Back in the Saddle

Ahhhhh ... home again.

Rome is a great, wonderful place to visit. The city is loaded with fine sites of antiquity, fine paintings and sculptures, fine food and the people are quite friendly and helpful. It's easy to get around, too, as much is within walking distances. And did I walk ... up and down the seven hills of Rome. Or at least up and down a few of them many times. Mrs. B strongly prefers walking over taxis and so I obeyed.

We had fine weather every day except some rain on half of one day. The temperatures were comfortable at 75-80F midday when sunny, which was most of the days. I'll write more later about Rome. Also, this "one city" or "one country" method is really the way to travel if one expects to do it a lot over a decade or two. Staying in one hotel and then using walks and tours to see the area is really comfortable and not stressful at all.

OK, I admit I did not live as a "common man" on the vacation. Regarding the flight, "business class" is about 90% of what "first class" was in the 1980s when I experienced it with frequent flyer miles on a few long flights overseas. So it's really worth it if you have the extra money [quite a lot, actually] or can get the seats with mileage awards.

I did not eat at McDonald's, but went into one to see. The place was fabulous with a Travetine marble floor, and sold fine coffees, gelato [a form of ice cream] and the usual foods. There were places to sit and enjoy the coffee, etc. Prices were high vs. Bunkerman's town, but about equal to NYC Manhattan prices. One of our guides said, jokingly, that churches and McDonalds were everywhere in Rome. But I asked and the Vatican state has no McDonald's.

Markets

I hear that AIG re-invigorated the financial bears ... sigh. Why did anyone believe that company ? They can manufacture whatever numbers they wish from the bag of assets.

The S&P is about where it was when I left for Rome. Hope all enjoyed the beefer ping-pong games.

Core CPI is at 2.3% year over year - very low inflation. The BLS has it right. Energy and food prices rises are purely supply and demand related. Energy price increases are due to the emerging market demand bumping into no new supply growth. Food is weather-related and idiotic US ethanol policies.

The monetary base is growing about 1-2% - there is no money fueled "inflation". The Fed should really force that to grow faster to accomodate growth.

Word of the Day

"Moloch" - noun [$10]
Moloch means 1a. a Canaanite idol to whom children were sacrificed; 1b. a tyrannical object of sacrifices; 2. a grotesque spiny slow moving Australian lizard.
Sentence: [from "Shah of Shahs" by R. Kapuscinki, pg. 64 - a really fine book, ref the corruption of the Shah of Iran in the 1970s] "As prices rose, the bribes got bigger and ordinary people complained that more and more of their earnings went to feed the moloch of corruption."