Longterm Chart: Gold vs. Dollar

Click on the picture of the chart above to see it expand. This is a Long Term Japanese Candlestick chart showing you how Gold has fared against the US Dollar since the Federal Reserve started flying over the USA and dumping dollars from helicopters.

Unsavvy investors spend way too much time demeaning other people who advocate "hedging" their portfolios with gold. Those of us who buy gold and gold stocks as a hedge are derisively called "Gold Bugs". (If that's the best perjorative you call me, you don't even get my attention.)

I advocate purchasing real gold coins and purchasing select gold stocks.

Since 2003 I've been a buyer of gold. One of my core gold stocks, Goldcorp (NYSE: GG) is a double since purchasing 100 shares in 2003.

My American Gold Eagle Proof coins have more than doubled in value in two years time. These I bought directly from the US Mint in 2005 and 2006.

I use the above Japanese candlestick chart as a picture which updates monthly and tells how my gold is faring against the US Dollar. All I need to know is gold still on the upswing, going up that blue trendline you see on my chart? It's a very simple concept: gold is winning against the dollar? Buy gold. Gold breaks through its longterm trendline of support? Sell gold.

Boomers Dying to Live During Retirement: Can You Afford to Retire?

Absolute MUST SEE TV plus updated MUST READs on the website:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/retirement/view/

This is a look at how middle class workers in America are finding they will have to work more years for less pay with fewer benefits.

Especially hurtful to watch is the saga at United Airlines where bankers, management and the new CEO walked away with millions based on new bankruptcy laws which gave them "Superpriority" claims to any money unleashed through bankruptcy.

(“Superpriority” claims allow CEOs and management to be treated as Super-mortals who require safety and no risk to their own pay and pensions while cutting the pay and benefits of Lesser Mortals, i.e., the working class stiffs loading the underbellies of planes, standing on their feet all day taking abuse at ticket cues, fueling and maintaining airplanes, etc.)

In segment two, for instance, we learn that bankers and lawyers walked away with $400 million in cash after United comes out of bankruptcy. We also discover the new CEO, Mr. Tilton, made sure his pension was shunted into a protected pension plan while his workers were fooled into working 2 1/2 years during the "workout" of bankruptcy as their pensions were slashed.

United workers have taken big paycuts. You will see and hear many a story of loyal longtime United workers who are now on the short end of a stick, learning what loyalty gets you in the end: benefits were slashed with workers picking up more of the costs. Longer hours must be worked. And the worst thing one worker says is the uncertainty of not knowing whether she will be working for United into retirement.

Meanwhile, United executives and bankers were paid bonuses for staying on with United during the “workout”.

Watch this investigative piece and witness a bigshot banker literally pull his collar to let out embarrassing steam when the Frontline host asks a hardball question whether CEO Tilton's "pension" was given preferential treatment and protection while workers were required to give up one thing after another. The banker stumbles in his answer and looks like a greedhead prevaricator protecting the guilty, which he is.

The program begins with a former United mechanic who retired at age 55. He tells how United patted him and other workers on their backs while calmly goading them to take retirement early. Now this ex-mechanic cannot retire. He and his wife live in a trailer. He drives an 18 wheeler to make ends meet simply because his pension from United was not protected like CEO Tilton's.


The Do It Yourself 401k Retirement

Part Three of this Program focuses on the new retirement hope which replaces the company pension all across America: The Do It Yourself 401k Retirement.

This is where it really gets interesting as this shows you how a national social security plan where individuals (with little investment knowledge) direct their retirements and end up hurting themselves in retirement.

Frontline visits National Semiconductor down in Dallas . . . which we are told . . . has one of the best 401ks in the nation.

We meet the company's Benefits Manager.

National has been aggressive with promoting its 401k with employees. They have achieved an incredible 90% participation in their company plan. They went beyond the typical company, dollar for dollar match, in 401ks. The company raised their match level to $1.50 put into an employee's 401k for every $1.00 the employee put in.

Sounds good, right?

National has mandatory meetings with 401k "Managers". National goes to great length to educate their employees on retirement.

We eavesdrop on a meeting where a rep from Fidelity Mutual Funds is explaining different funds. He tells the employees straight up that the way to invest is entirely up to them. They are "in the driver's seat" . . . and many of them do not look like they are happy to be driving.

You can see many of them are puzzled and frightened.(I stopped the video here and multiplied this room by tens of millions of mixed up Americans being asked by stock brokers, bankers, and other sharpies to “direct their own retirements.” You know who ends up richer and who ends up broker in this scenario.)

Then we meet two National retirees living nearby the plant in Dallas.



Some Do Okay Investing on Their Own . . .

The first guy we meet is a former customer tech rep. This guy is surfing his portfolio on Yahoo during his segment. He did his own personal research on the computer. In short, he's smart and savvy like many sharp investors who learn to invest on their own on the Motley Fool website.

(By the way, if you are a novice investor looking to learn what are the very best, safe, big cap stocks to buy for your retirement or regular accounts, go directly to a discussion board on Motley Fool called "The BMW Method Board." When you get there, lurk for a week or so before tagging the board with questions. To become a member of Motley Fool's discussion board which allows you ask those questions, the cost is something like $29.00 per year. It's the greatest community of individual investors on the planet connected by the Internet and I highly recommend one and all to become a member today if you are not already a member.)

The 401k was made for this former customer tech rep, an Engineer graduate with a Masters in Business Administration. He was making more than $90,000 a year. After 14 years, he built up a portfolio balance of $450,000 for his retirement.

. . . While Others Can't Seem to Master Just the Basics of Investing

The next retiree is a guy who lives in a smaller home with his wife. This guy is the face of what I would expect to be the average American who is told to direct their own 401k.This sad looking gentleman was a $50,000 a year Equipment Technician. During 16 years at National Semiconductor, he "faithfully funded" his 401k plan.

His "assumption" was, that at age 65, there would be this one big lump sum of money that he could take out of his 401k, then put into his bank, for "whatever".

Unfortunately, this did not happen.

The market bombed two years before this guy's retirement.

At one point, the maximum in his 401k was $120,000. The wife said, "That was our goal". When the market dumped, that $120,000 became $45,000. They built that $45,000 back up to $64,000. And then on the day this former Equipment tech drew out his money from the 401k, there was only $52,000.

