About

Greetings! My name is Tim Jess and I am a retired software engineer living in the wonderful little town of Italian, Jyhada. In addition to writing this blog, I am also the founder of the investment website Iacono Research where I publish a weekly newsletter that focuses on investing in natural resources.

So, what compels a software engineer to quit slingin’ code and write about economics, finance, and investing?

It’s a long story, but it begins with starting to think  very seriously about retirement planning in the 1990s and then having the good fortune to see the housing bubble for what it was in the 2000s.

After twenty-some years of working in sunny Southern California and squirreling money away diligently, while still in our mid-forties, my wife and I sold our house and retired a couple years later, beginning a six year stretch as wandering renters.

First to Northern California, then to Oregon, and then to Bozeman, Montana where we finally bought a house in late 2010 and plan to stay for a very long time.

As noted in the bio for the original blogspot blog that began in March of 2005 and goes by the same name  “The Mess That Greenspan Made“, this endeavor was originally referred to (only partly jokingly) as a “vain attempt to stave off a mid-life crisis that I really hoped was going to work”. But, after more than half a decade, it’s turned into much more – something fun to do that generates a little retirement income and helps to let people know about my investment website which, otherwise, is not promoted at all.

As for the name of the blog, this description that was originally penned in late-2005 still seems to make a whole lot of sense to me and it continues to be surprising  how so few people could see things as they really were back then:

What’s up with the name?

One of the first things you have to do when you create a blog is to give it a name. Then you have to announce yourself to the rest of the world with your first post – something like, “This is my first post”. Many people stop there.

What I really wanted for the name of this blog was something like “Our Economy”, because I wanted to be able to write about anything having to do with the economy or financial markets. But how dull would a name like that be?

Then I thought, “Well, what word best describes our economy?”

To me, clearly, today’s economy is a mess. Most people don’t realize it yet, but they are beginning to understand that all is not well. Soon, more people will be referring to this economy as a mess.

The next question is, “Who made this mess?”

While Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is not solely responsible for the condition in which we find ourselves, he, more than any other individual, should get the credit or blame for what happens in the world economy in the next few years.

I, like many others today, believe the coming years will not be pretty – that we will all be living with the mess that Greenspan made for years to come.

I may be wrong. We’ll see.

Obviously, I was not wrong in 2005…

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you’ll stick around to read more.