2023-01 Dividend Income Report

Everyday-Freethought / / Dividend Income

Here is the dividend income report for January, 2023.

The monthly dividend income came out to $98.53. The yearly income total for 2023 through the end of the month was $98.53. This is the only month the math is this easy.

The income for January, 2022 was $73.28, and the yearly income for 2022 through the end of January was $73.28.

First month and I am already beating the prior year by 20%.

This is the seventh month that my twelve-month moving average was above $1,000.

The only security to pay out in January was the Global X S&P 500 Covered Call ETF. There were two payments, since the payment for December always gets paid in January. That fund usually has four months in a year where the fund has a record date in one month, but pays in the next month.

I have been studying for a certification for work. It is looking more likely I will be leaving my employer soon. Right now I do not have another position lined up, so I will have to live on savings. I could probably get by for three years on my savings. My Roth 401k would go into my Roth IRA, and my dividend income will go up by a lot.

I logged onto the Social Security website, and if I understood the graph correctly, even if I had no income between now and when I turn 62, I could get $1600/month. I do plan on working more, so that is the worst-case scenario. All I have to do is survive until then.

Here is a table with the year-to-date amounts, the monthly amounts, and the three- and twelve-month moving averages for each January from 2012 through 2023:

Month YTD Amount 3MMA 12MMA
2023-01 $98.53 $98.53 $1173.95 $1017.58
2022-01 $73.28 $73.28 $1215.96 $911.36
2021-01 $88.40 $88.40 $1258.54 $884.83
2020-01 $12.01 $12.01 $1236.27 $866.30
2019-01 $90.72 $90.72 $818.52 $583.57
2018-01 $59.59 $59.59 $819.32 $614.81
2017-01 $218.88 $218.88 $584.54 $504.86
2016-01 $237.08 $237.08 $550.81 $457.97
2015-01 $213.49 $213.49 $471.54 $374.28
2014-01 $159.67 $159.67 $335.67 $287.98
2013-01 $110.12 $110.12 $348.07 $292.20
2012-01 $188.68 $188.68 $316.66 $256.77

Here are the securities and the income amounts for January, 2023:

  • Global X S&P 500 Covered Call ETF: $47.29
  • Global X S&P 500 Covered Call ETF: $51.24

Big Jim has a principle of never touching the principal.

Painting of Godfrey of Bouillon at Mount Sinai by Federico de Madrazo y Kuntz (1815-1894); image from Wikimedia; image assumed to be under public domain.

2022-12 Dividend Income Report

Everyday-Freethought / / Dividend Income

Here is the dividend income report for December, 2022.

The monthly dividend income came out to $3,145.22. The yearly income total for 2022 through the end of the month was $12,185.76.

The income for December, 2021 was $3,408.55, and the yearly income for 2021 through the end of December was $10,951.48.

This is the sixth month that my twelve-month moving average was above $1,000.

Honestly, I have been kind of tired over the past few weeks: job, economy, worrying about money, etc. I am tired of reading about bitcon and corrupt-o-currency, tired of thinking about them, tired of hearing about them. I wish it would all just go away. As Emily Gilmore would say, it all just nonsense. Anyone who is into it is either a scammer or stupid. It’s bad enough dealing with people who think capital gains is the answer, or tax cuts are the solution to all the world’s problems, and then turn around and tell you the world is complicated when tax cuts do not make anything better. The Big Lie. QAnon. Monotheism. People who haven’t realized the only intelligent amount of booze is none. Generally the same people who are too stupid or too much of a jerk to grasp the concept that universal statements are not invitations to come up with exceptions. I need a break from it all.

In the past year I got RWR in both IRA accounts. Right now they are both underwater. I know I said we should not rely on capital gains; that does not mean I want my stocks to go to zero. The goal is to live off the dividends and never touch principal. I think some sectors of real estate will have some issues. I also think rising interest rates will help here. The plan is to hold these for the rest of my life.

I am still concerned I might not make it with the funds I have. My 12-month moving average after estimated taxes (which is not part of this report) would not cover my rent today, let alone my rent in 20 years. Granted, if I had my 401(k) from work in dividend ETFs, I would have much higher income. I know I have been saying for a couple of years that the end may be soon. I am still in that in-between state.

Here is a table of the number of Dividend Champions, Contenders, Challengers, and a total of all three for the first week of each January from 2011 to 2023. The methodology changed from 2021 to 2022, but I think it is still a good comparison. I am starting to wonder if the number of Champions will ever crack 140.

Year Total Champions Contenders Challengers
2023 723 130 348 245
2022 708 127 302 280
2021 729 139 308 282
2020 866 138 265 463
2019 864 131 205 528
2018 822 115 220 487
2017 768 108 227 433
2016 753 107 250 396
2015 611 106 246 259
2014 476 105 210 161
2013 458 105 183 170
2012 448 102 146 200
2011 447 99 141 207
2010 98 62 N/A
2009 125
2008 138

I have been looking at some posts on the Dividends subreddit, and I am thinking about going back to individual stocks. It is more likely that my income would go up. I am not clear why a dividend growth ETF would have a variable payout from one quarter to another. Granted, there are always companies cutting dividends and others joining the club, but I still think the payouts should go down less often than they do. This phenomenon is not just in the DGI ETFs that I have been in from Vanguard and State Street, but Black Rock’s as well. Granted, stocks can cut or freeze their dividends, but with individual stocks there is more upward momentum. One reason I stopped with individual stocks is that it is a lot of work entering all that information. I have a customized spreadsheet that cannot be automated, and I think most banks and brokers do not know what GnuCash is. I think most of the gain I got from ETFs was in the international ETFs.

