Ehlana and Ethan:
Happy 14th Birthday, Valerie Malloy!
We did a vid-chat with the Malloys at breakfast this morning and sent gifts, but that was our only involvement in her special day. We can mention that they’ll be here for the fall festival weekend – including the extra day on Friday; so that will be fun - when we can spend time with them while not busy with football and chores.
The weather has been good today with another mid-seventies, so Tai Chi was by the river; and our football and cheer squad practices are always more-fun without any rain or worse. Ethan and I were home with Mom and Dad for dinner; we took care of the clean-up; and then we headed for the lab or archives for the evening. As usual, time phasing helped us with getting more done; I repeated two successful tests of one of my cancer cures; and Ethan had fun exploring ancient History while researching for a specific Magi training module that he’s been updating. For the record, yes, he knows where Atlantis is; and no, the ancient Magi did not build the Great Wall of China, the Egyptian pyramids; or any other ancient wonder of the world! We came home at ten-thirty; bath or Jacuzzi time followed a quick visit with Mom and Dad because they were done their work by then too; and now we’re winding down fast toward nap time.
That brings us to the world news of the day, and while the fighting and air strikes continue in Ukraine, Russia, and the Middle East; we’re going to cover other stories tonight. First up is financial news, and while there is some media attention; rising interest rates are going to be a problem for the world economy – especially when debt levels are so high in most developed countries. Yes, that will include problems for governments, but we’re including all debt in that statement; since all interest payments pull resources from everyone that can’t be used elsewhere. We won’t bore future Magi with too many details, but rates are up significantly pretty much around the world; and every one-percent increase adds trillions of dollars to the total interest expenses. Yes, it takes time for those increased to work through the system, but that happens faster than most people realize, since a large percentage of total debt is shorter-term while yet more is longer-term, but renewed and refinanced regularly. Our point is that not only will governments need to borrow more money to cover expenses, but many businesses will become unprofitable as high debt loads and higher debt-servicing costs explode; and personal – or ‘household’ – debt cost will bankrupt people just as it did during the last economic and housing market crash. Add this to the growing economic crises in the world; and we continue down a very ugly and dangerous path that our leaders continue to ignore at best and are intentionally-working toward at worst.
Moving on, President Trump really loves the spotlight, and recent stories include his ‘verious seriously considering’ an export ban on diesel fuel because he is unaware of the reality that attempting to control national prices while world prices skyrocket has never worked for long and would be another economic disaster for the world economy. Considering his comments about the Ukraine war being responsible for high diesel prices due to the destruction of Russia’s refining capacity; that’s even-dumber; since the United States is the world’s largest exporter of diesel fuel and quite a bit ahead of Russia for that title. We will predict that he won’t blame himself if he does order that export ban and then prices rise even-faster than they have this year since the start of the war with Iran! If that isn’t enough, we are also being told that President Trump is going to really focus on ‘our’ northern border security, which is likely bad news for Canada as well as for Greenland. We are not suggesting that there are not risks to the north of our country, but will claim that those risks could be lessened quickly if we’d simply stop making enemies with pretty much everything we do around the world! Let’s also add that no sane military leader would choose to attempt a naval invasion through the arctic passages of northern Canada and Greenland in the age of satellites; since their fleets would be sitting ducks along all of those routes. Spending billions of dollars to build defenses against that sort of thing would just be a waste of resources.
That does bring us to one Middle East story that caught our attention – about eight American Marines that were injured earlier in September during an Iranian anti-ship missile strike. Details are not being provided, but we know it wasn’t an American naval ship that was hit; so we can only speculate as to why our Marines would have been on a civilian ship in the Strait of Hormuz. It might be even more-interesting if Iranian intelligence knew about them and that was why the ship was targeted and hit, but then it could have also been in retaliation for something the Marines did before being attacked. We’ll likely never know, but if we’re starting to use Trojan ships and similar tactics; that is a very bad precedent to set for our enemies – or anyone else in the world. No, that isn’t new, and we’ve even had recent examples from the Ukraine war including the drone attacks out of modular housing transport trailers and using transport trailers to disguise missile launchers. We really hope that doesn’t become a standard war tactic; since then nothing could be trusted to be safe anymore – and we already have enough to worry about with everything else going on in the world.
That’s enough for tonight. Ethan and I have had a good, happy, and productive day; and now we’re going to go and get some sleep so we’ll be ready for an even-busier day tomorrow.
Until next time, live with love, fellow Magi of the Light!
