When no good deed goes unpunished

For much of their career, many, maybe most feds and private sector types too have been at the wrong place at the wrong time. Or made decisions that were bad. Or didn’t make the right decisions at the right time.

So who’s fault is that? Are you really as dumb as you sometimes think? Or …

Is it possible that whatever we do, in this complex world with its mind-numbing 24/7 news cycle, will be wrong? Later if not sooner.

Example: Driving to work Tuesday a.m., listening to the car radio. It was a news reader with the “latest” news — which is usually bad — on the economy. This time he said there was good news. My ears perked up. My heart skipped a beat. Hot ziggity. Good news!

So what was the good news, you ask? Turns out the good news is that the American dollar is getting “weak” and that oil prices are going up!

Say what?

Turns out a strong American dollar is great if you are ordering a croque-monsieur in Paris. But a strong American dollar is awful, if you are selling American goods abroad. Or hoping European, Latin American or Asian tourists will flock to Miami, Las Vegas, Raleigh-Durham or New York City to buy expensive electronics made in China.

Then there is the suddenly-it’s-good news that oil prices are going up, how does that work? Turns out it is bad for the economy — tourism, travel, manufacturing — if gasoline costs too much but equally bad if it is too cheap. People that were paying top dollar for housing in suddenly oil-rich North Dakota are now losing their jobs. Once in-demand houses are now empty. Either way, it appears, we are fracked!

When the recession hit, the government responded by freezing federal pay raises for three years. When the sequestration-triggered furloughs and the subsequent White House-Congress food fight produced the government shutdown, tens of thousands of paycheck-to-paycheckers sought emergency no-interest loans from the Federal Employees Education and Assistance Fund. To the point where the feds-helping-feds charity ran out of money to loan out.

During the recession, tens of thousands of nervous federal investors shifted money from the stock-indexed C, S and I funds into the super-safe (super dull!) Treasury securities G-fund. Those who shifted, then moved back into the stock market as things improved sold low and bought high. Those who stayed in the G-fund (as many did) lost out on the big comeback of the last couple of years. But who knew? Who knew how long the recession would last, or if it would ever end?

Thanks to fracking (whether you love it or hate it) world oil prices dropped dramatically. The U.S. went from buyer to seller. That was good, until we found out it is now bad.

The American dollar rose in value kicking the euro and the pound’s backsides. That too was great news until, we are now told, it is terrible.

Moving into the G-fund, which seemed a safe move at the bottom of the recession, now turns out to be a bad move. Your TSP account would be much fatter, now, if you had done nothing then and continued to buy. But that was then, this is now.

Lesson (if any): Don’t worry. Be happy. If whatever you do is always wrong, embrace it. Or stop listening to the news — except us.

NEARLY USELESS FACTOID

By Michael O’Connell

The earliest mention of the croque-monsieur sandwich in literature is in volume two of Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time”.

Source: Wikipedia

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