Here are the 2021 and 2022 amounts for the securities that I own, with the differences. Yes, I know this is off for 2022. I might have entered something wrong in one sheet in my spreadsheet; I am willing to live with it.

Security 2021 Income 2022 Income YOY Change
BND 1796.89 1907.55 110.66
BNDX 453.20 163.47 -289.73
LAND 204.55 46.10 -158.45
RLI 315.22 0 -315.22
RWR Reg 0 504.12 504.12
RWR Roth 0 853.13 853.13
SDY 3616.80 3501.55 -115.25
VPU 943.49 1053.15 109.66
WDIV 3080.13 3508.98 428.85
XYLD 473.24 620.80 147.56
Sold 67.96 0 -67.96
Total 10951.48 12158.85 1207.37

I have noticed on the Dividends subreddit they love SCHD. I plan on looking at that fund, and at its underlying index. Some of them really love SCHD over there. It is almost like a religion with some of them: And the lord spoke “thou shalt only buy” and lo, the believers prospered. The sinners sold and their fields lay barren and bereft of hope. Still, buying DGI stocks or ETFs and never selling is an idea I can get behind.

Another goal for this year is to follow a few more of Ron DeLegge’s ideas: Make a written investment policy statement, and try to pick a commodities ETF.

Here is a table with the year-to-date amounts, the monthly amounts, and the three- and twelve-month moving averages for each December from 2011 through 2022:

Month YTD Amount 3MMA 12MMA
2022-12 $12185.76 $3145.22 $1296.91 $1015.48
2021-12 $10951.48 $3408.55 $1346.62 $912.62
2020-12 $10541.51 $3490.60 $1294.16 $878.46
2019-12 $10515.13 $3611.13 $1343.15 $876.26
2018-12 $6971.76 $2313.99 $1165.08 $580.98
2017-12 $7536.98 $1837.78 $913.40 $628.08
2016-12 $6076.53 $1027.76 $605.28 $506.38
2015-12 $5472.07 $954.52 $575.86 $456.01
2014-12 $4438.02 $909.86 $481.67 $369.80
2013-12 $3406.20 $594.59 $344.05 $283.85
2012-12 $3585.01 $686.10 $386.41 $298.75
2011-12 $3091.99 $514.94 $323.40 $253.92

Here are the securities and the income amounts for December, 2022:

  • Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF: $169.72
  • Vanguard Total International Bond ETF: $13.66
  • Vanguard Utilities ETF VPU ETF: $278.12
  • SPDR S&P Dividend ETF SDY ETF: $984.34
  • SPDR Dow Jones REIT ETF RWR ETF: $164.89
  • SPDR Dow Jones REIT ETF RWR ETF: $328.31
  • SPDR S&P Global Dividend ETF: $978.89
  • Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF: $178.06
  • Vanguard Total International Bond ETF: $49.23

Big Jim has a principle of never touching the principal.

Painting of the Anunciation at the Church of San Salvadore by Titian (1488-1576); image from Wikimedia; image assumed to be under public domain.

Now On Mastodon

Everyday-Freethought / / About

Like many people distrustful of Elon Musk, I have an account on a Mastodon server. You can find it at https://masthead.social/@EFreethought.

I know some Mastodon servers have “themes”, like tech, or a geographic location, some are geared towards journalists, etc. I just picked one that would let me make an account. I read somewhere that it might be a good idea to make accounts on multiple servers in case one goes down. I guess I was thinking about how Mastodon is like Twitter, and not considering how it is different.

So far I am following three accounts: journalist Molly White who writes a lot about corrupt-o-currency, her project web3 is going just great, and blogger David Gerard, who has been mentioned several times on this website.

I also found out today Amy Castor and David sometimes post and comment on the Buttcoin subreddit.

I was never very active on Twitter. I might not be too active on Mastodon.

Daily Kos had an article about possible Twitter replacements in case Mastodon does not work out.

One thing about Mastodon is that I can see the toots of people I follow, but I do not know how to hide their re-toots or forwards. Or whatever they are called.

Honestly, calling them “toots” just sounds stupid. I want to call them “tweets”, even though it is not Twitter. Granted, I thought the term “tankie” was stupid, but I have been seeing it more lately, especially as the Russian invasion of Ukraine keeps going. Per the Wikipedia article, the term “tankie” has been around since the 1950s; I thought it was new.

I may or may not post some thoughts on Elon Musk. I have an outline that I started a while back. I have always wondered how he is able to run three companies. Given how he handled things at Twitter: it looks like he doesn’t. When there is chaos and drama (living in the factory, making cars in tents), he is running things. When things are smooth, he is not involved. I have read a lot of articles stating that he is just a figurehead and there is a layer of management devoted to preventing him from breaking things.

Big Jim was surprised there are not more paintings of Hannibal crossing the Alps; you have to be pretty determined to go through high mountains with elephants.

Image “Hannibal the Conqueror, Viewing Italy for the First Time from the Alps” by Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, aka “Goya” (1746 – 1828); image from Wikimedia, assumed allowed under public domain.

Instructions For Steel Cut Oats

Everyday-Freethought / / Misc

I am trying to improve my diet. I have heard that steel cut oats are good for you, so I am going to start eating more of them.

My local grocer, HEB, sells them in a cardboard can. They are good. However, the instructions are written in a small gold font on a black background, which makes them hard to read. I have no idea who decided on that color scheme. What makes it more irritating is that some things are printed in a white font, and those are easier to read, and (I would argue) not as important as the instructions.

  1. Bring 3/4 cup of water to a boil.
  2. Stir in 1/4 cup of oats.
  3. Reduce heat to low, simmer uncovered for 5 to 7 minutes, stirring regularly.
  4. Remove from heat, and allow to stand for 1 minute before serving.

