The Worst Generation Ever

And Dilbert Too

noreply@blogger.com (X-er) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:24:00 +0000

Yes folks, even Dilbert is in on it now.

Enough with Woodstock already

noreply@blogger.com (X-er) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 11:19:00 +0000

OK. I've had enough of Woodstock already. Not just this year but from the time I was eight and found out that it wasn't just the bird that hung around with Snoopy. I have had enough to last my entire lifetime.

We get it. It was a big concert. Oh, yeah, it was outdoors. You took drugs and listened to music. This makes you special, how?

It was like anything else boomer. There were tickets for sale but the boomers wanted to go to this concert and they didn't have any money. So they climbed / tore down the fences and let themselves in for free. The promoters lost so much money they had to declare bankruptcy.

We get it.

But the boomers did not know that it was a harbinger of things to come. A generational foreshadowing.

You wanted it. You took it. You didn't pay for it and then you walked away from it. Leaving a giant mess behind you. Just like everything else in your lives.

Now, every year we get to hear about it. Over, and over and over and over and over.

Enough already.

Let's point some things out. For starters the music wasn't that good you just thought it was because you were all stoned out of your minds. And have you seen what you were wearing (or not)? You looked foolish.

If your kids started behaving that way you would find drugs for them (of the Ritalin variety) and make them buy some nice preppy clothes.

We get it. Forty years ago there was a concert (god knows we don't have anything like that anymore).

Now do us a favor and STFU!

Pro Obama Care or Anti-Baby Boomer?

noreply@blogger.com (X-er) — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 09:29:00 +0000

Sometimes editorials can be a little bit funny. This bloke writes a piece about Obama's health care plan and in the process bashes the baby boomers.

The piece starts out so promising:

As we Baby Boomers turn the corners on our lives, we’re staring down all kinds of insecurities and fears from our lifestyles and our wastefully-led economic past practices.

We spent money like crazy, and helped create the turning of the Credit Card industry into a legally sanctioned Mafia with vigs and juice loan rates higher than those charged by the organized crime.

Ahhhh... One of the scariest things in life is to truly know yourself. I wonder if it is a good idea to make your case for health care reform by bashing the people whose support you are trying to enlist.

Here's a bit more:

Now, as the Baby Boomers transform from a help thy neighbor to a “where’s my” phenomena, we are willing to swallow every fear-mongering claim by the hate-mongers like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Lou Dobbs and Glen Beck.

Are today’s seniors really that stupid or are they losing their ability to think for themselves, the one asset we celebrated that set us apart from every other generation

The thing is, the baby boomers never really did think for themselves. It is not an ability that they ever had to begin with. If they had it then the world never, ever, never would have had disco.

Think the boomers can think for themselves?

I rest my case.

The echo chamber, or... Did I call it?

noreply@blogger.com (X-er) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 10:36:00 +0000

As Steven Colbert says, "Nailed IT!"

The cries against the Baby Boomer generation are becoming louder and more frequent. It is popping up online, in comments and on TV.

Today's Link is from the Veronon Broadcaster (where ever that is):

The generation right after the “greatest,” is largely deemed the worst. They are the Love Generation or Baby Boomers — those who were going to change the world and redefine freedom, yet have largely squandered everything.

Wow, this guy sounds like one of our readers.

Remember, I once told the boomers that we would write their history.

Meanwhile, in the July 21 edition of the Chicago Tribune, columnist David Byrne wrote: “...Someone who writes a book about (Baby Boomers) in another 40 or 50 years... will brand them as perhaps the most selfish generation in American history. That author would accurately nail them for their greedy, miserable selves because he and hundreds of millions of others will be living in the cesspool of debt that they leave behind.”

We will decide how they are remembered. What is great is they are living long enough to see how history will view them.

Just one more snippet:

The Baby Boomers consumed what they inherited from their parents, while also digging a massive hole of national debt for their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The whole piece is an excellent bash on the boomers. Head on over there and leave some comments to let them know that they are on the right path.

Well, now we know. Or, learn from others

noreply@blogger.com (X-er) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 00:30:00 +0000

My fellow X-ers, we are young enough that we can learn from the mistakes of others.

Two and three generations ago there was a different mindset in this country. You worked, you saved, you paid off you house and you shunned debt.

Then the baby boomer generation came along. This was a group of people that never met something they didn't want and didn't want it right now.

It made no difference how they got it. If they had the cash then they bought it right then. If they had the credit card then they bought it right then. Send no money now! Just get it right now!

They told themselves it was good for the economy. They more they spent the richer they were.

They invented the concept of good debt and bad debt. I'm here to tell you all debt is bad. Sometime you have to use it (to buy a house) but you should not maintain the debt for longer than you absolutely must.

Why do I go on about this.

Well, if you read through previous posts you will see that the baby boomers cannot afford to retire and thanks to the recent market crash that has only gotten worse.

Once again, over at MSNBC there is a story about this:

Even before the collapse of the housing and financial markets last year, Americans were woefully unprepared to pay retirement in the traditional sense of a post-career period of leisure and personal pursuits supported by a pension, well-managed nest egg and Social Security.

Now, trillions of dollars of housing equity have been destroyed, retirement savings have vaporized and pension funds are being squeezed. The old-fashioned notion that when you hit age 65 your lifelong employer will give you a warm sendoff, a gold watch and a pension that guarantees your financial security for life is very much in the past.

The question should arise; were these ideas of the past or were they a lie that a generation willingly sold and bought itself.

Look back to your grandparents and great-grandparents. They lived through the Great Depression. They knew a job was not for a lifetime. They knew not to use debt and not to trust a bank.

These are the lessons that you need to learn. (Though I think most of us x-ers already know it.)

The numbers are stark. An April survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute found that 53 percent of American workers have put away less than $25,000 in retirement savings and investments. That figure doesn’t include home equity and the lump sum value of pension plans. Some 20 percent said they had saved less than $1,000.

That is scary! I hope that you (yes, you reading this) are not in that category. If you are change your ways now.

Well, I'd like to rant some more and rip this apart. But, I have a life to live and so do you.

Remember: Fear banks and shun debt and you will get ahead.

A Gen-Xer goes out in Style (from the archive)

noreply@blogger.com (X-er) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 20:46:00 +0000

Before I took my (ahem) brief (ahem) hiatus I had readied this post and then never got around to posting it.

This is from the market crash back in October.

Enjoy.

I don't think much of the people in the finance industry. When I think of these folks Gordon Geeko from the movie Wall Street comes to mind.

This story, however, is about a Gen-x hedge fund manager who made a killing and is getting out of the game. It is great fun because he tells it like it is. (I lifted the full text from here).

Today I write not to gloat. Given the pain that nearly everyone is experiencing, that would be entirely inappropriate. Nor am I writing to make further predictions, as most of my forecasts in previous letters have unfolded or are in the process of unfolding. Instead, I am writing to say goodbye.

Recently, on the front page of Section C of the Wall Street Journal, a hedge fund manager who was also closing up shop (a $300 million fund), was quoted as saying, "What I have learned about the hedge fund business is that I hate it." I could not agree more with that statement. I was in this game for the money. The low hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale, and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking. These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government. All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy, only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America.

