Monthly Archives: August 2014

Musings on Athleticism

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When the mariner was young (a long time ago – Merlin was an acquaintance), he enjoyed sports and physical activity. At age eleven he favored American football and joined a recreation league for ages 11-13. The games provided an immense amount of emotional release for the mariner.

He moved on to the 13-15 league where experience and technique was insignificant but having played in the 11-13 league, the structure of football offense and defense was not strange to him and he did not have to go through the learning curve required for first time players. Playing on the team and being in the games became a linchpin of his identity. Consequently, the mariner played with desire if not with savoir faire.

In high school, he played on the varsity and simultaneously played in a 16-19 recreation league, which was against school policy but many school players played both anyway. Solely through experience, technique became an advantage. Intuition about the intricacies of game situations was often correct.

To make an already long story shorter, the mariner went on to play in a semi-pro league and at a liberal arts college. The need to reveal this history is to demonstrate that technique, experience and playing with an attitude of zealous vigor – especially zealous vigor – was enough to be a starter on the various teams.

However, as the mariner played in the older leagues, athleticism emerged as a noticeable advantage. More players had the same zeal; more players had acumen. Some, however, seemed a cut above the rest. Their advantage was athleticism – a combination of well proportioned bodies, faster reflexes, and an ability to flawlessly execute physical movement without thinking about it.

A quarterback on the semi-pro team had never played golf but when we showed him how to use a few clubs, he was able, albeit in an unpracticed way, to be within a few strokes of the rest of us even though we had played for several years. John Unitas, quarterback of the Baltimore Colts, liked to eat in seafood restaurants. With great fanfare, he would catch his own fish barehanded in one lightning quick strike with a grip the slippery fish could not escape. He had an air of physical assuredness.

Athleticism is genetic superiority. It is the final factor that allows a few to go on to greater achievement. Television brings us only the best and the most athletic. Every sport that has professional teams or national competitions is made up of individuals who can achieve physical performance most humans cannot.

All of this came to mind as the mariner watched the tennis US Open in New York. With some practice, a viewer could discern those who had zeal, who had mastered the mental aspects of play, but did not perform with the ease, physical pre-consciousness and physical skill of natural athletes. If the mariner played tennis instead of football, he would never be capable of hitting a tennis ball 135 miles per hour and with dependable accuracy place the ball within an inch or two of the sideline. Nor could he do it effortlessly. A reader may take issue, citing players in the top ten rank that seem not to be natural athletes. That may be true but the proof in the pudding is effortlessness, relative lack of concern within the physical act and reflexes that respond quickly enough to catch a fish barehanded. Non-athletes may achieve parity, even persistence, only by working twice as hard as a natural athlete. However, they will never surpass the performance of those with natural athleticism.

Oh – a postscript: the mariner played outside linebacker and retired from football at age 29.

Ancient Mariner

The Bank Bubble

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As frequent readers may know, the mariner is at once a progressive dreamer, skeptical of human intelligence, a critic of politics in general and an alarmist about the ability of international cooperation to solve global issues. Angst should be a four-letter word.

This morning I read news about everything becoming more difficult, especially in the economic sector. Since about 2005, central banks around the world increasingly support national and international economies. Each year, pressure on the banks’ “finger in the dike” grows. Central, AKA government banks, AKA the Federal Reserve Bank in the US, are leaning against global debt, trying to prevent inflation, rising interest rates, shifts in monetary value between nations and waiting, waiting, waiting for someone’s economy to grow – anyone’s!

This morning, it was bad news about Europe. The European Union central bank has little influence over monetary exchange policies between member nations. Managing monetary policy in the EU is quite truly like herding cats. As a result, the EU GDP slipped noticeably. Add to this the unstable relationship with Russia, which supplies forty percent of Europe’s natural gas, and things don’t look good. Europe, combined with the US market is the largest international economy in the world – at the moment.

Real return on Treasury notes has been dropping steadily for twenty years; inflation, around 2+ percent, makes real return less than the 3% ceiling that has been held in place by the Federal Reserve. Each year’s inflation diminishes return value further. Consequently, several investment houses have begun dumping their Treasury holdings. PIMCO, the largest investment firm, is leading the way.

What this means to national economic policy is that the US is in no position to bail out the EU. If the EU economy continues to slow, the US can only slow with them. Further, suppose China decides the same thing and begins selling its vast investment in government bonds? Sooner or later, dumping large amounts of government securities has the effect of inflation – the US will have to cover the difference between real return and 3%.

What this means to you and the mariner is that our government, in fact many governments, are facing an inflation bubble. The situation is identical to you and the mariner extending our debt but at a higher interest rate. We may not be able to pay our debts because real income is not rising at the same time. Iowa farmers in the 1970’s know all about this. The small farm disappeared under thousands of foreclosures.

Even the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China), competitors to the US-EU GDP, are having difficulty clearing the path to engage in rapid growth.