 

Given the prevalence of low-contrast text on a lot of websites (and now products), I have to wonder how UI/UX people got to be so stupid. And unlike a browser, a can from a grocery store does not have a reader mode.

The Ecstasy of Saint Paul by Nicolas Poussin (1594 – 1665); image from Wikimedia, assumed allowed under Fair Use.

2022-11 Dividend Income Report

Everyday-Freethought / / Dividend Income

Here is the dividend income report for November, 2022.

The monthly dividend income came out to $278.11. The yearly income total for 2022 through the end of the month was $9040.54.

The income for November, 2021 was $166.06, and the yearly income for 2021 through the end of November was $7542.93.

This is the fifth month that my twelve-month moving average was above $1,000.

Before I continue writing about why bitcon and corrupt-o-currency are stupid, I should mention another no-coiner. I have written about David Gerard and his blog Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain. He has weekly updates on what is happening in the world of corrupt-o-currency. I should also mention Amy Castor. He and Amy alternate the weekly report. Her blog is low-contrast, but you can read it in Reader View.

Six months ago there were a lot of bankruptcies in corrupt-o-currency: Voyager Digital, Three Arrows Capital, Terraform Labs, Celsius Network. A firm called FTX started buying other corrupt-o-currency firms, and a lot of people thought they were going to help the sector stabilize. Now FTX has gone bankrupt. The first wave of collapse brought bitcon from $30K to $20K. This wave has taken it from $20K to $17K.

Some bitcon maximalists think this will not hurt bitcon in the long run. One of David Gerard’s ongoing gags is to explain how something bad is actually “good for crypto” or “good for bitcoin”, because whenever anything happens that looks terrible, there is always someone who says “This is actually good for crypto because…” or “This is actually good for bitcoin because…”. Well, for those people, the hamster wheels in their brains are working overtime, because a lot is happening.

Blockchain is just a trojan horse for bitcon. When bitcon first came out, a lot of people who were not glibertarian dudebros asked what good is this? And the answer was: the magic is not bitcon itself, but the blockchain! For a long time you could not buy other coins directly. You had to go fiat -> bitcon -> some_other_stupid_coin. Then NFTs came along, and only two types of people thought they were any good: People selling them, and the first wave of buyers. It became a solution in search of a problem. Blockchain, NFT, alt-coins, ICO, web3: It’s all just a way to push bitcon.

Shipping company Maersk and IBM made a platform that used blockchain to manage global trade. They are shutting it down. I wrote a few months ago that Walmart is using blockchain to manage their supply chains in Canada. The vendor is DLT Labs, and their news page has not had any updates since then. Perhaps Walmart stopped using it and DLT Labs hasn’t mentioned it. Or at best DLT Labs is looking for a second customer for The Answer To All The World’s Problems. Back in 2017, blogger Tim Bray pointed out even then that we should have seen more success stories with blockchain. He mentioned other technologies that made life easier for developers and admins: Unix, C, Java, REST, cloud.

And without exception, I observed that they were initially loaded in the back door by geeks, without asking permission, because they got [tasks] done and helped people with their jobs.

That’s not happening with blockchain. Not in the slightest. Which is why I don’t believe in it.

Maybe Walmart is expanding their use of blockchain with another vendor. Given what little I know about Walmart, they would not tell anyone. Maybe there are a few niche cases for blockchain. Maybe it will change the jobs of a few (hundred? thousand? ten-thousand?) people out there. But it’s not the web, it’s not Java, it’s not Rails, it’s not cloud.

I cannot find it, but there was a tweet from someone who said if you look at the chart for bitcon, you can almost see the moment it went from a toy for anarcho-glibertarians to a speculative asset for the masses. Well, the masses speculated, and they lost a lot of money.

Bitcon is the paradox of glibertarianism writ large: Glibertarian dudebros are always complaining about the guv-ment telling them what to do. Yet they have no problem trying to force changes on society that nobody asked for.

I have been gathering notes with links and comments from various sites about bitcon and corrupt-o-currency. Perhaps at some point I will get around to making it into a blog post and clear all that stuff out. Honestly, I wish bitcon and corrupt-o-currencies would all just go away. A few bloggers and lecturers have said they want it all to “die in a fire” (see here and here). Given that climate change is already an issue, there is a chance that bitcon won’t just die in a fire; it might take all of us with it.

As Amy Castor and David Gerard have pointed out, every firm in this sector is as Quadriga as they can get away with, until they cannot.

Here is a table with the year-to-date amounts, the monthly amounts, and the three- and twelve-month moving averages for each November from 2011 through 2022:

Month YTD Amount 3MMA 12MMA
2022-11 $9040.54 $278.11 $968.22 $1037.42
2021-11 $7542.93 $166.06 $824.63 $919.46
2020-11 $7050.91 $196.63 $742.84 $885.10
2019-11 $6904.00 $126.48 $843.65 $768.17
2018-11 $4657.77 $50.86 $562.56 $541.30
2017-11 $5699.20 $560.60 $559.31 $560.58
2016-11 $5048.77 $506.98 $502.98 $500.27
2015-11 $4517.55 $460.83 $477.55 $452.28
2014-11 $3528.16 $291.27 $357.30 $343.53
2013-11 $2811.61 $252.75 $277.74 $291.48
2012-11 $2898.91 $247.99 $262.78 $284.49
2011-11 $2577.05 $246.37 $232.84 $240.81

Here are the securities and the income amounts for November, 2022:

  • Global X S&P 500 Covered Call ETF: $48.60
  • Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF BND ETF: $167.53
  • Vanguard Total International Bond ETF: $12.34
  • Global X S&P 500 Covered Call ETF: $49.64

 

Big Jim is trying to be as Captain Kirk as he wants to be. He is doing better than the corrupt-o-currency sector, but not as well as he wishes.

