Days since inception: 761
Cash balance: $26.39 (all time)
Cents per day: 3.4678(since inception)
Predicted day for $1,000,000: Thursday 10th April 80,960 AD

1/31/2010
$1,000,000
= 924.38 oz of Gold @ $1081.80 (as per Nymex close near month)
= 13,766.52 barrels of oil @ $72.64 (as per Nymex close Light Sweet Crude near month)
= 61,747.45 oz of Silver @ $16.195 (as per Nymex close near month)

This month’s paltry additions to the Sidewalker Fund has seen the quest completion date pushed back another 2,000 years! Not even the double nickel find on Friday could lift the spirits around Castle Sidewalker.

In other news the Chief Bubble Blower, non other than Bumblin’ Ben Bernanke got confirmed by Congress to continue for another 4  years of monetary policy experiments at our expense. The markets dipped in the second half of the month leaving January with a negative return. I’m no doom-monger, I like to live life with my cup half full, but I see storm clouds gathering on the financial horizon, be wary and prepared.

-Luke Sidewalker
-Current balance $26.39

For arguments sake let’s say you walk into a store and buy a widget for 75 cents. You dutifully hand over a dollar bill to the store owner, he then apologizes because he has no quarters or dimes and has to make change using five nickels instead. You huff and puff but except the five coins, money is money after all, right? WRONG!

Lately because of the price gyrations in the commodity markets, and due to the different metal compositions of the two coins in question, by giving you five nickels the store owner actually gave you 26.1 cents in change due to the rising price of nickel. Yes that’s right, at today’s market prices the metal in the 5 cent coin is actually worth 5.23 cents, a rather healthy 4+% premium! I bet you are intrigued now about the value of the metal content in the quarter? You are correct to be curious, so allow me to disappoint you! The metal content of a quarter is worth about 4.9 cents at current prices.

Could you have got a better deal by requesting a different breakdown for your 25 cents change? Absolutely. It would be a long shot, but if you asked for your change to be made with 25 pre-1982 pennies, the store owner would have unwittingly given you approximately 57.5 cents worth of copper for the 25 cents of change. The pre-1982 penny’s over generous copper content makes it worth an astounding 2.3 cents at today’s copper prices. In percentage terms that is an incredible premium of 130% over face value. Are you guys still sure Ben Bernanke knows what he is doing? If you think I ride Bumblin’ Ben  hard, I’d just like to make it clear, I don’t hate the man, I just think he is in way over his head and no one is protecting my savings from his reckless monetary policy.

So now you know which coins are worth keeping in your coin jar and not banking, do you want to know what is the worst value coin of the bunch? Of course you do. Well it’s rather fitting actually, as you will see. The coin that is worth the biggest discount from face value as per metal content is none other than the 2007-2010 Presidential Dollar coin! It may have a dollar face value but the metal is worth just shy of 6 cents, a whopping 94% discount to face. Just to be clear this is an equal opportunity thumbing of my nose at the incumbent and previous holder of the ‘Office’ (note the dates of minting on the Presidential Dollar), so no political flaming please!

Where did I get all this great information from? Well here is a major hat tip to the guys over at www.coinflation.com, if you get the chance check out their site. It appeals to my inner coin nerd…

-Luke Sidewalker

-Current balance $25.80

No self-respecting blogger can let New Years Eve go by without a list of predictions for the coming year. So I hope you are sitting comfortably and enjoy reading my ‘visionary’ list.

1. Eldorado, the lost city of Gold, is finally located and it’s location rather surprisingly is right next door to Castle Sidewalker. However the discovery is not made by me.
2. Amelia Earhart’s aircraft is found… at Newark Airport Terminal C  Gate 128 .
3. General Motors ceases to operate as a car manufacturer, but their re-issued stock rockets to $100 a share in a frantic day of trading when they announce they are going to become a health care provider.
4. Unemployment reaches 20% the same day that the S&P 500 reaches 2,000 on news that the unemployment number was better than the 20.0000001% expected.
5. The USA invades Italy in order to protect their oil supply for their two other wars, after 8 months of street to street fighting they discover it is oil of the olive variety. Don’t worry though the third war is good for the economy, so after discovering the mistake they decide to fight on anyway.
6. Tiger Woods doesn’t hit a competitive golf ball all year.
7. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is photographed by the paparazzi lying naked on a bed surrounded by Gold Bullion coins the day before he officially announces the devaluation of the Dollar.
8. Elvis releases his first album for 33 years as he is forced out of disappearance/retirement citing the economic downturn for his return from self-imposed obscurity.
9. Main Stream News Media re-brands itself as an entertainment/variety show in a vain attempt to survive when the general populace finally discover they have not been reporting reality for almost 3 years.
10. I don’t reach my goal of finding $1,000,000 on the sidewalks of America, so you are stuck reading this blog for another year!

Happy New Year everyone.

