How To Spot eBay Arbitrage

People make money selling Amazon items on eBay.  It isn't hard to spot, though.

Mark broke off the antenna on the backup camera on the camper.  No big deal, I broke it off before while washing the camper. I reattached it with duct tape, but this time it was really broken.  I went on eBay and saw a two-pack of antennas for sale for $12.77.   "Last one!  16 sold!" it said.  Seemed like a good price so I clicked.   It never came.  The seller said it was lost in transit, so they gave a full refund.

The reality was, they forgot to order it as a "gift" on Amazon.  That's how arbitrage works. They list something for sale on eBay for a few dollars more than what it sells for on Amazon.  Since they are a "Prime" member, they get free shipping.  Someone "buys" their item on eBay and they then go to their Amazon account, and "buy" the item as a "gift" for their buyer and then pocket the difference in price.

One could, I suppose, even program a "bot" to do all of this automatically - and I suspect that is what happens.  Perhaps the bot glitched in this case and "forgot" to order the item on Amazon - or it was out of stock.  We'll never know.  Of course, the "seller" gladly issued a refund and suggested I reorder the item.  I got suspicious at this point.  How could the item be "lost in transit" when eBay shows it was never shipped?  I was a victim of arbitrage - or attempted arbitrage, anyway.

It isn't illegal, and it isn't really immoral, either.  When I clicked on "buy" on eBay, I thought I was getting a good deal,  Little did I know the item was for sale on Amazon for $7.50 for the pair.  I've been "stung" by this a few times, and you can tell when it happens as the package arrives from Amazon, not the seller, and there is a "gift receipt" inside.  You've been arbitraged!

Of course, the easiest way to avoid this "problem" is to open both Amazon and eBay windows and cross-shop the item in question.  You'll figure out pretty quickly whether someone is arbitraging on eBay.  Hint: Often the item titles are identical - making searching on Amazon for the same product advertised on eBay much easier.

Often the listing is word-for-word what was on the Amazon listing.  Perhaps another bot "scrapes" Amazon and automatically creates eBay listings.  Why not?   Another tipoff is this "Last one! Over 25 sold!" or something like that.  I seem to be buying the "last one!" whenever I am arbitraged.

Also, these are often inexpensive items - usually under $50 or so.  They mark them up by a few dollars, which seems pointless, until you realize that if you have a 100-bot army scraping Amazon for listings and then processing the sales, automatically, you can make an awful lot of money without a lot of effort.  That is, until everyone and their brother gets in on this deal.  At that point, you sell seminars and kits on how to arbitrage on eBay.  And yes, I have seen ads for this nonsense.

Is there any harm to this?  Like I said, I was the chump for not cross-shopping with Amazon.  The problem with this technique is that everyone is doing it and the everyones have set up multiple eBay accounts, so you end up with hundreds of nearly identical listings for the same item, over and over again, which tends to "bury" the real listings at competitive prices.  This makes eBay harder to shop on, which in turn means people get turned off by eBay.  The real risk is to eBay itself, although they make a commission on each item sold, so maybe they don't care either, if they end up being merely a reseller for Amazon.

Time was, whatever was sold on Amazon could be found on eBay for a few dollars cheaper.  And sometimes this is still the case, although I think less and less lately, and arbitrage is part of the problem.  Of course, Amazon is loving this, as they make sales, and it degrades one of their largest competitors.  If people turn away from eBay, so much better for Amazon.

But sometimes, you find deals that beat Amazon.  We bought a portable safe from masterlock for our trip.  It is ABS plastic and has a cable so you can lock it to a beach chair or under the seat of your car.  Not burglar-proof, but it deters the smash-and-grab set.  Amazon had it for $19 and eBay wanted a few dollars more (last one! arbitrage strikes again!).  Home Depot had it for the same price as Amazon.  The kicker was, Amazon wanted $12 extra to deliver it by today, while Home Depot had free delivery by today (it is out for delivery according to FedEx).  Home Depot has a warehouse nearby, so I guess they have an advantage.  Either that, or it is one of Amazon's games, designed to get you to pay extra for "fast shipping" when half the time, slow shipping arrives at the same "fast" time.

Who knows?  What is interesting to me is how we are constantly manipulated in the marketplace.  And with the Internet, well, there are so many more subtle ways to manipulate us these days!

Arbitrage!  Beware!