There are far too many people for me to sincerely thank for my success. However, I do not want to sound like a Hollywood actor accepting an award. The money was reward enough. Furthermore, the endless list those deserving thanks know who they are.

I will no longer manage money for other people or institutions. I have enough of my own wealth to manage. Some people, who think they have arrived at a reasonable estimate of my net worth, might be surprised that I would call it quits with such a small war chest. That is fine; I am content with my rewards. Moreover, I will let others try to amass nine, ten or eleven figure net worths. Meanwhile, their lives suck. Appointments back to back, booked solid for the next three months, they look forward to their two week vacation in January during which they will likely be glued to their Blackberries or other such devices. What is the point? They will all be forgotten in fifty years anyway. Steve Balmer, Steven Cohen, and Larry Ellison will all be forgotten. I do not understand the legacy thing. Nearly everyone will be forgotten. Give up on leaving your mark. Throw the Blackberry away and enjoy life.

So this is it. With all due respect, I am dropping out. Please do not expect any type of reply to emails or voicemails within normal time frames or at all. Andy Springer and his company will be handling the dissolution of the fund. And don't worry about my employees, they were always employed by Mr. Springer's company and only one (who has been well-rewarded) will lose his job.

I have no interest in any deals in which anyone would like me to participate. I truly do not have a strong opinion about any market right now, other than to say that things will continue to get worse for some time, probably years. I am content sitting on the sidelines and waiting. After all, sitting and waiting is how we made money from the subprime debacle. I now have time to repair my health, which was destroyed by the stress I layered onto myself over the past two years, as well as my entire life -- where I had to compete for spaces in universities and graduate schools, jobs and assets under management -- with those who had all the advantages (rich parents) that I did not. May meritocracy be part of a new form of government, which needs to be established.

On the issue of the U.S. Government, I would like to make a modest proposal. First, I point out the obvious flaws, whereby legislation was repeatedly brought forth to Congress over the past eight years, which would have reigned in the predatory lending practices of now mostly defunct institutions. These institutions regularly filled the coffers of both parties in return for voting down all of this legislation designed to protect the common citizen. This is an outrage, yet no one seems to know or care about it. Since Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith passed, I would argue that there has been a dearth of worthy philosophers in this country, at least ones focused on improving government. Capitalism worked for two hundred years, but times change, and systems become corrupt. George Soros, a man of staggering wealth, has stated that he would like to be remembered as a philosopher. My suggestion is that this great man start and sponsor a forum for great minds to come together to create a new system of government that truly represents the common man's interest, while at the same time creating rewards great enough to attract the best and brightest minds to serve in government roles without having to rely on corruption to further their interests or lifestyles. This forum could be similar to the one used to create the operating system, Linux, which competes with Microsoft's near monopoly. I believe there is an answer, but for now the system is clearly broken.

Lastly, while I still have an audience, I would like to bring attention to an alternative food and energy source. You won't see it included in BP's, "Feel good. We are working on sustainable solutions," television commercials, nor is it mentioned in ADM's similar commercials. But hemp has been used for at least 5,000 years for cloth and food, as well as just about everything that is produced from petroleum products. Hemp is not marijuana and vice versa. Hemp is the male plant and it grows like a weed, hence the slang term. The original American flag was made of hemp fiber and our Constitution was printed on paper made of hemp. It was used as recently as World War II by the U.S. Government, and then promptly made illegal after the war was won. At a time when rhetoric is flying about becoming more self-sufficient in terms of energy, why is it illegal to grow this plant in this country? Ah, the female. The evil female plant -- marijuana. It gets you high, it makes you laugh, it does not produce a hangover. Unlike alcohol, it does not result in bar fights or wife beating. So, why is this innocuous plant illegal? Is it a gateway drug? No, that would be alcohol, which is so heavily advertised in this country. My only conclusion as to why it is illegal, is that Corporate America, which owns Congress, would rather sell you Paxil, Zoloft, Xanax and other additive drugs, than allow you to grow a plant in your home without some of the profits going into their coffers. This policy is ludicrous. It has surely contributed to our dependency on foreign energy sources. Our policies have other countries literally laughing at our stupidity, most notably Canada, as well as several European nations (both Eastern and Western). You would not know this by paying attention to U.S. media sources though, as they tend not to elaborate on who is laughing at the United States this week. Please people, let's stop the rhetoric and start thinking about how we can truly become self-sufficient.

With that I say good-bye and good luck.

All the best,

Andrew Lahde

Say it isn't so...

noreply@blogger.com (X-er) — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 19:02:00 +0000

Hi folks (if any of you are still around after all this time).

Unlike me, the baby boomers have not yet disappeared. Even though we wish that they would have all taken an extended holiday they are still with us.

And what has happened since I've been gone?

Well, the stock market cratered thereby answering the question of, "Will or will they not retire?" It appears the answer is, "Never". Which means we are screwed. They will be in the workforce with us forever. I guess we will have to get used to seeing paramedics show up at the office.

Anyway.....

Over at MSNBC we find a story about the baby boomers cutting back on their spending.

Mercedes is the quintessential boomer brand. Drive down an American highway, and odds are good that the person piloting the Benz in the next lane was born between 1946 and 1962. And Mercedes-Benz has prospered right along with America's huge postwar generation. Back in 1986, when the first baby boomers turned 40, Mercedes sold 99,000 cars in the U.S. In 2006, when those boomers hit 60, the automaker moved almost 250,000 vehicles, a fifth of its global total.

This year, Mercedes will sell a third fewer cars in America. In Montvale, N.J., Kristi Steinberg, who runs Benz's North American market research operation, has a nagging fear: that sales won't recover for a long time because boomers, history's wealthiest generation, are tapped out. "I don't know if anyone knows yet if this is a blip," she says, "or a defining moment like the Great Depression."

Now let me ask something. Are the baby boomers really history's wealthiest generation? How can wealthy people be tapped out? If they are tapped out that means they are poor. You see wealth implies that you have assets. Assets that generate income or assets that you can sell to raise money.

If you are tapped out then you are broke. You are not wealthy.

So let's change the meme. Baby boomers are history's poorest generation.

Now, let's move on.

Not so long ago, boomers were never going to die. Filled with a self-confidence born of unprecedented prosperity, many thought rising markets would assure their future. If the economy faltered, well, it would rebound more strongly than ever, as it had so many times before. And so boomers spent — and borrowed — as if there were no tomorrow.

Well, this is not a news flash. After all they did, "Hope I die before I get old".

So let's look at this next tool.

Meet Tim Woodhouse, 56. He owns Hood Sailmakers in Middletown, R.I., a business that helped finance a plush life. Woodhouse owns a boat, five Ducati motorcycles, and every few years treated himself to a new Porsche 911. He figured he'd retire when he felt like it. Then the markets crashed, the economy tanked, and suddenly Woodhouse felt a lot poorer. In April, with business slowing and his real estate holdings leaking value, Woodhouse hit the brakes. "I was scared," he says. "My net worth took a real hit." Woodhouse sold the Porsche and bought a Mini Cooper. The boat spends more time tied up these days than out on the water. He and his wife dine out less often, and they don't entertain at home much either.

OK. Let's start.