Painting of the Storm on the Sea of Gallilee by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606 – 1669); image from Wikipedia, missing since 1990, assumed allowed under public domain.

Does Trump Ever Say Anything Nice About Anyone?

Everyday-Freethought / / Politics

Trump badmouths his own appointments, never compliments people who were there for whole term

Donald Trump is so toxic, not only does he constantly bad-mouth people who were fired or left during his administration, he never has anything positive to say about the people who stayed for the duration.

Many people have noticed the pattern that Trump brags he “only hires the best people”, things go badly (usually a combination of the person he hired having terrible ethics, massive conflicts of interest, and being callous and stupid, and Trump saying crazy things to make their jobs more difficult), then he fires them, and then he says nothing but bad things about them from then on out.

We could point out that if he was as smart as he says he is, he would find better people. Or he would admit that maybe since he is the boss that he just might be part of the problem.

I would like to point out something else that has not gotten a lot of attention. Like everything else about him it is a sign of dysfunction. Out of the 23 highest-level appointed positions in the executive branch, only about a half-dozen were there for his whole term. Five served until the end of his admistration [Note 1]:

  • Secretary of the Treasury: Steven Mnuchin: 2017–2021
  • Secretary of Agriculture: Sonny Perdue: 2017–2021
  • Secretary of Commerce: Wilbur Ross: 2017–2021
  • Secretary of Housing and Urban Development: Ben Carson: 2017–2021
  • United States Trade Representative: Robert Lighthizer: 2017–2021

Two more served until they resigned after the January 2021 attempted coup:

  • Secretary of Transportation: Elaine Chao: 2017–2021
  • Secretary of Education: Betsy DeVos: 2017–2021

To my knowledge, he has never said anything positive about any of these people.

Recently, he even insulted Chao on his Twitter knock-off [Note 2]:

Is McConnell approving all of these Trillions of Dollars worth of Democrat sponsored Bills, without even the slightest bit of negotiation, because he hates Donald J. Trump, or is he doing it because he believes in the Fake and Highly Destructive Green New Deal, and is will take the Country down with him? In any event, either reason is acceptabl. He has a DEATH WISH. Must immediately seek help and advise from his China loving wife, Coco Chow.

Notice how he sees other people’s actions as springing from their opinions of him, and cannot conceive that he might not be a criteria in someone’s decision-making progress.

Recently Bob Woodward released some tapes showing how stupid and horrible Trump is. Trump is suing Woodward over tapes, and says Woodward is a sleazy journalist. Then why did you grant him access?

There is something seriously wrong with someone who only has positive things to say about himself, the daughter he wants to bang, and dictators. It’s like that old saying: If you think everybody is a jerk, then you are the jerk. And yet half the country would literally die for him. Some just for the tax cuts. He would cast them aside just like he did with his loyal Cabinet members.

Note 1: If you think this group is the best and the brightest, you are a poor judge of character and intellect. And you might have a future in the Rethuglican Party. Note 2: For a guy who loves to brag about how educated he is, it is odd that he capitalizes random words. I think in German you should capitalize every noun. Why does Trump do it? I do Nazi the connection.

Big Jim says that most people who brag about their instincts usually have terrible instincts.

Image of Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse by Hans von Faber du Faur (1863 – 1940); image from Wikimedia, assumed allowed under public domain.

2022-10 Dividend Income Report

Everyday-Freethought / / Dividend Income

Here is the dividend income report for October, 2022.

The monthly dividend income came out to $467.39. The yearly income total for 2022 through the end of the month was $8762.43.

The income for October, 2021 was $465.25, and the yearly income for 2021 through the end of October was $7376.87.

This is the fourth month that my twelve-month moving average was above $1,000.

The price of bitcon is just above $21,000 today. It was stuck below $20,000 for a few weeks, then jumped up to above $21,000, and since has slightly declined, but still flat. Dave Gerard and Amy Castor both think the price is being manipulated. Given how the economy is grinding along, it is odd how The Answer To All The World’s Problems is in a tight range.

I watched a few episodes of the Rational Reminder channel’s Understanding Crypto Limited Series. I have only watched a few out of order. So far I like them.

It seems like every one has a comment from someone complaining that the guest is anti-corrupt-o-currency and not objective, why don’t they have $SOME-CRAZY-DUDE on? Why should they? There are PLENTY of pro-corrupt-o-currency channels on YouTube. I have not kept track of these commenters, but I wonder if these same commenters are asking those pro-corrupt-o-currency channels to have anti-corrupt-o-currency guests. I would say the corrupt-o-currency crowd doesn’t want an objective discussion. It’s like talking to Jordan Peterson fanboys: context, you haven’t read this, blah blah blah. The hosts are financial advisors; their goal is to do what is best for their clients. If they say corrupt-o-currencies are bad, maybe it is because corrupt-o-currencies are bad. All the pro-corrupt-o-currency people are talking their book, or just old men yelling at clouds. A lot of them are like Donald Trump or Peter Thiel: rich guys who despite all their money are really angry for who knows what reason.

One commenter on the episode with Bruce Schneier suggested Greg Foss: “olearly and foss have strong personalities and have strong onscreen presence and they’ll likely overpower the hosts”. I googled this Greg Foss and looked at a few videos with him on YouTube. He does not have a “strong personality”. He is just an asshole who yells a lot. A lot of people think “loud” means “strong”. It doesn’t. Generally loud people are stupid. You can just nod your head, they think you agree, then they go away none the wiser, not even remembering what they spewed out in the first place. Greg Foss looks like he has never had an actual conversation with anyone. He just yells whatever is brain is vomiting. Can you imagine this guy meeting Alex Jones? They would spend hours yelling at the clouds before noticing each other. News flash: us quiet people can yell back when we need to. Yelling is not a super power.

