Operator, can you help me make this call?
See the number on the matchbook is old and faded,
She’s livin’ in LA, with my best old ex-friend Ray,
A guy she said she knew well and sometimes hated
Operator, let’s forget about this call,
There’s no one there I really wanna talk to,
Thank you for your time, you’ve been so much more than kind,
You can keep the dime…
Jim Croce
Yup, you can keep the dime. I was gonna use it to make a call, but now I reckon not.
Because I read this past week that whoever decides such matters had removed the last remaining NYC coin operated pay phone from its HQ – as it happens, in Times Square.
Here’s the evidence:
My additional investigations (conducted on the ubiquitous, impeccably accurate Snopes.com) suggest that this is, as ad nauseum designation deems such matters, Fake News. That there are, apparently, any number of these buggers still functioning on Manhattan streets, and even more when those ensconced inside bodegas and other such commercial enterprises are counted.
And it certainly would be inaccurate to suggest that the city features no more pay phones of any kind. They have these new-fangled machines that hook into them fancified cell phones on nearly every block. I’ve never used one of these contraptions, but then again, there’s lotsa things I never done. Like making a TikTok video or operating behind the wheel of a speed boat.
I reckon I’m just too old to change now. But I kinda wish that the folks at Snopes wouldn’t have saw fit to call BS on this here story, because it is about the best theme I can come up with on this holiday weekend. On the other hand (so I tell myself), there is ample precedent in this space for bending the facts just a tetch — in the name of poetical license and all. So that’s what I’m gonna do now.
Leastways, I got no other use for dimes, because even before they bounced that last Superman Receptacle one outta town, it cost a federally mandated 4.94 of them to effect a telephonic connection. And, beyond this, there ain’t much a fella can do with 0.8 of a bit. I do own quite a few of them round near-worthless cylinders, though, gathering dust in various receptacles across my multiple residences, and with which I can’t bear to part. Because I like to see them, even if the image of Franklin Delano Roosevelt embossed on every one of them looks, to me, more like his successor Harry S Truman.
Roosevelt or Truman: I Can’t Rightly Tell
So, I reckon I’ll hold on to the ones I got – dimes that is. Maybe even shine ‘em up now and again. It don’t much matter, after all, if the guy on the left is FDR or HST. Plus, in my research for this note, I learned that the S in Truman’s name is just an S. He don’t have no additional letters in his middle name. And, that being the case, putting a period after it is a typographical error. It ain’t Harry S. Truman; just Harry S Truman.
I could swap any dime I have for a few hundred British Thermal Units of Nat Gas, but hey, it’s the official start of summer this weekend, so why bother? The commodity crossed $9 per 10 Billion BTUs earlier last week, nearly 4x where it was trading a year ago, so it’s safe to say they’s pricey. I also recently learned, to my infinite horror, that Canada, which I once assumed to be the producer of 100% of the world’s NG, is now a net importer of the stuff. It’s like Wisconsin sourcing most of its cheese from Vermont, or Mexico outsourcing poncho production. And it just ain’t right.
News is not much better in other realms of the Energy Patch. Friday’s WTI close of >$115/barrel is itself a triple from even pre-lockdown days, and a level that eclipsed our post invasion panic session of a couple of months back.
And ten cents won’t purchase much of anything else – not even the fleshy stuff that you’re BBQing this weekend:
From what I gather, the folks in charge in Washington are just as likely as not to celebrate this here graph. Maybe slide it in alongside the one indicating record prices as the pump, and proclaim a new era of vegetarian, bicycling Nirvana.
I have some sympathy for them, though. Not too much, after all, that the House, Senate, President or even Supreme Court can do to turn longstanding food consumption patterns on (I must say it) a dime.
Economists are hopeful that these trends will run their course. That pricing pressure has peaked. And maybe it has. But inflation is a tough nut to crack. And, while we’re on the subject, the financial press has recently been bandying about a quote from the magnificent Milton Friedman, that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. I LOVE Friedman, but is he right here? Are, for instance, the price increases in Grains, Meats and Energy simply a matter of too much money chasing too few goods? Or does the hostile disruption of these products from major supply sources factor into the equation? Is, for instance, the bird flu that is destroying our poultry population and rendering wings, legs and thighs a delicacy beyond the economic reach of the masses truly and exclusively a monetary phenomenon?
Just wondering is all.
Meantime, the market was droppin’ dimes all week. Like it was Peyton Manning or John Stockton. The Gallant 500 recaptured >6% of recent losses; Captain Naz >9%. The value of corporate paper spiked. Crypto stabilized. I reckon we’ll take it.
But rather than take a victory lap on my repeated “oversold” call, I’ll simply state that I was relieved to have been let off the hook. However, I must point out the obvious: bear markets don’t typically end in the types of V-bottoms manifested last week, which are more typically driven by short squeezes and poorly informed re-allocations of capital than they are evidence that the selloff is over.
On balance, market prognosticators are calling this a Bear Market rally, and on balance, I am inclined to agree with them. Valuations may hang in there for a stretch – if for no other reason than selling fatigue, but the underpinnings of the economy feature some ominous signs. To wit, the Almighty Consumer has spent down her covid savings and is increasingly relying upon credit to finance her purchases:
Not gonna lie: all of this makes me a bit jumpy.
One way or another, though, my dimes are buying less, and the images on the coins themselves are looking less like Roosevelt or Truman, and more like FDR’s predecessor: Herbert Hoover.
In earlier, happier times, I’d probably trek down to the corner with some change in my pocket and call someone.
But the coins will no longer work in the machines, and even if they did, there’s no one there I really wanna talk to. Certainly not my best old ex-friend Ray, nor his roommate. Likely, the feeling will pass, but in the meanwhile, I intend to proceed with extreme caution.
I suggest you do the same.
TIMSHEL