Brian Mounts | My Life

Photos Of My Dad’s New Church

2009-12-06T13:14:00.000-08:00

Please Forgive the Quality I’m Not a Photographer

So October and November have come and gone and I haven’t updated this site in a while. I guess now is an excellent time to do so though because I have great news from the family.

My father who’s been looking to take on another church for a while now was just installed as the new head pastor at the Auberry Church of the Nazarene in Auberry California on Sunday. Flor and I had a great time visiting with her family and my family for Thanksgiving last week and then we were treated with a nice surprise by being able to witness the installation of my dad as the pastor on Sunday.

Mel Rich, the Nazarene central district’s superintendent, and his wife showed up for the occasion and installed my dad during the service. Though I’ve grown up as a pastor’s kid my whole life I cannot for the life of me remember watching this ceremony happen before. Sure there was little pomp and circumstance but the formality was there and it was a nice time.

Seeing as though my old roommate and San Diego photographer Aaron wasn’t able to attend Flor and I were left to our own devices in capturing the event on film.

I remembered to bring my old digital camera to take some photos but unfortunately the camera is starting to suck battery life out of the device while it’s not being used so the following pictures were taken between our respective cell phones. Regardless you should get the idea here about the church.

It’s up in the mountains of the central valley; it’s a small congregation with very friendly people. The building is a little dated but looks nice and the property is huge and beautiful. I look forward to returning once the dust settles and my dad gets things rolling in the new church.

I don’t have too much else to say but I wanted to publish these photos for the few people out there desperately looking for them. :) Don’t you all go and jam the servers OK. :) The following photo slideshow includes pictures of the church, inside and out, the pastoral installation ceremony, and the grounds including parsonage. Enjoy!

And next time you’re heading up to Shaver Lake, stop by Auberry and worship with everyone there at the Mountain Gathering Place, Church of the Nazarene.

Auberry Nazarene Church Photographs

Click to Play

Not into the slideshow thing: Check out the individual Auberry Church of the Nazarene pictures.

Peter Schiff For Senate - Taking on Chris Dodd

2009-09-24T15:05:00.000-07:00

Man I love this guy! Peter Schiff is finally officially running for Senate in Connecticut. He sat down today on Yahoo’s Tech Ticker and talked about his running against Chris Dodd for the 2010 election and what he brings to the table. I hope ever so much that he wins the seat.

In addition to discussing his candidacy he also spoke a bit about Gold:

And rebuffed Ben Bernanke’s conclusion that the economy is getting better:

Now, I’m not interested in seeing bad things occur by any means but I am a huge proponent of speaking thee truth rather than sugar coating things and talking up a wish list of what we’d like to come to pass. The economy is not getting better it is continually getting worse and without changing things soon even our government will feel pain when the back’s of American’s begin cracking. We think the economy hit rock bottom within the past year but we merely bent backwards. Soon, if we don’t stand back up again we’ll fall over backwards and actually hit the floor. Peter understands that and for some reason Bernanke doesn’t.

Ben is supposed to be a scholar of the Great Depression and he should know that in the middle of the Depression government stopped supporting the recovery and tried to balance the budget and the economy tanked yet again. The longer we try to support the economy artificially through government intervention the more the economy becomes dependent on that support. It’s like an addiction to drugs. A nice stimulus check feels nice but two years later after constant stimulus we are now addicted and the free market has ceased to operate on it’s own. If we are ever to get past these issues government has to stop intervening and has to let the market work independently.

Soon, government will stop buying treasuries (Oct), soon the housing credit will end (Nov), soon the purchase of MBS will stop (Mar ‘10); hopefully we can stop inflating GDP through monetary expansion and government deficit spending. This unfortunately will not happen and the administration will instead try to support government stimulus by funding it with tax increases… this unfortunately will spark another wave of this recession and end up prolonging the death spiral.

We need more Peter Schiffs to bring a realistic voice to government and work on decreasing its size, scope, and agenda.

If interested check out a few of Schiff's thoughts (and others) that I’ve shared in a previous post.

Brian Mounts Dot Com Has Finally Arrived

2009-09-17T14:59:00.000-07:00

After all these years I finally have completely setup BrianMounts.com. You should notice the new address in the address bar at the top of your screen doesn't revert back to "blogspot.com" anymore. Ahh, I feel complete.

