Having been in the construction business for most of my life, I am all too familiar with the US “boom & bust” cycles. I have “lost my ass” a number of times over the last 30 years, and most recently, at the opening of 2008. This time however, I am not too terribly sad or upset about it. The reason for this bears some explanation.
I long ago realized that my chosen profession, construction, remodeling and building repair was subject to cyclical downturns. In the “boom” times I would make “bank” and in the “bust” times I would have to “suck it up.” Every six to eight years the work would dry up and I would have to lay off staff. The laid off staff would immediately “hang out their own shingle” and go into business for themselves and undercut my prices in an ineffective attempt to get their income back. 99.5% of these ex-employees would under bid the sparsely available work, further driving the available profits down. 99.5% of these ex-employees with new businesses would then loose their own asses in the process. They just never learned that running a business was a risky endeavor, especially in construction.
After the first and second round of trying to compete against my low bidding ex-employees, I realized that it was better to just retire for a year, a sabbatical, and live of my bank account until the ex-employees got abused and the market for my skills came back. I eventually looked forward to it. A year off to kick about and cherry-pick jobs, get some rest, educate myself, dally about with the ladies as a man-of-leisure.
I usually wound up the year off with money still in the bank to reconstitute by business and hit the ground running, but I always lamented the lost income. This time there is no lament. This time, after being down 2 years, I realize that the construction business ain’t coming back. I have no bank account left to live off of, and I am glad. Glad! It surprised me too. This time, I was a little older, near retirement and in 2008 thru 2009, I watched a fat SEP-IRA with Smith-Barney evaporate and I was glad. Glad!
I was glad it happened while I was still young enough to relearn how to exist. Exist without money that is. I am happy to have been forced to “Go low budget.” I was glad that I had not had time to build up a real nest-egg retirement fund. Glad because I realized that the game would be how others, banksters and the Grunch of Giants ( http://halfpasthuman.com/grunch.html ) planned to steal my wealth. Freedom it having nothing left to loose… and I will die a free man. Fuck ‘em! I only hope to live long enough to piss on their graves.
“At the End of Empire, the looting begins.” I find a modicum of humorous irony in the fact that the looters are carting off worthless paper, that the looters will get less value out of the paper when they try to spend it then when it was ours. But the looters continue to think they got over on someone… Who did you get over on? You got over on yourselves! Dumb asses! Loot your little black hearts out.
Now that I am lean and schooled in adversity, I wonder who will laugh louder when reality sets in. The fat & happy, or the lean & ready? Bad things are coming down the pipe and I am glad to be right where I am. Right with God and ready to go. I actually feel a bit of pity for the thieves and their ilk, the corrupt who think it will go on, but it won’t. “No man can rise further than a man who has been to the bottom,” and conversely, “No man can fall further than a man who has been at the top.” The day of reckoning is at hand.
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