The Lost Decade

On a short flight from Cleveland to Chicago earlier this month, I had the unknown pleasure of sitting next to Jim Brickman the entire trip.  It was not until we were preparing to land that he and I started talking at length, but having been friends with Jeordie & Chad, not to mention The Caterwauls prior, and Chris Hiatt before all of them, I think musicians truly enjoy talking to me because I understand their current plight.  Personally, I had to revel in Mr. Brickman's reaction to my comment: "They say that we had The Lost Decade in the stock market, but I think that suits the music business better."  He simply bowed his head to exhale and then gratefully agreed.

Sadly it is not hard to see what went wrong in the music business.  The power of the people shifted into a narrow focus where almost all radio stations were bound to the control of dictatorships through the conflicts of interest known as corporate conglomerates.

Look up almost any hit song from 15-20 years ago on YouTube nowadays, and you can read comment after comment lambasting the music business today, dismissing it altogether as if no bands today are worth our time because they are very secondary to Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, and other actor/actresses pretending to be musicians.

If you think all new songs are overplayed on the radio until they are stale, then I implore you to seek out fresh new music.  You can even start at Amazon.com, believe it or not.  Download their free sampler albums, they ROCK!  Amazon has them for every genre of music, even a few comedy albums.

I stumbled upon these samplers myself a bit over a year ago when I saw that the label which signed What Made Milwaukee Famous had a free sampler album with eight tracks, so I downloaded it on a whim thinking that maybe three songs would grow on me.  But I never listened to it on my computer after I downloaded it.  It wasn't until I was burning a new CD-R where I was 45 minutes short of a full disc that I recalled that I even downloaded the Barsuk Sampler album.  I put it on there thinking if any of the songs were ever going to grow on me, this CD-R would be a better opportunity.

Sure enough, I started digging 2-3 of them almost immediately, and within a week, I started loving all eight tracks!  Inspired by these new sounds, I found Barsuk.com where I could download even more tracks (each album has one or two tracks to download for free directly).  I had never heard of bands like Ra Ra Riot or Say Hi (To Your Mom) but this sampler album was even better than the music I had purchased for which I was burning the CD-R initially.

About six months ago, I started to branch out and I bought another couple Amazon sampler albums (well, "bought" for free).  This time, it was Dangerbird and Merge Records.  Another strong set of compilations, and these labels even had bands that I already knew (like Silversun Pickups) and bands I at least heard of (like The Clientele and Spoon).  In fairness, Barsuk had Deathcab For Cutie so it was not as if I was clueless to their names.

This week, I tried it again.  I downloaded the Burning Building Fall 2010 sampler and two Sarathan Records samplers.  This new CD-R has been moved to my car, where the songs are slowly growing on me.  Truthfully, only one track stood out immediately (Speaker Speaker) but now I find a LOT more of them are growing on me.  I don't even realize it until I get inside and find myself humming the song, so I find it in my home collection.  Now, I have to wonder how The Purrs "Loose Talk" wasn't an immediate favorite.

If you want recommendations, here are the ones I have downloaded and enjoyed:

• Barsuk Records: 2009 Amazon Digital Sampler
• Merge Records 2010 Digital Sampler
• Dangerbird Amazon Sampler
• Sarathan Records Indie Sampler
• Sarathan Records Sunset Sampler
• Burning Building Fall 2010 Sampler for Amazon

Wiser Time: 4Q 2010

Since the start of the fourth quarter, the markets have been enjoying closings above 11,000 more days than not, which isn't surprising that they experienced a fourth-quarter boost since it is often typical after a third quarter retreat (actually, the standard retreat is viewed as lasting from May until the start of October).

My favorite radio program for the drive home is Market Wrap with Mo Ansari on KFNN 1510 "Radio That Makes You Money."  Mo Ansari has great insights and forethought, and he prepares as a pessemist but his amount of negativity often reflects optimism.  I guess any time you are looking forward to plan for the long-term future, that frame of mind is somewhat optimistic in itself.

I expect the markets to end 2010 between 11,500 and 12,000, at which point I can revisit my previous blog where I looked at a poll posted on Money.CNN.com in November 2009 asking readers to predict where the market would close 2010.

The big deal about 2010 is that President Barack Obama is now midway through his term as president.  Originally, as in "when the markets tumbled down to 6,500," I predicted that our recovery would outpace anything in the past and that the markets would be back to October 2007 by November 2012.  The reason I thought that was due to the strength of Obama, but now that we are two years away from the relatity of the next election, I can see it turning out a very different way.

All the Obama supporters who turned out in droves two years ago only to get him elected are not going to be going to the polls in November 2012.  Read that carefully, but my use of the word "only" is to separate those voters who showed up in November 2008 because Obama was running from those voters who would have come out to the polls regardless which candidate was running for the Democratic party.

The Republican party ran a very poor campaign two years ago, and if they want to take Obama out of the White House in January 2013, then they had better learn from the mistakes of the John Kerry campaign in November 2004.  Not enough people vote against a bad president to make a difference.  The Republican party still needs a strong candidate, and if their nomination of John McCain was any indication, they don't have one.  Although there are a lot of new names emerging with this political renaissance from these Tea Party campaigns for the mid-term elections.

Personally I am a Republican, but after eight years of George W. Bush (whom I considered a good president), it was time for the Democratic party to take office and focus on the things that Republicans don't care about as much, namely the healthcare issues (although, it's a bit disappointing that Obama has not been able to propose an adequate solution, but the issue is getting addressed, so maybe these minor changes to the current nature of the programs will be the best solution).

I voted for Obama, proudly, and the reason I voted for Obama was for the change he would bring.  I know a lot of critics and cynics have complained that he has fallen short of his goal of "change," but maybe they misunderstood his campaign slogan or at least, the only change I was interested in was the one that I knew he already represented, and that was changing the political paradigm of how campaigns are run.

Maybe I was one of the few voters who "got it," or maybe all the Obama supporters read into his "Change" campaign the way they wanted to, but I cannot lavish enough praise onto Obama's 2008 campaign for its class and its no-nonsense philosophies.  As I was saying, it was my hope that it was that "change" that Obama was referencing in his campaign.

I would be surprised to see a return to the old mud-slinging methods, but the Arizona elections hardly resembled Obama's successful tactics from two years ago.  I did not see many if any commercials putting the importance of voting for someone above not voting for the other person.  As a result, most people decided not to vote at all (which isn't the worst thing: I think blind voting obligated by the "privilege" is more irresponsible than not voting).

Regardless, it was amusing to hear what qualified as "bad" in today's politics during the past month of campaigns.  For as much guff as SB 1070 received in its initial press, there were signs around the Valley that cited when a candidate voted in favor of it.  It rightly has the public's support, even when it was deemed "poisonous" by the media.

Conversely, the worst thing to have your name tied to in this campaign was apparently Nancy Pelosi.  Also, voting in favor of Obama's weak stimulus plan was a very bad thing, and any candidate who voted for it was exploited by their opposition as a bad politician for that reason alone.

Politics aside, the markets are slowly recovering from its retreat after a high in 2007, and the only thing individual investors can do is focus on their own portfolio.  As the bond markets continue to plunge, I moved a small 2.5% of my stock holdings into the Total Bond Market Index fund today.  If the stock markets have not recently been over-valued, then the bond markets are at least becoming under-valued, so the trend is more likely to turn around to my benefit.  But even if stocks continue to rise and bonds continue to retreat, then only moving 2.5% into a losing asset class won't adversely affect my overall portfolio either.  The best place to find a winning investment is the state lottery or a casino.  The best place to amass wealth is through reasonable investing.