Book Review: The Wastelands by Stephen King

2009-08-16T18:48:00.000-07:00

Yet again my inevitable yet slow march forward continues. I have finally completed book three in Stephen King's Dark Tower Series. I read books 1-4 when I was a kid and in college I started book five but found myself severely lacking in the memory department when it came to the details of the storyline which I was picking back up mid-stream. Because I had forgotten so much from the first four books I didn't finish book five and eventually, a couple years ago, I decided to start all over and re-read the entire series again from book one.

Strangely I'm not really reading these very fast even still. I've only managed to get through the first three books in about two years, though I think that is a bit better than the first time through. When I was a kid I read them slow and had to wait a couple years for book four to even be released so I should get around to finishing it up sooner rather than later.

Anyway, book three, The Wastelands, struck me as a meandering tale that really didn't tell much. I remember this book being much more entertaining as a kid. Maybe I've been trained all these years to expect a conventional beginning, middle, and end, whereas in my youth I was more open to loose interpretations of story lines. This book picked up with the training of Susan and Eddie and then moved on to their beginning travels. They follow "the beam" which gave me to some insight to the greater King universe, which I didn't know of when I first read this book in Middle School. The beam ties in significantly to a short story included in Hearts In Atlantis, which I've also read fairly recently.

Anyway, we eventually get a plot build and conclusion with the drawing of the fourth, Jake... except the book is not over... it's only half finished. This drawing moment was quite spectacular and left me enjoying every word like it was the last I'd ever read. Of course when there ended up being a ton more to the book I found a letdown to the story, not sure why though. I think it was just so strange to have what seemed to be two books side-by-side in the same novel.

Anyway, eventually the group makes there way through the wilderness and we build a second dramatic tale from the ground up by setting the stage for the Gunslinger to rescue Jake and save him, seemingly making up for the time he killed him in book one. Blaine the pain, enters into the thick as the "God" of Lud and becomes there carrier and possibly savior but of course we won't know until we get to book four. Again, this goes against all preconceived notions of plot conclusions. We got a good one half way through the book but a bad conclusion at the end. Sure it leaves us wanting book four but it's artificial in my opinion.

Also, I remember quite a bit more riddling from my reading of this book as a kid but then again maybe I'm thinking of book four. We shall see. I'll have to get my hands on book four, Wizard and Glass, soon and catch back up. Despite my disappointment from this book I do trust King to deliver and since I read this far before I have to finally finish the series.

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Feel free to take a look at my fairly recent reviews of books 1 & 2, The Gunslinger and The Drawing of the Three or any of the other random books I've read and noted here on this blog.

Disneyland Family Pictures

2009-08-08T12:46:00.000-07:00

A couple months back Flor and I met the rest of my family for an old fashioned family trip to Disneyland. We had a great time and the family outing reminded me of being a kid again. Ohh the good old days. Anyway, Kathleen made it abundantly clear a few weeks back that she was disappointed that I hadn't posted pictures from our trip so this post is for her. For related reading this is my previous post on our time at Disneyland.

Atlantic and Pacific Blue Tangs

2009-08-06T17:20:00.000-07:00

Today, Flor and I finally ridded ourselves of our "starter fish" and upgraded to some more interesting fish. This whole process began last weekend when we were unfortunate enough to think that we could introduce a Tang into our small saltwater tank with our four Damselfishes. This did not work out as the Damselfishes decided to torment the Tang to death.

After days of trying to rid our tank of the Damselfishes we finally caught them and returned them to the store. These little buggers were incredibly difficult right up until then end as we were not able to catch them until we pulled all of our live rock from the tank.

Anyway, after the ordeal was over, and after the fish store exchange today, we now have two new fish who are non-aggressive herbivores. We picked up two small Tang's, an Atlantic Blue Tang and a Pacific Blue Tang. The Atlantic Tang is yellow while still young and will eventually turn blue as they get bigger and older. We'll look forward to that happening as our family grows up. For visual stimulation please enjoy these stock photos of our two Tangs:

The Atlantic Blue Tang (blue is old yellow is young.)

The Pacific Blue Tang

Next time you stop by the house make sure to say hi to our newest additions!