It gets worse.

This middle class guy had debts to pay. (Think about how we are now a nation of negative savers living on borrowed debt.) Then he got hit by the government with a tax bill when he cashed out the 401k in a lump sum.

You learn quickly that this guy . . . as nice a fellow as he is . . . was no financial whiz kid and that he was simply going on the little bit of information he understood clearly to prepare for his life in retirement.

Wait. It still gets worse.

So, after everything was said and done, he wound up with about $26,000 at retirement from National Semiconductor.To make ends meet, he had to take on a couple of jobs. His wife works now. The jolt of reality smacking this couple in the face made this guy do things like sell off his beloved gun collection for $12,000. As he relates, this "was a hobby of mine since I was about 8 years old."




Experts Take a Closer Look at This Financial Cancer Called "Yield Disparity

The Frontline investigator became curious as to why these two National Semiconductor retirees had such different results from their 401k plans. In Dallas, the reporter meets up with a corporate benefits consultant who has the answer.

Originally, this corporate benefits consultant was a big believer in the self-directed 401k. But by the mid-1990s, he began to see troubling differences in employees results in the 15 corporate 401ks which he helped to oversee.

This specialist in corporate benefits dug deeply into every single plan he helped oversee. He investigated yields for every single worker in every single plan. No one in a plan was overlooked.

He saw the same thing over and over at all 15 companies:The bottom 20% of the plans had an average return at the end of the year of 4%.The top 20% would be anywhere between 20-28% return.

In every case, those at the Top 20% not only had the most investment income (that is they put more into their plans) . . . they also had the highest average annual pay.

The lowest 20% had the lowest annual average pay. And they had the lowest returns on investment.

Those with the most investment savvy and money to invest for retirement were in the offices directing the worker bees. The best paid people were getting richer in their retirement plans.

Those with the worst retirement results were the guys and gals who not only received less pay, but they were not schooled in investing.

Hence, middle class workers are falling way behind in self-directed 401ks.

This consultant calls this self-directed 401k "Yield Disparity" and a "Financial Cancer" in this 401k movement.

This yield disparity was everywhere he looked. He said this financial cancer will destroy what would be an ordinary opportunity to retire with dignity. He tells you the middle class worker "cannot get there from here.

"This is a national crisis," he forewarns.

Yet there is an even more scary fact than investing for yourself in a company 401k plan: half of all Americans are not covered by any retirement plan.

Only 40% of Americans are enrolled in some kind of self-styled 401k styled plan.

According to the Federal Reserve, the average family's retirement account balance is only $29,000. Mind you, that is not a figure for individuals. The Fed says "family retirement accounts" . . . on average . . . have only $29,000 at this time. And keep in mind this figure is the "average" for those families who have any kind of retirement savings at all.

This $29,000 "average" does not include all the goose eggs in retirement savings from the 60% of Americans with no 401 retirement type savings plans at all.

Furthermore, it's not just average Americans who have trouble making the 401k plans work well. Not all highly educated people were schooled in investment planning, financing, banking, or accounting.



A College Professor Afraid of Directing Her Own 401k

Our Frontline reporter interviews a professor from a Boston college.

She relates that she has made many mistakes herself in her own 401k.This educated woman lives a busy complicated life. Planning and "saving for retirement is a really hard thing to do."

As she explains, everything that can go wrong usually does go wrong.

As the Professor tells it:The individual has to make a choice every step along the way and stay full aware of where their retirement is and how it is doing.

For instance, you have to decide:

• Whether to join the plan?


• How do you contribute?


• How do you allocate those contributions?


• How do you change those allocations over time?


• What to do when moving from one job to another?


• You have to think what to do about your last company's stock?


• And the hardest thing to think about is "What do you do at retirement when somebody hands you the check form your 401k plan? How do you figure out how to use this money over your retirement span?"

Mind you, readers, these questions and points are made by a college professor who is obviously worried about her own retirement.

How Much a 65 Year Old Retiree Needs to Survive To Age 82

Our investigative reporter then visits the Employee Benefit Research Institute . . . a leading think tank on employee issues. This Institute is not using small samples of 401ks around the country to formulate their opinion on what Boomers should expect at retirement.

The Employee Benefit Research Institute has data on about 16,000,000 401k participants from about 45,000 401k plans across America.

The head researcher says in the current batch of retirees. . . ages 60 to 65 today and the last of the generation preceding the Baby Boomers into retirement . . . those who earned $40,000 to $50,000 per year have on average about $125,000 saved in their 401ks.

When asked how long that would last in retirement, the research said, "About 7 or 8 years . . . and then you would have to rely on Social Security entirely."

Question: What is life expectancy if you retire at 65?

Answer: At 65, the average life expectancy is another 17 years.

So we are talking a gap of 10 years or so where these retirees will be down to just social security levels.

The Retirement consultant says workers need to really save up about 8 times their average pre-retirement salary.For that, you need to sock away a lot more than most people are doing.

This specialist is telling us you need to put in about 14 to 15% of your life's salary for about 30 years in a row to retire happily.He does state, "combined employee/employer deposits, that is correct." (Meaning a worker would contribute 7 to 7 1/2% to his 401k which would be matched by their respective company.)

The famed retirement benefits consultant puts the figure even higher. He says 15 to 18% of pay should be put away. (Or the employee/employers toss in 7 ½ to 9% each on payday.)

Whatever the case, Middle class America heading into retirement now is in for a rough ride.

The biggest problem is low participation.Masses of workers have no plans whatsoever.

Even those who are offered one do not put in enough money.

Between 25 to 30% of people offered 401ks, do not join the plans.

Of the possibility of contributing the maximum? Less than 10% of workers in plans do that.

Another problem is "leakage".

Too Often the 401k plan Becomes the "Rainy Day Plan".

Half the people, who move form one job to another, take their money out of their 401ks. They might use it for further education. They might use it for a downpayment of a house.

But it means it's not there when they come to retirement.Add to all this the difficulties normal Americans have in doing their own investing.(Boo-yah, Jim Cramer, what should I buy today?)

