Monthly Archives: October 2008

If You Give A House A Garage

Posted on 28 October 2008 by Admin| 1 Comment

Another of the children’s books that I was blessed to read a gazillion times was “If You Give A Mouse A Cookie.”  If you give a mouse a cookie, chances are he’ll ask you for a glass of milk to go with it.  If you give him a glass of milk, chances are, he’ll ask you for a straw.  Then a napkin, then a mirror to check for a milk moustache, then scissors for a little trim, and on and on.

If you give a house a garage, chances are the household will buy as many cars as there are bays, plus a spare…that is, unless the garage houses the house’s overflow of Stuff and the cars spill onto the driveway and street.

How many people drove more than 30 minutes to work today?  How many people are this instant scoffing that they would LOVE to drive “only” 30 minutes to work?  How many people regularly spend an hour or more, each way, commuting to and from work?  The mind REELS at the lost productivity.

The heart breaks at the lost living.

Happily, since the Great Majority enjoys the privacy of individual coaches, a certain amount of productivity occurs as owner/operators work IN their car/offices…which is to say while operating moving equipment, amidst lots of other moving equipment, with other owner/operators doin’ THEIR thing.

In 2000, I took a driving course that came “with” purchase of a particular car.  Driving Dynamics, it was called.  SenSAtional.  It changed my life and I am NOT exaggerating.  As just a HUGE fer instance, there is no “blind spot” if your mirrors are positioned rightly.  Make no mistake, not having to look over your shoulder to change lanes in traffic that is sailing along at 70 or 80 miles as hour is a BIG plus.  I’m right smack in the middle of the Baby Boom…we were taught to drive by the P.E. teachers/coaches.  Whether Driver’s Education SHOULD be taught in high school is one debate but separately, in retrospect, I AM interested to know the rationale behind gym teacher = driving instructor.

One of the things I “learned”…more like, a gist that I recall without specifics…had to do with the number of feet a car will go forward, no matter HOW quick you are to “slam on the brakes.”  I want to say that it takes .06 seconds to get your foot from the accelerator to the brake, and I feel like I remember the numbers 60 and 90.  I sort of want to say that, regardless how swift a driver’s reaction time, a car traveling at 60 mph will still move forward 90 feet BEFORE the brakes are applied.  It seems unlikely that a driving course would give us examples of cars driving at 90 mph.  Of course, I’m not even sure those are the numbers although the point-six seconds sounds reasonable.  To make a short story long, the casualness of tailgating is an ongoing and substantial hazard to life and property.

In the same spirit, that pen you’re holding?  A projectile.

California banned talking on a phone while driving, unless it’s hands-free, but what do they say about the MILLIONS of us who are driving around holding three more shots of caffeine in a cup that is hot enough to warrant a “sleeve?”  Not a word about the people who simultaneously drive and shave, apply make-up, smoke, change channels, hold dogs, discipline children, write notes, read maps, READ BOOKS.  I have seen all this and more…not only on the streets of Los Angeles, but on the freeways…including, oddly, application of aerosol deoderant.

When the Rescue plan was a mere Bailout Proposal, I was talking to someone at one of the financial houses, “Sooo, whadyya think…reward the Bad Guys and one more fix for the Crack Addicts, or let ‘em sweat it out in Financial Rehab?”

“They HAVE to pass it.”

“Why?”

She went on to say that credit was “completely” frozen…that, by way of example, the lease was up on her car and that even she couldn’t even get financing for another lease.

I’m gonna be honest here, this doesn’t sound like a crisis to me.

We have lots and lots…and lots upon lots…indeed, we have ACRES of Used Cars.  

We are long and debilitatingly at war, even ostriches have come face to face with our Oil Situation, our economy is in the crapper and so is national morale…separately from Obamamania, of course…and we would throw MORE Assistance Money at Detroit?

I’m sure I oversimplify, but I also don’t buy the bullshit that everything is always more complicated than we realize.  The only thing that’s rocket science is rocket science.  Literally, all things considered, I cannot imagine why we would roll even ONE car off the line that isn’t at least a hybrid.  Stipulating exceptions…there are always exceptions…commercial vehicles, emergency vehicles, whatever.  So stipulated.  But for regular transportation for regular people, no, I cannot imagine the Reason.  If they build it, we will come?

Light rail.  Light rail.  Light rail.  Electricity.