I'll take my MBA, thank you. :)

2009-08-01T19:06:00.000-07:00

I'll take my MBA, thank you. :)

Mounts Financial Podcast

2009-07-28T18:27:00.000-07:00

Well it seems I made a change to my podcast feed address, and just like that, the original feed I published last week won't work any more.

In case you are really interested in financial / economic matters I'll invite you to subscribe to the feed yet again. Maybe in the future I'll see if I can get this feed published in iTunes but for the time being you can manually load it in yourself or just subscribe through the link below.

If you recall the first episode was a minute long ramble about nothing. Going forward the subject matter will be a somewhat focused free-thought on the economy, finance, markets, and investing. I'm not an academic but I feel like I have something worthwhile to say. Enjoy!

Brian Mounts Starts Podcasting!

2009-07-23T22:59:00.000-07:00

I've started podcasting - but there's one catch; you've gotta subscribe. :) You're unlikely to see many audio episodes here on this site. Enjoy this pointless first episode.

Ron Paul's Audit of the Federal Reserve

2009-07-08T09:57:00.000-07:00

A little over a week has passed since I last offered the dire outlook for the American dollar as posed by the misc people who produce quality YouTube videos. That video posed the possibility of hyperinflation. This video via Yahoo's Tech Ticker is another along the same lines. Though it doesn't talk specifically about the consequences of current policy it does discuss Ron Paul's attempt to audit the fed. This makes sense to me as I am an auditor by trade and especially since these are extreme times economically. Ron Paul has been warning of these kinds of actions for years now and it's interesting to see him getting more and more publicity as I think many people are finding his thoughts to be plausible.

In a related note, Peter Schiff is considering running for office for the 2010 Senate elections. This just goes to show us that the credibility of those that warned us of financial disaster is growing day by day.

Ron Paul's Attempt To Audit The Fed

Peter Schiff says Hyperinflation Is Right Around the Corner

2009-06-30T00:51:00.000-07:00

This series of videos on hyperinflation - skewed opinions as they are - are the most riveting analytical pieces on the current state of American economic theory that I have seen to date. Peter Schiff, Ron Paul, Jim Rogers, Tom Woods, Gerald Celente, etc. say it like it is and warn of impending doom. One might find their theories on economic collapse, hyperinflation, and financial Armageddon to be fear mongering but they were the few (Peter Schiff & Ron Paul especially) who called the market collapse long before it ever happened.

Personally; I'm not convinced that hyperinflation is coming unless deficits continue to climb year after year at the current rate. US debt owed is still only around 75 percent* or so of national GDP (which is darned high); the only problem is that debt is rising and GPD is falling. 100 percent seems right around the corner with the way Obama is spending money... It's a crazy world we live in. I'm getting into commodities once the next leg down occurs... and if this debt to GDP ratio starts getting above 100 percent I will have a hard time not getting into the hyperinfation boat.

*Update 7/3/09: The debt to national output (GDP) is actually 80 percent now. MOUNTAIN OF DEBT: Rising debt may be next crisis: "The overall debt is now slightly over 80 percent of the annual output of the entire U.S. economy, as measured by the gross domestic product."

Enjoy the following videos.

Hyperinflation Video - Part 1

Hyperinflation Video - Part 2

Hyperinflation Video - Part 3

Experimenting With SEO - Part 2

2009-06-23T17:42:00.000-07:00

Last month I spent a good deal of time discussing some of the interesting things I was learning about Search Engine Optimization. I related the information directly to the one post in my site which is the most popular of them all; my review of and desire to purchase a Sony Ericsson HCB-150 car speaker phone. In the first post int his series I attempted to do some editing of the post in question to see if I could optimize it for increased traffic. I ended up linking directly to the post with anchored text as well as editing some of the content of the old popular post to include more keywords and heading tags in the content section. It’s been a good deal of time now since this experiment and so I figured I’d take a minute to run a quick analysis and see if there has been any uptick in traffic to this page.

In a nut shell, there’s been essentially no long-term change in activity to this page, however, there was a surge in activity for the two weeks or so after I made the SEO post in May and edited the HCB-150 page. During that two week period traffic was up nearly 50 percent before volume fell back to normal pre-experiment levels. The two weeks before the post the page had 19 visitors and the 14 days after the post the page had 31 visitors. Now I’m not sure if this is statistical noise or a simple coincident but it is a correlation.