At the end of Segment 3 of this Frontline special, the sharp retirement benefits consultant tells of a common question he pops on CEOs and CFOs at all 15 firms he helped to oversee.

The setting: he is meeting in private with the CEO or CFO. An underling would come in with coffee and doughnuts, a document needing an immediate signature, whatever. After the underling would leave, this guy would ask the CEO or CFO, "Mr. So and So, would you let that fellow who just left this room direct your own retirement plan?"

And as usual, the incredulous bigwig would look aghast at this consultant and say things like, "Of course not you big dummy. Don't they teach you anything down in Texas? I wouldn't allow him near my account with a ten foot pole."

To which the consultant would respond, " . . . but your force your employees to direct their own?"

I've given you pretty much the transcript of Segment 3, which is the most eye opening warning shot about Boomers going into retirement without enough preparation for the New Reality.

The whole series is worth watching today, right now, at this very moment.

Segment 4 explains how the 401ks came about and how they originally were not plans for retirement for average Americans when passed legislation in 1978.

Watch this entire Frontline special and shake your head.There are no commercials. You will be able to view this in an hour.Do this for yourself and your family.And then put on your thinking cap.How do you get there from here?

Thinking Locally and Seeing Nationally

And also think with empathy about all those you work alongside who have no retirement plans whatsoever, who don't have the smarts to self-direct a 401k if offered one, who have not dental or health insurance.

In Key West alone, I know of no bartenders or waitresses or security guys or strippers or maintenance men or janitors or room attendants or cab drivers or barkers or fishermen or shrimpers or captains of fishing boats . . . and on and on . . . who receive any kind of retirement benefits help. In fact all of the above just mentioned do not receive any medical or dental.

Go into any bar in Key West and ask any of the above mentioned workers what they have done for retirement or what happens when they have a medical emergency. Ask any taxi driver what kind of retirement plan they have. Ask the bi-lingual maids and cleaners of hotels how they expect to retire. Ask a toughened fisherman what he's doing for retirement. Ninety percent of these people have nothing saved for retirement.

Multiply Key West's population (28,000) by 1,100 and you get a feel for what this Nation is like.

We are not prepared to retire. More people will be forced to work during their "Golden Years".

And this could get a whole lot worse if the Ponzi Scheme of Credit Manufacturing comes tumbling down and leaves America begging for scraps from Creditor nations who tell us, "Enough is enough. No more EZ Credit for you Debt Addicts. We're turning in our dollars for more of your assets and for safer currencies. You guys are going a diet. Good luck to you suckers who lived beyond your means for too too long."

In the near future, I will be looking at the issue of deflating prices on homes . . . which too many Americans think of as "investments". Homes are to be lived in. The average American home for the last 100 years has barely kept up with inflation. And the real inflation rate is not reported by our Federal Government which has ample help form its Bureaucrats and those at the Federal Reserve Bank. Nevertheless, the Housing Bubble has sucked in millions of homebuyers into believing Housing is an investment which always goes up.

We will look closely at what is happening in not only Key West, but all across the nation, as the chimera of EZ Credit for millions of unqualified buyers has turned the "American Dream" into the "American Nightmare".

Yes, I'm a Pussy Man

This post is a test to see whether I can post a photo to my blog. If you see a photo of a black cat, click on it and take a good look at the most handsome famous cat on Solares Hill, Key West: Sluggo.

Sluggo is my cat. Let me correct that. I am Sluggo's human. Correction again. I am one of two handpersons who waits on the Almighty Jag-goo-wah (as Cartman called his cat on "South Park").

He is a ratter, constantly prowling my neighborhood at night, killing rats, and bringing them back home and laying his gift of honor at my door.

I think Sluggo is pushing 11 years of age, although, I'm not really sure.

I will say this. Sluggo loves female homo-sapiens.

My ex-wife, Anna, saved Sluggo's life probably the day or day after he was born.

She heard mewing under our old rental house. She crawled under that house (she was afraid of harmless Grandaddy Long Leg spiders, yet she'd crawl under a tight, claustrophobic space were rats and scorpions would venture . . . go figure) and discovered Sluggo was the last of a new born litter. The mother had eaten its young.

I remember coming home from work and seeing Sluggo for the first time. He was a tiny little turd. His eyes were slits and not open. We had to feed him with an eye dropper filled with some kind of formula Anna procured or figured out with a call to the vet.

For days, you could put this little bugger in your hand, slowly flip him onto his back, and he'd mew this very tiny voiced "Meeeeeeel, meeeeeel," while four paws cut the air.

It sounded to me like he was crying Anna's sister's name, Millie, in short form. "Meeeeeel, meeeeel, meeeeel."

Sluggo's first weeks were spent in a box layered with newspaper and towels. I remember we kept that box on an ironing board in this tiny room which served as junk/storage/ironing room.

Before meeting Anna in Richmond, VA way back in 1987, I never really liked cats. And then she introduced me to this cat of hers, "Taz", who was very cool to me, but who got my sympathy when I found out Anna's old roomate did not care for him.

I started talking to Taz when Anna and her roomate weren't listening. And Taz would allow me to scratch his head for a short bit.

I can't remember Anna's old roomate's name, but I remember her shutting Taz out in the cold several times by shutting this window that Taz would use to enter their rental house.

One time, I went over to Anna's house. She was not home. Nor was her roomate. Taz was locked out in the cold. And there was snow on the ground. I remember it was below freezing and although Taz had a nice thick coat of fur, he was shivering when I picked him up. I could see that Anna's roomate had locked him out in the cold as some kind of punishment.

I had this old beater of a car, a ragtop whose ragtop was mostly duct tape and which ran like crap . . . but it had a fabulous heater. So, I put Taz on the front seat next to me. And off we drove to the convenience store nearest Anna's house.

When I got to the Convenience Store, I ran in and bought Taz some cat food. Taz lay perfectly still on the seat with the heater blowing on him, last I saw. I left the car running to keep him warm. There was a slow moving line in the store. I probably looked at a magazine or something and didn't pay attention to my car in the parking lot. When I came out with the bag of Meow Mix, I opened the creaky door and realized Taz was gone!

