Whoa There, Pardner! Not so fast, I seen them thar abominobile deflation bogeymen recently and he sure was ugly! Howdy, Mquice, so this is where you and JFred been hanging out? Just perused 2.75 years of deflation talk and it sure was mightie interestin.
Problem is, Mr. Winn, nobody has been talking much about big ticket items, jest eggs and such. Here in the Valley d'Silica, we have lots of commuter pleasing traffic reductions over a couple years ago. Great for commuting but lousy for job searches. Besides many of the buildings that used to house companies that were bent on changing the world through technology are now just albatrosses for the landlords who have put up "lease me" signs in front of so many. Cisco has a whole herd of these buildings its trying to sublease.
Speaking of rents, me and the missus been a hankering to rent our cute little condo on the duck pond for over a year, when our last good tenant moved out to head back to Floridae to take care of her elderly Mom. She'd been a great tenant and we had reluctantly raised her rent a couple times in 5+ years, so she was paying well below market, ($950). So last Sept we done dumped $5K into the place giving it a good makeover (carpets, linoleum, drapes, appliances, paint, the works) and know what it got us? Pshaw! Three months empty then some scummer druggie who shined us on for a couple of months in the first quarter of this year until I had him evicted for non-payment. Then nothing. He'd promised to pay $1300 a month which seemed to be the going rate last December. Paid the first month then not even half of the second. We threw him out by the end of March. Just today, we finally found a new couple willing to rent it for $1100. Maybe they will in 30 days and we kin start abringing in some money agin, but he works for NT. So is that inflation, disinflation, deflation or jest dumbass bad luck?
Speakin o losing condo deals. A couple years ago, we hadta bail out the missus elderly parents and bought them out of a rental condo they had on their home island o' Guam. Now, mind you this was not exactly a deal which I thought ta be makin money from the gitgo. When we got out there to set up the deal, I quickly learned they was using the D word for the local economy and I knew I was overpaying for it. Fortunately, we got that unit occupied at first. It went vacant June 1st this year and we're still awaitin for someone to come along with some rent money agin.
Speakin of deflation, I had to reduce my contracted price at one of my customer semiconductor companys twice last year. I saw a 37.5% gross receipts reduction from that thar client. It twar no little bit painful but the alternative of losing the contract completely would have been worse. Definitely a deflater.
Recently, the missus and I went out to the big island of Hawaii, our first visit. Though we've been to Oahu many times this was a first. We liked it immediately, and being more than just idly interested, we drove around looking at property, houses, land and such. I was surprised at the quantity and relative attractiveness in pricing. O'course coming from the Valley d'Silica that might be understandable, where JFred's $250 wouldn't buy much more than a down payment on a 50 year old fixer-upper.
More recently, we passed through HK on the way to a week's stay in Nepal. See we really were lookin for them thar Yeti creatures. HK was hard to assess as this was my first real visit into the city. The new airport is really cool and big though I must say I miss the thrill of kachinking up the harbor past the towering buildings on either side to the old airport. The MTR train service was excellent and once in town everybody seemed to be using it. And every stop seemed to be under a different shopping mall. And people were crowding on the trains and in the malls but I didn't think they were buying much, especially not in the expensive looking malls.
Nepal, was definitely a basket case. We bought the ticket on a whim a year ago. $600 for 7 nights and breakfasts at the Yak and Yeti (Nepali 5 star) through a public television auction. We thought we had a great deal at the time. 12 months later, when we were checking in, we heard them quoting the walk-in rate at $90 a night, no breakfast, all taxes included, so we were just below market afterall. Looked like deflation to me. The tourist shops in the Thamel tourist sector seemed overly anxious for business and tourists were few and far between. At night the restaurant scenes were totally desolate. We'd be the only customers in several different places throughout the city. For an overnight, we flew in-country a little deeper to Pokhara for a look-see around the Annapurna region. There the nice 3-star hotel we stayed at was almost totally empty and over-charged us at $40 bucks a night bed and breakfast. Again we were a scarce and sought after minority. The shopkeepers and the Tibetan trinket sellers seemed overly desperate to win access to our wallets. We tried to be generous and consciously tipped overly much, as again we would be the only paying customers in the restaurants and stores we visited. Now its true there is some Maoist unrest through much of the country. We saw the Maoists in Pokhara (I think.). They were driving around town in delapidated little old Toyota-like car with bullhorns blaring on top, a couple of guys sitting in the back seat, a driver in front. From sunup to sundown driving around blaring out their talk. Nobody much paying them any mind. We learned, while flying in from HK, from another Kiwi, on a mission that the Maoists have definitely had an effect on the country. He was on a house hunting trip coming from Mongolia where World Vision had him currently located. He was being shifted down to Kathmandu in an effort to help avert a looming harvest crisis. Seems the Maoists have scared a lot of the able-bodied Nepali off the land and into India for jobs and safety. He claimed that in the country-side only the old, infirm, women and children were left. That both the current grain harvest and the next season's planting were in jeopardy. That wide scale starvation was looming out there in a few months as supplies get depleted. Sounded serious. So maybe the unrest has scared away the tourist but I think its more due to economics in the US that the tourist dollar is so scarce. As one merchant explained to us, the American tourist was "the best". They would spend the most, then the European. He didn't think much of the Indian tourist. He hoped dearly that a lot of American tourists would come back. Last year was bad, and this year was looking worse to him. One jeweler said he hadn't made a sale (anything) in over 17 days and this was inside the Yak and Yeti Hotel. What a gracious kind and gentle people the Nepali seemed, it was so sad. It was heartbreaking knowing what I knew about the broken wealth creation engine back in the Valley d'Silica.
We have seen the deflation yeti and he is a scary beast! Buy something with chips in it, dammit Mr. Winn! |