Free up the oil for AvJet product supply line.  We want MORE airlines.  We want CHEAPER airfares.  For all the Stuff that all the people are spending all the money to get all the other people to buy, I believe that people on the move always spend more money than people at home.  Think about how you bleed money on a vacation.

Then think how you can’t afford the airfare even if you could afford the hotel bill, which presupposes that you even get that kind of vacation time where you work.

Not only people but the entire economy endures abiding negative impact from our LOUSY transportation systems.  People and entire ECONOMIES, note the plural, endure abiding loss of revenue because travel is prohibitively expensive to the rank and file.

Feed the classes, dine with the masses.  Feed the masses, dine with the classes.

We won’t even have to fight Big Oil to make it happen.  ExxonMobil Aviation, who knew?

http://www.exxonmobilaviation.com/AviationGlobal/default.asp

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T.G.I.F.: Thank God It’s Fixed

Posted on 24 October 2008 by Admin| 3 Comments

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THE PEOPLE WHO DIDN’T FORESEE THE CRISIS

HAVE ARRANGED TO OVERSEE ONE ANOTHER

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Consider how different life is after home ownership.  It’s not as different as life after parenthood, but it’s pretty different…beginning with that pesky business of handling all the Stuff that was, once upon a time, handled by Someone Else.

Think back, when it was just you in an apartment.  Those who cleaned and did laundry EVERY week were few…every other week was conscientious, every third week was fine and once a month wouldn’t get the neighbors talking.  Movies, museums, bars, bookstores, plays…”Attractions.”  Have car keys, will travel.  

Today, I know people who pick up groceries Friday afternoon on the way home from work, and who pretty much don’t get in the car again until they return to work on Monday morning.  And I am not talking about a nod to oil independence.

I am not talking about them living in mid-town Manhattan, and walk-walk-walking their way to fitness and culture.  I am talking about them living in suburbs…some of which, I’m not gonna lie, are almost eerily planned…and them pretty much not leaving their Ponderosa-slash-sphere of errands until it’s time to go back into the trenches and do it all again.  If the preoccupation featured more relaxation than maintenance, that would be one thing.   But spending one’s days off from the workplace working on the living space, well, it’s not for everyone.

Those would be childless people, mind.

Families hop onto a different treadmill on the weekend.  There’s the weekday routine and the weekend routine.  Anyone who’s been on one of those weekend routines will attest that, despite inordinate hours in Spectate Mode, there is a steady stream of outlays i.e. expenses i.e. Someone Else’s revenue.  But it’s not a lot of big-ticket items…the money just sort of gets pissed away.  Then there is the exhaustion factor and frequently the homework factor and ALWAYS the errand/chore factor such that, even among families with means, homeowners get out and kick it less than renters.  

A claim for which I have no statistical support, by the by.  SOMEONE’S got all that information, though. America is first and foremost a Moneyian Nation.  As a nation, American’s care more about money than about anything, that is my experience.  Introduce, or re-introduce Surveillance As Policy, and I am QUITE certain that we have been finely sliced and diced according to who spends how much when, where, on what, and how often. 

Getting out there and kicking it is good for the soul AND good for the economy.  Not that all those home repairs and improvements aren’t ALSO good for the economy, they are.  It’s a multi-faceted interconnected industry that constitutes the bread and butter for a huge segment of Earners and Families.  But a lot of that spending is not good for the soul, I am certain of it.

Not to say it isn’t good for some people.  Some people are natural homebodies.  Some people are natural hosts.  Some people really LIVE in a house, if y’know what I mean…the residential equivalent of being comfortable in your own skin.  More power to ‘em.  Those are the kind of people to whose houses people who don’t own houses like to be invited for the holidays.

But restaurant/retail/arts/sports/entertainment are multi-faceted and interconnected, too.  Taxis, limos, florists…many of them small businesses or owner/operators…are favorably impacted by people getting out and DOING stuff instead of staying home and BUYING stuff.  Hair and nail salons, dry cleaners, gyms are all favorably impacted by people getting out and DOING stuff instead of staying home and BUYING stuff.  Ditto theaters, restaurants and museums.

For real, you know what I think would do America a world of good?  Deliberate cultivation of a Pub Culture…not with an emphasis on booze but on pool and darts and ping pong and air hockey and music and camaraderie.  Sports and news and debates and presidential addresses and C-SPAN and cable…enjoyed at will in local company, rather than each lightly populated household paying for the same channels that they watch alone.  That’s Frugality AND Community…whatcha call a Win-Win.