Since my initial foray into SEO I have read and learned more about what to do and how to do it more effectively and one of the most notable things to do to increase search traffic is to do more internal linking so over the next few posts I’m going to try linking more often to some of my more popular pages just to see if I can find any further correlation in the search engines. This long-standing and slow-moving experiment should come in handy in the future as I start dabbling a little bit more significantly on the web and trying to do more than just documenting my life here on this site.

Currently the more popular pages on this blog, in addition to the aforementioned Bluetooth Headset post are my posts on the Cadillac Graveyard and Derek Paravicini, the blind, autistic pianist. I’m also going to try and highlight a few pages on this blog that are not all that popular and see if they do any better with some optimization such as my old book review of Alan Greenspan’s book; The Age of Turbulence. And my picture post of my new Brunswick Fury Pearl Bowling Ball.

In addition to optimizing these pages I intend on cleaning up the many other pages a bit more significantly, eliminating more personal matters, and linking between more of my old posts in hope that this will give the entire domain more favorability in the search engines. Stay tuned for the eventual part three in this SEO Series.

PLNU Public Safety Video Series - Matrix Pops: Aaron's Edit

2009-06-14T00:46:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago I shared with the world the first part of my PLNU Public Safety video series: Two Angry German Men. Today I share with you another classic featuring myself, filmed by Evan while being laughed at by Grace. The distinguished Aaron Riveroll provides his excellent though novice (at the time) video editing skills to tastefully amp up the excitement of this scene.

Enjoy Matrix Pops & Matrix: Aaron's edit!

Matrix Pop's: Aaron's Edit

...and the source clips:

Matrix Pops

The Palm Pre Is A Beautiful Thing

2009-06-06T13:28:00.000-07:00

The Palm Pre Is A Beautiful Thing

Check out Flor on her new toy.

Flor On Her New Palm Pre!

2009-06-06T10:21:00.000-07:00

Flor On Her New Palm Pre!

PLNU Public Safety Video Series - Two Angry German Men

2009-05-31T12:38:00.000-07:00

It's been a good number of years now since my Public Safety days at PLNU but while I was there many of the officers were known for our video taking prowess while on the job. I still have most every stupid video we ever filmed (that I ever saw, at least) during that era and through the wishes of some I will slowly start reintroducing them to the world through the wonders of YouTube.

For my first installment of PLNU Public Safety videos I present you with: Two Angry German Men featuring David Schmidt and "brother" Daniel Schmidt, narrated by the reverend, Pablo Vargas. Enjoy!

Shipwrecked In Disneyland

2009-05-28T22:29:00.000-07:00

Last weekend on Saturday after Flor finished up with her 2nd year of med school, we had the pleasure of heading up to LA to meet my family for a rousing day at Disneyland. We had a fantastic time taking in all the sights and riding all the rides while enjoying short lines on a Memorial Day weekend. In fact I can't even remember the last time that my family got together for something like this... maybe last Fall when we hit up the Charger's Chiefs football game but that just seems somewhat different in my opinion. The last family vacation like this was probably back before I moved out of the house if you take weddings and the like out of the equation. Anyway, Jim was there to join us as was my sister Kathleen. For around three years now the family outings have been lacking Kathleen because she was living in Boston so it's been great to have her around again.

Anyway, I'm not going to say too much about Disneyland because we all know about the place but I will say that while we were there we were treated to an exceptionally long ride on the Pirate Ship. It's not really a pirate ship though, it's actually a replica of the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe. The replica now circles the pond/river there at Disneyland every day while guests take rides like they would a roller coaster. Well, we were no different than any other group of riders except that on our ride the motor on our boat went out and we were stranded about 15 feet from the shoreline for about an hour and half on this boat. We ended up having to be rescued one by one down a ladder onto the Mark Twain River Raft. Keep in mind this ship supposedly circumnavigated the globe... I guess they worked better before they threw motors into them. Apparently the Disneyland model doesn't have sails.

Eventually of course we got off and they treated us to some fine bottled waters on the house as well as some complimentary front of the line passes for our troubles. Lets just say I'm glad none of us had to go to the bathroom while we were on the boat; that would have been some significant trouble. It's hard to complain though because we got to do pretty much everything we wanted to do on the day despite the lost 90 minutes. I will also say I had so much fun spending time with my dad on roller coasters; I honestly can't remember riding a roller coaster with him for some reason. It makes me smile thinking of it.

