And now for a Happier New Year

by Mike Crouse, Publisher

We're certainly familiar with cycles in the logging industry. The business of logging provides repeated experience and exposure to the roller coaster, cyclical nature of this business, but nothing like we've seen in the past 12 months (plus). In tough economic times the value of experience really comes to the forefront.

That brings to mind my father's talking of his experience onboard a U.S. Navy ship in World War II when they were in the China Sea (in 1944 perhaps) and found themselves in a historically famous typhoon, that scattered the American fleet all over the sea. He'd earlier confessed that his chief concern on board ship was to wind up as "fish food," which contributed to his heightened interest in attending every religious service offered throughout the War (which were well attended by most his crew mates too).

While they had very high respect for the Captain, never were they more grateful to have his wisdom and knowledge in commanding them through those horrific seas. Regardless of whatever they felt about "the old man" they were most thankful to have his experience at the helm when their lives and futures were on the line.

Similarly in this economy, it has been a trial for every phase of any business that operates within the various markets of this world and one where experience and preparation can spell the difference between bust and survival. This past year has certainly been a year of survival, and diversification, which those who were willing, able, and smart enough to see where our economy was headed, worked to reduce debt, consolidate operations, and protect their core crew taking on several jobs perhaps outside their normal enterprise to keep cash flowing and reduce unnecessary expenses.

Experience reinforces the value of anticipating what the future holds by recognizing the signs of change early-on. Rather you're the owner, manager, or member of the crew, experiences is a most valuable commodity.

Timing is everything. It's not a matter of selling when the market is at its highest or buying when equipment is the lowest in price, but buying and selling according to what you see and what experience has demonstrated to you: a very important lesson and key in understanding the reality we all exist in (though this clearly does not apply to government). It's not just being in the market, but understanding the market as well. While this is important at any point in time, it is critical in tough economies.

It's the difference between maintaining sufficient reserves over time (for business declines) and spending without reserves then selling (through necessity) when times are harsh. Wisdom comes in maintaining a balance and operating with an eye constantly on the future... and the difference between gambling and taking a "reasonable businessman's risk" calculated and thought out.

As J.P. Morgan responded when a reporter asked him how he'd made so much money in stocks his reply was, "... I sold too early." Your decision in running business is guided not by emotion but by what you know, what you've seen, and your gut instinct. Knowing when... to expand, to contract, hire, fire, accumulate capital and buy more or new equipment, and perhaps equally important, knowing which of your crew to keep, spells the difference between efficiency, and the future, or a rapid demise.

Through the past year in particular we've been told time and again this current business slump will not be a rapid but rather a slow and gradual recovery over a longer period of time. We have bottomed out over the past spring and should be looking at improved markets as we approach spring 2010... the reason why? As we heard several time from various economists that is when the declining inventory of existing homes crosses the increasing demand for homes nationally. To what degree that will impact the market in real world time we'll just have to see.

Each down market is different, unique to its own time, and this one in particular has factors beyond the normal market forces, not the least of which is the policy and ideologically driven forces of the federal government in particular.

The causes of the financial melt-down were many: regulations and regulators being out of step with new and technologically complex financial manipulations played a large part in the ethical and moral collapse of a system that had gotten wildly out of control, and meets its rapid demise last fall. That has shaken markets world-wide, which are only now regaining some footing.

Another factor was Congress' insistence on lending money to borrowers who were not capable of repaying loans. Granted, that was not the language, but that in effect was what was demanded of lending institutions. What's particularly unnerving at present is those who encouraged this behavior are still in positions of authority (Rep. Frank, Sen. Dodd, and a host of others)... stunningly, breathtaking hypocrisy.

And of course we have our Congress' current ongoing spending binge coupled with their insistence on further imposing governmental growth into private industry, coupled with the urge to punish any and all business through the combined force of increased taxation, a host of additional layers of governmental bureaucracy, and a dirge of additionally burdensome rules and regulations.

