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Page 18 NOVEMBER 7, 2010 SfarNews www.starnewsga.com Commentary The life of and on Adamson Square Sam gentr^^ SfarNews Online editor www.starnewsga.com I’m going to miss Miller’s Downtown on the Carrollton square. I’ve been play ing in the house band there since the doors opened almost six years ago. There are still many fantastic eateries on the square, however, and I hope they can continue to survive and prosper. Forcing the restaurants on the square to close at midnight is a mistake. Although we sensed things were not going well for Miller’s, the news took still us by surprise, and it came quickly, like a thief in the night. Now that two weeks have passed, I must say that the absence of the place has left me with somewhat of an identity crisis. Of course, if restaurants are forced to close at midnight by the Carrollton City Council, then the square itself may soon be facing an identity crisis. Forcing the restaurants on the square to close at mid night is a mistake. We all deserve an escape from our ordinary, daily lives, and the nightlife the square provides has been a positive out let in my life, as I know it has for so many others. It’s a culture all its own, filled with music, dancing and fun found in no other place at no other time. Hundreds of patrons frequent these res taurants, and after 6 years I can tell you that the busiest time for these establish ments - on the weekends - is between 11:30 p.m. and 1:30 a.m. Forcing the restaurants on the square to close at mid night is a mistake. These businesses provide a source of income for many local people who work in the food services industry. I was recently speaking with a young lady who was on the wait staff at Miller’s. She said the worst part about it closing was that she and her friends were now all fighting for the same jobs. Finding a new job with less than a week’s notice is difficult for anyone, and bills don’t stop coming in just because income does. If the res taurants on the square are forced to close at midnight, many decent, hardworking individuals will be faced with the same dilemma. Forcing the restaurants on the square to close at midnight is a mistake. One of my closest friends sells food to independent restaurants. If he doesn’t sell, he doesn’t get paid. The restaurants on the square provide much of his income. He. is a family man with three children, who works tirelessly to provide for them. If these establishments con tinue to. disappear, his future will be in jeopardy. Forcing the restaurants on the square to close at midnight is a mistake. The chain reaction that a dying town square would create could damage so many lives in so many ways. The work ers need the income, as does the city and the restaurant owners. Remember Super D? That’s the only business I remember being on the Carrollton square during my youth. The square was desolate and dead, and now it could be in danger of becoming that way again. The good peo ple at Carrollton Main Street have worked diligently for years to create and promote the unique and lively environ ment found on the Carrollton square. Forcing the restaurants on the square to close at midnight is a mistake. I understand why Mayor Gamer is concerned. The potential dangers con cern me, too, and no one should have to live in fear of being attacked in this great city. However, allowing thugs and punks See GENTRY page 31 Going for ninety first, then a hundred Harold MILES When you get to be eighty years old you begin to contemplate what the future might hold. In most cases, not much. I recently suffered a business loss that could be catastrophic for my financial well being unless I can take a business that has been mn into the ground and make it work. With this in mind, the last time I saw Doctor Lee Stringfellow I told him of this loss. In our discussion, I told him I thought I c,ould recover my loss if he could keep me alive until I am a hundred. Then I asked him if he thought he could. His reply was “Harold, let us try for ninety first, then we will look at a hundred.” In other words, he didn’t seem to hold a great deal of confidence that I would even make ninety. In the same week I saw Doctor Whitpey the vascular surgeon who repaired an iliac artery aneurism for me last Thanksgiving. I asked him about my prospects for living to be a hundred. He said, “I will give you ninety-nine”, but he didn’t seem to say it with much enthusiasm. So, it seems that if I want to leave an inheritance for my children, I must work faster. When I crossed the zero of the decade beginning at forty, I experienced some period of depression after that event. At eighty, there can’t be any more than one more, and at this advanced age the decades go by now like the years did a few decades ago. One of the greatest disappointments of growing up, then growing old is that I didn’t seem to become wise. I have often tried to understand why I thought I would be wise with the passing of years. I now believe it was because during my childhood when I asked an adult a question I got an answer. I don’t ever remember as a child an adult telling me they didn’t know something. I know now a great number of adults told me a lot more than they knew and a great deal of what they told me was not true. Even today I rarely hear “I don’t know.” Will I be alive in ten or twenty years? I don’t know. If I am, I will be damn old. Why you should care about Mr. Huichang Why should you care about Mr.Huichang? Let’s get to know him. His full name is Geng Huichang, a one-time obscure economics professor. He is a pleasant fellow, soft-spoken, mild-mannered, very polite. He is also one of the most danger ous men on earth with the ability to change our world with a sin gle computer keystroke. On September 6, 