A few days ago CNN had a story about the last surviving United States veteran of World War I, Frank Buckles.  He is 107 years old.

He lives about an hour away and was recently in Washington DC to advocate for repair of the World War I Memorial.  Honoring 26,000 Washingtonians who served in World War I, it has been neglected for quite some time.  Buckles and others hope to that by getting it changed into a national monument it will not be left to fall apart.

I walked across the National Mall during lunch on Tuesday to see it since I had last stumbled upon it about six years ago.  The Memorial is slightly off the beaten path, a bandshell nestled among the trees to the side of the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool.  You could probably sit there for hours unbothered by the tour groups that crowd the other veterans memorials nearby.

The deflation of the Great Depression, as in 1836, did not begin because of any sudden rise or surplus in output. It occurred because there was an enormous contraction of credit (money), bankruptcies creating an environment where cash was in frantic demand, and the Federal Reserve did not adequately accommodate that demand, so banks toppled one-by-one (because they were unable to meet the sudden demand for cash). [T]here was a concomitant drop both in money supply (credit) and the velocity of money which was so profound that price deflation took hold despite the increases in money supply spurred by the Federal Reserve.

I am not a goldbug or a survivalist and for all I know I should be also worried about inflation.  But on the bright side, maybe we can get some large public works going should unemployment kick in.  We have already tried war.

[The excerpt above is brought to you by the truthiness of Wikipedia.]

Aside from being alarming, it has been interesting to see how the Federal Reserve Chairman is trying to use some of the economic tools he described in a speech I attended in November 2002. 

At the time Ben Bernanke was a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve and there were some concerns about deflation, or falling prices, as had happened in the United States during the Great Depression and in Japan in the 1990s. 

For consumers, who today are up to their necks in debt, deflation is quite scary:  the money you owe has to be paid back with dollars that are worth more. 

Much of what he talked about sounded dramatic, but not very real at the time since the last deflationary period in the United States was in the 1930s.  It sounded like we did not have much to worry about now.  There were some bubbles in specific markets, but we were assured that

A particularly important protective factor in the current environment is the strength of our financial system: Despite the adverse shocks of the past year, our banking system remains healthy and well-regulated, and firm and household balance sheets are for the most part in good shape.

And so, to be honest, I was focused more on the Chinese food in front of me.

Bernanke was speaking at a Chinese restaurant in Washington DC where a group of economists, and their groupies, meet nearly every week to hear a lecture on the economic issues of the day.  The material is often dry but at least you are assured of eating good food.  If you arrive on time. 

As a member of the National Economists Club, I quickly observed that many of our nation’s top economists think that if a few chairs at their 10-person table are empty at five minutes past the hour it is their duty to hoard as much lo mein as possible before their colleagues arrive.  The laws of supply and demand clearly trump etiquette in this crowd.

But now, rereading his speech, it is a bit more horrifying partly because I still do not really understand monetary policy and partly because I suspect everyone in Washington is totally winging it when it comes to the bail-out legislation.

Back in 2002, Bernanke identified the warning signs of deflation:

[T]he Fed should take most seriously–as of course it does–its responsibility to ensure financial stability in the economy. Irving Fisher (1933) was perhaps the first economist to emphasize the potential connections between violent financial crises, which lead to “fire sales” of assets and falling asset prices, with general declines in aggregate demand and the price level. A healthy, well capitalized banking system and smoothly functioning capital markets are an important line of defense against deflationary shocks.

He also suggested several policy measures that the Federal Reserve could take to head off deflation.  For example, the government could print a lot of money and add it to the economy to increase inflation.  But at the time he cautioned that it would be new territory:

One important concern in practice is that calibrating the economic effects of nonstandard means of injecting money may be difficult, given our relative lack of experience with such policies.

And yet Bernanke and Paulson want the power to address the financial crisis with absolutely no oversight from Congress, the courts, or regulators. 

Fascinating.

Our friend Jeremy recently blogged about his 18 months living in our house while Elysia was stationed in Norfolk.  He remains grateful that he was not kicked out for setting a kitchen towel on fire his first weekend in the house when I returned home to find all of the windows open. 

Little does he know how low my standards were for roommates. 

You can’t do any better than that, Jeremy?  You call that a fire?

New York City has to be the ultimate test of how much you can tolerate in order to live there.  During eleven years I lived in seven different apartments and had fourteen different roommates.  But while I have my share of stories, in New York City you always hear of a greater horror when you compare notes with other people.  

Your problems are trivial when your friend describes the screaming in the hallway and the blood she found smeared on walls going down several flights of stairs.  Or the co-worker who came home to find that his neighbor had been keeping a woman chained in a closet.

And then there was the guy in the East Village who made soup out of his girlfriend and served it to his friends.  Fortunately I had no connection to that one but undoubtedly many New Yorkers took a second look at their roommate that week.  And wondered when the newly vacated unit would be cleaned and available.  Or even just available. 

Compared to that I just knew some eccentrics.  I lived briefly with a British woman who had a nice apartment and was fairly normal until she lost her job.  She then spent every waking moment watching movies in the living room.  I like movies, but she would only watch Westerns.  She would rent six John Wayne movies at a time and the Indians would circle the cowboys from 9am until 3am. 

Woo-woo-woo-woo-woo! 

After many weeks she ultimately moved back to England and sub-leased the apartment to a friend.  I was included with the apartment like furniture and met my new roommate after she moved in.  Awkward.

In Brooklyn I looked for a roommate with a job but asked too few questions.  I found myself sharing my apartment with someone who made a living buying and selling museum-quality chinese snuff bottles.  All kept in a briefcase, about fifteen of them worth tens of thousands of dollars apiece. 