In one of the videos I saw of Foss, he was going on about the deficit. I pretty much stopped there. These idiots never have a problem with the deficit when conservatives cut taxes for the wealthy. It does not lead to more economic growth, wealthy people do not expand and invest, and the tax cuts do not force conservative governments to spend less. But when a progressive adminstration comes in, oh my god, the debt!! Will nobody think of the children?!?!?! Living life in all caps makes you look stupid. Living life in all caps while sucking up to the wealthy means you are stupid.

A lot of people treat corrupt-o-currency like another speculative asset, even though the world already has a lot of speculative assets; some of them actually have cash flow. Other say bitcon is a hedge against inflation. Isn’t gold a hedge against inflation? Why do we need bitcon when the world has gold? A lot of the bitcon-men do not want to spend their bitcon, they just want to hold it. Warren Buffett pointed out that gold is inefficient: You have to mine it, then you have to store it somewhere secure and pay insurance. So you pay money to dig it out of one hole, and you pay more to stick it in another hole. The bitcon community looked at that and thought: We can be even less efficient than that. Why not just use gold? I guess bitconners really are just misanthropes.

Schneier says that corrupt-o-currency is trying to solve social problems (or what are problems for some people) with technology. The host asked why corrupt-o-currency bros are trying that, and Schneier said, “Because it would be great if you could do that.” It reminded me of the quote from Big Jim from last month: do not confuse the way things are with the way you want them to be.

First one was a programmer named Daniel Mescheder who explained blockchains, bitcon, and proof of work. He had a few points that were also made by another software developer named Stephen Diehl, who authored the articles The Case Against Crypto and Web3 is Bullshit. It all sounds great until you need to have your blockchain interact with the rest of the world. Getting real money in is easy, but getting it back out always seems difficult. It’s like a roach motel for money. Mesheder said some blockchain people want to put land ownership records on the block chain. But if he claims your land, he cannot just wave his blockchain at you. We need some sort of real-world enforcement, or some way to resolve disputes. And if you are relying on someone for enforcement, can’t you rely on them to store the data on the chain? One issue he did not mention is: what is to stop someone from making another blockchain for the same land? Diehl mentioned multiple coins. There have been some blockchain/coin companies that paid people in their tokens instead of dollars. Diehl compared this to wildcat banking. I do not want to pay every monthly bill in another currency.

The topic of immutability came up a few times. Ethereum rolled back a hack, so it’s not really immutable. The only reason bitcon is immutable is that nobody wants to roll back. But it’s all just stuff people made up; they could roll it back. The reason that will not happen is that a lot of people are invested (literally and metaphorically) in the status quo. Bitcon is just “too big to fail”. The sort of problem with the current financial system that bitcon was supposed to solve.

Another episode was with David Gerard. As you can imagine, he said there was no point in any of this.

A lot of the justifications for corrupt-o-currency are circular reasoning. One justification for blockchain is to manage “digital assets”. But nobody was talking about digital assets until blockchain. So we need the blockchain to manage what is on the blockchain.

In other news, Kroger buying Albertsons, and the PE firms that own Albertsons are paying themselves a dividend (discussion on Hacker News; some states are trying to stop the “dividend”). Per the linked article on HN, the $4B extraction is about all the cash Albertsons has on hand. The PE firms have owned Albertsons for 7 years. If they haven’t made a profit, it’s their own fault. Paying out all your cash at once is stupid. It’s like they looked at Elon Musk buying Twitter and said, “We can top that.” I think we should stop calling these one-time payments “dividends” and call them extractions, or bloodlettings. Just as there are public benefit corporations whose charters say they have to be run in a sustainable manner, perhaps there should be a type of corporation that is centered on long-term sustainable dividends and prohibits stock buybacks.

Here is a table with the year-to-date amounts, the monthly amounts, and the three- and twelve-month moving averages for each October from 2011 through 2022:

Month YTD Amount 3MMA 12MMA
2022-10 $8762.43 $467.39 $948.63 $1028.09
2021-10 $7376.87 $465.25 $838.41 $922.01
2020-10 $6854.28 $195.26 $745.73 $879.26
2019-10 $6777.52 $291.83 $822.53 $761.86
2018-10 $4606.91 $1130.39 $561.66 $583.77
2017-10 $5138.63 $341.83 $566.34 $556.11
2016-10 $4541.79 $281.09 $508.05 $496.43
2015-10 $4056.72 $312.23 $459.42 $438.15
2014-10 $3236.89 $243.87 $368.19 $340.32
2013-10 $2558.86 $184.81 $295.19 $291.08
2012-10 $2650.92 $225.14 $285.46 $284.35
2011-10 $2330.68 $208.90 $258.17 $238.44

Here are the securities and the income amounts for October, 2022:

  • Vanguard Utilities ETF: $295.86
  • Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF: $160.25
  • Vanguard Total International Bond ETF: $11.28

Big Jim encourages strangling loud people. They deserve it.

Painting of the Temptation of Christ by Tobias Verhaecht (1561–1631); image from Wikipedia, assumed allowed under public domain.

More Thoughts On Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Everyday-Freethought / / Misc

I have a few more thoughts on the Russian invasion of Ukraine: It proves that Putin is probably one of the stupidest people who has ever lived, and China should think long and hard about invading Taiwan.