You Thought Eggs Were Expensive!

Food Prices are about to skyrocket!

Tariffs end up tanking economies - that is a  basic fact that any economist will tell you.  Never, in the history of the world, has a tariff-fueled trade war ended up being advantageous for anyone.  Tariffs merely increase prices overall, which reduces demand, shrinking economies.  As prices rise, inflation takes off - the sort of "stagflation" we saw back in the late 1970s.  I lived through that and it wasn't pretty.

Already the CEOs of Walmart and Dollar General are sounding the alarm.  Their low-income customers are cutting back - cutting off - non-essential spending.  The poor had little in the way of disposable income, now they have none.

While we are the breadbasket of the world, our crops consist mostly of corn, soybeans, and wheat.  Yes, California grows a lot of produce in the Central Valley, but that is a seasonal crop.  You can say goodbye to buying fresh fruit from South America when it is out-of-season in the North.  And for things like bananas  and other tropical fruits, well, they will be hit with tariffs, as they don't grow in the United States.

Even though we grow a lot of produce in America, a large portion of our produce comes from Mexico and Central America.  So expect prices to rise considerably.  And for things like Coffee and Tea, well, they simply don't grow in the US.

Yes, this may be a windfall for some farmers.  Their US-grown tomatoes will be worth far more, now that tomatoes from Mexico are tariffed.  But the net result is higher prices for consumers.  US farmers won't simply sell at the lower prices we have today, once the competition is selling at higher prices.

Other farmers are going to be hit and hit hard.  The vast farms in the Midwest growing thousands of acres of wheat, soybeans, and corn, are going to see their export markets shrink and thus demand for these bulk crops shrink.  There is a carry-on effect as well - fewer hopper cars filled with corn for CSX to ship to the coast to send overseas.  Struggling farmers will buy fewer new tractors and harvesters, meaning John Deere will have to lay off workers.  And with tariffs making US-made tractors less attractive, sales will slump further.  Traffic at the Ro-Ro terminal here in Brunswick (where we export American-made agricultural and construction equipment) will decrease and layoffs will ensue.

This is not "chicken little" thinking, but the logical outcome of a trade war.  It is what happened in 1829 and 1930 when this idiotic thinking previously took hold.

Tariffs can be enacted in such a way to limit collateral damage.  Small tariffs or tariffs limited to specific products may only affect a narrow market or cause prices to adjust slightly.  The so-called "chicken tax" of the 1960s was enacted to tax commercial vans from Europe, in response to Germany tariffing American chicken.  The net result was that VW stopped selling it windowless cargo van in the US, but still sold their passenger version.  Today, Ford imports "passenger" vans with cardboard seats and cheap plastic windows, which are converted to cargo vans at the port, to avoid the tariff (a process known as "tariff engineering").

The chicken tax illustrates another thing, though.  Once enacted, tariffs are damn hard to get rid of.  Each trading nation has a gun pointed at the others' head, with each saying, "Let's put our guns down - you go first!"  The Smoot-Hawley tariffs of 1930 took a decade or more to alleviate, as new trade agreements had to be painfully negotiated with each trading partner.  Tariffs are easy to enact, difficult to eliminate.

Tariffs of ridiculous amounts shut down trade entirely.  Trump is tossing around double-digit numbers and blanket tariffs without much consideration as to how they affect markets.  And the net effect of most tariffs is higher prices and reduced trade.

Consider the "anti-dumping" tariff levied by the International Trade Commission during the Obama years.   The ITC used to be down at 4th and D street and one of my jobs as law clerk was to go down there and make copies of "section 337" complaints.  You see, you can ask the ITC to levy tariffs or actually exclude products from import, based on a number of factors.  Naturally, we were interested in Patent and Trademark complaints - section 337.  If someone overseas infringes your Patent, and they import the infringing goods, you can file a complaint with the ITC and get an exclusion order commanding Customs to stop the products at the port of entry.  The importer either has to pay to have the products shipped back or have them shredded.  We saw a lot of knock-off sneakers get shredded.

Anti-dumping complaints are a different beast and go back to the Smoot-Hawley tariff act of 1930.  They became very popular in the 1970s when Japanese car manufacturers were accused of "dumping" cars in America for below cost, in order to get market share and a foothold in the market.  It worked.  Honda, Toyota, Nissan, et al. sold cars for cheap at first, but people quickly realized how much of a bargain they were and how reliable they are.  Not long thereafter, people were paying more for Japanese cars than they would for a US-made car,  And the "Japanese" car was likely assembled in America, negating  much of the anti-dumping tariffs.

