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And here's the next article in my "series" of posts from the archives of my first ever blog. This one takes on the under-reporting of the total deaths and casualties in the Iraq War. (Which I expanded on for this article later). That war was, as can clearly be seen now, an absolute catastrophe. Yes folks, the neocons are traitors.
Alright, it's time to get a bit more serious, much more serious. As of July 14th, 2008, 4119 American soldiers and 314 troops from other nations in the "coalition of the willing" have been killed in Iraq since the war started on March 20th, 2003. An additional 30,349 have been wounded although some estimates put the real number closer to 100,000. Yet as awful as those stastics are, they are really much worse. According to CBS, in 2005 alone 6256 American soldiers and veterans commited suicide! This shouldn't be that shocking giving the revelations in 2007 of the cockroach infested building 18 at Walter Reed as well as the well documented effects of post traumatic stress syndrome. Nonetheless, it's just as horrifying. What makes an accurate estimation of the number of suicides among our veterans even more difficult is that CBS had to fight tooth and nail to get this information and to my knowledge hasn't been able to get information for 2004, 2006, 2007 and so far in 2008. This is nothing new for the Pentagon, they typically won't even let the media see the coffins of those killed in action. Still, it would probably be safe to assume that the epidemic is even more widespread today as soldiers are serving a third and fourth tour as well as longer tours. However, I will be generous in trying to extrapolate a rough estimate and use the 6256 suicides as a baseline for each year. We can then look at what the suicide rate should have been among the armed forces by looking at the national average. There are surely many demographic differences that should be accounted for, but I'm just looking for a rough estimate. In 2005, 32,637 people committed suicide in the United States, or about 0.0011%, although among males it was about 0.0017%. Since the military is predominantly male, let’s use the 0.0017% to find what should be the average (1). While the suicides are predominantly among veterans that served in Iraq, the data obtained by CBS are suicides among the armed forces, so I will use that total. Since most of the armed forces have not seen combat in Iraq, again I'm being generous. Regardless, there are currently 1,380,028 men and women in the military (2), so there should be about 2346 suicides per year. The difference between 6256 and 2346 is 3910. I think it is reasonable to attribute the increased suicides to the war, which has been going on for about 5 1/4 years. So 3910 X 5.25 = 20,528 estimated suicides attributable to the war since it began! Add that to the 4119 soldiers who were killed in action and we arrive at a grand total of 24,647 deaths. Again this can not be verified given the information I have access to and a much more thorough study would have to be taken to come up with a more supportable number. However, this is a story that has barely made it into the public and needs to be reported on more, although I should give credit to CBS who did a story on it back in November. We must also not forget the huge cost for the citizens of Iraq. The official number of Iraqi dead is around 93,778 and probably much higher. According the Opinion Research Business the number could be over a million! Many more have been forced to leave the country, the infrastructure is still heavily damaged and the nation is stuck amidst terrible ethnic strife. It's nice that a tyrant like Saddam Hussein is gone, but with no WMD, no connection to Al Qaeda, and the enormous human and financial cost, if we haven't yet done it, it's time to admit we made a horrible, horrible mistake. (1) U.S.A. Suicide: 2005 Official Final Data, American Association of Suicidology, http://www.suicidology.org/ (2) Active Duty Military Personnel by Rank/Grade, Department of Defense, August 31, 2007, http://www.defenselink.mil/
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On this episode of The Good Stewards Podcast, Amanda, my dad, Ryan and I take a deep dive into two questions: 1) Are we heading into a recession and 2) How should you invest going into a recession. These are many of the topics I discuss in this article for BiggerPockets on the inverted yield curve.
There's no way to know exactly when the economy will take a dive. But there are signs it is on the horizon. Still, that doesn't mean you should just sit on the sideline. Check it out for advise on how to invest going into a (likely) recession:
Previous Episodes
Episode 1: The BRRRR Strategy Overview Episode 2: BRRRR Rehab Episode 3: BRRRR Refinance Episode 4: BRRRR Rent I just ran across my old blog Peace, Love and Capitalism (which is, I know, a very cheesy name from back in my more libertarian days). I figured that like my old SwiftEconomics articles, I would go ahead and my more prominent posts here to better record them for posterity. Here is the first ever, titled "Why Would I Add My Name to the Blogosphere."