Russia thought it had a good army. It did have a few conflicts that it seemed to win; granted, its enemies were worse than they were, and they usually did a lot of bombing and human rights violations (kind of like they are doing in Ukraine). But they seemed to think because they defeated weaker militaries in countries with a fraction of Russian’s population that they knew what they were doing. The Ukrainian military in 2014 was worse than Russia’s, with even older equipment, but they learned their lesson and have been preparing. A lot of people think Ukraine is more corrupt, yet somehow they are able to train and equip their soldiers. Meanwhile, Russia is sending obese and aging convicts to the front with toy rifles. If only the oligarchs could throw their misstresses’ fur coats at the Ukraine army, then this would be over very quickly.

If any leader should win a war, it is a former spy. Not because I think that spies are geniuses. Their job is to get an accurate assessment of a situation, particularly when other people are trying to mislead you. Perhaps Putin got so caught up in spreading lies in the West he forgot how to detect liars in Russia.

Aren’t spies supposed to know what the situation is on the ground? Putin was wrong about the readiness of the Russian and Ukrainian militaries, the sentiments of the peoples of Russia and Ukraine, and the response from the international community. In other words, just about everything.

The Russian gov had press releases ready to go before the invasion with dates two or three days later congratulating the Russian army for liberating Ukraine. There were screenshots of them posted to twitter. Now there are rumors that Putin is preparing to use nuclear weapons. There have been much longer wars throughout history, but from press releases to doomsday weapons in seven months is something.

Putin keeps saying Ukraine is part of Russia, but Ukrainians say they are a separate country, language and ethnicity. To non-Slavs, Slavs all look and sound alike. To them, they are all as different as night and day. Kind of like Scandinavians look to the rest of us. I have not met too many Ukrainians, but they were all insistent that Ukrainians are not Russian. But like I said, to me, as a non-Slav, they seem the same. Maybe Putin’s problem is he does not know any Slavic people. If you have any thoughts on how the President of Russia can get in contact with some Slavs, let me know. Either the few Ukrainians I have met were part of a conspiracy to fool little old me, or Putin knows less about Slavs than I do.

And let’s never forget: A lot of conservatives still think that Putin is the smart one and Biden is senile and doesn’t know what he is doing. They never look at evidence. Some pro-Russian supporters say that Russia is tricking Ukraine, and they will “release the kraken” soon. Why didn’t Russia start out that way? I hereby propose Dugin’s Law: If someone’s plans are going badly, and they or their supporters keep saying “Just wait” or they are playing Nth dimensional chess and you just can’t see it, they are idiots.

I think it’s funny that some pro-Russian people say that Ukraine is winning because of help from NATO; the implication is that getting help from NATO is unfair. Maybe Putin should have foreseen that; Trump tells us Putin is a really smart guy. If we are going to argue about that is fair, Ukrainians would say that the whole invasion is unfair. People forced to fight for their lives are not going to care about fairness.

As far as China goes, given that Russia was wrong about everything even though they have fought more conflicts than China has in the past 40 years, China should take a long, hard look at its miliary to make sure it can do whatever mission it is sent on.

Russia faced some outclassed opponents, but they have fought some actual land battles in the past few decades. When was the last time China tried a sustained conflict? I think that was the last time they invaded Vietnam in the late 1970s. I read somewhere China did not even give some of their soldiers guns, they just sent wave after wave of bodies against the Vietnamese. Vietnam had to ask to start peace negotiations because they were running out of bullets. China has had a few small skirmishes with India, but nothing major since then. Nothing as large as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Building a bunch of fake islands will not help China take over a real one filled with people who do not want to be part of mainland China. China should make sure their equipment works, their food is less than a decade old, and not send their elderly to an unwinnable war.

It is amazing to me that people who call Ukraine “the Ukraine” will call The Hague just “Hague”. I don’t know why there is a city with the definite article. Perhaps there were professional wrestlers in medieval Europe.

“Ladies and gentlemen, weighing in with a population of half a million, the International Court of Justice, and several multi-national corporations, give it up for….The Hague!!”

“We’re The Hague, and we’re gonna kick Rotter-god-dam’s ass!!”

Big Jim says: Do not conflate the way things actually are with the way you want things to be. Reality has better stamina and determination than you do.

Painting by 13th-14th century Italian painter Rinaldo da Taranto, image from Wikimedia, assumed allowed under public domain .

2022-09 Dividend Income Report

Everyday-Freethought / / Dividend Income

Here is the dividend income report for September, 2022.

The monthly dividend income came out to $2159.15. The yearly income total for 2022 through the end of the month was $8295.04.

The income for September, 2021 was $1842.58, and the yearly income for 2021 through the end of September was $6911.62.

This is the third month that my twelve-month moving average was above $1,000.

There is not a whole lot to say about my stocks.

VPU was late again. I wish that iShares would lower the cost of IDU, or that State Street would come out with another utilities ETF besides XLU. State Street has lots of sector ETFs besides their S&P 500 SPDRs; for some reason utilities is the only sector without a non-SPDR ETF.

WRT bitcon: at the end of last month it was at $19K. Then throughout the month it hovered around $18K, up to $20K, and now it is slowly going back down to $19K. I watched David Gerard’s August appearance on the Rational Reminder podcast. He pretty much said it’s all just fraud; that is the only use case. He also point out that bitcon’s peak was when Elon Musk talked about bitcon. I don’t know if him talking about corrupt-o-currency was the cause of the peak, and DG did not really go into that too much. I would not be surprised if it never goes above $25K again. Granted, I might be wrong; there is no shortage of either predators or desparate people. DG said a good book about bitcon and corrupt-o-currency was written in 1841: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

I did ask on Hacker News how is the Lightning Network supposed to help. I got a couple of responses; you can see them at the link. My question was: Bitcoin advocates say that the BTC network has to be slow to be secure and decentralized. If you start putting transactions on a second blockchain, don’t you lose all the security/validation of the BTC blockchain? One of the answers pointed out that LN is not another blockchain. It seems like a lot of bitcon fanboys want to have it both ways: Bitcon is the answer to all our problems, until it’s not. You can look at the answers for yourself, but I am not convinced the circle has been squared. Or if it has, then what is the point?