Oh shit. My hair follicles filled with ice. This was Anna's "Baby". I looked about the car, under the seat, behind the seat, no Taz. And then I looked at one of the sides of this old decrepit ragtop which had been taped with duct tape and I see Taz's most probable exit of the car: duct tape had dropped from one of the holes which was big enough for my head to fit through.

This Convenience Store was on a very busy thoroughfare called Staples Mills Road in Richmond's (Virginia) West End. And as I was running around like a crazy man behind the store and on its sides, I began to feel panic. I remember thinking, "If Taz runs out into the street and is run over, I am dead too."

I run back around to the front of the store. No Taz. And this is before cellphones so I can call my dad and mom to come help me look immediately. Both payphones at the store were out of order. I remember that. And I'm thinking "Time is of the essence."

So I do one more run around the store. No Taz. Then I hear a voice coming from this garage/empty lot. A guy is yelling at me, "Hey, are you looking for a cat?"

"Yes, is he over there?"

"Nope, he's in that field, I saw him run from a guy in that parking lot who was trying to pick him up," and he points back at the Convenience Store parking lot.

So, I missed all that. Possibly a Good Samaritan, possibly a catnapper! But Taz had run away.

Now I had the right field, which was overgrown with bramble and was filled with trash, snow, slush, and odd hunks of big machinery. I see some tracks and try to follow them, but there is so much junk, abandoned cars, etc., that he could be anywhere hiding, thinking I'm the bad man in the lot trying to pick him up or something.

So I ran back to the car and got that box of Meow Mix. Then I ran back to the field and started shaking the box. "Here, Taz, here, here . . . " shake, shake, shake.

Within a few seconds I see this flying furball coming at me like a sidewinder missile through the tall dead weeds. He was shivering and breathing steam.

I picked him up, kissed his face, and said, "Ole Buddy, you almost ended it all for both of us."

When I got back to Anna's house, her dumpy roomate's vehicle was out front..

I knock politely on the door, I cradle Taz in my arms, and when she opens the door, I said, "I just saved our lives . . . I need to get Taz into the house."

So I told this woman, who did not care for Taz, what had transpired. I told her how cold Taz was and how he almost got away. She looked at me. She knew by closing the window for Taz to come in to the house, she had basically left him alone to the elements and started this whole chain of events.

Now this gal had my ex-wife, Anna, by at least 50 pounds. And most of it was in her butt. Her butt was so big it eclipsed the sunlight coming through a window if she stood in front of it.

Anyway, what I'm saying is it would take a lot to kick her ass because there was so much ass to kick.

But if anybody could kick this woman's ass, it would be Anna, all 105 pounds of her soaking wet. No questions about it. Las Vegas bookies who knew what Anna was like when face to face with a person who committed Animal cruelty would have given 1000 to 1 odds on Anna versus the girl with two 25 pound Smithfield Smoked Hams for an ass.

So, this woman did the math real quick like. And her conclusion was the same as mine: "I will never, ever close the window on Taz again, and you cannot ever mention this to Anna, or she will kill us both."

I laughed and said, "I can live with that."

And after that, Taz and I really hit it off. When Anna was in the other room doing her hair or dressing or whatever, ole Taz would come sit in my lap and look at me and say, "Dude, I had to do what I had to do. You see, everything has worked out for you, me, Anna and Ms. Thunder Pants."

Taz broke me in to loving cats.

And there were many others who stole my heart, Sparky the Great White Cat who beat every badass cat who ever came near his weaker brothers and sisters, Cassidy Cat who still lives with Anna up in Virginia, Possum who died, and the last of the crew who used to live with us on Catherine Street, Sluggo, Slugmeister, Meister, the Boy, the Man, Cranky Cat, man, I've got dozen of names for the coolest of the cool who still puts up with me in Key West.

Getting back to Sluggo's early days: he finally opened his eyes after a nights of his mewing. His paws were tinier than No. 2 pencil erasers. But the microscopic slivers on the ends of those tiny paws were sharper than X-acto knife blades.

He loved "kneading" the towels inside his box. He would "nurse" on the flesh between my thumb and forefinger, which meant, "Feed me, human."

So, I'd take out the tiny eyedropper (which may have graduated to a tiny baby doll bottle filled with milk or formula . . . I don't know) and I'd feed the cute little bugger.

Sluggo, as you can see by the photo in this blog, grew into possibly the most handsome cat I've ever known. And as our cat menagerie grew, I saw less of him. He really didn't care to be around the other cats. And he absolutely didn't care for my hyperkinetic Dalmatian, Tara.

Sluggo is a Bombay Cat. Bombay Cat's don't get along well with other cats as they want to be the dominant cat in all households. They also are finicky eaters.

Now when you open that link and look at the Bombay's, you will see the dudes who didn't make the cut at Pethouse Magazine. Sluggo is the first Bombay Centerfold in Pethouse. And if you ask me, Sluggo probably isn't purebred Bombay. Like his father, he's a Mongrel American. Unlike his father, he actually turned out handsome as all. Slug is Tiger Woods. Is he black? Is he Asian? Women don't care. He's handsome and rich and talented and focused. Women like those traits in any man, screw the racial makeup.

So, I think of Sluggo as the Tiger Woods of Bombay Cats. Some Bombays might sniff that he isn't 100% "pure", but I can assure you, not a damn one of them are going to come up to my boy's face and say he's inferior because of his breeding.

Enough about my son's looks, let's talk about his eating habits which the Bombay FAQs do not detail enough:

God help us, I'm telling you true: we bought one can of every freaking kind of Fancy Feast canned catfood and tested them on Sluggo. Only one, a very specific mix, passed Cranky Cat's muster: Fancy Feast's "Ocean Whitefish and Tuna Feast In Gravy."

Oh, and you must also make verrrrrry sure the word "Grilled" is on the label in a yellow highlight box.

For if you come home and serve Fancy Feast "Ocean Whitefish and Tuna Feast in Gravy" and it's not grilled, Sluggo will look up at your eyes which are 5 and 1/2 feet above his and meow disgustingly, "Get this inedible crap out of here. It isn't grilled. Can't you read a frotting label?"

