Knee Update

I blew out injured my knee Friday night playing ultimate frisbee. My defender ran me over and after a tangle of legs and feet I twisted a bit too far and heard my knee go pop. There was maybe a dislocation, some hyper extension and a sprain. I really don't know. It hurt(s)! I gimp about here, gimp about there. Somehow, I was approved for health insurance effective today, and I went to the doctor. Over the weekend I assumed the worst and thought I had torn a ligament or damaged my knee in someway where I thought I'd have to get surgery (or at the least an MRI-$$$$) and was worrying about being uninsured (now underinsured) and what all this stuff would cost and whether I'd be covered. Bad knees run in the family and I kept thinking about what had happened to my dad when he was my age. The dreaded phrase kept coming up in conversations with my friends: pre-existing condition. After seeing Doc, it looks as though things will be OK. I have to wear a goofy brace around my pants to immobilize my knee. It's called a knee immobilizer (how appropriate!). Also keep up the icing and ibuprofen regimen. We'll see what happens after a week of that but my knee tested pretty strong. Can take pressure and can be flexed in all directions. Just have to wait for the swelling to go down and the fluid to drain to get my range of motion back and work through the soreness and tight muscles.

Whew! I thought I may have been out for the season but if all goes well I could be playing in a couple of weeks (optimistic?)! Just gotta be careful about re-injuring it even worse.

Well, At Least the Fed Is Getting What It Wants

A few weeks ago my AIM status message read something like : Are the declines in housing prices causing inflation to appear low, artificially? This was a serious question. Not something that would allow me to say "told ya so!" down the line. No one ever answered. Inflation and the CPI are things I'm not too familiar with. I understand that there is core and non-core and that food and energy can be stripped out, and that measurements and metrics were changed about 30 years ago and are revised now and again when a potentially better way of monitoring price changes is found. Back to my question. Not having spent a great deal of time in the US from 2005 - 2007, things seemed a bit more expensive upon returning. At first I chalked it up to differences in the countries I was living in. After a while though I noticed price increases in more and more products. In following peak oil, one not only watches energy prices, but other commodities as well. Five major grain crops were up, some over 100% (corn, wheat), oil continuing its upward rise (~75% in 2007), moo juice and gold reaching new highs. All happening last year.

Scanning through the daily posted drum beat (note that the first story posted mentions Mexico as having closed its ports that ship 80% of its oil exports!) at the Oil Drum the other day, I stumbled across this article that piqued my interest as a possible answer to my inflation/housing question. In short, the answer was yes.

Why is there no inflation? Housing. [...] Housing prices are down, at least if you are trying to sell.

We know that the credit crunch, sub prime mortgage mess and declining housing values are wreaking havoc all over the economy. It is also cancelling out price increases in other goods.

as far as the government's concerned, the 5 or 10 percent decline in the average value of your home is more than going to make up for a more expensive gallon of diesel or case of beer

Well, OK. It doesn't seem that way though. As the value of your home goes up or down, your property taxes follow suit, but not your mortgage payment. That might change every 10-20 years. With energy and food costs rising (not spiking, IMO) we feel the inflationary pinch in the things we buy every day. We do not buy houses every day. Not all commodities are up, i.e. metals (strange, as people are stripping foreclosed home of copper wiring!) but as the tireless industrialisation of emerging economies continues there will no doubt be higher demand and higher prices for those goods as well.

Perhaps this serves as at least a slice of proper evidence to my anecdotal theory that inflation is being understated, or under reported by the government. Change the metrics around and the numbers can give you a very different answer. As noted in the Brudaimonia post linked above, Many of the suburban, sub prime households are now spending a greater share of income on transportation than housing, while the gov't measures transportation fuel costs as 5% of a household spending.

Priorities

Nearly all financial markets today are falling, crashing even, or at least massive losses are taking place. Some of the biggest drops since 9/11. India down 12%. The UK down 5.5%. DAX down 7%. Aussie markets lose another $43 billion. Canada down 4%. CAC40 and the Hang Seng also down big percentages. These aren't just emerging economies going through high volatility! Today is a trading holiday in the US for MLK day. Tomorrow will not be pretty. It will be painful (but it has been since 1/1/2008) though also interesting with earnings announcements and a fed meeting.

But you wouldn't know it from watching the television. Fox News was more concerned with the chemicals in lipstick increasing women's breast size. Only CNN International was carrying much of the global business activity. Political Candidate in fighting took up much blog space. So while the global stock markets plummet, America is off in McLa-La Land.

To Become A Bloomingtonian

For all my ranting and raving about the suburban living arrangement, I will soon be living in one as well. I hope to be ending the suburb - suburb commute soon enough though. While my reverse commute isn't terrible, if I could find a job downtown I may well take that. I am a 5 minute ride from the light rail, so about 40-50 minutes to the city (sans driving or parking!) which, even though it is longer, is my preferred option.

Fred Thompson: Booo Teachers!

Yay Fundamentalist Christians! On the way to work this morning I was listening to the radio (NPR) say that Fred Thompson is down in South Carolina trying to pry the evangelical votes away from Huckabee. The way he is doing this is to say that he had won the National Right to Life endorsenment and Huckabee only had the endorsement of the NEA.

Republican politics in this campaign are laughable. Thompson, the guy who got 1% in NH, the guy who was billed as the Neo-Reagan poster boy, came into this election thinking he would be the saviour of the Republican party. Best part is that he is no worse than the top tier candidates, but doesn't stand a chance. As I recently read on the Daily Kos frontpage, the front runners are a guy who doesn't believe in science, a guy who is OK with staying in Iraq for 100 years and a plutocrat attempting to purchase the presidency.