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Articles - January - 2022 Issue

Living Dangerously in the Year Ahead

- by Bruce E. McKinney

The future is up in the air

The future is up in the air

While I’m managing Partner of Rare Book Hub, the other hat I wear is as a private money manager, building and diversifying our family assets.  I’ve had a good record, year over year my number has run at and above 30%.  For 2021, our traded assets increased in value by 46.4%.  I’m writing about this as I’ve been a keen and effective observer for the past 30 years and am expecting the net change this year to be +7%, a much smaller increase than we’ve seen in the past 5 years.  Irrational exuberance doesn’t last.

 

Stock market investors have been having a free ride while the Federal Reserve [the Fed] has kept interest rates unnaturally low and the outcome of such a policy eventually creates inflation.  The financial system is rigged to hide it, suggesting low comforting rates that encourage the stock market higher.  But increasingly inflation can no longer be hidden by happy talk.  Whether you are buying a quart of milk, a gallon of gas, a new or used car, or a professional baseball or football ticket you’re experiencing solid 20% inflation and it’s going to go on and on.

 

So the Fed, now accepting they can no longer hide inflation, call it temporary.  And there is another explanation; it’s baloney.  Inflation like sex, is very hard to stamp out.

 

Between January 1st and December 31st inflation will set the table.  Unfortunately, there will also be the proverbial drunk at the table, the open Republican efforts to suppress and marginalize Democratic voters in the November election, their purpose to take control of the House and Senate after which American democracy will end.

 

Cutting to the chase, while inflation was been the high risk for the Fed and while they have done exceptionally well managing it, costs are starting to run away as the Trump-Putin partnership openly subverts American democracy with the stated intent to elect Trump white nationalists.

 

America’s strength has long been its enduring capacity to accept human differences.  Skills and ability, poverty, disability, race, religion, and sexual orientation have long been excuses to exclude.  In America we must stand for equal human possibility.

 

But even as we are close to losing democracy it’s not clear Americans care enough to fight to keep it, perhaps thinking it’s not their fight.  What are they in the sea of huge money, social media and local pressure?  What are we?  We are Americans, the last best hope of the world.  If we fail, democracy fails for the world.

 

One way or the other, investing in America in 2022 is going to be difficult.  Prosperous and free economies are dependent on democratic societies.  Take away democracy you’ll have Russian “prosperity.”

 

It’s going to be a tough year.

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Posted On: 2022-01-01 04:27
User Name: lthing

Thank you, Bruce! "The last, best hope of the world..." I just came from watching "Hamilton" for the first time if we want another reminder that we are all of us always a part of history whether we want to be or not.

- Lowell Thing

Posted On: 2022-01-01 07:18
User Name: psps

No, Bruce McKinney. You Americans are not the last, best hope of the world. You are a deeply dysfunctional people and an example to nobody. Nothing will change for the better in your country until you stop thinking of yourselves as exceptional, take a long hard look in the mirror and start to do something about it. Sorry! I wish it were otherwise. We Europeans would like America to be a force for good. But you aren't. Get used to it!

Posted On: 2022-01-01 13:43
User Name: sumthinu

Unfortunately, a quite unsettling observation of our situation. I have friends that still say Trump could not have lost because he received more votes than any sitting president. Also unfortunate is that the same friends won’t use the same logic with the number of votes the democratic candidate received. A selfish disdain for democracy while waving the American flag and seeking out others to demonize. Wish us luck !

Posted On: 2022-01-01 16:27
User Name: arnet1

“We are Americans, the last best hope of the world.  If we fail, democracy fails for the world.”
mmmm....hubris or disconnect?
The answer is both and lies in the appeals I now receive to sponsor American children living in conditions that differ little from those in the third world, while its most privileged defenders of democracy, like the hub writer, boast of securing year after year 30 percent increases in the family wealth. Can a democracy that does not work for all be a democracy?
It seems to me that the United States lost its way a long time ago.

Posted On: 2022-01-01 23:41
User Name: charlesrobinson127

I fear younhave it right

Posted On: 2022-01-02 00:11
User Name: bukowski

“psps” is a Kremlin troll. Delete his provocative false post.