“You wanna go where everybody knows your name” is exaggerated and unrealistic, like TV.  But I DO sense that, the incredible connectedness of the internet notwithstanding, Americans are much in need of some friendly faces and encouraging words, and I am NOT talking about Barack Obama’s image being beamed into every living room.

Now then, did you get the garbage disposal fixed?  And are you gonna finally clean up that mess in the garage, or are you gonna sit parked in front of your computer all weekend?

Love SO does not mean never having to say you’re sorry.

Having pointedly resolved to keep this post under a thousand words, I find that, oh so uncharacteristically, I have more than 200 words to spare.  I’m rich.

Hold a door for someone this weekend.  Do something nice for someone who doesn’t even realize you’re going out of your way to make an effort.

Go out for a meal with amusing reading material or a more amusing friend.

For a change, resist buying crap you don’t need…return home empty-handed.

For a bigger change, do something nice for yourself.

Naps are good.  Naps are also free.

Don’t think about the market until the opening bell.

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IF WE DIDN’T PANIC AFTER 9/11

WE DON’T NEED TO PANIC NOW

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The Housing Hoopla

Posted on 23 October 2008 by Admin| Leave a comment

I am not moving on from Executive Retribution.  On the contrary, I will argue that Corrupt Officials should ALSO be given their walking papers and prosecuted wherever grounds for prosecution exist.  It is not possible to learn that Congresspeople received money and favors from Mortgage Meltdown kingpins and then pretend that our representation in Washington is innocent.  It is my experience that perpetrators are among the most avid advocates of taking the high road, dispensing with the Blame Game, and forgiving and forgetting. 

Stuff like the The Collapse of the Worldwide Financial Sector doesn’t sneak up on a governing body or an executive board.  To suggest that we “found” ourselves in this mess is ridiculous.  Really, with all the analysis and measurement available?  All the formulas and ratios?  Not seeing this coming is akin to saying that Katrina was a surprise…BAM, outta nowhere.

Keith Fimian, running for Congress out of Virginia, trumpeted for indictments on FOX whereupon Neil Cavuto objected that Congress is only stupid, not criminal. Since when is ignorance a defense?  Since when is it okay to deflect allegations of corruption in office with claims of stupidity?  Ocean’s Eleven, the remake…”I say I’m a thief and you call me a liar.”

I say that we have the attention spans of humming birds but, in our defense, so much crap comes at us…not just steadily, but worse and faster…we are like Lucy and Ethyl in the chocolate factory. We mean well when we say we will not forget but anyone who has ever suffered a great injustice or a grave loss will confirm that, with heartbreaking matter-of-factness, the collective We goes on about the business of living as though nothing happened.

Something definitely happened, and I am here to serve as reminder…in a bumper sticker sort of way:

EXPECTING GOVERNMENT TO FIX THE PROBLEM

IS LIKE ASKING THE BURGLAR TO FIX THE LOCK

That said…not moving on, but broadening the scope…I will argue that, even setting cost aside, owning a home is not really or rightly the dream of all Americans.

But there is no setting THOSE costs aside, eh? Owning a home will max-out credit cards that were acquired to make payments on maxed-out credit cards.  Hardware, software, yardware, electrical, plumbing, furniture, cabinets, bath tubs, toilets, window treatments, flooring, insurance, taxes, improvements, renovations, add-ons, tear-downs…begin again.

It’s hard to know which things are such common knowledge that piping up with them almost causes the reader/listener to cringe with embarrassment for the writer/speaker, and which things are cool-you-learn-something-new-every-day.  The Did You Know Or Do You Care Department.

A crew is always painting the Golden Gate Bridge.  They work their way from one end to the other, I was told, and by the time they get TO the other end, it’s time to go back and begin again.  I was told that there are people who have spent the whole of their adult working lives painting the Golden Gate Bridge.   

Houses are like painting the Golden Gate Bridge.  After the nesting costs, the repairs begin. By the time you get the sprinklers fixed, gates and doors are swollen shut.  While you’re getting the gates and doors shaved down, one of the handles comes off in your hand, right before the upstairs sink stops up, which is probably related to the water spots that are appearing on the kitchen ceiling.  Copper pipes demand new electrical just as surely as new paint cries for window washing.  By the time you get it all done, it’s time to update the bathrooms and re-upholster the furniture.  Projects beget projects, chores beget chores…it is RELENTLESS.

