Will Texas' new state tree soon become the cactus?

Missouri's loss is our gain.

I feel like Gen. George Custer at the Little Big Horn when he realized he was surrounded.  Modern legend has it his final words were, "Holy crap!  Where'd all these _______ Indians come from?"  In my neighborhood I think I'm the last Texan standing.  Haha!  Plenty of room....come on.  Just bring your greenbacks with you.  ;)

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Oh no!  Heaven is on fire.  Colorado is burning.  The temp hit 100 in Denver yesterday.  The virtual home I built in the mountains is threatened.  This climate change thing is getting totally out of hand.  If not Colorado, where can I escape to?

Here in Dallas the temps are in the upper 90's and the humidity isn't far behind.  The drought map shows my area to be only slightly impacted, yet the water utilities are planning ahead and already declaring a water emergency.  Lawn watering is limited to once a week.  

Before long it will look like Arizona around here, except flat.  Hardly suitable for a Chamber of Commerce photo spread.

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You've heard the ads that say, "We can get you $500,000 worth of life insurance with a 5-Star-rated company for only $25 per month"?  Not so fast.  Turns out the insurance companies are cooking their books to make it look like they have WAY more money available to pay claims than they really do.  Many of those "5-star-rated companies" aren't.

Basically they're paying excessive executive bonuses and handsome dividends to stockholders (semi-Ponzi scheme?) using the money that should be in reserve to pay claims.  They have bought $5.46TRILLION in re-insurance (normally a prudent industry tactic) from wholly-owned subsidiaries they have set up in states that have lax insurance regulation.  The net result is they don't really have the re-insurance protection their financial statements say they do.  (They would be filing a claim against themselves.)  It's all a shell game.

They say this is likely to blow up eventually necessitating a government (taxpayer) bailout.  And businesses are lobbying heavily for the right to "self-regulate".  Yeah, right.  

S

The coming "Aporkalypse"

The news reported yesterday that within a year we might be facing a serious shortage of bacon.  I'm sure that would also include pork chops, ham and other assorted pig parts, but of most concern to me is bacon.  It seems the drought has caused pig farmers to thin their herds (?), which means by next year bacon might be scarce.

Doesn't it look good?  Yum!  I love it, but since I know it can't be that good for me, I eat it sparingly.

All this brings to mind the time years ago when I tried my luck in the pig farming bidness.  I had a trash-haul guy, Eddie, who owned some land in the country about 50 miles north of Dallas.  He was always looking for a way to make some extra money, and that included raising pigs, goats, cattle....anything legal....and maybe even a few things not legal.  I never asked.

One day he approached me offering a joint venture deal.  It worked like this:  I would give him $500 and he would buy some piglets.  Then he would take them to his property and feed them, and when they were "porky" enough, he'd sell them and we'd split 50-50.   Sure, why not.

Shockingly, after 4 months and 1 week I received a check payable to me from the Bonham (TX) livestock auction for $1,154.  That's about a 400% annual return.  WOW!  

He asked if I wanted to do it again, and I said absolutely!  My brother even wanted in this time.  I briefly thought about giving him $10,000, but I really didn't trust him that much.  His could have been a small-time Ponzi scheme for all I knew. I stuck with another $500.  

This time, however, it took 10 months before he handed me $900 cash for my $500 investment.  As I had already figured out that pigs grew fast, I deduced he sold our bacon months earlier and floated himself a loan.  Sneaky, but I still couldn't complain.

I've often thought maybe I should have stuck with it and applied to the Agriculture Department for a "Not-Raising-Pigs Subsidy".  I could have started by not raising a few dozen pigs, then a few hundred, and over time upped that to not raising several thousand a year.  (Isn't that how the government works?)  I could have been a pigless pig farming mogul by now!

Wonder why when Wall Street is on fire they call it a Bull Market?  Why not a Pork Market?  Seems to me that's where the big investment opportunity is.

S