I took a lot of pictures during the day and I thought I'd share a few of them here. Note the awesome picture of my uncle Jim squealing like a five year old girl at the fake elephant behind him on the Jungle Cruise. Hehe, I love it!

On a side note, Flor and I hit up Loma Linda the following day and saw Carolyn Sharpe and her family on Sunday. She just graduated Medical School and is now a doctor! Congratulations Carolyn!

Stratosphere Thrill Rides - Video

2009-05-20T16:10:00.000-07:00

It’s been over two months now I know but Flor and I enjoyed our time in Las Vegas at the USBC Nationals both on and off the lanes. Of course I put on a show of inconsistent achievement during the tournament and she showed me how to bowl after I purchased her her very own bowling ball and bag… but when we weren’t in a bowling center we had some fun seeing the sights.

We actually didn’t venture very far from our Hotel but we did walk around the Freemont Street Experience a little bit and we decided to hit up the Stratosphere. The sole reason for this visit was because neither Flor nor I had ever been inside the hotel let alone gone to the top of the needle. Anyway, long story short we rode up the elevator and took a gander at the strip from some 1000 feet in the sky. It was very beautiful up there but unfortunately for us the bar was closed and the rides were just too scary to consider enjoying. Yes, I know. We are chickens. Here’s the video:

The Top of the Stratosphere

Remembering Bill Seidman

2009-05-14T10:37:00.000-07:00

Last night I learned of the passing of Bill Siedman. This struck me more than I would have had anticipated for a couple reasons. First I’ve watched Bill on Thursday mornings on CNBC for months now as he was a regular and highly respected commentator on their morning shows and I got to liking him and his analysis of the markets and economic theory. If I was older I probably could appreciate him a bit more for his accomplishments in life but this is how I know him.

Second I think this struck me because I learned just yesterday evening that my friend’s father, whom I know well, was rushed to the emergency room with elevated blood-sugar levels. My wife, the near-doctor, tells me that this condition can kill someone if it is left untreated for too long. I’m happy to hear that this is not the case in this situation but it does remind me of our own mortality and the gift of life.

In case you don’t know who Bill Seidman is, he was most famous for his role as FDIC Chairman in the 80’s and 90’s as well as for his work in fixing the Savings and Loan crisis in the early 90’s. The following is a CNBC video remembrance of Bill Siedman. Feel free to watch all or part of it, it’s approximately 8 minutes long.

Experimenting With SEO

2009-05-12T18:24:00.000-07:00

Today I'm going to be crafting a bit of an experiment for my topic. I met earlier today with my buddy Aaron for nuggets at our favorite Tuesday afternoon lunch spot and we got to talking about a number of things. One of those things happened to be our business and finding our business' website through search engines.

The problem as we discussed revolves around the fact that our business website is not searchable... meaning it cannot be found on the web unless you know the company name and or web address in the first place. Now this has been on my mind for some time and until recently I didn't have the time to devote to it anyway so it didn't really bother me too much. Well, it did bother me, I just didn't lose sleep over it. Anyway, since my classes ended last week I've had some free time on my hands and I've generally been in a more ambitious mood so I've been reading up quite a bit on the concepts of SEO or search engine optimization.

What is SEO

The concept of SEO is all about crafting your website with the Googlers of the world in mind. Most sites, ours included, have been crafted in the interest of passing product and service information along to viewers and less about the drawing of the viewers in in the first place. This is a big deal. Consider this. Most people that know about our business know it by name and what we do. Because they know of us they have probably no need for our business or have already used it's services. If they meet either of these two qualifications then they already can find our site without or with little help from Google.

Take another situation for a spin. Let's say you are a budding bride living in San Diego and you've always wanted a local wedding on the beach. How would you find a videographer if you wanted one but didn't know of any off the top of your head? You would probably pop onto Google and type in some like 'San Diego Wedding Video' or something like that and go down the list one-by-one. Well, the people making these kinds of searches are the one's that actually need our services and they are actually the ones that have money to spend. These are the people we want to bring to the website and when they can't find it through Google then we're not going to be meeting these brides anytime soon.

This is my dilemma, I want people to find the site; so how do we go about making the site optimized for search? To try to answer that question I decided to try some experiments here on my blog based on some solid information I've picked up from around the web.