Re-upholster…how quaint is that?  NEW, we want new.  So much new stuff that ostensibly non-profit thrift shops are picky and choosy about which donations are good enough for them.  God forbid that, in addition to ringing up sales, non-profits should freely facilitate getting superfluous Stuff into the hands of people who can’t afford Stuff.  ”If it isn’t in resale condition, we can’t accept it”…what kind of a charitable sentiment is that?  Tell me again, why exactly are they tax exempt?

Obviously, I am not proposing that everyone bail on the housing industry and take up nomadic camping.  I AM saying that it was misguided short-term profiteering to PUSH houses, like drugs.  A tranquil suburban lifestyle, with lots of buying and arranging and gathering and rearranging is right for domestic-type people, but decidedly not right for not-domestic-type people.  I will even gently suggest that the tedium and repetition attendant to home ownership…not just maintaining one’s spot on America’s “normal” track but, beyond that, keeping up with the Joneses…is the source of no small amount of unhappiness and not a few divorces.

Me, I’m a big fan of Specialization of Labor.  I’m the kind of person who really oughtn’t to own a home unless I have enough money to, without anxiety, hire whoever needs to be hired to do whatever needs to be done.  I can relish results with the best of ‘em…I’ve got a perfectionist streak that is wide and unforgiving…but the operations don’t INTEREST me.  Special as we all are, blah blah, I cannot believe I am the only person who feels thusly…give me reasonable rent and a conscientious landlord any day.  

The No Headache Zone.

Housing is a pillar of the economy, sure, but I will suggest that HOUSES are as prominent as they are because of the tax advantages associated with them.  There are more than NINETY MILLION single people in America.  I realize that some single people want to own homes…some people are domestic-type people…but I will guess that just as many single people gravitate to homes they will rattle around in because “paying rent is throwing your money away.”  Landlords, I think, don’t think that paying rent is throwing money away.  Why shall the renters be penalized?  Why shall the childless underwrite families?

Always we rob from Peter to pay Paul, rather than steward social and commercial reconfigurations.

Not that I don’t have cupboards and closets and ROOMFULS more to say…especially do I have things to say about the Single Sector, Doll Houses, Musical Apartments and Mobile Mankind… but I am instructed that shorter frequenter posts are desirable, so I will quit on two points:

1.  We are going broker than we already were, trying to keep people in houses they already couldn’t afford.  With the economy worsening and joblessness rising, with houses as with cars, we fight to keep people wrongly positioned.

2.  It is not wealth but resources that want redistribution.  As time is a person’s most valuable asset, people are an economy’s most valuable resource.  Optimal distribution of resources requires maneuverability.  People are TRAPPED in their homes.

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Plan C for Cell

Posted on 22 October 2008 by Admin| 1 Comment

Plan A was for America, if memory serves.  

Over the course of this wild and wacky Campaign-O-Rama…a two-year spending frenzy that has served as our principal economic stimulus…I have actually heard the legendary American Dream redefined as “owning your own home.”  See here, I thought it was more along the lines of starting with little or nothing and, through superlative effort/energy/aptitude/ingenuity coupled with extraordinary opportunity/serendipity/providence/timing…voila…a productive, fulfilled, happy and secure personage who commands the respect of and enjoys the benefits of Society.  What do I know?

Which brings me to Plan B, for Bailout.  I know the Great Bailout constitutes privatizing profits and socializing losses, I do know that much.  I know that if crime pays, there will be more crime.  And I know that, so far, crime pays.

That doesn’t work for me.

I dare claim universal recognition that it is rather harder to be honest than dishonest.  It is rather more difficult to continually endeavor to do the right thing…when time and money are short and expediencies regularly present themselves…than to do whatever you please, whenever you please, however you please.  A lotta people could get over a lot better if they did not feel morally obliged to tow the line.  Government would tell us that not only can the Elite NOT tow any lines, but that they shall be REWARDED for unrestrained free-wheeling with other people’s money?

Like I said, that doesn’t work for me.

Ergo, Plan C…for Cells.  Not the terrorist cells that have caused a certain amount of mayhem and that have, in my opinion, been marketed to create OTHER mayhem.  Prison Cells.  Note the distinction between prison cells and jail cells.  I’m talking about federal penitentiaries, not country club jails that serve almost as much needed R & R after all that raping and pillaging.