If your business generates income and you spend all of it, you are not wealthy. You are maintaining a lifestyle. You have the appearance of wealth. From the outside you have more motorcycles than you can ride and a car that makes you look good. But what does this do for you?

If you had true business sense, you would live frugally and save a lot of your money for the rainy day that had to be coming.

But we won't cry for this guy. He could at least sell the Porsche.

Don't worry there is hope. The boomers are the generation that will buy whatever is marketed to them:

The trick will be finding a way to fulfill the needs and wants of a generation that is used to being catered to — but is now on a budget. Timothy Malefyt, an anthropologist who studies consumer trends for the ad agency BBDO New York, argues that boomers, having ridden a wave of technological change, are highly adaptable and well versed in problem-solving. (Or at least they see themselves as such.) Already, he says, they are making a virtue of value shopping, once viewed by this group as hopelessly déclassé. For many boomers it's no longer about keeping up with the Joneses, it's about outthinking them. "If you make boomers feel they've failed, you'll lose them," Malefyt says. "They want to feel they've outsmarted the system or their circumstances."

You think gen-y is spoiled? Where do you think they learned it from. Tell a boomer he is awesome and he will follow you around like a puppy begging for more (he'll do it so much that you want to have him euthanized.)

Well, there is more to the article. You can go read the rest yourselves.

For now I am out of time.

Maybe I will be able to post more. Maybe not. It's a busy being a gen-x in this world. It's work maintaining the frugal lifestyle to which I have become accustomed.

I'm willing to bet that I will retire before the boomers.

Till next time....

If you are in doubt of what to do or how to behave, look to those a generation older than you and then do the opposite. You have a 90% chance that it will be the right thing.

Something to wake me up

noreply@blogger.com (X-er) — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:57:00 +0000

Ahhhhhh.....

If I could just get going.

Let's start with a song.

Yawn.... Garble... Stretch

noreply@blogger.com (X-er) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 23:54:00 +0000

Yawn.....

Stretch.....

Oh man, I just can't wake up. WTF?!?! What day is it? What week is it? Damn, what year is it?!?

I know.....

I've been....

Slackin!

Real Baby Boomers of Genius

noreply@blogger.com (X-er) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 22:26:00 +0000

Today we salute you, Mr. Fred Goodwin.

You were on top of the world while you ran RBS (The Royal Bank of Scotland).
But running a bank founded in 1727 wasn't good enough for you.
You merged, you expanded, you never met a credit product you did not like.

Now, your bank is being nationalized.

Others before you guided the institution through depressions, panics and world wars. To be a modern Yank I can say, "It was A real Energizer bunny rabbit of a bank."

To kill it took a baby boomer.

Good Job Mr. Goodwin.

For all you do, this Buds for you.

The Ponzi Generation

noreply@blogger.com (X-er) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 07:43:00 +0000

Today it is off to the American Thinker for our story. (Hat tip to Ken for the link.)

What is a service economy? How can you have an economy based on doing each others laundry? Or, cleaning each others home? If I pay you $100 to mow your lawn and you pay me $100 to mow yours have we created $200 in GDP?

I believe the answer is, no.

Wealth is created by taking raw materials adding some labor and creating something new. The thing remains. It is an item of value. It might be consumed gradually over time but the time frame should be long. Ten years or more.

We have lost that. We took our factories and moved them over seas. We had to replace it with something.

One of the things we tried to replace it with was the, "Financial Services Industry". This industry takes debt, slices it up and sells it as something. In the process turning a negative (a promise to pay) into positive (cash).

This is what the baby boomer economy is based on.

What value did they add to this debt?

We are seeing in the Wall Street implosion the inevitable result of the Boomer Elite outlook and the behavior it spawned. Storied investment banks were being run on 40 to 1 leverage. Fancy new securities were designed and widely disseminated whose terms are opaque even to highly knowledgeable and experienced hands. Mortgage securitization techniques were developed which, our betters assured us, would magically spread risk and thus stabilize the financial system. However, simultaneously with these brilliant innovations, lenders were being forced -- by Boomer Elite congressmen with an aching love of the poor and oppressed unique to themselves -- to loan to uncreditworthy borrowers at subprime rates and without adequate documentation. These loans, packaged into securities together with standard, performing loans, rendered unknowable the value of the securities, leading to mandatory write downs and drastic capital impairment or outright insolvency for many very large firms. Given the high degree of integration of the international financial system, critical destabilization was the real result of this confluence of Master of the Universe genius and Boomer Elite turpitude.

There is an idea going around right now that part of this problem was caused by banks being forced to lend to the poor. This is a lie.

The system needed loans. Lots of loans. "Industries" make things. The "Financial Services Industry" needed something to make. Its raw input were loans. Its output were bonds backed by the loans.

In the early part of the cycle there were lots of credit worthy borrowers available. This is sort of like picking up gold from the surface. Soon these borrowers were used up.

Next they had to start digging. These borrowers had jobs and a little bit of money to put down but soon they got used up.

Then all the easy money was gone. Where would the next set of inputs come from. There was not gold left. So instead the industry turned to fools gold.

No job? No Income? No problem. The "industry" needed raw material to feed into the machine.

Now these new Masters of the Universe have made a shambles of the US and world financial system. This is, to be sure, not the construction put upon things by the main stream media, but it is plainly the case. The current market turmoil is a product of every bad trait the Boomer Elite has long exhibited in other social and political contexts: unbridled greed and hubris, exorbitant self-regard, breathtaking recklessness, insatiable appetite for immediate gratification, and a rollicking sense of entitlement.

Everybody gets a loan.

It's not just the liberals. Remember, W is a conservative and he wanted us to have the, "Ownership Society". Well folks, not everyone is capable of owning their own home. There is nothing wrong with that. Sometimes it is just better to rent.

The "Industry" ran out of loans to process. They ran out of inputs. When you make something you need raw materials. If you use crappy raw materials then your end product is crappy. There is no way around that.

Now that that the industry is "broken" we are expected to pay for it.

The unwillingness of the rest of us to underwrite the moral excesses of the Boomer Elite perfectly enrages them. So, today, the rest of us are being screamed at. In fact, the barrel of a gun is being pressed to our temple. It is demanded that we play our accustomed role of sheep to the slaughter. We are told we must funnel the better part of a trillion dollars to the fantastically imprudent, self-dealing Wall Streeters that gave us the mess, and that we must also chip in the odd tens of billions more on pet lefty projects with which the Boomer Elite, with characteristic cynicism, lard up the package.

Our efforts to be responsible citizens in this crisis are ridiculed and shouted down: exclude from the bail-out the pork and the payoffs to interest groups? How dare we! Include measures that might actually spur badly needed growth in the tough times now surely coming, like cuts in capital gains and corporate taxes? Leave the room!

Now this is where I will take a big turn from the article.

The left / right war is a big time baby boomer fallacy. There is no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans except for one or two wedge issues. By creating wedge issues and getting us to fight over those we are distracted from the real issues at hand.