When Anna and I used to be servants to four cats (during Hurricane Georges I watched two cats belonging to a friend, so, I had six cats and a frightened dog all living in peace, shivering, next to me as the winds tried to rip the roof off the house in total darkness. Really, that's one of the most pleasant memories I have of "All My Animal Family" getting along like brothers and sisters.) Sluggo would not eat out of the same dish those guys ate out of. He was like a gourmand in a fancy black tuxedo. "Don't serve me in the presence of lesser mortals."

In fact, Sluggo used to feed on the washing machine outside. That's where we kept his bowl of food and water. The other cats would eat indoors. Sluggo stayed outside for the most part.

Later in life, after Anna and I divorced, we divided the cats among us. It broke my heart Sparky and Cassidy went to Virginia with her, but I was gladdened so much to keep Sluggo with me on Big Coppitt Key.

The day Anna came to Big Coppitt and picked up Sparky, I put him in his carrier cage. Anna placed the carrier in the rear of her vehicle and she and her friend drove off. Man, I was inconsolable. There goes the bravest cat I evern knew. I went inside and lay down on the bed and tears welled up in my eyes and spilled slowly down my cheeks. Some of it was because a chapter in Anna's and my life was now final. But most of it was Sparky, the Great White Cat who shared so many hardships with me, who was always there, was gone out of my life.

I muttered, "Sparky you were the bravest, you were always there, man, you were the best." And I thought back to an event which was still fresh in my mind.

One day, this Big Coppitt Key neigborhood bully cat, a giant Maine Cooncat twice the size of Sparky, came into my yard. This giant cat chased Sparky's black brother, Sluggo, onto the top of a shed where Sluggo shivered in fear and outrage and hissed. (Had this happened today, Sluggo would have fileted the Cooncat. He's now a Ninja Warrior with 20 razor sharp blades on four shuriken paws. But I digress. On with the story of Sparky coming to Sluggo's aide and giving him a lessson in cat fighting to study.)

I almost ran out the backdoor, but I watched Sparky run like John Riggins of the old Redskins straight up the middle of the back of the yard as fast as he could and jump this huge Maine Coon Cat who was fixated on Sluggo.

Hey, you're not supposed to enjoy sporting events where animals fight, but this fight was sweet. You had my gutsiest cat taking on a guy who was easily twice his size and who chased his brother Sluggo. Could Sparky become the new Topcat of Big Coppitt Key?

As the fight started, I began to screw the nozzle on the hose and hook the hose to the spicket. I watched the fight caroom all over the yard.

The fur, flew. Tufts ballooned upward in the small breeze. The free for all banged into the laundry shed, under the porch, under the metal tool shed. The cats howled with rage, like wild mountain lions or cougars. The racket was as loud as the jets flying overhead into the Naval Air Station.

The Maine Coon Cat kept running from Sparky, and Sparky would tackle him again and again and would not let him leave the premises without a proper ass kicking.

Sparky attacked, attacked, attacked.

They did barrel rolls over one another, this Maine Coon Cat several times covering all of Sparky with his massive body, but Sparky, even on his back, was shredding this guy like Stevie Wonder as a guest Ginsu Chef while on speed. Sparky sliced and diced at everything this bigger cat had. And he beat the big cat in the first few seconds by mentally getting into his head. Sparky was so much smaller than he. This was not supposed to be happening.

I've never seen a more vicious cat fight in my life, and I could see the Maine Coon Cat was not going to make the fence line before Sparky killed him.

I had to end it quickly. Sparky was bleeding . . . and the Maine Coon Cat was bleeding more . . . and Sparky really was out of his mind wildcat. He reverted back to the jungle or plains. He was not domestic.

I finally ran outdoors, used the hose and a high powered jet of water to separate the two combatants. It took a good soaking too. Sparky, who hated water, at first did not take his mouth away from the Maine Coon Cat's throat.

That Maine Coon Cat got the worst of this. I saved his life by using that hose. And he never, ever, showed his face anywhere on the block after ole Sparcitus clawed him to hell and back.

When Sparky finally came out from his hiding (the good soaking finally broke through his reptilean brain in the heat of battle and he ran like lighting) he looked like he'd been to a fashion show picketed by Peta crazies who plucked at a model's real fur. He had blood all over him . . . much of it belonging to that other cat. His fur was also matted with cat saliva, water, feces, you name it. But I took a clean damp towel and ever so gently rubbed him clean while applying Neo-sporin to his cuts. He stood there and took it like a man, wincing when I rubbed a raw wound.

After doctoring him, I fed him well and let him fall asleep on a towel on my bed while cooing to him.

Later that night, after Linda came home form nightschool, he moved out to the deck under the cool night breeze. Sparky plopped down, curled up, bone tired, and basically passed out on the grounds where he had had his greatest battle.

Later that night, Sluggo, slinked over to where Sparky passed out. He gently lay down beside him. The great black cat and the great white cat, side by side. It was one of those Kodak moments that got away on camera, but which was burned into my memory.Sparky opened an eye, looked at Slug, and gave his head a few licks as though to say, "I got your back, brother."

Sluggo, without any hesitation, licked Sparky's wounds on his head and neck. It was one of the most pure moments of gracious thanks I've ever seen. A few weeks later, I saw that Maine Coon Cat resting on the front porch of a trailer a few blocks over from us. I looked at him closely. He was okay.

I felt a twinge of regret and guilt for having let this fight go for as long as it did. I could have run and gotten a rake or broom to beat these guys apart. But the fight did a lot of good for Sparky and Sluggo's growth as brothers.

Today, Sluggo is like Sparky was.

No cat can take on Sluggo. He learned from Sparky to stand his ground.

Sluggo weighs less than Sparky. But he's much faster and much quicker too.

My girlfriend, Linda, and Sluggo are inseperable. When she is a block away, his ears pop up. When she enters the gate to our compound, he jumps out of whatever box we leave around the place as "Sanctuaries" (places he cannot be bothered) and runs for the door to sit and greet her.

Sluggo jumps in her lap and sleeps. He follows her everywhere like a little puppy dog. It's so funny and ridiculous that I kid Sluggo by whistling for him as he follows Linda around the house and I say, "Come here, boy, be a good dog." But he looks at me like, "What do I want with a big stupid hairy gorilla like you who doesn't know who the real Master is in this house?"