This year the pleasure has been all mine…

-Luke Sidewalker

-Current balance $25.77

My Shopping with Sidewalker feature this month may be a day late, but as you can see from the total below, it is not a dollar short. In stark contrast to the words of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke telling all that will listen that inflation is a non-existent threat, my grocery bill has gone up for the second month in a row. Month over a month I have seen just over a 1% increase. Just prove to Mr. Bernanke that he is not the only one who can be a smart arse with numbers, that equates to an annualized rate of inflation at just over 12%. Stick that in your non-inflationary pipe and smoke it Mr. Bernanke…

$2.84 {+$0.09} 1lb Land O’ Lakes unsalted butter
$2.99 {No Change} 1 dozen Eggland’s Best large grade ‘A’ eggs
$1.33 {-$0.33} 2 liter bottle of Coca-Cola Classic
$4.95 {+$1.00} 5lb Perdue Oven Stuffer whole roaster chicken
$9.99 {No Change} 12 pack of Charmin Ultra Strong toilet paper
$3.19 {No Change} 1 loaf of Wonder Bread Classic White
$3.79 {No Change} 2.5 Gallons of Poland Spring drinking water
$2.79 {No Change} 6.4oz. Starkist Chunk Light Tuna in water
$4.98 {-$0.40} 2lb of 80% lean ground beef
$3.19 {No Change} 5.6oz. Aquafresh Triple Protection toothpaste
$3.99 {+$1.00} 1lb Seedless White Grapes
$2.50 {+$0.51} 5lb Idaho Potatoes
$2.49 {+$0.20} 3 Bars of Dial Soap white
$27.99 {No Change} Nestle Good Start 2 Natural Cultures 9-24 Months baby food
$2.99 {No Change} 12 oz. box of Kellogg’s Cornflakes
$3.49 {No Change} 11.3 oz Folgers Classic Roast coffee
$5.49 {No Change} 3lb Uncle Bens long grain rice
$1.70 {-$0.09} 4 pack 9 Lives cat food
$2.99 {No Change} 50 oz. Ajax laundry detergent
$3.79 {+$0.20} 5lb Domino Pure Cane Granulated Sugar
Total: $97.46 {+$1.18}

-Luke Sidewalker

-Current balance $25.63

As I emptied the mail box at Castle Sidewalker this morning I was disturbed to see a letter from our medical insurance company. The reason for my angst? Quite simply I have never received a letter from them that has either been a refund or a premium reduction. And sure enough this letter did not buck that trend. They kindly informed me that as of January 1st they are jacking my premium by a ‘healthy’ 17.6%.

This notification left me scratching my head, as only last week Ben Bernanke the Chairman of the Federal Reserve had said in is statement that inflation was currently non existent, and he was set to continue his Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP).

I thought about writing back to the insurance company refusing their generous premium hike, citing the testimony of the man closest to the heartbeat of our economy. So you can see the conundrum we have here. Somewhere someones nose is growing Pinocchio style. The question is whose nose. Is it Mr. Bernanke’s or is it the CEO of my insurance company?

If there is no inflation, then my insurance company is gouging me. If there is inflation, then why my are my savings receiving 0.1% interest? Either way, regular people like you and me are getting the run-around. Would the last person to leave the Middle Class  please turn the light out…

I’ll leave you with this question, who do you think is lying to me? The insurance company or the Federal Reserve Chairman? Your thoughts on this would be most welcome.

-Luke Sidewalker

-Current balance $25.07

I heard a very disturbing rumor yesterday at the Castle Sidewalker scuttlebutt. I normally don’t give much credit to rumors, but as you will see this one may have some legs.

The word out there is that Bank of America (BAC.N) may need some more money to stop from going belly up. It would be no great surprise to me, after their acquisition of Countrywide and then their forced ingestion of Merrill Lynch; I’m shocked they have managed to survive this long!

Previously I have commented about Bank of America’s CEO Ken Lewis when he testified to Congress in the post Flaming Pantaloons in D.C. It came down to the fact that either Mr. Lewis, or Bumblin’ Ben Bernanke the Federal Reserve Chairman was telling a massive whopper about the Merrill Lynch transaction. At the time it was a tough call to make, as Bumblin’ Ben has a great portfolio of whoppers himself, including but not restricted to “…we have sub-prime contained” and denying the recession until we were a year into it.

It looks like Bumblin’ Ben won that encounter as Ken Lewis is stepping down at the end of the year to concentrate on enriching a host of lawyers, as they try to defend him from the raft of lawsuits headed his way.

So as you can see there is no honor amongst this bunch of thieves. With their track record I can’t dismiss any rumor I hear in the financial sector.

Will Bank of America be dipping their hand into my pocket once again? Hopefully not. Can I guarantee it won’t happen? Definitely not!

-Luke Sidewalker
-Current balance $24.10

The Fire Department of Washington D.C. was stretched to the limit yesterday as a firestorm of spontaneously combusting pants broke out on Capitol Hill. The Washington D.C. Fire Chief said, “We are not sure who started the inferno, but we have narrowed it down to two possible sources, Ken Lewis CEO of Bank of America (BAC.N) and Ben Bernanke the Federal Reserve Chairman”. In a bizarre move the Fire Chief went on to give the responsibility of concluding the investigation of the conflagration to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. And these clowns want me to deposit the full $11.06 of the Sidewalker Fund in a bank!? Strange times indeed. The full story can be read here from CNN.

In other news, it gives me great pleasure to announce the first coin find by our very own Little Miss Sidewalker yesterday. I was in the middle of berating her for crawling around on the floor of a bar (before midnight) when she came up to me and spat a dime out of her mouth. Not the preferred Sidewalker method for retrieving a coin in that situation as I discussed in my post yesterday, but I have come to accept that Little Miss Sidewalker marches to the beat of her own drum. Ah the joys of fatherhood.

-Luke Sidewalker
-Current balance $11.06