Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis |
- Celebrating Life: I Got Married on Friday
- Greece Tax Filing Bureaucracy in Action
- Superman Joins a Union
- Germany Election Update: AfD Soars in Online Poll; Is Merkel Toast?
| Celebrating Life: I Got Married on Friday Posted: 16 Jun 2013 11:27 PM PDT As most of you know, I lost my wife Joanne on May 16 last year to ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease. We were happily married for 27 years. Joanne's three closest friends, Kathy, Marybeth, and Debbie all wanted me to move on, have fun, meet someone and enjoy life. But where does one who is 59 years old find someone? The bar scene may work for someone 21 to 35. For someone 59, the bar scene is a near-certain strikeout. There are numerous online services but most of the horror stories speak for themselves. I do have a close friend who was "successful" on the exact 100th match. No thanks. I decided to try a place called Selective Search. I found them doing a search for executive matching. There are other high-end matching services, but I liked the Selective Search model. One key difference between Selective Search and other executive matching services is only the men pay. The advantages and disadvantages of such an approach should be obvious. The advantage to men is there are far more women in the system. The advantage to women is they do not pay and thus have nothing to lose. Selective Search interviews every candidate and they weed out men who are not seriously looking for a relationship; they weed out women who appear to be gold-diggers, and they weed out people with unrealistic goals (for example a 60 year-old overweight man who wants to find a 23-year-old beauty-queen match). My Criteria Preferably, I wanted someone with a nice smile and slender build, who likes to travel, likes golf, likes to kayak, and likes to play cards. My "dealbreakers" were smoking, someone with young kids, and someone who wanted more kids. Liz was my second date, matched personally by "Molly", my Selective Search matchmaker. Liz, 52, had a cutoff age of 55, "but he JUST turned 59" quipped Molly, and Liz decided to take a chance. We went out for dinner on Saturday, November 3, then again on November 6, Election Day. Very quickly we started seeing a lot of each other. Since then we bought and decorated a Christmas tree together, have been to Mexico, Mackinaw Island, gone hiking in state parks, went kayaking twice, golf on numerous occasions, and even won two regional duplicate bridge tournaments together. The odds of quickly finding someone with those interests except via a high-end matching service is about zero percent, no matter how long one looks. Old Friends, New Friends Liz and Joanne's closest friends have met, and we have even traveled together, to Mexico. Kathy, Marybeth, and Debbie have embraced Liz and vice versa. Kathy, was my "best man" at the wedding. Meet Liz Here are some pictures from our two most recent trips. Click on any image for sharper view. Sipping Tea on Front Porch of Grand Hotel - Mackinac Island  Mackinac Island Michigan Carriage Ride  Mackinac Island - Fun in Phone Booth  Glen Arbor Michigan - Rhododendrons  Sunset, Sipping Wine at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, Michigan  Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore Sunset  Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore - Wild Lilacs  Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore - Wild Lilacs  Starved Rock State Park, Utica IL, Waterfall After Spring Rain  Yes, we got wet taking that picture (Liz got soaked while I was fooling around trying to find the best angle), but it was fun. And, life's too short to not have fun with a compatible soulmate. I am extremely fortunate to have found Liz. And I could not possibly be happier. We are going on a delayed honeymoon at the end of July and early August in Prague (the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic), Munich Germany, and Rothenburg ob der Tauber (a lovely fairy-tale city on the Romantic Road in Germany). I will post some pictures while there. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com |
| Greece Tax Filing Bureaucracy in Action Posted: 16 Jun 2013 10:00 PM PDT My friend "Lefteris" reports .. Greece decided that all tax returns will be filed electronically. Great! There is no more standing in line at the tax office to file your tax return. This is probably a problem for some older folks, but arguably it's a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, you still have to go to the tax office and wait in line with your ID in order to get a "password" to use the new electronic system. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com |
| Posted: 16 Jun 2013 07:34 PM PDT Inquiring minds may be wondering what would happen if the "Man of Steel" were forced to join a union. The following video explains. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com |
| Germany Election Update: AfD Soars in Online Poll; Is Merkel Toast? Posted: 16 Jun 2013 11:16 AM PDT Reader Bernd from Germany (not Bernd Lucke, AfD anti-euro party leader) has emailed me several times since Friday about polls conducted by the German tabloid Bild. Emphasis must be placed on the the word "tabloid" because intellectuals and academics do not tend to read the paper, nor even acknowledge its existence. Nonetheless, Bild is the number one readership paper in Germany, by far, with about 20 million readers daily. And a poll is a poll, not a slanted news article. The Bild is not a supporter of AfD in the least. If the poll is pro-Afd biased, it surely was not by the Bild. With that backdrop here are a few emails from reader Bernd. Friday June 14 Hi Mish,Saturday, June 15 Hi Mish,Sunday, June 16 Hi MishMish Comments Online polls can be manipulated but Bernd counters with "To vote several times you need to clear the cache and clear the cookies each time. I guess 99% of Bild online readers do not know how to do that." Still, the results are not scientific and a few very dedicated people could easily have hijacked the results. However, "could" and "did" are not the same thing. I see this as very similar to the rise of the Five-Star Movement (M5S) in Italy, where the mainstream media gave M5S no chance, yet M5S ended up as the largest political party in Italy at election time. If AfD gets as much as 10% of the vote and FDP does not clear the 5% threshold (both are likely), Angela Merkel will not survive the coalition building process or will be dramatically weakened in the process. Wahl-O-Meter Update Wahl-O-Meter shows support for AfD at 7.9% with FPD dropping to 4.5%. With the threshold for parliament participation at 5% it is FPD, not AfD that is on the bubble. Political Party Explanation Please see Understanding German Politics for an explanation of the German political parties and what they stand for. Prediction I am sticking with my April 23 prediction Merkel Loses Chancellorship in September as Support for AfD Soars Addendum: Bernd writes "The poll was done by Bild Online and not the physical tabloid. Bild tabloid has a circulation of about 3 million copies per day with a readership reach of about 12 Million (Bild's own claimed numbers). Each paper is read by 4 people. Pure observation in any train or street car in Germany will confirm this assumption. Between Bild tabloid and Bild Online the readership reach is claimed to be 20 Million. It is difficult to assess how high the online readership truly is, because the numbers come from two different sources." Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com |
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