George Rebane

Here in Nevada County the new year arrived clad in a light blanket of snow with a few flakes still drifting from a gray but hopeful looking sky.  The nearby photo from our office window says it better.  It will warm up later.

Jo Ann and I take this opportunity to wish all RR readers a healthy, prosperous, and hopeful new year.  Although, to keep with the distinctive tenor of these pages, I have to admit that I can’t offer the ‘hopeful’ part as an equal opportunity wish to all readers.  Some of you of the 20% progressive bent might take extraordinary pleasure in seeing things happen in the next twelve months that would bring another tear to the eye of the 40% rest of us.  Instead, to those so afflicted I wish a robust start on the road to recovery, especially in the understanding of things economic and financial that affect both our national welfare and personal finances.

In the last regard, I will put on my financial engineer’s hat more often than in the past, and try to write more pieces useful for interpreting the fate of the public purse and its implication on your private purse.  There is much mismatch between what the administration says about our economy and the effects of public policy on that economy, and what we here on the ground experience every time we go to the store or pay a bill.  One need look no further than the much cited 2.6% official inflation rate, or our Social Security ‘fully funded’ by a drawer full of IOUs.

If nothing else, I sincerely hope that such reports will help you to ask more revealing questions of your financial advisor and/or improve your own financial planning.  My hidden agenda is that when we better understand how to handle our money, we will also make wiser decisions in the voting booth.

The flip side of such commentary is that it will require dusting off some math that many of us left in high school for safe keeping when we graduated.  But when something comes down to reality, it inevitably comes down to numbers.  Besides, those who have alternative approaches and/or want to refute my assertions will have something firm to cite for comparison and correction.

So thank you again for visiting these pages.  Your thoughtful feedback is always welcome, and the discussion threads you have launched have been stimulating.  In spite of our different views of the where, the why, and the how in our country, we can all join in a prayer that in the coming year America will be an ever stronger, independent, and sovereign nation-state, and keep its place as the achievable example and pinnacle of mankind’s civil governance.