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On this day, Americans sit down to dinner, bow their heads and give thanks. It is a holiday in the Homeland. But here at The Daily Reckoning headquarters in this foreign city...far from hearth and home...we have neither leaders nor followers. So, we continue our vigil before the great Public Spectacle alone.

Yes, dear reader, we reckon today as everyday. And what we reckon with is a form of temporary insanity that takes over the multitudes from time to time. Sometimes it expresses itself in politics; sometimes in finances; sometimes in fashion and culture. We look around this morning and where do we see this collective insanity?

‘All of the above,’ comes the answer.

In politics, there is the War on Terror. Many Americans are convinced that Muslims want to cut their throats. They’ve never actually met one with a bloody knife, of course. But they read the papers; they know what’s up.

In lowbrow popular culture...grown men wear short pants...we used to call them ‘pedal pushers’...and young boys wear their pants below their underwear. At the other end of the culture curve, hedge fund managers bid millions for works of ‘art’ that would make a serious man choke himself laughing. No kidding. We watched a report on the BBC last night. The art market has never been more flush...and never more in need of flushing.

Today’s new art collectors are far more aggressive than previous generations, said the experts. They hire specialists to create multi-million dollar portfolios of what looks for all the world like junk.

Twisted bits of metal. Fabric samples. Paintings done with rollers...or grotesque representations of the human form. Klimt’s "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II" left the auction house on November 8th, after some addled art lover paid $87.9 million for it.

The Frieze in London brought in more than 60,000 gawkers when it put on a show of contemporary art recently. Sales of the stuff reached about $65 million.

"By investing in artists at the beginning of their careers," explains an article in The Business, "it is possible to acquire a major work. There is also the warm glow of having given an artist crucial support before everyone else jumped on the bandwagon."

How does the ‘investor’ know there will be a bandwagon? What makes him think he can make money by buying bits of inanimate trash? What does this stuff yield?

But then, the writer for The Business takes leave of his senses altogether:

"The art world has finely tuned antennae for those who put financial considerations before an interest in art. Any art buyer is expected to make a personal as well as a financial commitment; even the most hard-nosed dealer resents seeing artworks only appreciated in terms of accruing value..."

Here, we had to stop writing; we were laughing too hard. Getting a grip on ourselves, we continued

"...Artists hate it when their works are sold like commodities."

What planet does he come from? Artists are delighted if anyone buys their stuff at all. "Appreciated only in terms of accruing value?" They should be overjoyed if it’s appreciated in anyway at all.

Agnes Gund, a famous collector, once noticed that her cat had appreciated a sculpture by Mary Frank, by using it as a litter box. Most contemporary artists would be lucky even to get that kind of attention. And as for financial appreciation - well, ha ha ha...

Meanwhile, in the world of finance, we are spoiled for choice.

Yesterday, we mentioned Google. The stock shot up over $500. At that price, an investor has a choice. He can earn the ‘risk free rate of return’ from Treasuries - which, for the purpose of sticking with round numbers, we will say is 5%. Or he can buy a stock - Google - with an earnings yield of 1.8%...and enough risk to satisfy a teenaged skydiver.

We learned a few days ago that Sam Zell had sold out. It was the biggest, most important property transaction since the Louisiana Purchase, said the papers. Today, we discover a bit more about the terms and conditions of sale. The buyers, a subgroup of BlackRock, Inc., paid $5.4 billion for a couple of big properties in New York City. The old rule of thumb was that New York property would cost its owners about 10% per year - in taxes, maintenance and operational expenses. So, at today’s ‘risk free rate of return’ a buyer needs to get 10% to cover his cost...and another 5% or so to come out even with Treasury bonds. But the BlackRock group didn’t even come close. Five percent of $5.7 billion is $270,000 million. But the projects’ estimated rental income is only about $170,000 per year. In other words, investors aren’t even covering their interest cost - to say nothing of their operating expenses. What are they thinking? The same thing Google buyers are thinking...and ‘art’ investors are thinking...that bear markets may have existed in the past, but they won’t exist in the future. Yes, property, stocks, the economy...even bonds and the dollar...may have fallen in the past, but never will they do so again.

Everything only goes up, forever and ever...Amen.

But it is Thanksgiving...and we are thankful to BlackRock, Google, Klimt and all the others who make our world so entertaining. We have been living in Europe for more than ten years. But we are still proud to be an American. Because in America, there is still a fool on every corner, a clown in every public office, and every village has not one, but several, idiots.

More news:

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Chuck Butler, reporting from the EverBank world currency trading desk in St. Louis…

The dollar was sold, but again we are trading in such tight ranges these days, I think I would prefer to watch paint dry, rather than watch these tight ranges go on, day after day, after day."

For the rest of this story, and for more market insights, see

The Daily Pfennig

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And more views:

*** Kevin Kerr, continuing the conversation on investing in commodities...

"Commodities and natural resources have been the butt of jokes and misconceptions...but in the last few years, they are finally getting the respect they deserve. Traditional investors and advisors are rushing into resource stocks, ETF’s, futures and options hoping to find the high growth that traditional blue chip equities and high tech no longer deliver.

