveness (or ignorance) of Americans.

(Disclaimer: that last joke has been approved by Erin and is a complete fabrication. No hate mail, please. I love my wife and my ex-girlfriend is a terrible person.)

And spending cuts? No mention of ‘em. That’s right: we get to have THAT debate two months from now when we hit our new and improved national debt ceiling, because the last debate about our debt ceiling was so wonderfully productive (it wasn’t).

So the self-imposed deadline our governing body created to force our elected officials to deal with the tough issues just got kicked down the road by two months and turned into a “double or nothing” monstrosity. But I’m sure we’ll deal with the tough issues head on once we get there. It feels a lot like politicians were playing chicken except we’re all duct taped to the grills of their respective hotrods.

Thankfully in a “hey guys, everyone will probably get super-duper pissed off if we actually go through with this” move, Congress managed to deny themselves a raise in the midst of their bickering. Bravo, our fearless and self-sacrificing leaders. Way to demonstrate your commitment to the common man.

Now join our health care system, retirement entitlement system and system of pay where when you’re done working your job you STOP MAKING MONEY FROM SAID JOB. Then we shall applaud your sacrifice.

Can you tell this one seriously ticked me off? Because unless you are immune to sarcasm then I’m being pretty blunt about my opinion on the matter.

During all of these shenanigans, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have been talking openly about stepping down in the foreseeable future. In fact, Tim’s already got one foot out the door. Frankly, I don’t blame them. If I had to deal with the financial aber-rations of recent history WITHOUT the benefit of bourbon (which thank God I didn’t have to do) I would be pretty burnt out by now too.

Speaking of the Fed, my Fed governor buddies decided to come out with a statement hinting at ending their bond buying program (lovingly known as QE3) earlier than expected without any kind of warning at all. Interest rates suffered a noteworthy and abrupt rise in response. While this is certainly not the end of the easy-money strategies that are buoying our economy right now, it does bring us to a sobering moment when we realize that 30 year fixed mortgages with rates in the 3’s will cease to exist soon and permanently.

Tick tock, consumers.

And now on to pop culture: because politics and economics have effectively given me a migraine. Kim Kardashian (pointlessly famous plastic surgery poster child) is pregnant with Kanye West’s baby while still married to that other guy (who’s fifteen minutes of fame just ended). Thankfully she isn’t experiencing any nausea yet (likely because everyone else in America is already vomiting over it).

And our bright-eyed next generation of world leaders has started a new trend dubbed “Cutting for Bieber” where they post pictures of self-mutilation (usually a razor to the wrists) online in order to dissuade pop singer Justin Bieber from smoking marijuana (which no one is entirely sure he actually did). Yup. Some jackass with goofy hair who sings like a girl sparks up a doobie and the entire 9-15 year old demographic busts out knives and Instagram.

And these are the people who will eventually decide which old folks home we get put in. I dunno about you, but I know I’m pretty scared.