Although our Masters of the Universe insist we credit them as moral paragons, they are among the most luxury loving, wealth flaunting population ever seen in the world. Whenever a Hollywood celebutard mouths some perfect imbecility in front of a camera, it is sure to be done from a five star resort hotel or on the red carpet of one of those absurdly frequent self-congratulation festivals. The silk tie, moussed hair crowd on Wall Street is no better. If the extent of the naked short selling, self dealing and market manipulation that has actually gone on these last few years were ever to become generally known, it would indict this crew all by itself. And it cannot be said enough: this crowd is heavily on the left and mostly in the Democratic Party. The cigar chomping, pin-striped caricature of a GOP money man has been false to the Wall Street facts for some time, though the left continues to furiously peddle that image.

Yes Virginia, the Republicans created this mess. It started with the deficits of Regan. The fire was flamed by the easy money of Greenspan. The investment banks were allowed back into the mortgage industry when Senator Phil Gram worked to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act.

The Republicans had the Presidency and the Congress for six years. We will lay blame were blame is due.

The Democrats however were quick to get behind the bailout and made sure that it passed. They are culpable in this mess as well.

We will place the ongoing crisis at all of their feet.

Here's the articles ending.

This crisis is, at bottom, about self government in two senses and the Boomer Elite is against both. On the macro level, they don't want the American people to govern themselves under the terms of the Constitution of 1789, preferring to rule over us by anti-democratic means wherever possible, and to the full extent possible. On the micro level, being Rousseau's children, they abjure governing their own appetites, and bid everyone act likewise. The Boomer Elite ideal is a sort of Directorate in the political system and economy, moral anarchy in personal conduct, and a quasi-totalitarian PC regime in societal relations. It is bad character as a manifesto, and tsarism as a mode of governance.

Some of the sane knew it all along, but for many others a stunning realization is only now dawning. Much of the vaunted wealth creation of the last 20 years was a mirage, and the ballyhooed processes of wealth creation were themselves largely a scam, no more than the discounted cash flow of the borrowed future.

We must shudder to think how little of our civilization may remain standing when the Boomer Elite finally, mercifully, passes from the scene.

Gone for a week

noreply@blogger.com (X-er) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 22:02:00 +0000

Today's post is going to be a bit a rambler. I am just going to dump out some thoughts about our world today.

Wow, I go on vacation for a week and the whole baby boomer world falls apart.

Yup, I left town and went on the road. Made a swing through the North East. It is really pretty up there at this time of year. And, one of the great things was that I stayed away from the news. (As best I could.)

Tuesday I was waiting in line in Quincy Market to buy a coffee and looked up at a TV and saw the Dow was around 9,500. I will say that I wasn't shocked. Our finance system is a giant house of cards. It is based on us borrowing more and more money from each other. At some point the system has to collapse. At that point it can be rebuilt from the ground up; wash, rinse, repeat.

That was my first full week vacation in over 15 years. Like most gen-xers I work. I work a lot. I don't do a lot of shopping and I don't do a lot of spending. I am not good for the economy.

I did make time last week to watch the debate. I can tell you we are screwed. Not because of any difference between the candidates but because of their similarities.

No matter what they are saying about Iraq, Obama and McCain have the same foreign policy. A policy that is costing us over $1 trillion a year. Neither one has said they are going to change that. If you take the military budget of every other country in the world and add them together, we spend more than that. Think about that for a minute. Neither one will change that.

Why do we have troops in Japan? Germany? Pick a country? Empires crumble from within. It takes a great amounts of money to maintain an Empire. Money that we do not have. At some point our allies / enemies will not want to lend us any more money.

Our current financial crisis is based on easy credit. Both candidates want to get those credit markets going again so that we can continue this current Ponzi scheme of debt.

Then there is the question, "Given the current financial crisis, what in your economic plan would you change?" Neither candidate has the stones to tell us either A. they don't know, or B. Name some stuff to change.

I believe, deep down, that we have it within us to pull together and work for a greater good. However, our leaders, do not have the balls to ask us to do it. After 9/11 we were told to go shopping. That statement from our leadership shows the moral bankruptcy of our age.

I will tell you all right now I am voting for Obama.

Something has gone very wrong with McCain. We should search his many houses (how many was it again) for pods. He is not the man that he once was. The quest for power has ruined him. He has taken on a win at any cost mentality.

Normally a VP candidate should not matter as much. But, given McCains age there is a chance that Palin could become president. To me, that would be a nightmare scenario. Palin encompasses too many traits that I cannot stand. She is like a female George W. Bush. I do not believe she is capable of understanding complicated issues. (And is it just me or is she just like Karen from Will and Grace?) That whole wink and, "You bet-cha" is right out of the world of sitcoms.

Of the two candidate I believe Obama may have the spark within him to ask us to make the sacrifices that are required to rebuild our country. I could be wrong, it's hard to tell because he too is pandering to his base. But, I think he will do better on the world stage. His tone is better.

That's it for today. (Oh, and if the markets bounce over the next few days, don't think that the crisis is over. We still have a very long way to go.)

That's it for today.

Now a return to your regularly scheduled boomer bashing.

Real Baby Boomers of Genius

noreply@blogger.com (X-er) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:03:00 +0000

Today we salute you Mr.Kerry K Killinger. A Real Baby Boomer of Genius.

As the head of Washington Mutual your bank never met a borrower they wouldn't lend too.

No Income? No Job? No problem.

Can't afford the monthly payment. That's OK. Let the borrower pay what they can. You'll just add the balance to the end of the loan.

We can't see how this will hurt you in the long run. And since the long run means next week; we think you're good.

For all you do, Mr. Killinger, this Bud's for you.

It's the end of the world as we know it

noreply@blogger.com (X-er) — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 23:08:00 +0000

I don't read Pat Buchanan regularly. I will admit I don't know what to make of him. There seems to be two of him. There is the shill that is on TV. Once in a while he let's the real Pat out but then the TV producers pull him back in line and he sticks to the talking points.

Then there is the Pat Buchanan who writes books and articles. I wish that Pat was on TV more. (Though I don't watch TV so I wouldn't see him anyway.)

It is obvious that he does not think much of the baby boom generation. I've linked to him before. Today some one sent me this article by him. He talks about our current financial meltdown. (We'll get to his piece in a minute.)

I will confess to you here that I am a financial news junkie. But, I want to clarify that. As you may have figured, given the content of this site, I do not get that news from mainstream sources. I do not watch Cramer or anything on CNBC for that matter. That is not news that is entertainment.

Now this financial meltdown might be a surprise to some of you. But there are people in the world that saw this coming. Though I lightly touch on financial topics here I do it only in regards to the baby boomers. If you want to understand what is going on in the world there are a lot better places to go to. Some of them (in no particular order) are:

Calculated Risk
The Big Picture
Nouriel Roubini's Global EconoMonitor (Sign up to read all the content, there is more free stuff there than you will have time to read.)
Dr. Housing Bubble

That's just a subset to get you started.

Now, let's get back to Mr. Buchanan:

The Crash of 2008, which is now wiping out trillions of dollars of our people’s wealth, is, like the Crash of 1929, likely to mark the end of one era and the onset of another.

Remember the curse, "May you live in interesting times."

This is nonsense. What we are witnessing is the collapse of Gordon Gecko (”Greed Is Good!”) capitalism. What we are witnessing is what happens to a prodigal nation that ignores history, and forgets and abandons the philosophy and principles that made it great.

Remember folks, Gordon Gecko was the villain of the story. All those boomers who watched, Wall Street, and decided to grow up to be like him were saying they wanted to be the bad guy.