That is the question I’ve asked myself many times since the idea of blogging emerged in some rarely used part of my mind. The odds of my blog ever being read en mass are extremely unlikely. There are already countless blogs out there as well as online versions of every magazine, newspaper, news network, university, think tank and activist group out there. many of which actually pay people to write. I guess it boils down to something even more selfish than wanting to be read and make money from spending a few hours here and there silently opining in front of my computer: I want to do it. Perhaps this luring temptation was best put by Christopher Hitchens when asked why he wrote, "...it was sort of decided for me, I think. I believe it's true with anyone who makes it their life. It isn't what you do, it's what you are, in other words, that somehow you've always known." (1) That's a little extreme in my case, but there is surely something irresistible about writing down your thoughts and leaving them out there for everyone to see. It's strangely therapeutic. That's not to say that's it's solely a self-soothing sort of exercise. I would love to be read widely and influence people. I do have strong opinions and believe strongly our country is heading in the wrong direction and most intellectuals are off base with their solutions. It's almost as if I have a duty to fight what's happening even if it's only in an unread blog on one of umpteen blogging sites. And hey, it could be the start of something bigger. As an old Chinese proverb says, “every thousand mile journey begins with the first step.” There's one last reason that is probably the most important of all. It's often said that teaching is the best method of learning. Well I, and surely many of my friends, am getting tired of interjecting my politics into a random talk about which team had the best draft. Unfortunately, people don’t always want to hear your opinions about what caused the Roman Empire to collapse and sometimes I can’t resist. Writing solves this dilemma. It is like teaching a nonexistent person. It allows you to see your own thoughts and evaluate your own arguments. I've often found logical fallacies, blatant omissions and other flaws in my reasoning after putting pencil to pad (or fingers to keyboard). If nothing else, writing will allow me to question my assumptions and clarify my opinions. Basically it should make me more smarter. And that in itself makes writing worth while. (1) Christopher Hitchens, Conversations with History, "Conversations with Christopher Hitchens P. 3 of 5," http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/Elberg/Hitchens/hitchens-con3.html My latest article for LendingHome.com is up and it's titled "How to Buy Rental Properties 9 Steps." And it is exactly what it sounds like.
It's one of my longer pieces and (at least I would like to think) one of those essays you can use as a guide and resort back to from time to time as you begin the process of becoming a buy-and-hold real estate investor. The nine steps are as follows:
I think this is a really good guide, if I don't say so myself. Easily the best thing I've written for LendingHome.com. If you're interested in investing in rental properties, please check it out!
So I didn't listen to the entire hearing with US Ambassador William Taylor, which would mean I have about as much knowledge of that hearing as Mr. Taylor does of the Trump's call with the Ukrainian President since he heard about it secondhand. Indeed, apparently all of it's hearsay.
If this review of the sheer volume of hearsay involved in this circus by Republican Representative Jim Jordan is anywhere near accurate, this Ukrainian "scandal" (which I predicted would be a hoax) is even more of a hoax than the Russiahoax.
Sigh... maybe someday we can actually get back to debating policy...
In Episode 4 of The Good Stewards Podcast, we stick with the BRRRR strategy, but this time focus on second R; namely Rent. Or more generally, property management for buy and hold rentals. Please check it out!
Previous Episodes
Episode 1: The BRRRR Strategy Overview Episode 2: BRRRR Rehab Episode 3: BRRRR Refinance My latest article for BiggerPockets takes on the fat cats on Wall Street (well sorta) and discusses the advantages that the little guy has over said fat cats. I boil it down to three main points:
Indeed, as I note, James Randel, the author of Confessions of a Real Estate Entrepreneur recommends looking for institutional investors to do buy from as their rigid thinking leaves opportunities for more entrepreneurial buyers. Check out the article here! Well the vote on the ill-conceived Kansas City Tenant Bill of Rights has been postponed until December 2nd it appears. This just appears to be the beginning (things like this are happening throughout the country, particularly on the West Coast). This legislation was apparently proposed by a group called People's Action which wants to create a National Home Guarantee that "is the major intervention that takes housing off the market and decommodifies it." This would be done by, ...Taxing the appreciation of privately owned homes, while the 12 million new social housing units would put a massive number of new units off the speculation market entirely. The aim is to shift the paradigm—from homes as wealth stores to basic necessities. That would be a great way to remove all incentives from every home builder, renovator and property manager so you better build those 12 million units pretty quickly given And by the way, what are we going to "decommidify" next? Food? Appliances? Cars? Everything? Let's just try full communism again because it worked out so well the last time! Indeed, I've seen some chatter about that. One helpful Facebook commenter noted that "Mao was right about landlords." Yes, the guy on the far right of the following chart was "right." Uh huh..... 
In episode 3 of the The Good Stewards Podcast, Ryan, Bill, Amanda and I pick up on the BRRRR Strategy and dive into the final R (other than the R to Repeat, of course), namely Refinance. This may sound easy, but there's more to it than meets the eye. Check it out:
On this, the 30th Anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down, we can all celebrate that. And hopefully the communism is kept the people of East Germany locked in will stay down forever as well. Here's Peter Jennings broadcast from the time:
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Andrew Syrios"Every day is a new life to the wise man." Archives
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