A few weeks ago we were again reminded by Pres. "hope and change" Obama's declaration at the "jobs summit" that in effect recovery was being held up by businesses not hiring more people. The media reports this in a matter of fact air of stunningly myopic Obama-fact, without a hint of understanding, even as media itself is going through a financial melt-down of its own. This administration, and congress, have totally lost track of private enterprise's purpose is to be efficient, enterprising, productive and profitable... which is the foundation of our country, our freedoms, and our way of life. In business you either serve the markets efficiently and productively or you will perish. That means your either you produce or you cease to exist... which is WHY our economic engine has been the envy of the world.

The administration, congress, and the media is so separated from the real world they truly believe business should act as government does: simply adding jobs with no relationship to those jobs being productive, which has yielded what we have particularly in Washington DC and we also see in many individual seats of government: bloating, waste, inefficiency, and an increasing staff whose purpose seems dedicated to rearranging deck chairs rather than actually producing anything.

Certainly we will overcome the current economic headaches although the process is being hindered, not helped, by the brain trust in Washington DC and the massive gap in professional legislators and ideologues understanding of what is the foundation of our economy: private enterprise.

IF government wishes to help, they need to understand that business is there to satisfy market needs, which involves risk... there is NO guarantee of a profit. If there is no profit, because you've either missed the need or cannot do that efficiently, unlike in government, you cease to exist.

Good leadership in business recognizes these factors. The challenge is in seeing clearly and anticipating how and when to ramp your company up anticipating the future. In private enterprise, these down cycles demand that you run efficiently, lean and mean, to be in position for the markets of the future.

We should start to see a resurgence of some sort as we approach the spring. What those markets will look like, for what products and in what areas is subject to business enterprise, experience, connections, and businessmen again taking a "reasonable businessman's risk" in their ability to meet the markets of that future.

Should governmental leadership have the courage to actually encourage rather than punish free enterprise, they can serve a positive role. Unfortunately we suspect that a business recovery will be in spite rather than as a result of government intervention.

Chicken Little in denial

As the fever pitch pushing towards the Copenhagen Climate Conference neared its peak for the event at which the "true believers" had hoped to cap off a 30-lear long campaign that had the potential of literally changing the world for generations, and arguably not to the benefit of mankind, but most assuredly to the benefit of several groups with a "stake" in the outcome... from NGO's (non-governmental organizations), to academics, a host of governmental entities and new-world-order devotees.

Then appeared private emails gleaned from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, where a good deal of the "climate-change" research and information has been generated from. They, in effect, outlined the contrived and spun nature of the research, and the data, which has been used to construct the "man-caused" premise of the world-wide climate change hysteria most publicly noted by Mr. Wizard himself, our beloved former Vice President Al Gore.

While it's been side stepped by media lackeys, the financial and other world journals have noted this fiasco of deceit, which essentially was allowed to prevail due strictly through media hype, and the large number of institutions who found a fat trough of money available if they simply joined the band.

The real question in global warming is not that its occurring (which it has the past 600 years since the Little Ice Age) but what can be done about it. Should it be studied: absolutely, and it has been. But herein the train appears to have left the track, by not just ignoring but purposefully distorting and shaping the data from legitimate scientific inquiry, and painting a picture to match pre-conceived goals.

There was a period of time preceding the Little Ice Age that reflected those very ideals as well: it was called the dark ages. There anecdotal evidence was used to support preconceived notions of how the real world worked, where hope replaced research, and selective use of factoids, with little or no support in the real world occurrence, was blindly accepted without challenge.

Acceptance of the Scientific Method is credited to Roger Bacon (1214-1294), who in turn applied what he'd drawn from the writing of Muslim scientists, which described a repeating cycle of observation, hypothesis, experimentation and verification. In essence, this is what you see, you establish an explanation then experiment, collecting data, which ultimately reveals the real world, and you verify, and repeat those tests to assure what you have is reality rather than an anomaly.

The scientific method is the cornerstone of modern science. Data IS reality, and making sense of that data: ALL THE DATA is what reveals what is real and what is imagined.

The problem with the "man-caused" global warming argument appears to be in the details... where science and scientific exploration presents what our natural world is. If the data is contaminated, skewed, massaged, reversed, or simply ignored, you have what most would describe as "bad science," wherein wishful thinking and preconceived notions prevail.