For years, we Americans have spent more than we earned. We save nothing. Credit card debt, consumer debt, auto debt, mortgage debt, corporate debt — all are at record levels. And with pensions and savings being wiped out, much of that debt will never be repaid.

Our standard of living is inevitably going to fall. For foreigners will not forever buy our bonds or lend us more money if they rightly fear that they will be paid back, if at all, in cheaper dollars.

We are going to have to learn to live again without our means.

The party’s over

Yes, the party is over. I am glad that the party is ending while the baby boomers are still alive. They will reap what they sow. Those of us that come after them will have a chance to rebuild and make a decent life for ourselves. We will be able to show our kids what happens when you live beyond your means. And gen-y (like my own grandparents) will become a deeply changed generation. Having baby boomers for parents, they are going to need it.

Up through World War II, we followed the Hamiltonian idea that America must remain economically independent of the world in order to remain politically independent.

But this generation decided that was yesterday’s bromide and we must march bravely forward into a Global Economy, where we all depend on one another. American companies morphed into “global companies” and moved plants and factories to Mexico, Asia, China and India, and we began buying more cheaply from abroad what we used to make at home: shoes, clothes, bikes, cars, radios, TVs, planes, computers.

As the trade deficits began inexorably to rise to 6 percent of GDP, we began vast borrowing from abroad to continue buying from abroad.

At home, propelled by tax cuts, war in Iraq and an explosion in social spending, surpluses vanished and deficits reappeared and began to rise. The dollar began to sink, and gold began to soar.

Yet, still, the promises of the politicians come. Barack Obama will give us national health insurance and tax cuts for all but that 2 percent of the nation that already carries 50 percent of the federal income tax load.

John McCain is going to cut taxes, expand the military, move NATO into Georgia and Ukraine, confront Russia and force Iran to stop enriching uranium or “bomb, bomb, bomb,” with Joe Lieberman as wartime consigliere.(x-er: I went to public school, I had to look that one up. The link is there in case you didn't know either.)

Who are we kidding?

What we are witnessing today is how empires end.

Sorry for the huge quote.

Yes, it is the end of the world as we know it. Empires crumble from within. The people become complacent. They will no longer sacrifice for the greater good. The citizens have been raised with the largess accumulated by the work of prior generations.

Empires may be forced down from the outside but they topple because they have become rotten from within.

At the start of the novel Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand we are introduced to a giant old tree. One that has stood for a very long time. One of the characters loves that tree. It represents strength and fortitude. One day a wind blows it down. The wind could blow it down because it was rotten on the inside. It may have looked strong but there was really nothing left of it. It serves as a metaphor for the entire novel.

The American Empire is now beginning to crumble from within. No one is willing to sacrifice or to go without for the greater good.

The Last Superpower is unable to defend its borders, protect its currency, win its wars or balance its budget. Medicare and Social Security are headed for the cliff with unfunded liabilities in the tens of trillions of dollars.

What we are witnessing today is nothing less than a Katrina-like failure of government, of our political class, and of democracy itself, casting a cloud over the viability and longevity of the system.

Notice who is managing the crisis. Not our elected leaders. Nancy Pelosi says she had nothing to do with it. Congress is paralyzed and heading home. President Bush is nowhere to be seen.

Hank Paulson of Goldman Sachs and Ben Bernanke of the Fed chose to bail out Bear Sterns but let Lehman go under. They decided to nationalize Fannie and Freddie at a cost to taxpayers of hundreds of billions, putting the U.S. government behind $5 trillion in mortgages. They decided to buy AIG with $85 billion rather than see the insurance giant sink beneath the waves.

An unelected financial elite is now entrusted with the assignment of getting us out of a disaster into which an unelected financial elite plunged the nation. We are just spectators.

I don't know what a gen-xer is to do. There aren't enough of us. I guess the best we can do is get ready for the struggle. I think we are ready for it though. I think collectively we have known that this moment would be coming. It's just sooner than we expected.

I grew up hearing stories of the great depression. I can't say that I am truly read for what may be coming but at least I won't be wondering why.

We know were to lay the blame and so does Pat:

What the Greatest Generation handed down to us — the richest, most powerful, most self-sufficient republic in history, with the highest standard of living any nation had ever achieved — the baby boomers, oblivious and self-indulgent to the end, have frittered away.

The government is doing all it can to keep the game going. The stock market may rally for the next few days, maybe even a week or two, but make no mistake we have reached the endgame. In the end the bill always comes due.

Here's your video:

And while looking for that one I found this one. Which is a lot of fun too:

Go green little boomer, go green

noreply@blogger.com (X-er) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 22:39:00 +0000

You've got to love the headline for this news story at Market Watch: 40 Million Boomers Can't be wrong.

In the category of an understatement not only are 40 million baby boomers wrong but we are hard pressed to think of a time when that many of them have ever been right.

In Scottsdale, AZ there is actually and event called the Festival of the Wise. This just shows how marketers will say anything to get you to buy stuff. You are older now, you are more experienced, you are the wise ones.

How great is that? First, never trust anyone over thirty but now that you are way past that mark it is a sign of your wisdom. Do these folks ever stop?

The point of the story is that they are adding a whole section on "green" living to the event.

The GreenWise track will see a variety of dynamic discussions revolving around topics such as greening your home on a budget, saving money through solar paneling, and the comparison of hybrid vehicles. It will offer intelligent and up-to-the-minute information on the latest and best trends in going green and offer simple ways for people to immediately become more energy efficient.

Let me rephrase: Here is how to spend your money so that you feel good about yourself and you can further inflate your giant sense of self importance.

The next block is the funny one.

"Boomers as a whole have always led the way in taking care of our environment. But, we are now seeing the number of environmentally conscious boomers increase," stated Melle Amade, co-founder and Marketing Director of Festival of the Wise. "As they enter their 50+ years, boomers are using their formidable purchasing power to change the world by insisting that green products and services enter the main stream. The GreenWise track is intended to support the decisions made by boomers and give them the information they need to continue in their endeavors to leave a lasting legacy."

Yes, the boomers have always found a way to take care of the environment. They developed the exurbs. The most inefficient style of living ever created by mankind. From those exurbs they drive for two hours in gas guzzling SUVs to get to work. They embraced the gas guzzling mini-van which they used to cart their kids all over creation.

Yes. These boomers have done well by the environment. Let's not forget the McMansions with their massive lawns growing in climates that were never meant to have green grass. Places like..... Scottsdale, AZ. Massive amounts of water, fertilizer and chemical pesticides for a lawn. I guess it makes sense, first poison the ground water so that you have to buy bottled water.

Yes folks the boomers have always gone there first. I say we let them go that way. We can, however, choose to go somewhere else.

Well, which is it?

noreply@blogger.com (X-er) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 23:06:00 +0000

Ahhhh, the main stream media. The want us to be scared. Scared of something, anything. The oceans are going to swallow all our cities. A giant asteroid will hit the Earth. Something. Dear god will you please be scared of something!

Anyway, as far as the baby boomers go, the media can't make up it's mind. What should we fear? One day it's, "they can't retire because they don't have the money." the next it's, "they are retiring and all businesses on earth are sunk."