In the case of an anti-dumping complaint, counter-tariffs may be levied if the ITC finds the products are sold for below cost.  One of the funniest complaints was filed by Mercury Marine against Yamaha, claiming "certain power heads" were being dumped on the market for below cost.  The case was dismissed when it turned out that the number one customer for these power heads was..... Mercury Marine, which used them in their "American-made" outboard motors.  Truth is stranger than fiction.

Anyway, once an anti-dumping complaint is validated by the ITC, the tariff order has to be signed by the President, which in this case, was President Obama.   Unlike Trump's tariffs, the amount and reasoning behind the tariffs wasn't just pulled out of a hat, but was judiciously deliberated by the Administrative Law Judges of the ITC, after hearing arguments and pleadings from both parties.  There was due process involved.

Even so, "Obama's" tire tariffs accomplished nothing, other than to screw consumers.  Tire prices - imported and domestic - skyrocketed for a brief period of time - and "American" tire companies simply pocketed windfall profits. Once the tariffs ended, well, we went back to the way things were, and today, Chinese and Korean tires dominate the market.  Even "American" brands like Firestone are owned by Bridgestone, a Japanese conglomerate and the second-largest tire company in the world.  Plants were closed, no jobs were saved, and today, of the five largest tire companies in the world, only Goodyear represents the United States.  Tariffs did bubkis.

Harley-Davidson went a similar route.  I worked for a fellow whose wife was a Trademark attorney in-house at H-D during the transition from the AMF years (boo! hiss!) to the reorganization under new management.  The company was pretty broke, but they started licensing their marks and that provided enough income to fund development of their next generation "Evolution" motors.  They also filed an anti-dumping complaint with the ITC for motorcycles above 750cc.  They could not keep all Japanese bikes out the market (which were, indeed, killing off domestic bike production in the US, UK, and Europe) as H-D didn't make smaller motorcycles.

But they prevailed in the big-bike segment and the ITC levied a tariff on big bikes.  The Japanese responded by making bikes of 749cc or less, and still managed to do well.  Of course, the traditional Harley buyer wouldn't touch a "Jap Bike" but it did give H-D some breathing room for a few years.  

But, once again, the relief was short-lived.  The Indian brand was revived in America and Polaris started selling big "Hogs" as well (the two merged later on).  There is no secret sauce in building motorcycles and with domestic competition, well, the tariffs didn't do much to protect H-D's market share.  Not only that, but their target audience started aging out.  I commented on this before - how the younger generation isn't interested in big, loud, "hogs" and the image that goes along with them.   Motorcycling in general is on the decline, and the first part of 2025 has seen a 20% drop in sales, due to the recession. Boomers are aging out, and the next generation doesn't have the disposable income to buy what is a fair-weather friend and a very expensive recreational toy - one that is frustrating to ride in our ever-crowded roads.

So H-D is in trouble today, aided and abetted by some mis-steps in trying to reach out to the younger market as well as a ill-fated foray into electric bikes.  Tariffs didn't save the company, or if they did, it was only a short-term bump, not a long-term benefit.

So, in addition to tariffs causing a lot of financial pain for consumers, they don't end up helping the industries that they are supposed to help.  And a lot of other industries and business segments - particularly agriculture - end up being hurt by reciprocal tariffs.  And Trump thinks he can "warn" foreign countries not to enact such reciprocal tariffs.  That hasn't worked.

So why do people support tariffs?  For some, it is ignorance, for others it is greed.  I've heard people say things like, "Well, the foreign company will just have to take the cost of tariffs out of their profit margin!"   But in many industries, profit margins are measured in the single digits.  You can't simply cut your profits by 35% to match Trump's tariffs, when your own profit margin is less than 10%.   These ridiculous tariff numbers amount to an exclusion order, eliminating an import altogether.  VW simply stopped selling its cargo van (shown above) after the chicken tax was enacted.  They can't afford to "eat" a 20% tariff, and padding the price accordingly would make the van unaffordable to consumers.  They simply left the market at a time GM, Ford, and Dodge started producing their own vans.

