One of many gripes about Wal-Mart is that it supposedly eliminates competition. Here in the Catskill Mountains in the hamlet of West Shokan in the Town of Olive in the County of Ulster in the declining and falling Empire State I have a few options as to where to go to the supermarket--and it frequently is not Wal-Mart, although I respect its low prices and do take advantage of them with glee.
On the same highway as the Kingston, NY Wal-Mart, which is about 20-25 miles from West Shokan, there is a store called Adams Fairacre Farms and another supermarket called Hannaford's. Both of these stores are successful in competing with Wal-Mart because of their quality. Hannaford's, for example, has a fresh butcher shop and a fresh fish counter. They have a display with a huge assortment of feta cheese and a wide assortment of Greek Olives, not quite as extensive as a deli I remember in my childhood neighborhood of Astoria, Queens but pretty darn good. Their fresh bagels are near-H&H Bagel (of Manhattan's upper west side) quality. Adams is a local chain with excellent quality as well, and its parking lot is always nearly full.
Given this stiff competition, Wal-Mart at the low price end, Adams and Hannaford's at the higher price end, how might an IGA supermarket in Boiceville compete, especially if prices in Boiceville are high because of extra travel and delivery costs and low volume?
The quality of the deli in the Boiceville IGA is the best I have seen anywhere. It is better than what I used to get at Broadway Farm on 84th and Broadway. Their store-cooked roast beef is the freshest deli roast beef I have ever had. Zabars's isn't as good. Plus, until recently they had a daily sushi display, and it was very good. Unfortunately, their sushi chef quit. But their store-prepared hamburger patties are better than Hannaford's butcher (and Hannford's ain't bad). In fact, there is often a line at the deli. In a hamlet like Boiceville, that's an achievement. Sushi in Boiceville? When I was a child, you were happy to get a Slim Jim at the Sawkill Snack Bar not far from here. Now, the good people of Boiceville don't even need to go to Woodstock to have first rate Sushi. Who worries about gasoline prices? You never need to leave town!
But that's not all. There is an even smaller store that outcompetes Boiceville, Hannaford's, Adams' and Wal-Mart. It is called "Smoked Fish and Honey" and it's on Mt. Tremper Road just east of the Mt. Tremper stop sign going toward Woodstock. Smoked Fish and Honey is amazing.
I went there on Friday because I was told that honey comb is good for allergies and I thought I'd give it a try. "Smoked Fish and Honey" is owned by a guy named Lenny. The sign in the front looks like a private homeowner is selling Smoked Fish and Honey, but when you turn into the driveway there's an electric sign in the back and it looks like a regular store, but you can't see it from the road. The driveway is very cool, and there's a car with an imploded roof sitting there because a tree fell on it. Lenny, the bee keeper and trout smoker, wasn't in but his mother is an amazing Latvian grandma with a delightful sense of humor and wonderful old world charm. She regaled us with her insights about life. She mentioned that the tennis star from the 1970s and 1980s, Vitas Gerulaitis was her nephew (I suppose Lenny's cousin). They have a Time or Newsweek cover with him on it hanging in the store. (Tragically Gerulaitis died in a freak accident in the 1990s.)
Now here's the rub. The smoked trout at Smoked Fish and Honey is the best smoked fish I have ever had. Lenny raises much of the trout he uses himself, so it is very fresh. They hot smoke it with a special recipe. It is excellent. Likewise, the ultra-fresh honey is wonderful. I bought a jar and am floored. Unfortunately, a weasel broke into their chicken coop and ate their fresh eggs, but I am looking to buy those next time. (I have to come back to pick up the honey comb on special order.)
Now, can Wal-Mart compete with Smoked Fish and Honey? I think not. No way.
Showing posts with label Lenny Rann. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lenny Rann. Show all posts
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Monday, May 28, 2007
How to Re-Monetize Gold
Lenny Rann responds to my earlier blog as follows:
Rann writes:
>"We have exceeded the ability to regulate our currency along the gold standard, we have produced too much to cover with such a scarce resource. Much that we produce are not commodities that exist in the natural world, i.e. the richest man in the world made it on intellectual property. Today, copper and steel seem to define the relationship between liquidity and commodity prices (inflation?) Please see the five year chart for the following copper producer (PCU) and steel manufacturer (SID) http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=5y&s=PCU&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=sid. Whether we are in a metal commodity bubble, I don't know. Almost all of my holdings are in metals and mining, but I am reducing my positions and moving back to petroleum."