Today's news story (ht Joel) is the latter. The world is going to end because businesses are going to loose all their, "expert" employees.

Now before we get to the story I would like to tell a brief story of my own.

I once worked with a this mid-size company. About 100 employees. There were a couple of different computer systems there. I maintained one and this other guy (will call him OG for Other Guy)) maintained the other.

Now, OG thought he was special. He had written most of the system. He had to do special things once in a while to it; load data, create special exports, normal programmers stuff. Well, OG thought he should get more money. Did I mention he thought he was special? He was sure that he was completely Indispensable to the business.

OG asked for a raise. They wouldn't give it to him. The company wasn't doing that great financially so it was even and option. OG had a hissy and said he would leave. They said, "OK". He left. On his way out he offered to work as a consultant. They said no. Needless to say there was someone in OGs seat within two weeks doing the same job and figuring out what had to be done. OG was never missed.

The moral of the story is no one is irreplaceable.

So on to this news story from MSNBC:

A surge of titanic proportions is about to sweep through American businesses as 80 million skilled and experienced baby-boomers reach retirement age. Departing the work force at a rate of 4 million per year until 2024, this loss of seasoned workers will create an undertow in every sector. Retirees take with them networks of professional contacts, specific skill sets, and organizational knowledge.

OOOOHHHHHHH, so they are irreplaceable? Because I bet all those contacts are:

A. Not in Outlook
B. Not in need of staying in contact with the company themselves so they can get product or make sales.

No folks. Us consumers of the news are stupid.

The good take away from above is that four million baby boomers a year a going to leave. That's 333,3333 a month and that starts very soon. (Three more years. (2 years and 3 months but whose counting?))

Moving on:

But here's the good news. (x-er: to who?) In a recent American Association of Retired Persons study, 70 percent of employees nearing 62 and older plan to work well into their retirement years. (x-er: But who will hire them if they aren't in charge anymore?) The BLS study breaks down the numbers of those already retired, those who accepted early retirement packages, and those who were laid off. Employment of mature workers 55 to 64 is expected to climb by 36.5 percent. For those 65 and older, the employment numbers will soar by 80 percent. According to AARP's Public Policy Institute, "…workers aged 55 and over will account for more than 90 percent of projected labor force growth over the next decade. The number of employed men and women aged 55 and older grew by nearly 2.3 million, or 9.7 percent between 2005 and 2007." Companies looking to keep their competitive edge will have the opportunity to make use of the skills of these returning workers.

Who makes these predictions? What are they basing this on? Are these the same people who told us there was no NASDAQ bubble? The same ones who told us there was no real estate bubble? Oh, I know, these are the same people that have been telling us for the past eight months that the economy is great and we are just having a, "mental recession."

I think they are just making this shit up.

Telecommunication companies, such as R & B Network Services, No. 887 on the Inc. 5000 list, already hire workers who took early retirement from the top 500 publicly traded companies and are too energized to sit at home. Firms in the education sector, such as ESW Incorporated, No. 2125 on the Inc. 5000 list, search for employees with 25 to 35 years of specific subject matter experience. As a result, their staff ranges in age from the mid-50s into the 80s. The company is so successful that 95 percent of its business comes from repeat clients. Another firm, Educational Services of America, No. 1015 on the Inc. 5000 list, finds retirees a useful resource. Mark Claypool, President and CEO, comments that 15 percent of his staff is aged 55 to 75 and they "…offer a rich tapestry of experiences to the school environment."

I'm throwing this paragraph in for one reasons. Schools suck. The education system in the country would have to improve dramatically just to get the point where it was only a big stinking pile of dog shit. Hiring back the people that made it that way will do it a world of good.

You know where I usually find retires working? Wal-mart. I don't go there very often, but every time I do, I see them.

The article goes on a bit more, you are welcome to read the rest yourself and add your comments below. We'd love to hear from you.

Gen-x parenting website

noreply@blogger.com (X-er) — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 23:01:00 +0000

Hi Folks.

This may be off topic, or it may not. But, something went seriously wrong with parenting in the last twenty years (and I (of course) blame the baby boomers).

The baby boomers are /were the most risk adverse group of parents that have ever lived. I have watched baby boomer parents drive their kids to the bus stop. These are kids that are 17 freaking years old! The poor little dears my get jumped by the neighborhood pedophile at 7 in the morning on the way to the bus stop.

When I was a kid we all walked to school. From the age of kindergarten up. No one walked with their parents. Nobodies parents dropped them off at school. It wasn't done. You walked. Even if it was uphill in the snow. You still walked.

When I was a kid we went outside. Our parents didn't give a crap what we were doing out there just so long as we weren't in the house bugging them. I for one, think this was a good thing. This is different than being a latchkey kid.

Latchkey kids had no one there to draw on if there was a real emergency. They also could not go outside until their parents were home. (Well, in some cases....)

I stumbled across this website: Free Range Kids. It pushes to get parents to return to those ideas (the ones that most of us grew up with). Send the kids outside. Let them climb the tree. You get the idea. If you are a parent and you are paranoid then do a couple of things.

1. Stop watching the evening news. That's why your paranoid.
2. Throw you kid outside and tell them to be back in at 6 for dinner.

Nooooooooooooooooo

noreply@blogger.com (X-er) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 23:34:00 +0000

They.... Just..... Won't..... Leave!

Here is another story about how the baby boomers will not be retiring when they are supposed too. I think we will be flooded with these types of stories for several years to come.

We've talked about this before and I am sure that we will talk about it again. This time it comes to use from Market Watch:

As the more than 76 million baby boomers approach retirement, an imminent talent shortage is affecting the workforce and many US companies will be challenged with a significant loss of experienced workers. This talent drain can be partially alleviated if companies entice older workers to remain in the workforce longer, according to Joan Strewler-Carter and Stephen Carter, co-founders of the Life Options Institute, an organization dedicated to helping people plan for life after age 50.

OK. I've worked with these folks for almost 20 years now. I have to say that I don't see where the brain drain will come from. If anything the average I.Q. of the corporation might increase as they leave. After all, these are the managers that gave rise to Dilbert. Dilbert was created from the antics of these workers.

"The coming talent shortage may force employers to overcome their age bias and introduce new opportunities with which to utilize this powerful asset," adds Mrs. Strewler-Carter.

What asset would that be? They already can't work the computer. Could they not work it slower? Maybe they could micro-manage just a little bit more. Nothing would beat a crotchety old micro-manager.

"Few companies have solved the knowledge-transfer problem," says Mrs. Strewler-Carter.

OK. Hold on a sec. So what you are telling me is these folks somehow manged to learn their jobs. These corporation taught these folks how to do their jobs and now magically they can't pass that knowledge onto someone else? I'm calling bullshit on that one.

They don't want to pass the knowledge on. Because, let's face it, we all know that none of us are indispensable. If we were to get hit by a bus our employer would find a replacement for us. It may take a month or two for the new person to get up to speed. I'm sure that it would not take ten friggin years.

Many experts are predicting a shortage of 10 million workers by the year 2010. By 2014, nearly 20 percent of the workforce will be comprised of people age 65+. This increase will make mature workers the faster-growing workforce segment, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

More money for us! More money for us! (Oh sorry, guess I was gloating a little.)