Search Optimization Experiment

This website, my blog, has traffic monitoring code built into it so that I can track who's visiting the site, how often, what pages they look at, and how they got here. Most sites have similar code working on them and it's there for good reason. It should help me decide how to drive more traffic to the site by simply analyzing what is coming in already.

According to my stats, my blog's most popular page is HCB 150 - I Want One! Over the past 13 days this page has been hit 19 times by random visitors via search engines. After recently reading a fair amount of literature on SEO, I'm going to see if I can get this page's traffic to go even higher through various techniques. If these techniques work I think I can then use some of the same techniques to start building up searchability within the Google system.

The post above is a post about the hands-free car speakerphone that I blogged about last Spring. I wanted it for two reason. First, because it was cool, and second, because California was legally going to require driver's to have a hands-free device to use a phone while driving. In the end I got one, though I only got the next model down, and I've enjoyed it but since then this post continues to drive more traffic than any other post on my blog... and I have nearly 400 posts on this bad boy.

Filtering my stats down further I can see that the most frequent method that people find this post is by Googling 'HCB 150 review'. If you Google this phrase you'll find that this post is in the number one position. However if you take 'review' off and try any other word combination I'm not anywhere to be found.

The reason for this can be attributable to any number of things but mostly it is probably due a few things. First, the page does not contain many other words that are related to phrases that people might search for when looking up this device. Second, the pictures on the page are not labeled with descriptive text in the 'alt' tags. And third, there is no webpage out there linking directly to this original post of mine. General SEO knowledge says that when pages link to something search engines place greater importance on the destination of the link. Additionally the words used for the link, otherwise known as the anchor text, correlate directly to the words used in the actual search box. Meaning if I want people to find my business website I should link to it not by saying 'click here'. I should say: view my San Diego Wedding Video business website; you won't be disappointed. :)

So aside from plugging my business I will take some time in this post to plug my most popular webpage on this site with an anchored link of descriptive key words. Click through to take a look at the Hands Free Bluetooth Car Speakerphone that I wanted to buy last Spring, which also happens to be the most popular webpage on my blog.

When on the page you'll also notice that I expanded the post a bit today (what, you don't remember what it looked like originally?) to include more related text that people might search for, heading tags around headings, as well as an actual (albeit small) review of the device, which was never actually on the page in the first place. Ironic, I know.

To state my goal here one more time, I'll say that this is an experiment so we'll see how this works out. The last 13 days this page got 19 hits through Google so over then 13 days we'll see if the number goes up. I guess I'll check back in again on this topic on around the 25th of May. See you then!

-Brian

This is the Best Time Ever to Buy a Home

2009-05-09T14:10:00.000-07:00

I was just looking back through some old posts of mine here on my blog and I came across this gem from Spring of 2007. I wrote that '2008 would be a great entry point for first time home buyers' as I hopefully crossed my fingers that the real estate market would continue softening for another year.

Housing Market 2008

Well, a funny thing happened and housing did continue slumping into 2008, as we all know well, and we did take advantage of what I had forecast and hoped for. Flor and I ended up buying a condo in 2008 after all. We made an offer in late April and were in the underwriting process this time last year, finally closing in July. We felt great about ourselves buying for a 60% discount over 2006-2007 prices.

Housing Market 2009

It's amazing what happens in life. Now we're sitting a year later. It's the Spring of 2009 and the market is still dropping. It's down now in our condo complex about 75% from it's peak two years ago and now I'm just wishing we could buy a second place... maybe I should hope for the market to continue softening for another year or two... That might be devastating for the economy but maybe then it'll be the optimal time to buy a second property. Let's just put it this way though. The rest of the year things might continue softening but eventually it's got to to stop. I can't imagine this bottom lasting long enough for us to buy a second place despite their incredibly low asking prices but I do know that now and the near future seems to be one of the best times ever to buy a first or second home.

Shout Out to Myself

2009-05-05T17:31:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to take a few lines here to send a shout out to myself. Last night I finished up the last assignment of my MBA program at Ashford University. It's been a good long 18 months since I started this process and I'm immensely satisfied that I did it. Go me!

