Where your treasure is...

There have been some rather spectacular value reductions lately.

First, FTX -- an exchange for various cryptocurrencies -- has gone into bankruptcy proceedings, leaving many people unable to access their funds. Part of the problem may have been a secret backdoor that allowed money to be transferred without updates to the financial records.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/12/1-billion-to-2-billion-of-ftx-customer-funds-missing-report.html

It is unclear whether this has changed the mind of anyone who thought the lack of regulation on crypto was a feature and not  a bug.

In addition, Tesla stock has been trending downward. 

One interesting aspect of that is that with Twitter stock having been delisted, I can't help but wonder if there would have been the same effect on Tesla if Twitter were still publicly traded. There would still be reason for the Tesla drop, as the company shares are now tied to the Twitter purchase, and the purchaser is displaying horrible management skills, acting exactly as if his wealth and ego made him believe he was the genius his fans claim he is, despite a disturbing lack of evidence.

Plus Teslas keep bursting into flames and getting involved in fatal collisions. 

That's the kind of thing that hurts investors' confidence, and the stock market is based largely on confidence. If people believe the stock will increase in value, the demand to purchase it goes up, and that in itself increases the value.

If you can hold on, meaning if you have enough real assets that you don't need to sell your depreciated stocks, the stocks will often recover. Sometimes they don't, but more to the point, poorer people may not be able to wait. I believe that the 2008 crash was a big factor in the spread of income inequality, but probably also where the church's hedge fund really started getting big.

This post is not about that, but I want to make three points about "investment" based on things that we know and believe.

My family has been enjoying reruns of Barney Miller. There was one recurring character, Mr. Brauer, who was always getting into some new craze. His frustrated wife Harriet (played by Doris Roberts) would seek help from the police. 

The first time it was because he was converting all their assets into gold, including emptying their savings and selling their furniture. He was doing this in anticipation of an economic collapse, where their current cash would be worthless.

"Do you want to have to roll a wheelbarrow full of money to buy a loaf of bread?"

Other episodes featured other people trying to prepare for economic collapse, becoming survivalists or finding other ways to buck the system. 

It's not that there haven't been economic problems, but there was never really that collapse where you needed gold, though you will still periodically see commercials urging you to do it. However, it assumes that someone who has something of value will want gold. 

If you want bread, maybe you should purchase flour and yeast.

The idea of food storage and other forms of provident living are old concepts to us. How well we follow them is another question, but they do make sense.

Food storage may not as easily fit into the scripture referenced in the title, "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." (Matthew 6:21) 

It does fit in with knowing what matters. As useful as various items can be as a means of economic exchange, in the absence of the need for exchange those items revert back to their intrinsic worth.  Gold is pretty and malleable, so has some usefulness in that way. Green paper -- or digital or paper records of things that were bought and can be sold as long as someone else is willing to buy -- is less obviously valuable. 

In the absence of that kind of value, the desire to accumulate more can function as a kind of addiction, where it can never be enough, no matter how many zeros you add to the total.* 

Therefore, it seems worthwhile to consider how much of environmental destruction, attacks on personal worth via advertising, and exploitation of labor happens because of capitalism's need for "more".

Consumer confidence is often boosted, leading to a rise in stock prices, because of harmful practices like layoffs at companies that are making a profit, but just not getting that stock boost. 

When you look at the companies that really do collapse (oh hey, there was just a sentence for the Theranos fraud), there is often some kind of malfeasance or at least wild arrogance involved, that integrity could have prevented.

There is a negative relationship between how we value people and how we value money. 

People need to be our treasure.

That leads to the third point: how you invest your treasure.

A stock portfolio can shrink away before you have a chance to spend it. Many women have saved up for retirement travel with their first husbands, then been widowed and gone with their second husbands, or perhaps not gone at all as health issues came with aging. That saving and putting off sounds prudent, but simply may not work out.

Temporal life is built on being temporary. If you feed someone, they will get hungry again. If you fund someone's medical care, they will still eventually die.

Regardless of that, when we give from love and do things to make people's lives better, there is a very real way in which is cannot be taken away. Not only will our hearts stay there, but that giving will stay with our hearts.

As we start a season of giving in perilous times, let us consider what things have eternal worth. 

This doesn't rule out fleeting joys and pleasures, those moments of rest and shared enjoyment can have great worth, increasing our bonds and refreshing our souls.

I can't tell you how or if to plan for retirement, but you can make those decisions with eternal perspective.

*Wealth acquisition as an addiction comes partly from Charles Eisenstein and his book Sacred Economics, but I can't refer to it enthusiastically as there were so many bad ideas around that pretty good one.