So a win for the big-3?  Maybe.  VW is still around, and cargo vans, as I noted, are now imported with disposable seats and windows to avoid the tariff.   Mercedes assembles knock-down "kits" in South Carolina and avoids the chicken tax as well.  Dodge (Ram) builds its "Promaster" vans (based on Fiat designs) in either Mexico or Turkey.  I'm getting so tired of winning!

The other argument made by the pro-tariff set is that tariffs on imported goods will raise their prices, thus nurturing domestic industry.  Unprofitable businesses will become profitable!  The problem is, of course, it that prices of domestically-produced products increase as well.  Oddly enough, the people who make this argument about tariffs insist it will not raise domestic prices!  But if tariffs increase prices to the point where domestic industry takes up the slack, don't prices have to be hgher by default?  You can't have it both ways.  If domestic production was profitable at current prices, people would be motivated to produce, domestically.  And indeed, some are, many of which are foreign companies - such as Mercedes, Nissan, Toyota, Honda, KIA, Hyundai, BMW, and VW, to name a few, as well as a host of companies whose names and products you never heard of.  Most all of them use non-union labor, however.  Hmmmm...... something there I can't quite put my finger on!

No, prices will go up with tariffs - full stop.  But what about the greed factor?  I noted before that prior to the income tax (enacted as a result of our entry into WW I) the Federal government was pretty small and weak and funded mostly by tariffs and other government fees.  The greedy faction wants to go back to that old model - of a tiny government and no income tax, like the days of the "robber barons" and trusts.  I mean, that is swell for Billionaires to consolidate their wealth and take over huge sections of the economy, but sort of a raw deal for the rest of us.

I live on an island where these robber barons used to vacation.  South of us is Cumberland Island, home of the Carnegies.  Adjacent that is Little Cumberland, home of the Coca-Cola heirs.  Back in the late 1800s and early 1900s (the "guilded age" for a privileged few) you could make unlimited amounts of money and pay little or nothing in taxes and leave it all to your heirs.  As a result, we were devolving into the class-based society they have (or had) in Olde Englande, where Lords and Ladies and titled persons owned all the land an everyone else was a servant or serf, living as a perpetual tenant with no hope of climbing the social ladder.  You were born into poverty, you stayed there.

I mean, I get it.  If I was Elon Musk, I would want no income tax and no gifts and estates tax.  But I'm not Elon Musk, and I have to get by on my savings and Social Security.  I don't want to see the stock market turned into a casino (which it already has, to some extent) or Social Security abolished, just so some filthy rich guy can get even richer.  Others seem less bothered by this and assume that the "savings" will somehow trickle down to them through unknown means.  You gotta have faith - right?

Faith-based economics, however, are always doomed to failure, whether it is the Tulip bubble of 1637, the real estate bubbles of 1989, 2008, and today, or the global trade war of 2025.  Like I said, at least with the anti-dumping tariffs, there was some sort of judicial process and logic applied.  Traditional tariff levels of 1-5% don't seem to affect markets too much.  But today, we are seeing numbers as high as 100%, which generally amounts to an exclusion order.

All I can say is, stock up on coffee, because it is about to get expensive.  And enjoy your bananas while you can.  And if you have a reliable working car, keep it, because in the next four years, new and used car prices are going to increase at least 25% or more.

Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And sadly, the MAGA set all flunked history or simply believe "this time, it's different!'

It isn't.

Passive Income - Rent vrs. Mortgage

Is it better to be a landlord or a mortgage holder?

There is a lot of talk, mostly inaccurate, about passive income these days. Self-styled internet "influencers" exhort their followers to seek out "passive income" as a way to get ahead in life.  Social activists, on the other end of the spectrum, decry passive income as parasitical losses and argue that landlords shouldn't exist - and everyone should own their own home, which is the "American Dream!"

Both are laughably wrong.

But let me address that last argument to get it out of the way.  The American Dream has never been about home ownership!  The American Dream was the idea that you could succeed on your merits in a society, regardless of your background or social status.  Granted, it is often a laughable farce - the two people touting a "meritocracy" today - Trump and Musk - were born into privilege and wealth in the millions.  They hardly "succeeded" based on merit, but moreso based on background, a huge head start, and lots of chicanery.