Yes, Sluggo gives his love freely to Linda. And I must say, she dotes on the little bugger. She also, like Anna, plays rough with him. And that's why his relfexes are the best on Solares Hill.

Linda and Sluggo go at it for 10 or 15 minutes non-stop with all kinds of cat toys, his favorite being these tiny feather boas stuck on the end of a stick like balloons were once tied to at State Fairs. Sluggo also likes to shred newspaper, follow the feathers under the paper, up in the air, or go crazy crazy when the feathers are tickling his tummy, doing circles on the floor.

Sometimes, Slug will stand on two paws like a Grizzly Bear and bat up in the air at the feathers taunting him just out of reach. He moves his paws quicker than a lightweight hitting a speedbag. I can see how any rat which saunters within 10 feet of him is dead meat.

Slug amazes me. At his age, he should be slowing down, but I swear, he's the most in shape and toughest cat on Solares Hill when it comes to fighting and hunting.

And before I leave this post, I will end with this vignette.

When we moved into this house, there were two or three other cats using the grounds as a flophouse. Once Sluggo entered the compound, all that nonsense stopped. I remember we had only one cut on his head from a fight during his first week or so here. But soon, all it took was one of his menancing looks of "You want a piece of this, come on, I'm game," and bigger cats around here run like scaredy cats.

After chasing off the neighborhood bums, Sluggo then went ratting and showed us what the other cats were too scared or too lazy to go after. If our neighbors knew how rat free we are now because Sluggo is on patrol, I think they'd award Sluggo with free meals all the time.

Sluggo likes to announce a kill with a horrific meow which is never perfectly spoken because his teeth are holding the neck of a rate.

When Meister makes this one weird "Eeeerrrrrrrrrrrrooooooooooowwwww!" we know it's time for another rat offering. That high pitched sound sends the hairs up on our necks, and it comes from immediately thinking back to our old apartment which had a cat trap door allowing Sluggo to enter and leave without asking.

He brought home so many fresh kills of rats, we lost count. And then there were the "almost kills" that more than once, he'd drop on our bed.

Have you ever woke up to bloody rat scurrying across your body? I'd put that up there with waterboarding as a form of torture which would make anyone go crazy.

And having a bloody rat run across the sheets next to the Little Linda's head is like having a firehouse klaxon go off next your ear. Linda would scream Holy Hell. She'd jump on a table, a dresser, a chair, anything, while I'm stumbling in the dark, finding lights, the broom, the dustpan, and Linda's last addition to the weapons, a pair of red oven mitts specifically bought to pick up Sluggo's "love offerings".

That's all I needed in the old days to wake my ass up good and proper: an almost dead bloody rat making his last escape attempt, scurrying about the bedroom, a crazy woman yelling instructions to me, me naked, a broom in one hand, a dustpan in the other, and a pair of red oven mitts on the hands while I worried about bites to my pecker from a rabid, cornered rat.

"Sir, you are dying from rabies in the Penis. That is why it has swollen to the size of an oozing breadbox . . . and that is also why we must amputate it to save the rest of you."

Trust me, that's the kind of thing you think about when you are wearing red oven mitts and nothing else while chasing a rat at 3 AM.

This one time, Sluggo brings home a rat as big as he is, drops it on the bed, the rat scurries off below the bed, and then Linda and I have to take the whole bed apart at 3 AM looking for a rat which may have burrowed into the bedsprings, or any number of boxes filled with our junk.

(We never found that dirty rat. I think he got away and ran out Sluggo's cat door.)

Meanwhile, Sluggo sits on a chair looking us over. He's the overseer of the tossing of the bedroom and he gives us a bored look which says,"I've done my part. When you gonna feed me?"

That time, I lost it. "Come here you black bastard and get that fucking rat."

Sluggo looks, "Are you talking to me?" and notices a piece of hair, hair No. 1426 below in the white tuft of fur on his chest is out of place. Lick, lick, lick while I am rip, rip, ripping the whole bedroom to pieces to find the rat.

In the middle of absolute chaos, Sluggo, as is usual, forgets all for an emergency cleaning. "Must primp before the next episode of cat madness, doncha know?"

Yes, I love my cat. Men are not normally cat persons.

And to be quite honest, Linda was never a cat person until she met Sparky and Sluggo, the ivory and ebony cats who played her like yin and yang. She has the worst allergies of anyone I know to cats. Yet she suffers with her sinus problems still because she loves Sluggo so damn much.

We joke sometimes about what would happen if she had to choose between me or him. I know she would choose him. It would actually let me down if she said she'd choose me over him, as Sluggo absolutely adores his new mom. They are closer than any human/cat on this island, I'll bet money on that.

And I'll tell you this too: I'd give my life for that cat. I would. If it meant he and Linda could live, I'd jump into a torrential flood to save him, or go back into a burning house to find him. That guy means that much to me, and it means much more to me that he means so much to Linda.

One day Sluggo shall die. I've thought about it more than once. When I had to put down my old Dalmation, Tara, I wept like a baby at the vets as I stroked her head after her very last breath. Linda had to drive me home as I blubbered and cried and cried. The female vets looked at me before I left with such compassion and maybe a dose of, "Jesus Christ, get a hold of yourself, man." I don't know. Probably imagined that after it was all over. But I know, I have to have been one of their Top 3 Weeping Men of all time at that vet's office.

Sluggo's death will fill Linda and me with so much sorrow that I will have to take off a week or more from work. And if I die before Sluggo, he'll sit, look over my corpse and meow, "Hey, mom, how about a new bowl of cat food? I don't think Dad is up to it today."

Thanks, Sluggo, for opening this flood of thoughts. You are one of the reasons I love coming home. I promise to take more photos of you and place them on this blog.

I think you should become a spokesperson around here because you always cut through the shit and enjoy life. Let's post this and see if your photo comes out. If it prints on my blog, know that I am honored your photo is number one.

p.s. This will not be spell checked as I am too tired. I really wanted to test the way to post photos. I am hoping this works. Fingers crossed.