What if you get scammed on the LN? Don’t you lose that money forever when the transactions are moved to the bitcon blockchain? Who backstops the LN? And why would I want to deal with sats (which I am guessing is short for Satoshis)? My life is complicated enough with one currency. Maybe that is the issue in a nutshell: The corrupt-o bros think they can make all of this easy. But ultimately it is not easy.

And even if corrupt-o-currencies become the norm, I think one condition will be that society will wind up building a parallel financial ecosystem just as complicated as we have today.

WRT LN not being another blockchain: if they only way to make the blockchain useful is to not use the blockchain, why should I bother with the blockchain in the first place?

And when your currency is touted by a jackass who calls himself a dictator, then do not talk to me about how bitcon is freedom. Maybe if Bukele had two brain cells talking to one another, he would have thrown the gang leaders in jail while he was making deals with them.

Bitcon seems like an online version of Glibertarian’s paradise. These experiments tend to fail (see here and here for two examples). Like DG, I predict that the Bitcoin City in El Salvador will not amount to much of anything.

While looking into Bitcon City and the various attempts to create Galt’s Gulch, I found some pages about a guy named Doug Casey, who created La Estancia Cafayate. I think this is the site for the community. There is also an article in the New York Times here. It seems to talk a lot about wine and golf, but no glibertarian buzzwords. There is a page here about a couple from South Africa looking for “freedom” and who mention Doug Casey’s writings. The site is for a broker names Terri Casey, who I assume is Doug Casey’s wife. The post has “Part 1” at the end of the title, but there is no Part 2 on the page with posts. Perhaps Mrs Casey needs to cut back on the wine.

I found out about Doug Casey on a site called International Man. Interestingly enough, the posts are not dated. There is one that predicted another Great Depression will hit full force in 2017. Evil fell upon us in 2017, but not an economic depression. I am at a point where I reject doomsayers who never admit they are wrong. I also do not trust sites that sell something and give no physical address. Maybe talking about wine and golf and villas for sale is a way to admit you were wrong without actually having to use those words. Maybe that is freedom and liberty are now: a place for old people to complain for half price.

I did not read all the articles on International Man (I have better things to do). Maybe he never intended it to be a place where people are productive, have jobs and run companies. But those glibertarian paradises never work out either. It is bizarre because a lot of the guys pushing these do tend to be wealthy and successful in some industry. Yet these git-er-done types fail when building a society or community.

Sometimes these guys all sound a lot like disaster preppers: Instead of just coming up with a plan to walk away from society (or prepare for its demise), why not put some thought into improving it somehow? Can putting too much energy into preparing for some negative outcomes make them more likely? If the corrupt-o-currency bros can get the world to talk about this thing that most people do not understand, then you can get some serious regulations through Congress, like the kind that worked for about 60 years.

Here is a table with the year-to-date amounts, the monthly amounts, and the three- and twelve-month moving averages for each September from 2011 through 2022:

Month YTD Amount 3MMA 12MMA
2022-09 $8295.04 $2159.15 $863.88 $1027.91
2021-09 $6911.62 $1842.58 $749.74 $899.51
2020-09 $6659.02 $1836.64 $750.42 $887.30
2019-09 $6485.69 $2112.65 $744.85 $831.74
2018-09 $3476.52 $506.44 $430.49 $518.06
2017-09 $4796.80 $775.50 $562.76 $551.05
2016-09 $4260.70 $720.86 $505.47 $499.02
2015-09 $3744.49 $659.59 $443.06 $432.46
2014-09 $2993.02 $536.75 $353.04 $335.39
2013-09 $2374.05 $395.65 $293.78 $294.44
2012-09 $2425.78 $315.21 $283.66 $283.00
2011-09 $2121.78 $243.26 $256.81 $233.01

Here are the securities and the income amounts for September, 2022:

  • Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF: $160.28
  • Vanguard Total International Bond ETF: $11.02
  • SPDR S&P Dividend ETF: $846.89
  • SPDR Dow Jones REIT ETF: $294.45
  • SPDR Dow Jones REIT ETF: $147.88
  • SPDR S&P Global Dividend ETF: $650.06
  • Global X S&P 500 Covered Call ETF: $48.57

 

Big Jim says there is more to preserving freedom than opting out.

“Immaculate Conception” by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640); image from Wikimedia, also available on his website or Museo del Prado; assumed allowed under public domain .

2022-08 Dividend Income Report

Everyday-Freethought / / Dividend Income

Here is the dividend income report for August, 2022.

The monthly dividend income came out to $219.36. The yearly income total for 2022 through the end of the month was $6135.89.

The income for August 2021 was $207.39, and the yearly income for 2021 through the end of August was $5069.04.

This is the second month that my twelve-month moving average was above $1,000.

This is not the time on Sprockets when we dahnce, but it is the time when we talk about the stupidity of corrupt-o-currency.

There is a lot of debate over whether or not we are in a recession. A lot of people are using the colloquial definition of two quarters of shrinking GDP. The National Bureau of Economic Research has more criteria: real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales. Employment right now is strong, and I think sales are also up. In general, most indicators are pointing in the same direction. I think one issue is we are in a transition period where some indicators are good, and some are bad. I suppose there is always a transition period when we go from expansion to recession or vice versa, but this transition period feels like it is grinding very slowly.

I think long-term things will improve. Raising rates will get rid of inflation. But it could cause a recession. Long-term gain, but short-term pain. How short-term? And for whom? Shouldn’t a store of value like bitcon be rising in a time of uncertainty and transition like this? At the end of last month, it was $23K. Then it went up to $24K. For the past week it has been hovering around $20K. Are there wash trades to keep it above a nice, round number?