But the idea itself has merit, and while a child in the ghetto has little chance of becoming a Billionaire, you can elevate yourself somewhat in society by applying yourself.  My Grandfather, for example, was born poor as his Father had killed himself.  He went to City College, got a law degree, joined a firm representing "City Bank of New York" and became partner, moved from Brooklyn to Larchmont and even became Mayor.  Local boy makes good!

And similarly in my own life, I went from college dropout stoner to millionaire lawyer in about a decade or so, mostly by not being a stoner anymore.  I'm not saying that luck isn't a factor - it is.  I'm not saying that everyone can do it - statistically they can't.  But the American Dream isn't about owning shit, it's about not being locked into the caste you were born in, as was (and is) the case in so many parts of the world today (and what the "meritocracy" mavens want to make permanent in America).

And yes, owning a house is just owning shit.  It is a machine for living (a term coined by Le Corbusier, btw) with lots of expensive parts that break regularly.   I guess when I was a kid, I thought if I owned a car free-and-clear I would be set for life.  Only later did I realize that cars are just appliances and they wear out fairly quickly.  Houses are no different, and they can be expensive maintenance nightmares.   Even just keeping them clean and tidy is a chore, over time.  It is only those who are renting who look on wistfully at the "lucky" homeowner who is up on his roof blowing off pine needles or cleaning gutters.  There are advantages to renting that most tenants don't realize.

Which brings us to the second point - are landlords "parasites" who shouldn't exist?  Well, there are situations where people want to rent for logical reasons (other than not being able to afford to buy).  My next (and last) home, for example, will likely be rented, as I will not have to worry about maintenance and repairs as I become more decrepit.  Young people starting out in a new city and a new job likely would prefer to rent as buying a home involves not only down payments, but transactional fees that can be as much as 5-10% of the purchase price (on both ends).  If you don't plan on living in a house for at least five years, it makes more sense to rent than buy.

And ask the folks who bought at the peak of these real estate bubbles how "lucky" they feel to be a homeowner!  No, no, there are legitimate reasons to rent and legitimate reasons to be a landlord.  It is only in recent years we have seen mega-landlords using software to collude on rental pricing.  That is the problem, not renting in general

But what about passive income?  As recently noted in an article online, it is sort of insulting to tell poor people - who spend 100% of their income on survival needs - to seek out passive income.  To have passive income - in the form of rental income, interest income, dividend income, capital gains, and the like, you need to have money to invest or at the very least, a decent income stream to cover money you borrow.  Yes, my first real estate "investment" was a nothing-down deal, but I couldn't have swung it without a substantial income stream and disposable income.

So, on to today's topic! Finally!

Last month I was a landlord.  This month, I am a mortgage holder - a banker of sorts - as the buyer for our condo asked us to take back a mortgage.  So they gave us about $30,000 and asked us to take back a note for $110,000, payable in monthly installments at 7% amortized over 30 years, at $750 a month.  Their first monthly payment cleared the bank yesterday.

As a landlord, I was responsible for all repairs and maintenance to the inside of the condo, and I had to find and vet tenants and deal with vacancy when they left, as well as rehab the place when it got worn down.  We also had to pay property taxes, insurance, as well as the condo fee and special assessments.  In addition, as remote landlords (a bad idea) we had to pay a management company to manage most of these things.

Probably the best year we had was 2023.  No vacancy, no repairs, no increase in the condo fee, no lease-signing fees by the management company.  According to Quickbooks, we cleared $6403.  Other years, we lost money or made far less.  It isn't easy being a landlord, to be sure!  And if our tenant stopped paying rent, we would have to initiate eviction proceedings, which can take months, cost money and you never get reimbursed for the costs.

Now, as a holder of the mortgage, we stand to make $8941.80 a year in principle and interest payments, which is steady regardless of whether there is a tenant in the property or not.  We don't have to pay for repairs, condo fees, taxes, or insurance.  Just those checks coming in, no hassle.  What's even better is that if the buyer stops paying the mortgage, we can foreclose on the property and take it back.  The costs of foreclosure all come out of the buyer's pocket, in the form of their down payment or even their own wallet.  It is a much nicer deal all the way around.

Mark's Father used to do this in rural Maine.  He would buy distressed properties for cheap - often bank foreclosures - as he knew the mortgage managers at the local banks.  He (and Mark) would fix up the properties and then sell them.  Since most rural Mainers had little money and crappy credit histories, he could take back a mortgage as payment and have a steady income stream in retirement.  Naturally, he vetted his buyers carefully, which in a small town wasn't hard to do as everyone knew your business.  That is, of course, the key - finding a good buyer.