Is It Better to Rent or Buy: Cool New Calculator from the New York Times

I rent a house in Key West for $1,900 a month. Before I show you a calculator which tells me to always rent this home for the next 30 years instead of buying, let me make a few points about this place:

• This house (really a one bedroom cottage) is in a very quiet compound of three houses behind a gated wall. All three houses have access to a community pool.
• This house has a washer/dryer on premises on a deck out back. Alone, my girlfriend and I are saving about $100.00 monthly in former laundromat fees. Also, we save on time and gas expense for the car needed to transport the wash to the Laundromat.
• The lights to the pool are tacked onto our electrical bill and although we've put the lights on a timer, our landlord still allows us to subtract $75 a month from our $1900 rent for the electricity which we feed the pool lights at probably $25 a month. So, in essence, our rent is really $1850 per month.
• This house is located close to the top of Solares Hill. Should we have flooding again in Key West due to hurricanes, we will not need to worry about our car being destroyed. Hence, we are keeping the high deductible which lowers our insurance. Also, renter's insurance is lower.
• Since we now live one block from Duval Street, I can now walk to and from work. I save the $10 in former parking fees which I used to pay four times weekly. Thus, another $160 to $180 a month is saved by this convenience.
• Lastly, we pay no insurance or taxes on this place. All maintenance is performed by a cool maintenance man hired by my landlord.

Now the reason I'm telling you all this is so you will have an understanding of how I and my girlfriend are living in a millionaire's home on blue collar money.

We don't buy new cars. We don't buy frivolous cosmetic junk like tattoos, liposuction, fake tits, and body piercings to set ourselves apart as "different" or feel better about ourselves.

We also live below our means when it comes to necessities such as purchases of bottled water (I'll post later about how I save at least another $200 to $300 a month on water purchases).

So, why are a couple of savers with no debt not buying a home in Key West when the Key West Real Estate Cartel keeps telling us "There's never been a better time to BUY Real Estate!"?

We did the math.

Actually, I did the math on a legal pad before we rented out this place and there was no way we could lose by renting.

And now, I've finally found an outstanding rent vs. buy calculator for Housing which is better than my legal pad and trusty Texas Instruments calculator.

Here are the parameters I set for the calculator and my reasons why:

1. We set my rent for $1850
2. We set the asking price for this house (on the market now) at $1.4 million.
3. We set the annual appreciation for the next 30 years at a very aggressive and conservative (in my mind) 4% per year. (This is close to the historical norm for the last 100 years in national real estate, but my feelings are American Real Estate will deflate for the next 10 to 20 years as it did in Japan.)
4. I have no idea what the current property taxes for Monroe County and Key West are at, so I am using the 1.35% preset on the NY Times Calculator. This sounds high to me, but if any of you have knowledge about the real rate of taxation for Real Estate, please let me know.
5. Lastly, I have excellent credit, but I still cannot afford a 10% downpayment on a $1.4 million home. I could do 5% for a downpayment, or about $70,000. Knowing that smaller downpayments mean a higher set interest rate, I've assigned a 7.25% mortgage rate to myself . . . which might be a lowball figure considering the fallout in sub-prime lending is now hitting Alt-A and Prime lenders.

So, basically I am being very conservative in all my picks on this calculator.

And for those of you who feel Key West Real Estate will continue to multiply annually by double digits just as soon as the "bottom" is found in pricing, I've got news for you: if Key West simply multiplied home prices by 10% annually for the next thirty years . . .this house I live in would double in price over 4 more times between now and 2037.

Using the Law of 72 which says Annualized percentage gains which add up to 72 will give you a double in price, we can find that the cost of this house should be the following in 2037.

• By 2014 we should see a price tag of $2.8 million on this home I rent.
• By 2021 we should see a price tag of $5.6 million on this home I rent.
• By 2028 we should see a price tag of $11.2 million on this home I rent.
• By 2035, we should see a price tag of $22.4 million on this home I rent.

Give or take a few hundred thousand dollars, but using local Real Estate Cartel cheerleader drivel, the Chuckleheads who are part of the cartel are still telling anyone who will listen that Real Estate is a sure fire bet which always goes up.

Now again, keep in mind the above math is done if Real Estate takes off again in Key West at a much slower 10% annual gain than the 30% and 40% gains we saw year over year during the Mad Buying Panic from 2000 to the middle of 2005.

Please note: there are actually builders and Realtors as customers in the bar I work who feel certain . . . absolutely positively certain . . . Real Estate will take off again in Key West within the next 18 months. Most of these cheerleaders feel a 10% growth rate will become the new norm since "they aren't making anymore Real Estate in Key West.

When I try to get these folks to think about my $22 million rental home in 2037, they blink at me like I am from Mars as I try to explain the simple math using their 10% annual"easy" gains they expect to materialize in the near future.

Anyway, let's get back to the calculator.

When you open it up, play with the slide parameters on the left hand side of the page.

Please note when this calculator says I should consider buying this home I live in and quit renting: NEVER.

Never, never, never.

Now, the only way this would change is if this freaking $1.4 home comes down in price. How far down?

Well, I changed the pricing of the house from $1.4 million to $1.3 million, then $1.2 million, and so on til I hit $500,000. Guess what? This calculator still shows it would be better to rent this place for 30 years.

It's not until I change the price to $400,000 that we see I would begin to to be cashflow positive in year 9 or 10 of a 30 year loan versus renting at $1,825 per month with a 3% increase in rent yearly.

I think all of you will enjoy this calculator as it is quicker than using a handheld TI calculator with a bunch of different formulae figuring amortization schedules. The slide on this NYT calculator makes this a breeze.

Check it out, bookmark, and enjoy!

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/business/2007_BUYRENT_GRAPHIC.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Canceled Condos at Holiday Isle Causes Change in Plans

This past Monday, the sharpies at the Key West Citizen printed a piece about the Holiday Isle in Islamorada toning down their famous end of season party. In the April 9, 2007 edition, an article titled "Holiday Isle promises low-key expo" the article ends with the following paragraph:

Plans call for Holiday Isle to be demolished and
replaced by an upscale hotel-condominium called Ocanos. Owner Ceebraid-Signal Corp. had planned to begin demolition by early April, but bookings are now being taken through the end of the year.

