Thanks to Donors Who Have Kept This Site running, and an Explanation of My Latest Premium Post
I've just posted my latest Premium Post on Patreon. It's about the world-sized peculiarities that are showing up in the bond market as well as the conjuncture of ill-opposed events happening this coming week in the US treasury bond market. The distortions I see in the surface of the bond bubble (Let's just call it a "balloon" because of its colossal size.) make me a little concerned the bond market is at risk of imploding in the US or exploding all over the world.
You see, I don't know what a crashing global bond market actually looks like because I've never seen such a monstrosity break up. Many times in life I've witnessed global stock-market crashes; so, I have a good sense of what those look like as well as a lot of history from before my time. However, the biggest global bond balloon in world history is not something I've ever seen go down, and I have no idea whether it is something that slowly but relentlessly deflates over a period of years (I doubt it) or implodes or explodes.
I'm exploring my way through that with you in this article. What does the start of a bond-market collapse look like? I'm seeking reader comments on the subject (here if you are not a patron and don't have access to the article ... or in a more informed way on Patreon after you read my own thoughts in the article). Maybe we can help each other out in getting some sort of sense of how this will develop and what its timing will be, as there are many bright readers at this website (as well as one or two intentional zombies).
What I see right now in the bond market are abnormalities and cross-purpose events I've never seen that make me think it is a good time to explore that question, whether the timing of such an event is now or turns out to be months or eve a few years away.
I'm also interested in getting everyone's comments below on what they like or don't like about the way I write my articles just because specific feedback is good. I hope you'll also interact with the comments others leave below, just so I get some sense about agreement or disagreement with those points of view. I'm not saying I'll change how I write or what I write. I may remain just as sardonic as ever because I'm tired of tolerating stupid financial commentary in this world, having had a belly full of it from the mainstream media for decades, that being a primary reason I started this site.
Still, I think it is good to get some feedback, especially now that I've given this another good eight-month try after my last discontinuance of writing, which was by my choice to wait and see how things turned out when I bet my blog on a stock-market crash in 2018. Honoring that bet until it became certain whether I was right or wrong about that was important to me, even though no one had the courage to take up the other side of the bet.
I want to thank those patrons who have encouraged me to keep producing this website and to make some of my articles freely available to other websites in order to get the word out as broadly as possible about the times we are going through. I promised, if you got things to the $500 a month level, I'd keep writing until summer to see if support would build from there to make this an endeavor that is financially worth my time. It has, however, remained stuck at about that level.
Given that I spend 20-30 hours a week researching and writing all the articles I post, $500 a month comes to about $5/hr -- far less than minimum wage. (Advertising, by the way, only covers my actual costs of hosting the site and keeping the domain registered and private.) From a financial perspective, it's clearly not worth continuing; HOWEVER, finances are not why I started writing these article nor why I set aside time career-wise to do this nor why I continue doing it.
So, while I hope support will grow to where this eventually becomes financially worthwhile, I'm going to keep on for now simply because I find it compelling to do so and because I feel I need to do what is within my capacity to speak out against the greed and corruption that governs our economy and strangles the middle class. If I don't do all I can and you don't do all you can, how can any of us complain from a state of apathy about what is happening to us? That is not how this great nation was built.
My goal is to help break through the middle-class blindness and apathy that allows this corrupt greed to keep ruling. After all, the middle class CLEARLY has the numbers to stop all of that dead in its tracks, using nothing but the voting box, if people can ever see clearly what is being done to them. It's like a herd of gazelles being attacked by a lion. If the entire herd turns and starts stomping and prodding the lion with their hooves and horns, even a lion doesn't have a ghost of a chance. The middle class has the shear number to change all of this in a hurry if it could just wake up to what is happening to it before it all gets repeated.
I am grateful to you patrons who have jumped in with as much support as you have. So, it is also out of gratefulness to you for that patronage that I am going to continue with this effort for now even if it is stuck at the $500 level. It's not about how much money the site makes for me but just about whether there is enough interest to justify donating as much of my own time as I do when I could spend it much more profitably at other work. After all, if it's value doesn't add up to, at least, minimum wage, who am I kidding, and why am I doing this? So, it is a measure of value to me. The fact that there is a small group of people who have said, "This is worth enough to me that I'm going to pitch something into the effort," makes it worthwhile.
Not that it matters, but just so everyone understands the change, I'm going to change what I call these special articles from "Premium Posts" to "Patron Posts" because that really catches more the spirit of those posts. They are not intended as subscription articles that you can buy if you pay a certain premium. Rather, I felt I needed to offer something additional as a thank you to readers who are offering something on their end by generously stepping up to support this site.
That is why they are available to any patron above the $1 level. The $1 level is a way for regular readers to toss a tip in my tip jar as a thanks, and I definitely appreciate that, too, because such people are not just takers. I appreciate it because of what it says about my readers. I also know, for some, that is really about all they can do, beaten down by the system as some have become. They are giving from the little they have. Both kinds of giving -- a tip to say thanks or doing the best you can with what you've got -- mean a lot.
Those who support at the $5/mo. level and above, however, are the ones who are really drivers that are pressing this site forward. Because I want as many readers as possible to benefit from these special articles, I don't just hold those articles out as a subscription at the $25 or $50 level. Readers who are supporting at those levels are giving from their largesse.
Because I want people to benefit from these deeper or more comprehensive articles that I offer as my thanks to donors, I'll send you a password if you sign up now so you can open this latest "Patron Post" on my website. (New patrons won't have access on Patreon to any Patron Posts until after your their payment is processed in the first week of August, and I want people to have access to this article this week because this week is when some of these odd forces are most certainly coming together.)
Once you get the password, click on the link to the "Protected" post here on my site's main page. That will take you to a page where you can enter the password phrase in order to access that particular article right away. I'll send you the phrase via a Patron message as soon as I see you've signed up at or above the $5 level of support to help me continue.
For all patrons, the way you will know Patron Posts have been posted in the future -- since Patreon doesn't notify you -- is you will see them show up on my site's home page as a "Protected" article. You can, then, go to my "posts" page on Patreon to read it. I'm letting everyone know this now so I don't have to keep messaging all patrons whenever a post goes up on Patreon.
Because no password is needed for donors to access Patron Posts on Patreon, I won't have to keep emailing you passwords. So long as a donor continues with his or her support, Patreon continues giving access as soon as I post articles there for you. (That way, I also don't have to spend precious time monitoring all of that. Patreon automatically monitors who continues to get access and who doesn't.)
Because these Patron Posts are a thank-you to donors at various levels of support, I don't promise one every month as though honoring a subscription. Sometimes I write two in a month, sometimes none. It depends on what deep or complex content comes up in the news that I find worth exploring at this more comprehensive level, which I choose to reserve for patrons. It also depends on how much time I have to DONATE, myself, since, at the $5/hr I'm making, every post involves a considerable donation of my time. Everybody gets a lot for free on this site all the time, so I want the most important stuff to be for those who are supporters unless it is SO important or so timely that I feel as many people as possible need to get it ASAP.
In this case, it is that timely if you're invested in bonds, which is why I decided to write this announcement.
I hope for your candid feedback and interaction with each other below as I consider how best to go forward in the fall.