It doesn't matter what resource is used as a standard. But the problem isn't that gold fluctuates too much; that there is too much productivity; or that the economy is too complicated for the dollar to be backed by gold. The problem is that we have increased productivity too little to merit the increases in the number of dollars.
You could use platinum, iron or silver, as a monetary standard, but historically gold has been used and people feel comfortable with it. You could use other things as well, say oil, it's arbitrary in the sense that people expect coins to be shiny. The government still makes them shiny because people feel comfortable with shiny coins. Coins could be orange, but people would be uncomfortable.
Gold is a good choice because people feel comfortable with it.The issue is whether to have a standard or not. It doesn't matter if commodities fluctuate in price. They don't fluctuate in only one direction, so over the long run there is more stability with a commodity standard than without one. The arguments against a standard are just an excuse because some people want inflation. The people who favor inflation are: commercial bankers, investment bankers, hedge fund managers, corporate executives, left wing academics, Keynesian economists, the American Enterprise Institute and debtors. The people who shouldn't want inflation are wage earners and savers.
There are many people who both benefit and lose from inflation. People who are bad stock market investors lose, because inflation causes unpredictable shifts in the stock market which make many people do irrational things like withdrawing their money when the market bottoms. Also, people are often both real estate owners who hold a fixed-rate mortgage and also are wage earners. Inflation will help them via the fixed rate mortgage but it will hurt them because it reduces the real value of their wages.
The last three decades have seen flat wages (which began in the 1970s, right after the gold standard was abolished) coupled with widespread home ownership. So the effects of inflation are complicated. The poor who can't borrow are hurt the most. The very wealthy are helped the most. Risk-averse savers are hurt. Risk-taking investors with good market timing and people who take large mortgages at fixed rates relative to their incomes are helped. Wage earners are hurt. Stock holders are helped.
The chief thing that changes when you don't have a gold or other standard is that the central bank has the flexibility to increase the money supply faster than the rate of increase in productivity. M3, the now-discontinued measure of global supply of US dollars, has been increasing at 8% per year, three times the rate of US productivity increases. If the Fed could match increases in the money supply to productivity increases in the US economy it would be ideal. But they cannot because of political pressure from the financial community, the business community and Keynesian and left-wing academics. Also, the Fed makes many mistakes.
The effects of money supply increases are felt in the long run and can potentially become catastrophic for the United States and its citizens.The shift from the gold standard to pure paper money was completed in 1972, under President Nixon, and workers' real wages started stagnating almost immediately thereafter.
According to David Wozney, a poster on Howard Katz's Gold Bug blog , "A 'Federal Reserve Note' is not a U.S.A. dollar. In 1973, Public Law 93-110 defined the U.S.A. dollar as consisting of 1/42.2222 fine troy ounces of gold."
I read on the web that there are 368,250 bars of gold in Ft. Knox, with each bar weighing 400 oz. 400 x 368,250 x $750 (approximate price) = $110.5 billion. The government stopped publishing M3, which included foreign deposits, but it is likely in the area of $11.3 trillion. That means that while the government has defined a dollar to be 1/42.2 oz. of gold, according to one observer it has gone ahead and printed 185,000 dollars for every ounce of gold that exists anywhere in the world.
Eventually, dollar holders may realize that the dollar has no validity. It has not been backed up "by the US economy"; it has not been backed up by the good faith of the US government (which has been increasing global money supply at 8 percent per year while US productivity has been increasing at 2.5 percent per year); and it has not been backed up by gold.
I would assume that to re monetize gold you need to redefine the dollar as 1/750th oz. of gold, or the current market value, and use the amount in Ft. Knox as fractional reserves.