Once again, the professional reporters of the Citizen missed out on a much bigger story which flew right up their schnozollas, did a couple of barrel rolls, and flew out without one of them thinking about what caused them to sneeze and breeze away from a bigger story which was scooped by the Miami Herald the next day:

In "Holiday Isle plans an extended vacation" we read the Big Story which the Citizen reporters couldn't smell:

A weak real estate market may prove a boon to rum
rummers in Islamorada.

The owners of Holiday Isle announced Monday they were scrapping plans to finance a new luxury resort there with condominium sales and will seek a traditional commercial loan to build the project instead.

The decision complicates plans for upgrading the famously honky-tonk getaway, which claims to have invented the frozen rum concoction. And it reflects South Florida's growing disillusionment with condo-hotels, where individuals own the rooms and share in the rental revenues.

If you open that fat link above you will also read how other expensive condotel projects are bombing all over Florida.

As Astro would say on "The Jetsons", Ruh-roh!

Imagine for a moment that the Key West Citizen started digging into the whispers you hear among fearful Realtors and investors in Key West bars instead of burying their heads in the Whale Harbor Sandbar when a real story presents itself.

Obviously, someone at the Citizen read Tuesday's Miami Herald. (Give that dog a bone!)

Today, finally, two days after the Herald scooped them, the Key West Citizen is acknowledging Hard Times at Holiday Isle with their update on the Miami Herald story . . . and doesn't this story make you shake your head at what these guys are really planning with "Ocanos"? Doesn't "Ocanos" sound like a casino name? Hey, I'm just asking! But you did hear it hear first . . .

ISLAMORADA — The stage could be set for a national hotel
chain to set up shop on the Holiday Isle property.

But a decision to halt sales of the 151 units that are to make up the Ocanos Resort does not necessarily mean that Islamorada's biggest party spot will be open much longer.

Ceebraid Signal Corp. President Adam Schlesinger announced Monday that plans for Ocanos to be a hotel-condominium with units starting at $1.2 million have
changed.

Holiday Isle now will be rebuilt as a traditional hotel property, but the Greek-inspired site plans for Ocanos will remain largely the same.

Demolition of Holiday Isle, originally scheduled to begin this month, is still likely by the first quarter of next year, if not sooner, Schlesinger said, contingent upon permit approval from the village.

The decision to scrap the hotel-condominium sales at Ocanos came just a month after Ceebraid announced
that 25 percent of the project's units were under contract. But in an interview Wednesday, Schlesinger said several of those contracts subsequently were canceled, which factored into the company's conclusion that the time was not right to proceed with hotel-condominium sales.

Realtors Wag The Key West Citizen Dog

In the past six weeks, I have become fascinated by blogs which use Key West as their center of gravity. The writers of these blogs come at Key West news . . . especially that which is Real Estate related . . . with no vested interests in being sycophantic to Key West’s ruling class or moneyed cartels.

I admire the writers of these blogs because they are lone voices in the darkness saying important, unpopular (as far as the Real Estate and Lending cartels are concerned) things which could save working class folks from making huge financial mistakes . . . mistakes which could bankrupt them in the near future.

With this first official post of mine, I join the ranks of the dispossessed who see through the bullshit and pomposity of those who have forgotten it takes a community of all classes to make Key West . . . and the world . . . work.

Not all will be a rant here. As an ex-writer for the online financial website, Motley Fool, I will go so far as to be specific in my recommendations of assets which are prime for picking at this dangerous time in the National and Global Economies.

I will also introduce readers to some brilliant minds . . . friends I’ve met online and who can sometimes be seen in the pages of Barron’s Weekly, the Wall Street Journal, famous financial newsletters, or be heard on CNBC, Sirius and XM Satellite Radios, web podcasts and elsewhere.

Lastly, everything I write will not pull punches. I am going to lop off heads of the sanctified and so called “experts” in housing, stocks, politics, and so on. I will especially enjoy displaying the heads of local gaseous poobahs on pikes at the front door of this blog.

Onward.

Who Butter's Your Bread, Mullet Wrapper?

My hometown rag, the Key West Citizen, makes serious money printing Real Estate ads in its daily classifieds. They also make massive moolah running real estate space ads in other sections of the paper.

For instance, recently, whole page and half-page Yacht Club of America ads have run almost every day for weeks. I am guessing Yacht Club of America has already done over $100,000 in ads with the Key West Citizen. And that's the kind of money which pays a lot of monthly salaries for writers who will never seriously bite the hands that feed them.

When you consider how many tens of thousands of dollars emanate from Real Estate advertising, you can quickly understand why there is not much in depth reporting on how bad the local Real Estate market has become.

Yes, the Citizen does print an article or two every month giving a mild treatment on housing problems. Usually its about the lack of Affordable Housing and how this or that politician has a new idea to make housing affordable for our blue collar workers.

However, nowhere in the Citizen are we going to find a weekly honest look at housing inventory which continues to explode upward or how so many houses on the market are placing pressure on pricing to continue spiraling downard.

Yes, the Citizen prints "Good Deeds" on Fridays in the paper, but those transfers of real estate are not reporting the entire story.

Good deeds printed in the Citizen only give the asking price and selling price of a property. There are no mentions of price reductions, price increases, inventory growth, homes back on the market, etc. That kind of info is held close to the chest by members of the Key West Real Estate Cartel who can see the data but who dare not share the truth with potential buyers so as to scare them away from making a purchase.

Nevertheless, here on the Internet, there is an amazing woman, Sally O' Boyle, a former Key West resident now living in Costa Rica, posting the numbers which all of us can use to unlock the truth about Key West Real Estate.

Just check out her most recent post 4/10/07.

I will be returning to this very post of Sally's in the next few days and give you my take on what the data is telling us. You can be sure it's not the La La Land scenario which the Key West Housing Cartel is trying to push on unsuspecting buyers.

(By the way, if you are a potential investor in Key West or Costa Rican Real Estate, take the time to open a file folder of Sally's blog. Open this file folder every other day or so to soak in the thoughts and data which this Ace of a Key West Realtor ex-patriate is now sharing for the asking.
Disclosure: I am in no way employed by Sally O' Boyle. I have never emailed her or spoken to her in my life. But she's going to hear from me soon enough. Sally O' Boyle has just been added to my personal Honor Roll of Good People for her excellent writing and pursuit of the truth.)