What is happening with our Economy?
What should I do with my investments?
By Gary Smith

What is happening with our Economy?
What should I do with my investments?

What loaded questions. 
·        Fact - we have declining interest rates.
·        Fact - we have just given out over 4 trillion dollars in stimulus by the government and the Fed.
·        Fact - corporate debt is higher than it has been since the Great Depression.
·        Fact - the US is in debt for over 25 trillion dollars. 

What does all this mean for us regular Americans?  The picture is not pretty.  But OMG the stock market is rising.  How do we explain all this?  There is so much uncertainty in our markets and our economy.  AND most of all we are having record unemployment.  This is not a good formula for the future.  But could the future be bright; perhaps.  How long will it take?

Post Coronavirus the job market will change. I think we are in a deflationary period. Historically that means businesses can borrow at a much cheaper rate.   But many of those businesses are those that were going to declare bankruptcy anyway.  Low interest rates eventually give way to inflation.

What a confusing economy we are in!   What a confusing picture.  Again, not only is unemployment high, over 25%, which is higher than the Great Depression.  Our system is in Chaos. 

So, what should I do with my retirement or what should I do with my investments?  First, talk to your investment advisor and do it now. Second, buy gold or silver or their stocks.  Gold is a chaos hedge. Some of the experts suggest gold could double in price.  Quite possibly in the next 1-2 years we will be slowly eliminating the fiat currencies (currencies without commodity backing) of most countries.  In China, almost everything is paid with your phone using WeChat.  Payments are not made with cash or checks. That will have a profound effect on banks when it happens here.  Gold does not typically track downward (or upward) moves in the stock markets or other markets but rises on chaos and uncertainty.  Silver is clouded as an investment as it used for other things.  Cash has great stability.  Since there is no inflation you are losing very little value when holding cash.  Forever stocks can be exceptional long term investments during this difficult time.  Warren Buffet’s theory of investing, buying low and holding forever, is arguably the most efficient safe way to invest.  Stocks like Hershey, Apple, Coke, Pepsi, Johnson & Johnson, Proctor & Gamble, Constellation Brands, and McDonald's are some of the forever stocks.  They pay a nice dividend and they have products that everyone uses during good times and difficult times. Forever stocks are arguably the safest and best way to assure nice growth for your future.

Again, be sure to discuss this with your investment advisors.  The FJMC Foundation for Jewish Life, in January, made sure that we followed most of this investment philosophy. We were down only 16 % vs the 30% drop in the market. Now we are back above what we were before the downturn.  Bottom line, in this time period hold an actively managed balanced portfolio of cash, gold, collectibles, corporate bonds, and forever stocks.

No one really knows how and when the economy will turn around.  The turnaround will comprise an intersection of 5G technology with serious job replacement.  Old jobs will be gone.  We have no plan on how to fix the coming disaster and how to bring us out of this pandemic.  It could take years.  The stock market is going up right now but it is just a matter of time before we have at least another 20-35 % loss in the market.

I hope this sheds a little light on what I think the next 6 months to 3 years might look like.  This is an in-depth topic so if you want more on this please email me at gsmith@fjmc.org 

Multiple Organ Dysfunction Syndrome
By Stephanie Chan, Village Voice

Before diving deeper into what constitutes multiple organ dysfunction syndrome, it should be clarified that instead of being a single event, it is more of a series of events, with varying degrees of severity in the alteration of organs. The syndrome involves the failure of at least two organ systems, and it is directly related to inflammation from a severe infection or injury. Therefore, most people who have experienced, for instance, a severe septic shock or a major traumatic event are more prone to develop this syndrome. During sepsis, there is disturbed perfusion of microcirculation, tissue-toxicity, and systemic hypotension. These three can influence the way an organ would function normally, and if there is a negative impact, it would lead to organ failure. Multiple organ dysfunction syndrome is a condition that is associated with both high morbidity and mortality rates.