Posted On: 2022-01-02 20:06
User Name: avocado1

Bruce,

I wonder what the powers that be think is going to happen with inflation, seeing as how M1 has grown five fold over the last couple of years? M1 is what he bottom 90% own.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL

Andy

Posted On: 2022-01-04 04:54
User Name: ezrabook

Thank you so much, Bruce. America as envisioned, realized, perpetuated and long mythologized, is now set on a course of dissolution, and dis-integration -- but historically speaking, this whole scenario might merely be an entirely "organic" move of a great ideal's need to cleanse itself of its own big lies, of which the "stolen" election is but the latest. Pioneers in pointy hats seeking a new land come and conquer the wilderness in the name of "freedom"after wiping out or "relocating" the Native populace, and constructing a magnificent democratic ideal, upon the backs of enslaved Black humans. So the whole shakedown begins, and of necessity, kicking and screaming and doomsaying as we are, our body politic is urged by circumstance, to voluntarily shake down its own assumptions, public and private, to the very roots of our country, community, family and self. Mere band-aid restorations of business as usual will not suffice. We're in deep. Now, at this point, only mass acknowledgement, apologies deep and sincere, and reparations, will open the doors to re-visioning.

"Got a new agenda
With a new dream
I'm kicking out the old regime
Liberation, elevation, education
America, you a lie
But the whole world 'bout to testify
I said, the whole world 'bout to testify
And the tables 'bout to
T-t-tables 'bout to
Turn, turn, turn"
(Janelle Monae in "Turn Table")

As I see it, as a country, it almost seems our devolved version of "The American Dream" HAS to come to the edge, in order for us to individually and collectively remember the core values which inspired and sparked this democratic experiment. With greed and denial as the bottom line justifications for so much insensitivity, extraction-consciousness, ignorance, and myth-gorging, our dear sweet and high-principled country, unique in so many ways, is destined to unwind and unravel before enough people realize what has been lost. So sorry, I'm usually so bushy-tailed, smiling and parade-waving in a universe of hope and good will from, of, and to all men and women. But the great cleanout has begun. Do we have the courage to stand to, and remember, and speak up, at very least to vote and actively protect the rights of others to vote?

Posted On: 2022-01-07 02:48
User Name: brixton1977

This is a truly bizarre post. Skyrocketing inequality is tearing America apart. And here Bruce is, boasting of decades of 30% returns and wondering, why oh why, the country is teetering toward fascism.

Posted On: 2022-01-08 00:52
User Name: bozo1950

I think we’ve spoken on the phone; you were always generous with your time. When I began reading your post I had a gnawing fear it would turn out to be pro-Trump. I’m so so relieved it was anything but - and you’ve put it all very well. On the other hand, I’m a bit in agreement with “psps” below. I wish America were a force for good in the world but that’s been an iffy proposition for a rather long while.

Posted On: 2022-01-31 20:12
User Name: warpstar1

So the only way to save democracy is to have Democrats in charge of congress in perpetuity? I'm afraid that would not be democracy.