Let's charge ahead:

According to the Merrill Lynch New Retirement Study published in 2006, 71 percent of baby boomers say they will work after retirement. The new retirement for people 60+ won't involve withdrawing from working life. Instead, boomers want to find a new life balance that includes some form of employment, notes Mr. Carter. (x-er: they haven't wanted life balance before why would they want it now?)

A New Employment Paradigm

Retirement for baby boomers will blend work with leisure activities. The boundaries between work and play will no longer be so firm. Flexible work will become the rule. The boomer generation will demand more autonomy, flexibility and satisfaction on the job, cites Mr. Carter. (x-er: What fun will that be? Remember that time you tried to get time off to do something important with you kid and the baby boomer manager f-d that up for you? Or you worked an few extra hours during the week and then tried to take off half an hour early on Friday and that lowlife tried to dock you for it? With a plan like this they will have to come to us to make it work. Hint: Think revenge time. Oh wait, that's mean, let's use a better word. Let's call it, karma.)

"To be more precise, the upcoming working retirees want to work on their own terms," stresses Mr. Carter. (x-er: It's good to want things. I've also heard, "Greed is good".)

Phased Retirement

An option to be considered is "phased retirement," the gradual tapering off of working hours and responsibilities, culminating in a final break from the company. This period of phased employment can extend for years, describes Mrs. Strewler-Carter.

As I read this it occurs to me. The people designing this, "phased retirement" thing are boomers.

The boomers are so self important that they are jumping up and down saying, "You are so going to suffer when we are gone." They are trying to create a way that they can milk more money out of the companies while they are headed out the door.

This will work right up until that first one steps out. Then, us newly "empowered" x-ers can end the programs because they are not cost effective. (What was that word.... Oh yeah, karma.)

Boomers I like

noreply@blogger.com (X-er) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:51:00 +0000

Let's face it. Not all boomers are bad. (Most, but not all.) If we were to make a graph of the types of boomer behaviors that we find abhorrent we would see that it makes a nice bell curve. The majority of the boomers right there doing boomer stuff and a few stragglers out on the sides.

Jim Kunstler might fall at one end of the bell curve. His blog is one that I like to read. How can you not like something titled Clusterfuck Nation. (Which reminds me, I've been meaning to add a "boomers I like section" to the blog roll.)

Jim's basic beef is with how our society is organized around the car and because of this why we are completely fucked. He posts weekly and it can be great fun.

This week he is writing about Georgia (the country not the state) and our bogus policy towards that part of the world.

Not a story that you would think I could find something with. At least not at first. Then Jim gives us this:

We could have spent the past ten years getting our own house in order -- waking up to the obsolescence of our suburban life-style, scaling back on the Happy Motoring, reconnecting our cities with world-class passenger rail, creating wealth by producing things of value (instead of resorting to financial racketeering), protecting our borders, and taking the necessary measures to defend and update our own industries. Instead, we pissed our time and resources away. Nations do make tragic errors of the collective will. The cluelessness of George Bush is nothing less than a perfect metaphor for the failure of a whole generation. The Boomers will be identified as the generation that wrecked America.

Thank you Jim. Today, you made my job easy.

Sign up for the e-mail

noreply@blogger.com (X-er) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:49:00 +0000

Just a quick note to everyone here.

Instead of checking for new posts you can have them e-mailed to you. It's quick, it's easy and it's spam free.

Over on the sidebar is a box to put your e-mail address in. Sign up and never miss a thing.

That way, when I take another extended break you won't miss it when I come back.

Sorry for the delay, be back soon

noreply@blogger.com (X-er) — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 07:22:00 +0000

Hi All,

Just wanted to drop a quick post to let you know that I'll be back at it soon. Summer came rushing in and I got busy with other things.

Took the family camping. Then the power supply in my PC died. Went off camping again. Fixed the power supply. Then got busy with regular old life stuff. Then, just for good measure, went camping again.

If you're a gen-xer then you are in the same stage of life as me and I'm sure you know how it goes. I have a back log of news stories to go through and I'll be starting in on them this coming week.

More soon.

Changing of the Guard

noreply@blogger.com (X-er) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 06:06:00 +0000

What's amazing to me is how Gen-x seems to have the same story the world over. There must have been something about that post WWII world that created the same environment on several different continents and in many different countries.

It seems that the Gen-x experience was the same for our friends down under. From the Sydney Morning Herald we get this story.

At 34, social researcher Mark McCrindle likes to think of his age cohort as a middle child. "Quiet, compliant, they just get on with it. They never got much attention and they don't expect it." Typically, no one's paying much attention, but that overlooked middle child is belatedly emerging from the shadow of its elder sibling and taking charge of the family business.

"Gen X have been punching below their demographic weight," McCrindle points out. "They're 44 per cent of the workforce but that's not reflected in the leadership ranks of organisations. Keep in mind that at a similar age the baby boomers were very much in leadership positions because they were moving through the workforce in the boom years, without a big bubble of older people above them."

Over the next five years or so, Australia will be transformed as that big boomer bubble floats off into retirement, leaving their long-frustrated juniors in charge of the nation's governments, corporations, unions, courts, universities and media.

Gen-xers the world over must be so excited. The day is drawing closer when the baby boomers will be out of the workforce. Raises, promotions. How do I know we'll get raises? Because we will give them to ourselves.

(Note to x-ers the world over. Force the pension plans into bankruptcy. We'll just chalk that one up to karma.)

The changing of the guard is already well advanced at the political level. With the departure of John Howard, the bulk of political heavy hitters are either fag-end boomers, such as Kevin Rudd, Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull, or Gen X-ers such as Penny Wong, Tanya Plibersek, Nicola Roxon and Bill Shorten

OK, I just threw that paragraph in because I want to know what the hell a, "fag-end boomer" is. Because I'm sure the meaning is quite different here in the states than it is in Australia. I know in the U.K. a fag is a cigarette. I know there are folks here from all around the world, so please, what does that mean?

Anyway, moving on...

If generation X-ers are so given to describing themselves as just getting on with the job, it's probably because they have raw memories of not having one. As the 2003 AMP-Natsem report Generation Xcluded noted: "In Australia, the changing economic environment created differences between the baby boomers and Gen X-ers. The boomers enjoyed cheap housing, free education, generous welfare benefits and plenty of job opportunities. The Gen X-ers have had to battle huge increases in the cost of housing and tertiary education, job insecurity and cuts in welfare."

It seems the world over the baby boomers are the same. Their parents handed them the world on a silver platter. The boomers consumed everything on that platter and then sold the platter to buy more stuff.

How is it, that such a huge demographic could not generate enough tax funds to keep the schools good? Oh, right, they were borrowing against their own future as well. My bad.

You also would have thought some country in the world would not have been in a recession as we entered the workforce.

"We're too cynical for the left. The socialist project had already failed by the 1960s when our boomer betters (x-er: You need to phrase that last bit better bud, boomer betters is not how I would describe them) took it up. Why would we repeat their mistake?" (x-er: see their not better. By mistakes we mean f#ck ups) says John Birmingham, 43, whose He Died With A Felafel In His Hand serves as the Aussie X-ers' On The Road.