We don't expect this to be the end of the debate... far too many hands are wallowing in the trough of power and public money for it to go quietly in the night.

There is no doubt it is to our benefit to understand the natural world in which we live, regardless of how that data demonstrates it to be. But to take and knowingly, purposefully alter the picture for whatever reason is damnable. Not only does it make for terrible public policy, it burdens future generations with false goals based on a methodology from the dark ages. Ask yourself: do we really wish to return to the days of witch burnings and human sacrifice? We'll pass, thank you.

Newspeak revisited

The life and times we live in brings to mind a book I'd read back in high school, George Orwell's "1984," published in 1949. The work of fiction was a fairly dark vision of the future featuring central world government control, the loss of individual identity, in a very different world order, where good and evil are relative terms.

Similarly it never ceases to amaze how casually terms are thrown about, and how their meanings are not absolute but very vague... being morphed in an attempt to confuse rather than clarify your meaning.

Progressive, for instance, has been used in parallel with individual freedom, responsibility, and accountability in establishing a level playing field, with laws, rules, and regulations designed to accomplish that end.

Thus progressives are also aligned with another term lost to vagueness: tolerance. Tolerance typically has meant not necessarily agreeing with but accepting and listening to other points of view. As it is currently used in reality, tolerance is accepting the view of those who agree with media, and government largess, and dismissing all other points as uninformed if not abysmally stupid.

Similar misleading and nebulous language has become commonplace when used on public budgets, incomes, and expenses. Whereas the terms increase and reduction was used to frame the amount spent or cut compared to the previous year, this too has been morphed in a manner only attorneys could refer to as "crafting" by complicating the language with a nice twist. Thus if the budget item had been projected to increase 10%, and instead was increased only 6%, that increase in a budget item would be publicized as a "cut" in spending, when in fact it was not.

Is it any wonder the general public is confused as to what goes on in government? The reason is clear where the language fails... the goal is to confuse, not enlighten.

This is how we hear explanations from Washington DC that may pass for progressive, and modern, (such as the recent "stimulus" package being responsible for creating and SAVING a certain number of jobs) that are in fact sheer spin and bluster. In past generations we had a media who would call attention and shine light on such linguistic alchemy, but when the same media sees themselves as the news rather than reporting the news, any hope of enlightenment goes up as so much hot air. Such open deceit does not make for a healthy debate, and in fact serves to stifle that very debate by confusing for the sake of one side's prevailing over another... good politics, horrible public policy for which we and future generations are paying.

Presently the elected class and policy makers are so busy defending their public policy turf they succumb to the temptation of miss-speak, obscuring the purpose, writing in vague terminology, and attempting to cover their folly with volumes of paper and reports carefully sculpted and presented in volumes so massive that in fact few, if any, have actually read, let alone understood, what they are signing.

Truly understanding an issue, legislation, spending, takes a back seat to the current "crisis mentality" of passing it now because now is the time! Huh? Is it any wonder we are up to our haunches in debt and spewing forth more of it with each passing moment? Thus we have the stimulus bill, cash for clunkers, cap and trade legislation, global warming, and the health "reform" presented as the crisis de jour that requires immediate (read "any" action) for the sake of appearance, and we'll worry about the details later.

Had the Continental Congress gone about business in this fashion, we'd still have the Union Jack as our flag, and enjoy tea for lunch. The cure for this bastardization of language so prevalent in our politically correct times is the light of public attention being cast on the practitioners of newspeak.

The entrenched "national media" appears to be so hopelessly mired in being opinion driven rather than actually reporting a story; we have little sympathy for their rapidly declining future and fortunes. The hope, we feel, comes from the more local media who have to live with their work, and the vastness of the internet in generating an array of sources and thus views. Where this will play out in the long run is too early to tell, but overall the press, particularly the entertainment media of TV, cable and radio of today would make principled journalists and chroniclers of history turn over in their grave. We need to return to clear language, with clear meaning, to convey our times as they are, not as one ideologue, pundit, or another would want to spin it.