The major organs that are affected are the kidneys, liver, lungs, heart, and the brain. Kidney failure can be separated into acute and chronic. Acute kidney failure can be associated with chest pain, decrease in urine output, fluid retention that leads to swelling in ankles, feet, and legs, fatigue, drowsiness, weakness in muscles, and shortness of breath. Additionally, a risk of death is also high even for acute kidney failure. For chronic kidney failure, the symptoms are the same, with the addition of nausea, anemia, decreased immunity, high blood pressure, weakness in bones, and for women, complications in pregnancy and health risks to the fetus. Similar to kidney failure, liver failure is also split into acute and chronic (cirrhosis). Symptoms of acute liver failure include nausea, yellowing of the skin and eyes, pain in the upper abdomen, infections in the urinary and respiratory tracts, cerebral edema, and difficulty in regulating blood flow and clotting. For chronic liver failure, symptoms include fatigue, easy bruising, liver cancer, loss of appetite, edema, excessive weakness, and spontaneous bacterial peritonitis (SBP).

Symptoms of lung failure include weakness in muscles, an obstruction to air pathways, and lung diseases such as pneumonia, while symptoms of heart failure include shortness of breath, fatigue, loss of appetite, and an increased heart rate. As for brain failure, there are two classifications-- acute (delirium) and chronic (Alzheimer’s Disease, dementia). While there are major differences among delirium, Alzheimer’s Disease, and dementia, common factors are that memory and focus are impaired, and daily life is also negatively affected.

In addition to the five organ systems mentioned above, there are three other sources of dysfunction that can lead to multiple organ dysfunction syndrome. There is immunologic failure, in which both the specific and nonspecific immune systems function abnormally and/or antibody production is altered. In addition, there is metabolic failure, where a common endocrinologic discrepancy that is easily discovered is insulin resistance. The third one is hematologic failure due to leukocytosis (leukocyte, or white blood cell count is higher than it should be).

The failure of one organ is already impactful on a patient’s body and the body’s ability to function, and therefore the failure of multiple organs is definitely more impactful and severe. Regardless, there are still steps that can be taken in combating organ failure. For organ dysfunction that is caused by sepsis, the first step is to restore and maintain adequate oxygen delivery to cells. Sepsis generally causes the failure of more than one organ, making it more of a condition to be on the lookout for. While the risk of death associated with multiple organ dysfunction syndrome is still present, organ failure caused by sepsis is generally reversible if the patient survives. Current treatment for sepsis involves limiting the development of organ failure by providing rapid control of any infection and organ support whenever possible.

References:
https://www.medscape.com/answers/169640-99164/what-is-multiple-organ-dysfunction-syndrome-mods
http://www.newhealthguide.org/organ-failure-symptoms.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26757392
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41581-018-0005-7

This article is provided by The Village Pulse, The NYC Pain Specialists Blog.  Karan Johar, M.D. | Executive Editor, Cherry Lam | Chief Medical Editor, Sherry Chow | Assistant Healthcare Editor, Nathalia Schettino | Assistant Wellness Editor.  The information in these articles are written by student interns interested in medical careers. As such please do not take the information described in these informational bulletins as medical advice. If you need treatment, please contact a certified medical health professional to address your issue.

What Passover Means To Me
By Lester Macklin

My Dear Children & Grandchildren,

Passover 2020 is gone, but not forgotten.  Neither has Passover from years ago.  Passover means FREEDOM and a time that families get together for a history lesson and a meaningful meal.  I think the word FREEDOM is taken for granted here in the good-old-USA, so look around at the countries of the world.  How many are actually free?

In the old days, when I was a kid, the family had their seders in my paternal grandmother’s living room in Brooklyn.  My dad and my uncles would bring saw-horses and planks of wood from the basement and assemble one long table.  The women were busy cooking and us kids were generally in someone’s way.

The seder itself was led by uncle Meyer, in Hebrew, directly from the Maxwell House Coffee Haggadah.  The four questions were recited by the boys in Hebrew and translated into Yiddish, question by question.  At the right time the meal followed, with lots of seltzer bottles and a strange dish called “petchar,” a garlicy aspic.  It was a wonderful time and repeated the next day.