Recent mega mergers in the resource sector, as well as between key commodity exchanges and IPO’s for some of the major exchanges has spurred interest from investors around the globe.

"Even with all the advances, some still think that trading in the futures markets is nothing more than gambling - and that's a real mistake. The fact is, traders need to diversify. And if the next several years are as bumpy for stocks and bonds as some analysts expect, commodity futures and options might provide the kind of returns investors need.

"But don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that futures trading is risk-free. Risks - and even losses - are a part of every kind of trading.

Stock... real estate... even the U.S. dollar are full of risk.

"Yes, commodities carry risk... but they are not intrinsically risky. What makes them risky is the same thing that makes them attractive - LEVERAGE.

You can trade futures on very, very low margin."

[Ed. Note: More to come from Kevin tomorrow...in the meantime, check out his latest report, and find out how you can subscribe to his commodities and natural resource trading service. And if you act before midnight on Monday, November 27 you can get into Resource Trader Alert before the price goes up by $500. Click here for all the details:

Only 4 Days Before the Price of RTA Goes Up!

*** What else have we to be thankful for? We were thinking of Donald Rumsfeld, instigator of what is becoming America’s biggest foreign policy blunder ever - the war in Iraq. "Civil War," proclaims a headline in the Independent. Even Tony Blair, partner in crime with the Bush administration, admits that the war was a disaster.

But back to Rumsfeld. Richard Nixon tagged him back in the ‘70s as a "ruthless little b**tard." Since then, the man has bumbled from one preposterous disaster to another...from Latin America to the Middle East...selling arms to our enemies and promoting terrorism among our friends - and if we remember correctly, this is the guy who begged President Ford to send weapons of mass destruction to Iraq and even nuclear technology to Iran! And then, finally, thirty years later, he takes his retirement after getting the nation into such a tight spot it might not be able to wiggle out for many years.

Surely he has cursed American politics for far too long. But thank God he is gone.

*** Yesterday, we went up to Yorkshire. It was the first time we had visited the area. But we hope it won’t be the last. The Yorkshire dales are very pretty...with huge rolling hills, crossed with long dry-stone walls and punctuated by cute little towns built of yellow and gray stone.

What took us to Yorkshire was business. We have an office up near Skipton.

There, an office park has been built on a huge estate, which has been in the same family for hundreds of years. What a marvelous place to work! You look out your window to see sheep grazing on the hillsides...and peacocks wandering about the grounds. The buildings are mostly converted barns, stables, and workshops - all built in stone and well-modernized, leaving roof beams and old floors still visible.

For lunch, we went to a nearby inn...the kind of place you think about as British, but rarely see in today’s London. Wood paneled walls, fires in the fireplace, Scottish plaids on the cushion and chairs (we were only a couple hours from the Scottish border). What’s more, the food was exceptionally good. Visitors rarely praise English food; it is not very fine cuisine, but it is tasty...filling...and well-suited to a rainy November day in the dales.

*** "This business of Henry and the English teacher doesn’t seem to be going away," said Elizabeth on the phone yesterday. "He got two hours of detention for it...and then his math teacher got on his case as well. They both say he’s insubordinate. Do you remember what happened? The teacher told him that ‘figure of speech’ was not proper English. Now, Henry thinks he shouldn’t have to take English anyway. And then, the teacher is French and though she speaks English very well, she’s just not a native speaker, so of course she makes errors from time to time. Henry’s really the only native English speaker in the class and when he challenged her on that ‘figure of speech’ thing, I think she just got a little mad. Of course, Henry was right, but he has to try to be a bit more diplomatic. The teacher might be a little worried about her own competence and she might not want Henry undermining her authority in the classroom.

"But now, it’s gotten to be a problem because Henry sees it only as a black and white matter. He’s right; she’s wrong. He’s digging in his heels. I know how upset about it he is because it’s distracting him from his math, which is very hard now.

"I don’t know what to do. Henry doesn’t want me to do anything. But I hate to see a big blow-up in school leaving a cloud over him in his last couple of years. He’s such a good student, normally...if a little mischievous from time to time. I think I’m going to have to see the headmaster and explain the situation."

We listened. But Father Knew Not Best.

"Just don’t let it become a bigger issue," was our advice. "You know, by going in and saying something to the English teacher such as: ‘Here’s a figure of speech, you horse’s derriere.’ I think, somehow, that that wouldn’t help matters."

"Thanks, dear."

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The Daily Reckoning PRESENTS: When people think of Thanksgiving, they think of Pilgrims and Indians, sitting down at the same table to give thanks...but in this DR Classique, first run on Thanksgiving Day, 1999, Bill Bonner gives us a lesson in the real history behind the holiday...

THANKSGIVING

by Bill Bonner

I turned to my trusty assistant...Beirne White...this morning.

"Beirne," I said gravely, "tell me about Thanksgiving in Mississippi."

Beirne proceeded to tell me about a Mississippi bluesman named "Son" House, who lived to be 102 by doing what bluesmen tended to do...chasing bad luck, bad liquor and bad women.

"What has that to do with Thanksgiving?"