2007 Geng Huichang became the Minister of State Security - China’s equivalent of the Soviet KGB and our CIA. He is an expert on America and on the application of commercial and industrial intelligence. He is also an expert on military intelligence and an accomplished master on the theft of military secrets and sen sitive technologies. Some think that Mr. Huichang is largely responsible for imple menting China’s long term strat egy of the “peaceful rise” to replace America as the world superpower without firing a shot. Some anticipate several sig nificant moves by Mr. Huichang to destroy our economy. The first move would be a plan to shed U.S. Treasuries in order to crush our bond market, the monetary machine that funds our deficit and a large part of our lifestyle. (Have you noticed that C. ED WILSON Thoughts While Shaving Reserve is now printing fait money to buy our Treasuries, because of reduced world - read Chinese - demand? Have you noticed that recently our buyers were paying the treasury a 0.55% premium to take their money to purchase 5 year inflation protected TIPS, in lieu of two year low interest Treasury Notes? Why? Our Federal Reserve is disappointed that our “inflation rate” is so low. Ultimately, Obama’s defi cits must be paid with inflated dollars or we may default. Is inflation on our horizon? You betcha! Who does inflation hurt? The savers and retirees. Some think that the next step will be to dump our fiat dollars and create a new “world reserve currency” no more petrodollars, the system formalized by nego tiations between the U.S. and the House of Saud whereby only U.S. dollars would be acceptable for the purchase of OPEC petroleum. Have you noticed that a number of pro posals are being floated to achieve that end? Have you noticed that from 2001 to 2009 our dollar has depreciated by some 40% and China, holding our dollar denominated treasur ies, has incurred huge losses? Zhu Mi, deputy governor of the Peoples Bank of China stated, “the U.S. cannot expect other nations to increase purchases of their Treasuries to fund the entire fiscal shortfall of the United States”. Some think that the final step will be to buy up and hoard the most precious natural resources required by global industry in order to crush our corporations. What has been happening: in December 2009, China sold off $34 billion of US government bonds. In January 2010, China and Japan reduced their treas ury holdings by selling a net $33 billion. Where did this money go? Between 2003 and 2009 China has acquired approximately 454 tons of gold to complement their silver stash, which is the world’s larg est. And, China has been using this cache of dollars to buy natural resources around the world: oil fields, natural gas reserves, mines, pipelines and refineries and other natural resource assets. The Chinese are not alone in their retreat from Treasuries. The central banks of Russia and See WILSON page 19 Michelle Obama: don’t make money, just help people our Federal While waiting for my breadkfast at a local restaurant, I was reading an article that quoted Michelle Obama telling some working class women in Zanesville, Ohio, “Don’t go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse....Make that choice, as we did, to move out of the money-making industry into the helping industry.” After thinking about how cooking and serving me break fast helped me, I thought about how my corporate-produced automobile sitting outside helps me. I decided not to tell the folks cooking and serving me breakfast that they were not helping me. So, despite the fact that the great majority of my working life has been spent at a University System of Georgia university (West Georgia), where I taught business and economics, I. was unable to glow with pride because, in First Lady Obama’s eyes, I am one of the noble people employed in a “helping industry”. Incidentally, like, I suspect, others in helping industries, one Carole SCOT^ of my interests was making money. Michelle’s past, high- paying jobs and the big bucks she blew on a pair of athletic shoes and vastly more on a ritzy resort in Spain suggests she does have some interest in mak ing money. I again thought about Michelle’s views that night as I watched a show on television about a ship that catches pollack in the cold and stormy Bering Sea. Most of the show was about the processing of the fish, all of which took place on the ship. This work is physically extremely demanding. It’s very boring, too. The most physically demanding job is working at well below zero stacking heavy boxes of processed fish. While watching the show, I wondered why so many people think Michelle is so smart. As an economist, I was very impressed with the fact that vir tually every bit of each fish is made use of in some way. We economists “preach” that each producer of the goods and serv ices we consume use as few resources as possible. This is best both for society as a whole and for private companies pro ducing goods and services. The fewer are the resources used up in producing one thing, the more we can produce of other things. Paying for fewer resources increases a company’s profits. So, profit is an incentive to be efficient that benefits soci ety. Thinking about profits reminded me of a senior maga zine major at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communications who, it has been reported, criti cized in print businesses charg ing more for their products than it costs them to produce them. UGA’s catalog indicates that this student could have chosen to take an economics course. However, it is possible that UQA has a Marxist economics professor who would condemn earning a profit. The reason he or she would condemn earning a profit—the return to the owners of a private business—is See SCOTT page 19