Rann writes:
>"We have exceeded the ability to regulate our currency along the gold standard, we have produced too much to cover with such a scarce resource. Much that we produce are not commodities that exist in the natural world, i.e. the richest man in the world made it on intellectual property. Today, copper and steel seem to define the relationship between liquidity and commodity prices (inflation?) Please see the five year chart for the following copper producer (PCU) and steel manufacturer (SID) http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=5y&s=PCU&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=sid. Whether we are in a metal commodity bubble, I don't know. Almost all of my holdings are in metals and mining, but I am reducing my positions and moving back to petroleum."
It doesn't matter what resource is used as a standard. But the problem isn't that gold fluctuates too much; that there is too much productivity; or that the economy is too complicated for the dollar to be backed by gold. The problem is that we have increased productivity too little to merit the increases in the number of dollars.
You could use platinum, iron or silver, as a monetary standard, but historically gold has been used and people feel comfortable with it. You could use other things as well, say oil, it's arbitrary in the sense that people expect coins to be shiny. The government still makes them shiny because people feel comfortable with shiny coins. Coins could be orange, but people would be uncomfortable.
Gold is a good choice because people feel comfortable with it.The issue is whether to have a standard or not. It doesn't matter if commodities fluctuate in price. They don't fluctuate in only one direction, so over the long run there is more stability with a commodity standard than without one. The arguments against a standard are just an excuse because some people want inflation. The people who favor inflation are: commercial bankers, investment bankers, hedge fund managers, corporate executives, left wing academics, Keynesian economists, the American Enterprise Institute and debtors. The people who shouldn't want inflation are wage earners and savers.
There are many people who both benefit and lose from inflation. People who are bad stock market investors lose, because inflation causes unpredictable shifts in the stock market which make many people do irrational things like withdrawing their money when the market bottoms. Also, people are often both real estate owners who hold a fixed-rate mortgage and also are wage earners. Inflation will help them via the fixed rate mortgage but it will hurt them because it reduces the real value of their wages.
The last three decades have seen flat wages (which began in the 1970s, right after the gold standard was abolished) coupled with widespread home ownership. So the effects of inflation are complicated. The poor who can't borrow are hurt the most. The very wealthy are helped the most. Risk-averse savers are hurt. Risk-taking investors with good market timing and people who take large mortgages at fixed rates relative to their incomes are helped. Wage earners are hurt. Stock holders are helped.
The chief thing that changes when you don't have a gold or other standard is that the central bank has the flexibility to increase the money supply faster than the rate of increase in productivity. M3, the now-discontinued measure of global supply of US dollars, has been increasing at 8% per year, three times the rate of US productivity increases. If the Fed could match increases in the money supply to productivity increases in the US economy it would be ideal. But they cannot because of political pressure from the financial community, the business community and Keynesian and left-wing academics. Also, the Fed makes many mistakes.
The effects of money supply increases are felt in the long run and can potentially become catastrophic for the United States and its citizens.The shift from the gold standard to pure paper money was completed in 1972, under President Nixon, and workers' real wages started stagnating almost immediately thereafter.
According to David Wozney, a poster on Howard Katz's Gold Bug blog , "A 'Federal Reserve Note' is not a U.S.A. dollar. In 1973, Public Law 93-110 defined the U.S.A. dollar as consisting of 1/42.2222 fine troy ounces of gold."
I read on the web that there are 368,250 bars of gold in Ft. Knox, with each bar weighing 400 oz. 400 x 368,250 x $750 (approximate price) = $110.5 billion. The government stopped publishing M3, which included foreign deposits, but it is likely in the area of $11.3 trillion. That means that while the government has defined a dollar to be 1/42.2 oz. of gold, according to one observer it has gone ahead and printed 185,000 dollars for every ounce of gold that exists anywhere in the world.
Eventually, dollar holders may realize that the dollar has no validity. It has not been backed up "by the US economy"; it has not been backed up by the good faith of the US government (which has been increasing global money supply at 8 percent per year while US productivity has been increasing at 2.5 percent per year); and it has not been backed up by gold.
I would assume that to re monetize gold you need to redefine the dollar as 1/750th oz. of gold, or the current market value, and use the amount in Ft. Knox as fractional reserves.
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