Rare Book Monthly

  • Aste Bolaffi, June 17-18: Galileo Galilei. Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo tolemaico, e copernicano. Firenze, 1632
    Aste Bolaffi, June 17-18: Saverio Manetti. Storia naturale degli uccelli. Firenze, 1771-76
    Aste Bolaffi, June 17-18: Fortunato Depero. Depero futurista. Rovereto, 1927
    Aste Bolaffi, June 17-18: Nicolas Visscher. Atlas minor sive totius orbis terrarum contracta delineat ex conatibus. Amsterdam, circa 1649-95
    Aste Bolaffi, June 17-18: Andreas Vesalius. Anatomia. Addita nunc. Antiquorum Anatome. Venezia, 1604
    Aste Bolaffi, June 17-18: Tristan Tzara and Salvador Dalì. Grains et Issues. Parigi, 1935
  • June 25, 2026
    Doyle, June 25: Houdini's biography, boldly signed. $3,000 to $5,000.
    Doyle, June 25: A volume from Abraham Lincoln's library, signed just before heading to Washington for his inauguration. $20,000 to $30,000.
    Doyle, June 25: A very early Confederate recruiting manual belonging to the chief commissary in Lee's Army. $600 to $800.
    Doyle, June 25: Rare hand-colored lithographs of the life of Napoleon. $20,000 to $30,000.
    Doyle, June 25: The "Holster Atlas" of the American Revolution. $5,000 to $8,000.
    Doyle, June 25: Jewish ceremonies in fine hand-colored engravings. $7,000 to $10,000.
    Doyle, June 25: A very rare work on Turkish military costume. $1,000 to $1,500.
    June 25, 2026
    Doyle, June 25: The most important illustrated work on the Mexican-American War. $10,000 to $15,000.
    Doyle, June 25: The finest illustrated book on Afghanistan. $10,000 to $15,000.
    Doyle, June 25: Henry Justice Ford St. George rescues the Princess from the horrible Dragon. $2,000 to $3,000.
    Doyle, June 25: A rare work of Prussian Army uniforms under Frederick William II, with exquisite hand-colored engravings. $800 to $1,200.
    Doyle, June 25: Lenny Bruce typed letter signed to a Village bohemian during his obscenity trials, with a manuscript note and drawing. $300 to $500.
    Doyle, June 25: Schiff's scarce Shanghai Sketchbook. $300 to $500.
    Doyle, June 25: The first accurate published representation of the American flag. $2,000 to $4,000.
  • Old World Auctions (June 17): Lot 123. Celebrate 250 Years of Independence with Original Stars and Stripes (1790) Est. $1,400 - $1,700
    Old World Auctions (June 17): Lot 20. Keulen's Spectacular Chart of the World Featuring California as an Island (1728) Est. $12,000 - $15,000
    Old World Auctions (June 17): Lot 42. Schedel's Ancient World Map with Fantastic Humanoid Creatures (1493) Est. $14,000 - $17,000
    Old World Auctions (June 17): Lot 591. Matching Set of 3 Stunning Globe Gores of Eastern Asia from Coronelli's 3.5 Foot Globe (1688) Est. $5,500 - $7,000
    Old World Auctions (June 17): Lot 9. Speed's Popular World Map with Allegorical Representations of the Elements (1651) Est. $14,000 - $17,000
    Old World Auctions (June 17): Lot 168. First Separate Map of Kansas & Nebraska Territories (1854) Est. $5,500 - $7,000
    Old World Auctions (June 17): Lot 43. Only Macrobius Map with Britain Attached to Europe (1515) Est. $800 - $950
    Old World Auctions (June 17): Lot 250. Rare Map of Boston and One of the Earliest Maps of the Revolutionary War (1775) Est. $2,000 - $2,300
    Old World Auctions (June 17): Lot 79. Schenk's Uncommon Map Featuring Two Figurative Title Cartouches (1696) Est. $1,200 - $1,500
    Old World Auctions (June 17): Lot 681. Hand-Colored Image of the Annunciation to the Shepherds (1502) Est. $800 - $950
  • Sotheby's Book Week
    2 June - 9 July
    Sotheby’s, June 25: Smith, Adam. The Wealth of Nations, on its 250th anniversary. $180,000 to $250,000.
    Sotheby’s, June 17: Fontana, Lucio. Concetto Spaziale. 1967. Leporello en papier doré. Bel exemplaire signé. €4,000 to $€,000.
    Sotheby’s, June 25: Fitzgerald, F. Scott. "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”. $150,000 to $200,000.
    Sotheby’s, June 25: Washington, George (as First President). Washington decries “an ostentatious imitation, or mimickry of Royalty” in his Presidency. $250,000 to $500,000.
    Sotheby’s, June 17: Lope de Vega. Rare manuscrit autographe signé de la préface dédicatoire de "El Cardenal de Belen" (le cardinal de Bethléem), pièce composée en 1610. €40,000 to €60,000.

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