But the point of this posting is that, in terms of passive income, being a landlord is a shitload of work and a shitload of risk, for less reward than other forms of passive income.  You would probably be better off just investing in a mutual fund.  Yes, the depreciation deduction is a nice perk, particularly if you are in the higher income brackets.  But after ten years, well, that's done and now you have a capital gains problem!

And that capital gains problem can be alleviated, in part, by using the installment provision of the tax code - by taking back a mortgage.

Doctor, My Eyes! (Posterior Vitreous Detachment)

 The human body doesn't come with an owner's manual!

I went to an eye doctor the other day - a retired fellow who was quite active back in the day in developing a lot of the eye tests that are used today to detect eye problems.  I was telling him about my old doctor, "Dr. Dolittle" (no, really) who had an oak-paneled office in the State Tower Building in downtown Syracuse, New York back in the 1970's.  He wore a waistcoat with a pocket watch on a chain, even!  He had these wooden racks of lenses and he would put this contraption on  your head and start stacking lenses until the bridge of your nose hurt.

My new doctor said, "like THIS?" and opened up a drawer containing a wooden case lined with felt with row upon row of lenses.  "Old School!" I cried, "No school like the old school!"  I knew I liked this guy from the get-go.

The reason I went was I recently had an eye infection and also I was seeing zoomies - black streaks (and sometimes white flashes) at the periphery of my vision.  I was also seeing darker than normal "floaties" in my line of sight, as well as a wallpaper of lighter floaties in my vision.  It was concerning and I remember reading something that this could be a sign of a detached retina or something.  Geez, I am really falling apart!

Well, my retina is OK, but I learned about posterior vitreous detachment, which is illustrated in the diagram above.  Simply stated, there is a bag of goo inside your eyeball, that fills up most of the space.  Between ages 40-65 or so, part of this goo bag may partially detach from the retina which may lead to weird things in your vision, temporarily.  It can also be caused, I believe, by physical injuries,  It is not deemed to be harmful per se, but if the zoomies or flashes come back, it may be a sign the retina is detaching.

On the one side, I am glad to hear I am no going blind.  On the other hand, it is like, really God?  This is how life plays out - ending not with a bang, but a whimper?   As we get older, we just gradually fall apart, getting more and more comfortable with the grave.  By the time you are 90, you end up like my neighbor, who told me yesterday that she is ready to die.  And I get that.  It sounds sad, but after nearly a century of living, you get comfortable with the end game and oddly enough, are not scared of it.  Maybe that is why horror movies always use old people as jump-scare props.  We are literally, the walking dead.

What is a real tragedy, I now realize, is when a young person dies - they are not gradually used to the idea and plans and dreams are cut short, and they may leave behind a spouse or children.  So much possibility - left undone.

But old people!  They're ready to check out.

Crazy Conspiracy Theory - New Northwest Passage!

 

Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.

People are rightfully scratching their heads as to why Trump is alienating our best allies in Europe and the Americas.  His anti-Canadian rhetoric is rightfully pissing off Canadians, who are puzzled as to why their best friend is now their best frenemy.  Of course, the reality is, America doesn't hate Canada, only Trump hates Canada.  And Trump is doing this on the orders of Vladmir Putin, who wants to divide America from its allies.  Make America Weak Again!

Yes, let's go back to before WW I when our military was tiny and unprepared for war, and our projection onto the world stage was almost nonexistent.  Back then, the sun never set on the British Empire, and well, you know how that worked out.  Maybe all empires are destined to fall, eventually.

Similarly, the noise about taking over Greenland seems stupid as well.  What is the strategic value of Greenland?  There is none.  However, it is a way of attacking our allies in Europe without attacking them directly.  We piss off Denmark while at the same time worrying our other European allies.  What's next?  Do we demand that France hand over Saint Pierre and Miquelon? (I'll bet most of you didn't know these islands even existed - I know I didn't!).

And why threaten Panama?  The canal thing was settled decades ago, and there doesn't seem to be much clamoring on anyone's part to take it back.  Yea, the Chinese had the franchise on the ports - but those were sold to Blackrock recently.  No, no, once again, it is just empty sabre-rattling designed to annoy our Southern neighbors (that and the threats of tariffs) and divide the US from its natural allies.