The mariner’s advice is to rid one’s debt held in credit cards and unsecured loans. This debt will prevent us from sustaining our discretionary spending as income remains static but interest rates rise. By no means extend your debt; pay it off the hard way, that is, pay down debt at a rate that is much greater than minimum payments. Spend cash as often as possible. If nothing else, it will frustrate Google and Experian, who know everything we do on our computers and smart phones.

The less we owe, the easier time we will have when our government must face the music and let the inflation dog off the leash.

Ancient Mariner

 

Is ISIS a Crisis?

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The Middle East has been a caldron of violence for four generations. This seems a long time for continuous war and political unrest. At the end of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, wars have been growing larger and any thought of conscientiousness is destroyed immediately and replaced with violence.

There is a new player on the battlefield. It is the Islamic State of Iraq and ash Sham (ISIS). It is predominantly Sunni. Unlike its parent organization, Al Qaida, ISIS is an organized army capable of taking ground and holding it. This capability enables ISIS to call itself a leader of all Islam nations. Whether this is true or not remains to be seen. In recent days, the fighters of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) proclaimed there was no longer a Syria or an Iraq. Instead, they said, the territory controlled by the ISIL in those countries was the Islamic State.

Trolling through history books (yes, the mariner has books) and searching the Internet, two ideas are repeated that reach beyond the battleground news on television. The boundaries of the nations in the Middle East were drawn in 1916 by two negotiators, one from England and one from France. Their names are Sir Mark Sykes and François-Georges Picot. The British and French controlled all of the Middle East at the time. The map was literally a divvy-up of resources based on the amount of local control held by the two countries. Whether Shia or Sunni, Turk or Jew did not matter. The boundaries were simply divided like properties on a Monopoly board. A map is provided:

Sykes-Picot map

The second idea is that Islam has yet to integrate several sects that comprise the Muslim religion. The Holy Roman Church achieved unification for Christians in the days when Popes could dictate international policy. Has everyone seen any movie about Henry VIII? Those times were bloody, too. Then there was the Protestant Reformation but that was associated more with changes in the rights of individuals to pursue new industries – a plight facing China at the moment. China needs an ‘Adam Smith’ to identify entrepreneurial policy. However, the mariner drifts from the subject.

The point is that any semblance of nationality in the Middle East is based on a dominant Muslim sect. All the nations except maybe Turkey are theocracies. There is no Pope for Islam so ISIS is filling the position.

There are many scholars around the world who think ISIS is too weak and too violent (only by modern standards of decency; all religious wars are violent). Nevertheless, ISIS may provoke unification. No doubt oil in the region is a reason to negotiate some kind of religious agreement – if only an agreement to be different.

All this being said, the common man thinks the Middle East is a bunch of fighting dogs and the world should ignore the Middle East until it straightens itself out and moves from the eighth century to the twenty-first century. For Obama and the west, the Middle East is like a fire that may grow too big to contain. Nor can one forget the oil…..

Ancient Mariner

 

Thoughts on Revolution

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The mariner is following the Ferguson, Missouri conflict. He feels there is a much larger conflict than the current troubles in Ferguson. If inequality and abuse of one class against another is a time bomb, Ferguson is the perfect example of a fuse for that bomb.

Ferguson was a “perfect storm” situation: low income town; majority black population; oppressive white law enforcement – all waiting for the spark. The overkill of Michael Brown was that spark.

What has happened is further oppression by law enforcement, causing even more rebellion, leading to looting, increased violence, a collapse in processes of government and a collapse of meager commerce in Ferguson. One cannot help but draw comparisons to Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.

Ideally, but not achievable, is to remove the cause of oppression: the police department. The mariner believes the State Of Missouri had good intentions when it deposed the authority of Police Chief Joe Belmar. However, State Police Captain Ron Brown, after making a fine gesture of cooperation, has made a wrong decision to bring in further oppression with heavy duty, military style equipment. Dressing police in alien uniforms straight out of a video game further separates police from blacks. Now, Governor Jay Nixon brings in the National Guard.

As of the census of 2010, Ferguson had a population of 22,406. The racial makeup of the city was 29.3% White, 67.4% African American, and 1.5% other races. State police and the National Guard, along with military ordnance, have been brought to Ferguson to control a fraction of 15,000 African Americans.

The mariner provides these details to show clearly the imbalance and improper but probable reaction by government. Imagine that Ferguson is first in many outbreaks caused by the inequalities of race and US economic policy.

Dast we suffer an overthrow by the likes of Maximilien Robespierre and the Jacobins before society can be reformed by Paul Barras and the Thermidorian Convention (French Revolution)? Perhaps this reference is too erudite. Dare we suffer an overthrow by Ted Cruz, the tea party and its associates before we can return to a balanced democratic society with a balanced economy? This is not a farfetched analogy considering the behavior of four Governors and Congress in response to humanitarian troubles on US borders, in many southern states and latent turmoil in under employed cities.

Meanwhile, CEOs earn 12.3 million a year – 354 times the salary of an average worker.

As Marie Antoinette said, “Let them eat cake.”

Ancient Mariner