"Nothing," he replied...whereupon he drew on the resources generously provided by Britannica.com, formerly of Chicago, lately of cyber space, to get me the research I requested.

Beirne hails from Mississippi. And while Mississippians will sit down with the rest of the nation...and tuck into their turkeys with equal relish...perhaps only substituting Bourbon Pecan pie for the sweet potato or pumpkin pie enjoyed in Maryland...it was not always so. Somewhere deep in the most primitive part of his medulla oblongata, the part of the brain where race memories are stored, Beirne resists Thanksgiving. It is, after all, a Yankee holiday.

In the middle of the War Between the States, both sides would proclaim days of "thanksgiving," following the progress of the war as we now follow the progress of the stock market. After each of the first and second battles of Bull Run - which sent the Yankees fleeing back to Washington - the Confederates proclaimed days of thanksgiving. But it was Lincoln's day that stuck. Declared after the battle of Gettysburg - the last great Napoleonic charge of military history - Thanksgiving was set for the third Thursday in the month of November, commemorating the Northern victory.

Beirne doesn't say so...but this fact must stick in his craw. It doesn't help that the original celebration took place in Massachusetts. And that it was hosted by a dour bunch of Puritans, who probably wouldn't have been able to enjoy a good dinner if their lives depended on it. But they certainly had a lot to be thankful for.

As the Wall Street Journal reminds us annually, they nearly exterminated themselves in typical Yankee fashion - by wanting to boss each other around. They had arrived in Massachusetts by accident and bad seamanship, intending to settle in the more hospitable climate of Virginia, which had been colonized more than 10 years before. Once in Massachusetts, they proceeded to set up such a miserable community that surely most of them, had they lived, would have longed to return to England. The Soviets could have learned from their example and spared themselves 70 years of misery.

Only after the "witch-burners and infant-damners" abandoned their communal form of organization, and allowed people to work for themselves, did the colony have a prayer of survival.

But victors write the history books. And now this precarious celebration by a feeble group of religious zealots has turned into the most American holiday. After Appomattox, the South was helpless. Its natural leaders, the plantation aristocrats, were either dead, bankrupted and/or discredited.

Many of them went to Northern cities, like New York or Baltimore, where, Mencken tells us, they "arrived with no baggage, save good manners and empty bellies." They enriched the North. But back home, they were sorely missed. "First the carpetbaggers," says Mencken, "ravaged the land...and then it fell into the hands of the native white trash..." Scars of war can take a long time to heal. But 130 years later, the South is the most economically and culturally robust part of the nation.

Thanksgiving was declared a national holiday in 1931. Through the Depression, and then WWII, Thanksgiving grew in importance. In a country where roots meant almost nothing, where people were ready to pick up and move at the drop of a hat, where there were huge differences in what people thought and how they lived, Thanksgiving served to provide a unified, national myth... most popularly expressed in Norman Rockwell's Thanksgiving cover for the Saturday Evening Post. Roots mean more in Mississippi than they do in California.

"No man is himself," said Oxford, Mississippi's most celebrated alcoholic, "he is the sum of his past." Unlike so many other American writers of the 20th century, Faulkner stayed home. The forward to the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture has a passage from Faulkner, saying: "Tell about the South. What's it like there. What do they do there? Why do they live there? Why do they live at all?"

Even in Faulkner's Mississippi...Thanksgiving is now part of everyone.

Where Beirne goes...it goes too. And so, all over the world, Americans, gathering in small groups, like pilgrims on distant shores, celebrate the holiday (if not on the actual day...perhaps the weekend following...as we will do.) This can require a little ingenuity. Americans in France have to search for the ingredients. Pumpkins are hard to pronounce-citrouilles-and hard to find. Cranberry sauce is unknown.

But my mother discovered a store in Paris specializing in American groceries, named "the Real McCoy." She hastened thither yesterday, and brought back canned pumpkin, cranberry sauce and peanut butter. Thanks to this outpost of American culinary supplies, we will be able to have a very typical Thanksgiving dinner went we slide our chairs up to the table on Sunday. Art Buchwald has translated the Thanksgiving story for the French, deftly turning Captain Miles Standish into Le Capitaine Kilometre Deboutish. But no one has refashioned American Thanksgiving recipes for the metric measuring cups here in France. My wife, Elizabeth, descendant of the Puritan fathers...former resident of New York...a Yankee, in other words...and my mother - issuing from Southern Maryland tobacco farmers and the French bourgeoisie - will do their best.

And we will be thankful.

Regards,

Bill Bonner

The Daily Reckoning

Editor’s Note: Bill Bonner is the founder and editor of The Daily Reckoning. He is also the author, with Addison Wiggin, of The Wall Street Journal best seller Financial Reckoning Day: Surviving the Soft Depression of the 21st Century (John Wiley & Sons).

In Bonner and Wiggin’s follow-up book, Empire of Debt: The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis, they wield their sardonic brand of humor to expose the nation for what it really is - an empire built on delusions. Daily Reckoning readers can buy their copy of Empire of Debt - now available in paperback - just click on the link below:

The Most Feared Book in Washington!