But maybe there is another explanation?  I heard this crazy theory online and I don't buy it for the reasons stated above.  Putin simply wants America to be weak and isolationist.  There has already been talk of cutting the military budget by 25% (the real "third rail" of America politics - not Social Security!) which would actually cut the overall Federal budget by a significant amount, compared to the penny-ante layoffs going on in various departments.

What is this conspiracy theory?  The New Northwest Passage.  It goes like this: Global warming is inevitable, particularly when right-wing governments across the globe squash environmental initiatives. Sea levels will rise, coastal cities will flood or become walled fortresses like the Netherlands already is.  Palm trees will grow in Canada and the sea ice that blocks the fabled Northwest Passage will be a thing of the past!  Whoever controls Canada and Greenland will control the biggest shipping lane in the world - a direct connection between Russia (our new friend!) and Europe (boo! hiss!).  And just in case, we'll be sure to control the Panama Canal, too!  Waddya gonna do - go around Cape Horn?  They don't call them the roaring forties for nothing!

It is, of course, a ridiculous proposition.  Why would it be advantageous to sail through the Northwest Passage from Asia to Europe, when you could sail through the Suez canal or even around the Cape of Good Hope.  Already today, some shippers are finding it cheaper to avoid canals and use huge ships (that would not fit through Panama or Suez) and just take the long way around.  Whatever the financial advantage of a Northwest Passage would be, it would be far offset by the economic damage caused by tariffs and trade wars.  Why would Trump want to control this passage that would mostly be traffic to Europe?  Vance has already expressed his views on helping European trade.

And speaking of economic damage, if all the sea ice permanently disappeared from the Northwest passage, the damage to our coasts would be staggering.  A substantial portion of the population of the US lives on either coast, and a major rise in sea levels would cause trillions of dollars in losses and forced a hundred million Americans to migrate inland.  And speaking of migration, such flooding would result in a worldwide migration crises.  Yes, the planet is burning up and Trump is diddling with Greenland.  .Priorities!

No, it is just online nonsense.  A more rational explanation is that like a bull in the china shop, Trump just wants to destroy things - on orders from Putin.  By Making America Weak Again, it paves the way for a new Russian or Chinese Century, while America looks inward and disengages from world affairs.

And engaged we are.  We have military bases in nearly every friendly country across the globe - and a few unfriendly ones as well.  Recall that the first gulf war was to rescue our "ally" Kuwait, which was essentially defenseless against Iraqi aggression.  Country after country has relied upon our foreign military bases and promises of protection, in lieu of their own military forces.  And yes, this has been a sore point, particularly with regard to NATO, at least until recently.  Disengagement with the world will mean the world will re-arm itself, which is good news for foreign weapons makers, not so much for Lockheed-Martin.

But the damage has already been done. America has aptly demonstrated that it is a fickle ally.  Even if a Democrat is elected President in 2028 and the Democrats take both houses and a majority of the governorships (and obtain a majority in the Supreme Court) it is doubtful our reputation will recover without years or even decades of atonement.  Why would any country rely on our promises when every four years, foreign policy can swing 180 degrees overnight?

In a way it is game over for the American Century or the American Empire.  The country has been looted, both financially and philosophically.  Today, it is every man for themselves, make money or die.  All must labor in service of the almighty shareholder!  Make it big by gambling on Bitcoin!  Only suckers work at "jobs" anymore!   And it is a message a lot of the younger generation has bought into - a younger generation who disturbingly voted for Trump.  Sadly, a lot of younger people are getting their information from bloggers and influencers, who tell them anyone can be the next big star!  All you gotta do is hustle and grind - work three jobs at a time for silicon valley startups!  Deliver food for Uber!  Rent out your spare bedroom on AirBnB!  You'll be the next Andrew Tate in no time!

It is no way to live.  And sadly, members of this next generation (particularly young men) are the most likely to latch on to these stupid conspiracy theories.  It ain't just Grandpa watching Fox News every night!

I used to feel bad at the state of our country and the world which we left to the next generation.  But when I see young people embracing the insanity, and as I slip slowly off the mortal coil, all I can say is, you have a good time, but be sure this is really what you want.

Northwest Passage?  Please! Spare me!