"The boomers had already marched in the street, pushed every boundary. There was nowhere left for the X-er to go," McCrindle argues. "Any outrage they felt, they internalised or expressed within their own little groups - they were never going to coalesce like their grandparents or parents and change society by introducing another New Deal or looking to some benign form of socialism." (x-er: What is sad about this right here, is that I am assuming they are talking about FDR's New Deal. I don't know if they had their own New Deal or not. I went to public school which means my knowledge of the world is limited to, "There are other countries in the world? They have, 'History'?")

It might be because we are bright enough to look at all those programs and realize that they don't work.

"Where they are more progressive than their predecessors is that while a boomer might say, 'We need female representation on the board', the X-er actually believes it. Gen X-ers are not converts to diversity like the boomers. They actually grew up with it; they embrace and appreciate it. Which is good news for women. We'll see a lot more of them at senior levels."

Whether that X-er tolerance can, or should, continue to extend to their parents is a subject of growing debate.

Growing debate? Hmmmmmm. I think that we have the answer to that question. What's fun is the number of Google searches that come this way that are some variation on, 'baby boomer ruin' or 'I hate baby boomers'.

You can hop on over and read the rest yourself. It is mostly a rehash of what we've been talking about here for over a year now. It is nice to see though that we are not alone in the world and that other nations are going to face the same problems as us.

At least we know who to blame.

Confidence is High

noreply@blogger.com (X-er) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 06:28:00 +0000

To me it seems the best part of being a baby boomer would be the joy of having an over exaggerated sense of self confidence.

Remember, the baby boomers changed the world. They invented marijuana. These folks invented rock music. Well, OK, we know the didn't but they think they did. But how great must it be to know that you invented it anyway?

Now the baby boomers are getting ready to invent retirement. Some column, somewhere, written by some boomer has all this to say:

Just as the we-can-do-anything generation approaches the open doors of retirement, many are hesitating to take the jump. Skydiving, rock climbing, running marathons and other evidence of physical prowess and purpose characterized the boomer generation. They made themselves the healthiest, and they set new standards for spending money and living in the now.

Wow, there's a lot in that one! If they made themselves the healthiest why are the so overweight? Now, I will agree with the, "set new standards for spending money" because the majority of them are broke.

Let's follow along:

Here's my assessment of what boomers see as they stand on the threshold of retirement. These further observations are based purely on my 15 years of experience advising boomers on how to get themselves on an appropriate financial course.

In the immortal words of that boomer looser Dr. Phil, "How's that working for ya?" Have they been listening to you?

About 20 percent (that's one out of every five) (x-er: Holy shit, no wonder we are so royally fucked if he had to tell us that. 1 in 5 is twenty percent. Fuck. I might have had to use a fucking calculator to figure that one out.) have laid out a credible plan for themselves and are confident they'll be fine financially in retirement. The problem is that 60 percent (x-er: That's 3 out of 5 for you fucks reading this that don't want to think it through. Why the hell didn't he stick that factoid in there too?) of the boomers think they are in the top 20 percent. That means that 40 percent (x-er: that's 2 out of 5 just for fucking consistency (I thought of messing with the numbers and writing 1 out of 5 to see if anyone noticed but then I thought people wouldn't get the joke so, oh well....)) are overconfident and are deluding themselves and, more regrettably, their spouses.

Boy you don't expect that behavior in a baby boomer. Over confident? Baby boomers? You're shitting me, right? (geeze, what's with me today? I've Got the volume cranked up to 11.)

Then the final 20 percent, 25 percent at best, get the value of consulting an experienced retirement-income specialist (x-er: warning, foreshadowing) to design an appropriate distribution strategy with the highest possible probability, based on the best statistical modeling available, they will not run out of money before they die. Retirees are looking for a clear and simple set of steps which make their money and resources last.

As a retirement-income adviser (x-er: spoiler alert), I explain that my job, above all others, is to do what I can to make your money last at least as long as you do.

Oh, I get it now. This isn't a news column. This is an advertisement masquerading as a news story. Oh, how convenient is that?

I love how modern newspapers do this crap. Print up stories about new products that look like it's news but it is just a glorified product placement.

It goes like this: Company x released this great thing today. It'll save people money. This expert says it's great. Here's two - three paragraphs from their press release. More info at their website.

The rest of the story is the same old blah, blah, blah. You can go read it for yourself if you want.

Till next time folks.

Boomers stealing from their children

noreply@blogger.com (X-er) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 01:40:00 +0000

Another HT to Joel for sending us this link.

For a long time now I have been writing about boomers stealing from their kids through the government. Running up huge deficits that us and future generations will be crushed under.

Now it seems that boomers are literally stealing from their children.

Angie got a shock when she checked her credit report last year. The Kansas State University student discovered one of the credit cards listed hadn't been paid in more than two months -- and it wasn't an account she recognized.

I called my mother to talk to her about it and how I was worried I was a victim of identity fraud, Angie said. My mother confessed that she was the one that had used the card when she got in a bind.

The mother had intercepted a preapproved credit card application intended for Angie, forged Angie's signature and added herself as an authorized user. She (got the card) thinking she would have it under control, but it went delinquent over Christmas time when money was short, Angie explained.

Angie's mom has committed identity theft against her. Pure and simple. Angie calls her mom worried that she was the victim of identity theft. Only to find out, surprise, she is a victim of identity theft. By her own mother.

Talk about being betrayed. Nothing like cutting right to the chase. It's one thing to, "die broke" it's another thing to die and bankrupt the kids at the same time.

Some parental thieves refuse to believe they've done anything immoral or illegal. Like other cases of parental theft -- such as raiding custodial accounts, swiping money from trust funds or selling off savings bonds given as birthday presents -- the parents may justify their behavior as ultimately benefiting, or at least not hurting, the victim.

The rationale is, Ill pay it off. They'll never be harmed, Foley said. If some of the ill-gotten gain is spent on the kids, this attitude is reinforced. But if you didn't pay your own bills, what makes you think you're going to do the right thing now? You still have the same poor money management skills that caused you the problem in the first place.

And such identity theft is far from a victimless crime. Parental ID thieves:

Let's face it. Boomers rarely think they are doing anything wrong. Even when it is blatant. It will take years for the kids to recover from the long term effects that this will have on them.

Angie won't press charges. If she doesn't press charges then the mark won't come off her credit. The mark doesn't come off her credit and what happens when she goes for next year's student loan? (OK, she shouldn't be taking student loans but that's a different discussion.)

What happens when Angie tries to get a job and they pull her credit and won't hire her? What will it cost her when she tries to get a car loan and the interest rate is jacked up an extra 3% - 4%?

Press charges Angie or your mother will just do it to you again. She got away with it once. She'll do it again.

The article does include some things to do (one is press charges). Go on over and read the rest.

And for you gen-xers reading this. Don't ever do this to your kids. If you do then we'll know you just want to be a boomer.

Bye George

noreply@blogger.com (X-er) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 07:08:00 +0000

One of the worlds best comedians is gone. He was one of my favorites. Iconoclastic, vulgar and downright truthful.

He could look at any given situation and see right through the bullshit of it. A trait us gen-x'ers greatly admire.

I can't say that he went off to met his maker. George didn't have a maker. So here he is explaining religion to us (and still calling bullshit, bullshit).