It was a risky venture where he would buy a bottle at a prestigious auction house and then try to quickly sell it on the other side of the world before the invoice was due.  Or at least that was my impression.  Years later I did an online search and found out that he was caught stealing two bottles from a university collection and was convicted.  I am now fairly certain that the first bottle was stolen while he lived with me.

I am not sure why we decided to part ways but I do remember the 11 empty bookcases he left.  A city of skyscrapers in the living room, galley kitchen and bathroom of my 450 square foot fifth-floor walk-up.  Had the FBI contacted me I would not have been able to do much but gripe about carrying the bookcases to the curb.

In contrast, when Elysia moved back and Jeremy moved out, he only left behind some insect repellent.

How mundane.

We were just discussing how we only have six more months of car payments, so the fender bender on Wednesday was timely.

An Army Colonel bumped into Elysia as she was leaving the parking garage at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.  Citrus let out a big wail but it turned out to be because her popcorn spilled.

Now we get to drive a Kia rental car and apply for temporary passes for three bases.  Woo.

I recently started studying to become an Accredited Financial Counselor through an online program offered to military spouses.  About 200 of us applied and were awarded a fellowship through the National Military Family Association, and part of the training includes online webinars.  Unfortunately the best time for me was the Saturday session at 8 a.m.

This past weekend I rolled out of bed to log on and listen to an instructor based in Missouri.  I was familiar with the content but reminded myself that the financial experience of participating military spouses is likely all over the map.  As were the participants. 

About 20 military spouses were connected from all over the continental United States as well as Hawaii, Italy and Japan and we had at least one thing in common:  Despite the time zone differences nearly everyone said they would be asleep if they did could be doing something else.

[I just started a Facebook group for military financial counselors, and not just those in the AFC program.  To join, search Facebook for Military Financial Counselors.  Coincidentally, after I had set up the page and emailed AFCPE, they started a moderated Google Group.  Which is great, but is a more limited audience than I am trying to reach.]

On Sunday we went to the 31st Annual Takoma Park Folk Festival a couple of miles from our house.  Takoma Park is the Berkeley-Park Slope-Ann Arbor-Madison-Austin-etc. of Maryland.  An enclave that takes pride in community so strongly that the recycling instructions are 10 pages, complete with notes making sure you know that they have had a manual since 1993 with original information from even earlier publications produced in Berkeley.  That is how deep the caring goes.

The festival has a nice crafts section as well as a lot of tables set up by about 100 community groups, but the main feature is seven stages of music.  For added excitement they put the children’s stage every year in the Grassy Nook, which features poison ivy.

As we sat down on the grass I noticed a man who seemed somewhat angry and out of place.  He was wearing a sunvisor and wraparound glasses and was fairly clean cut.  He clearly was not there for the music or crafts.  And then I noticed that he had his video camera pointing backwards under his arm and he was tapping his visor near his right temple periodically.  It was creepy to realize he was filming people behind him and possibly recording conversations.

As a parent I first watched to see that he was not filming children.  He was following specific people — mainly the more hippy-ish people in the crowd.  I thought he might be undercover law enforcement, as the Washington Post recently had an article about the police infiltrating and spying on Takoma Park anti-war groups.  But this guy was too obvious or sloppy to be an officer, yet no one else seemed to notice.  He was so into his surveillance that he did not notice me take a few pictures of him in the act. 

I looked around for a police officer but none were nearby.  What he was doing was probably not illegal and he was probably just some sort of vigilante, and not the type of person to confront. 

What should I have done?

Elysia just returned from a work-related trip to Kingston, Ontario.  As far as I know we are not invading Canada but she did learn that Ontario is the home to a number of microbreweries in case our homeland resources run dry.

She visited Fort Henry, a National Historic Site and World Heritage Site and dined at the Officer’s Mess, served by people playing the role of British soldier-servants.  Or, as Elysia put it, Canadians.

The original fort was built by the British during the War of 1812 in case of attack by the United States.  Coincidentally, just yesterday I was reading about the British attack on Fort McHenry in Baltimore during the War of 1812.  I guess there was a wartime shortage of names available for forts. 

In Canada neither the original nor second Fort Henry were attacked.  In Baltimore, the British attacked Fort McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore and were turned back.  As a result, Canada got salad dressing and we kept Baltimore and have to sing the Star Spangled Banner. 

On her return trip she visited Alexandria Bay in New York, which had a nice view of the Thousand Islands and stopped at a restaurant which looked out at our retirement home. 

Elysia is on a business trip so Citrus and I are just hanging out.  She wants to go watch Army Wives or “that movie with the Captain and the boat”. 

We were channel-surfing last night and wound up watching Midway, a war movie with Charlton Heston, by default.  We were briefly watching something more benign, but she became terrified by Martin Lawrence running around undercover as a huge woman in Big Momma’s House.  Although I suppose it could have been Big Momma’s House 2.

When I told her that the movies she wanted were not on she asked me “How come Army Wives is always not on.”  I tried to explain how we can watch DVDs all the time, and over and over, but things on television are always different.  Of course, this is practically a thing of the past with video-on-demand and TIVO.  We do not have either.

Not much scares her although that changes as the months go by.  Her first movie in a theater, at six months old, was King Kong and she was fine.  And we watched Black Hawk Down while Elysia was deployed.  The first time did not faze her, the second time she wanted to know “what happened to the man”.  I told her he fell down and got a boo-boo.  A very bad boo-boo.

Tonight I suggested that we could watch a different movie about a boat, Master and Commander.  She wanted to know if it was scary like Big Momma but then told me that she is not afraid, like Sheila Rae in one of her books.  So we are going to try it.

A few more photos of our family are posted here.  They were taken (and are copyrighted) by Jeremy Reitman.