The years passed quickly as I grew older, spent 4-years in the US Air Force, married, .and had children. Then the seders were held in many places, but always with family, sometimes away from home.  Here again, in this wonderful country we have the FREEDOM to meet and celebrate.

We now live in Massachusetts with no blood relatives nearby, so our family are the friends we met as neighbors but mostly from the synagogue.  We have our seder either at their home or at ours, and again we have the FREEDOM to choose.  This year (2020) was different! Coronovirus-19 has us basically quarantined at home.  But that did not stop us from “being” with friends for the Passover seder.  Thanks to a computer and the ZOOM program, we virtually prayed together as family and ate our Passover meal at the same time, only miles apart.

So, my children, if there is a will there is a way, and you should celebrate Passover with family and friends and speak about how our enslaved forefathers found FREEDOM because of what G-D did for them. Freedom is precious!  Passover is the time to recall our history.  And fight for FREEDOM always.

Dad/ Grandpa

GAME NIGHT
Reviewed by Daniel Kimmel

3 1/2 stars out of 5

With Rachel McAdams, Jason Bateman, Jesse Plemons, Kyle Chandler, Lamorne Morris. Written by Mark Perez. Directed by John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein. Rated R for language, sexual references and some violence. 100 minutes.

It takes a while for “Game Night” to get rolling but once it does, it turns into a zany, action-packed farce that keeps upping the ante. It’s not terribly deep, but it provides enough laughs to make it a winner.

Max (Jason Bateman) and Annie (Rachel McAdams) meet as rival team captains at a pub trivia night and are smitten. They’re both competitive and love games, and so teaming up seems inevitable. A few years later finds them hosting their friends for a weekly game night, except for Gary (Jesse Plemons), a sad sack whose wife has left him. Things start to get interesting with the arrival of Brooks (Kyle Chandler), Max’s older and more successful brother, who is constantly upstaging Max, even insisting on hosting the next game night himself.

His plan is to do a live-action mystery where a kidnapping will take place and the friends will have to figure out the clues to solve it. The plan goes awry when real kidnappers show up instead. At that point, the film kicks into high gear as they try to figure out what’s going on and what they will have to do to set things right.

The well-constructed script by Mark Perez sets up jokes and then builds on them so that a drinking game question about whether anyone had slept with a celebrity turns into an increasingly strange joke about Denzel Washington. Ryan (Billy Magnussen) shows up with a series of ditzy dates but arrives for the mystery party with a co-worker (Sharon Horgan) who is much smarter than him.

Best of all, Bateman and McAdams prove to be an effective comedy pairing. He hasn’t always had the best of luck with roles, and McAdams rarely gets the chance to show her comedy chops. The two of them play off each other perfectly. If there are any filmmakers who understand what made the great screwball romantic comedies of the 1930s work, get these two into a new one immediately.

It should be noted that this is an action-comedy and while the emphasis is on the comedy, there is a good deal of violence, including the elimination of one of the bad guys that wouldn’t be out of place in a movie by the Coen Brothers or Quentin Tarantino. It’s brutal… and it’s played for a big laugh. That should be fair warning to anyone who would just as soon give such material a pass

For anyone else, “Game Night” is a zany romp that may not linger in the memory, but if it leads to Bateman and McAdams being paired again, it will have been well worth it. ***

Daniel M. Kimmel is a veteran movie critic and author of a host of film-related books. His latest novel is Time on My Hands: My Misadventures in Time Travel. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.

“LDI strengthens FJMC in Multiple ways”
By Arnie Miller

FJMC’s LDI, Leadership Development Institute, strengthens FJMC through intense training of its incoming Region Presidents, Region and Club Leaders, and young men interested in future leadership roles at the club and/or region levels.

Solve this “multiplication problem” by determining what “numbers” the “letters” FJMC LDI represent.

               F J M C
              x   L D  I
         J   F  C  F C
     J  0   I   9   0
    C  D  D  F____
     9  7  L   9   F C

Email your answer to me at miller.arnold@comcast.net