Now that that project is behind me I can start working on scraping the popcorn off my ceiling and cleaning up an old computer I've had lying around for the past year or so. I also should expect everybody to call me 'Master Brian' from now on to reflect my status in life... :)

I am feeling very happy right now.

The Age Of Turbulence by Alan Greenspan - Book Review

2009-04-28T16:54:00.000-07:00

About a week and a half ago I finished up reading Alan Greenspan's epic biography and essay on the economic landscape just prior to the Credit Crisis and "Great Recession" that began in August and December of 2007. Interestingly this book, The Age of Turbulence, was published mere months prior to the first mention of the credit crisis in early 2007 and so it offers a fantastic perspective of flawed economic theory that was generally accepted by everybody to be gospel at the time.

Today we know that Greenspan probably left interest rates too low for too long which helped, though didn’t cause, the housing bubble to inflate. It can be argued however that the housing bubble did not necessarily create the crisis we’re in today but rather it was the insurance and derivatives markets that were poorly prepared, regulated, and subject to failure under the pressures of the real estate bubble bursting. Had the markets been more stable to these pressures then arguably much of what we’re currently facing could have been defused though not likely averted althogether… but seriously this is not a topic that can be confronted in this short of a space. To summarize my thoughts I will say that they are always evolving on this set of topics and maybe one day I’ll start ironing them out on this blog.

Getting back to Greenspan I have to say it was fascinating listening to his prose on economic theories, markets, and economies as well as his projections for the future of certain markets and economies. He is a very broad thinking man who does not seem nearly as dry as one might think.

The first half of his book was primarily a biography of the man himself. In it we learn of his family, his childhood, his love and talent for music as well as his early years in Finance. I remember talking to my wife about some of the many interesting things I was learning about Greenspan while I was in the first part of this book. I’d always wondered how one came to become the Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Bank; well now I know. I will have to take some time now to research a bit about the history of Ben Bernanke and see how to two histories compare. One story I found quite interesting was how Alan would woo women back to his apartment to read them his published economic papers. Woo-hoo; what a date that man must have been! :)

The second half of the book was primarily dedicated to economic theory, analysis, and projections. We learned about the behind-the-scenes thought process of the Fed Chief and what he was thinking as he chaired the Federal reserve Board and advised president after president on economic theory. As I read I found it interesting that Greenspan began working with US Presidents during the era of Nixon and he has advised every one of the presidents since then… with the exception thus far of Obama.

I realize that many people blame Greenspan for the current recession and housing bust but the man is likely one of the most qualified minds to advise on economic recovery and he is uniquely separated from the brothel that is investment banking. Currently our economic leadership in government is tied so closely with the investment banks that one has to wonder just how un-biased these people can possibly be. Greenspan has no ties to the industry (that I know of at least), you would think that he and Paul Volker could sit down and school Mr. Geitner on what might and what might not work.

All in all I thought the book was worth a read if you are in to the nitty-gritty numbers that flow from the fingers and mind of an 80-something economist and bank regulator. He is somewhat dry but in a very interesting sort of way. Again; I feel as if the interest was particularly present due to the economic meltdown we are experiencing in the real world so I will cross my fingers and hope that he decides to pen a second edition with an update to his economic analysis of the new world of finance and banking.

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This review is part of a series of reviews I’ve crafted from actual books I’ve read from beginning to end. Most books I read via audio recording during my commute. If you are interested you can click through for a complete list of books I’ve reviewed.

Mr and Mrs Arend Hermsen

2009-04-26T01:37:00.000-07:00

I guess technically it's after midnight and today is now tomorrow but ignoring that fact Aaron and I went today to Sycuan Resort out in East County to film / enjoy my old friend Arend Hermsen's wedding. Ironically he married Aaron's former coworker Carrie Stone (whom I've also become friends with over the past couple years) though there was no prior knowledge of the friend of friend situation. To my great pleasure Flor also came out about an hour after Aaron and I arrived to enjoy the wedding too; it was great having her there.

Weddings these day's seem a little different to me than they did not too long ago. Since Flor and I married I now think about us whenever I watch a wedding ceremony. I think about what I was feeling and thinking during each significant event during the day. It makes me smile. Anyway, the wedding was very nice, the location and weather were perfect and the food was good. I just wish I was able to enjoy the party a bit more than I did... having to wield a camcorder kind of wipes you out.

Congratulations my old bowling friend!

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