There are floods in Pakistan that made about 15% of the population homeless, the war in Ukraine is affecting energy prices and generation throughout Europe (in addition to all the problems it is causing for Ukrainians), the world is still having supply chain issues, the whole globe is dealing with drought and inflation, and it is looking like the previous president has been selling state secrets. The world is falling apart. Why isn’t bitcon soaring? It was supposed to be the thing that was to keep humanity free from tyranny. It was supposed to be hope. But it looks like it is losing steam right when people need something to be hopeful about. I have heard “any day now” from executives and managers. I have heard “just wait” from women who left my life in tatters. I heard “soon” from lying pastors and corrupt martial arts masters. This is the tomorrow when you said things would be different.

One of the arguments that corrupt-o-currency pushers use is that corrupt-o is good because there are more and more people buying corrupt-o. People still shoot themselves in the face. People get drunk and choke on their own vomit. People still support Donald Trump. Just because a lot of people are doing something does not make it a smart thing to do. As David Gerard and Wolf Street pointed out, a lot of this “corrupt-o-currency goes mainstream” was really a lot of corrupt-o companies investing their blockchains/coins/tokens/NFTs/web3-things in other corrupt-o companies’ blockchains/coins/tokens/NFTs/web3-things. It turns out that a bunch of snakes eating each other’s tails is no different than one snake eating its own tail. All the houses of cards were connected, so they all fell at the same time.

There is no income stream. Why are people still talking about this? And now electricity prices are going up while the price of crypto is going down, according to Wired magazine. Some miners funded their ASICs with debt, and instead of HODL-ing forever (which never makes sense for any asset), they are selling. The bitcon fanboys thought bitcon was different, but it turns out nothing has changed. Assets with no cash flow are worthless. And the world does not owe miners a minimum price based on the miners’ costs. Bitcon mining is like filling your bathtub with cement and demanding the world give you money.

However, I do think there is one good use of bitcon: It is an IQ test and an ethics test in one package. If you are pro-bitcon, you are both stupid and a terrible person. End of discussion.

Granted, since this is bitcon, there are probably more efficient ways to test someone’s IQ and ethics at the same time. Maybe that is the cynic’s definition of bitcon: finding the most wasteful way to tell the world what stupid, horrible person you are, and defending it until the bitter end.

In other news, the Federal Reserve is finally raising rates. I can understand why rates were kept low during and immediately after COVID, but I thought that they would have gone up between 2012 and 2019. One thing that bugs me is that a lot of people blame all the bad things that happen on “the Fed”. Even people on sites that I generally respect, like Wolf Street (mostly the commenters, not Wolf himself). I call bull. Nobody forced anyone to put money into meme stocks. Or unicorns that do not make any money. Or corrupt-o-currency. People chose to do those things. I have stuck with dividend growth stocks. I might not be doing as well as the people who are subjects of articles with titles like “Minimum Wage Janitor Retires With Millions Thanks to Dividends”, but I am doing alright. If people got greedy and stupid, it’s not the Fed’s fault.

I will say one thing for Powell: He deserves credit for not lowering rates until COVID. Trump was blathering on that rates were too high and needed to go down. Trump also owes a lot of debt to a lot of banks. He didn’t want rates to go down because he thought it was good for the economy, he was just crying his own book.

I don’t think they will have to raise rates to the same level that Volker did to tame inflation. People and corporations have a lot more debt now than they did in the 1970s and 1980s.

WRT unicorns that never make money: One commenter on Hacker News pointed out that many of the VC firms are not just investing, but pushing a glibertarian world-view. Why else would somebody be dumb enough to give money to Adam Neumann from WeWork? Maybe he should call his next company WeBezz, from John Kenneth Galbraith’s term “the bezzle”. He defined it as the period when the embezzler has his gain and the man who has been embezzled, oddly enough, feels no loss. There is a net increase in psychic wealth. Perhaps corrupt-o-currency and the VC/startup world are just a big “re-bezzle”: Nobody thinks any of it will amount to something, and all the participants at each step are just looking for someone else they can leave holding the bag; nobody cares about building a company that will last, they all just want to flip. Which is totally in line with the cynical definition of glibertarianism: I have the freedom to be rich, and you have the freedom to be poor.

Here is a table with the year-to-date amounts, the monthly amounts, and the three- and twelve-month moving averages for each August from 2011 through 2022:

Month YTD Amount 3MMA 12MMA
2022-08 $6135.89 $219.36 $1195.56 $1001.53
2021-08 $5069.04 $207.39 $856.33 $899.01
2020-08 $4822.38 $205.28 $790.58 $910.30
2019-08 $4373.04 $63.10 $788.78 $697.89
2018-08 $2970.08 $48.14 $549.51 $540.48
2017-08 $4021.30 $581.69 $558.23 $546.50
2016-08 $3539.84 $522.20 $493.44 $493.92
2015-08 $3084.90 $406.45 $427.26 $422.22
2014-08 $2456.27 $323.94 $348.41 $323.64
2013-08 $1978.40 $305.11 $279.05 $287.74
2012-08 $2110.57 $316.04 $280.53 $277.00
2011-08 $1878.52 $322.35 $254.56 $225.45

Here are the securities and the income amounts for August, 2022:

  • Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF: $156.71
  • Vanguard Total International Bond ETF: $11.10
  • Global X S&P 500 Covered Call ETF: $51.55

 

Big Jim says amateurs talk capital gains; professionals talk income streams.

“Adoration of the Magi” by Altichiero da Verona (c. 1330 – c. 1390), aka Aldighieri da Zevio; image allowed under public domain.