For real, I have a plan.  I not infrequently remind me of Lucy Ricardo…”I’ve GOT it!”  

“What have you got?” Ethyl would reliably ask with telltale skepticism.

“A PLAN.”

I am not precisely sure about blogging etiquette, nor about the Findability Factor.  I expect I will do myself a favor on both fronts by providing lots of links to correlate with my remarks.  I actually DO have quite a lot of research…completely inefficiently clumped at present…and I expect I shall improve rather than deteriorate as a Citizen Journalist.  I heard that term on what-passes-for-news…I kinda like it.

In the meantime, though, until I DO become more adroit, I will suggest that many of my remarks are intuitive and general and that demand to cite sources is usually the your-mother-wears-army-boots equivalent of “PROVE IT.”  As well, I hear this on the radio, I read that in the coffee shops, this farmer talks about that, that driver talks about this…some of my remarks don’t have “sources” more specialized than My Life. 

I declare that I am not a Liar.  I’m a piece of work, to be sure…an acquired taste for a niche audience, and even THEN only in limited doses…but I am not a Liar.  Easiest thing in the world to say.  The next easiest thing is to spot a discrepancy between words and deeds.  In real life, that’s the way it is, is it not?  You come up against a new person in whatever context, you gotta decide whether they know what they’re talking about and whether they mean what they say.  If a person’s word is no good, really, what more is there to say?

Liars lie.  It’s what they DO.  Babies cry, birds fly, people die and liars lie.  Psychopathic Liars, several of whom are numbered among our Conscienceless Uber Rich, lie even when they don’t have to.  It’s like chasing mercury.

Which brings me to Plan C, for Cells.

Must I dig up statistics to back up the assertion that America has the largest prison population on earth?  MAYBE it’s the largest per capita but I don’t think so, I think it’s the largest in the world.  Here is something I WILL pull from the dreaded Documents labyrinth of my computer, which has steadily deteriorated into an unsavory blend of the junk drawer in the kitchen and the wrong side of the tracks.

 

 ”When it shall be said in any country in the world, my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am the friend of its happiness: when these things can be said, thn may that country boast its constitution and its government.” 

Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, Part II, 1792 

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America…keenly principled and freshly independent…was one of Thomas Paine’s expressed inspirations in writing Rights of Man.  Neither he nor any of our Founding Fathers would be anything but horrified by the State of the Nation, I’m pretty sure of that.  I expect they would urge resurrection of public stockades.

If a dog poops on the living room rug, you don’t take the dog out back, point at the flowers and start hollering, “NO! Bad dog!”  And you surely don’t, whilst pointing at the flowers, commence lip service to beauty, “We want to keep the living room rug as fresh as flowers so…NO MORE POOPING IN THE HOUSE!” 

If a kid swipes another kid’s toy at the park, you don’t take him AND the swiped toy home, sit him down amongst all his toys plus the purloined toy and deliver a speech about sharing.  And you surely don’t, whilst delivering the speech on sharing, give the kid an early birthday present.

I am DELIGHTED to hear of more and more calls for Executive Retribution…Mario Cuomo in New York, Keith Fimian running for Congress out of Virginia, a couple different Congressmen on C-SPAN.  Otherwise, we’re not only letting them keep the toys they swiped, we’re giving them early birthday presents.

Let the punishment suit the crime.  That is wisdom of the ages.

At the root of creative accounting and juggling books and scattering risk and bundling debt and fudging incomes and fibbing rates and winging appraisals lies Greed.  Greed is one of the seven deadly sins, that is also wisdom of the ages.

In the couple years that I have been posting online, I have more than once been presented with the argument that a certain amount of Greed is good.  Bollocks, to quote Christine Lagarde.

Greed is intense, selfish insatiable desire that exceeds need and warrant alike.  

People also argue, rightly I think, that too much of a good thing is a bad thing.  But it does NOT follow that the right amount of a bad thing is a good thing.  Virtues can be rendered vices.  Vices are not rendered virtues.

The offenses are assorted…collusion, insider trading, price fixing, tax evasion, fiduciary malfeasance, conspiracies in restraint of trade, racketeering…but they all trace to Greed.

As a paradigm for punishment, seizure of ill-gotten gains suits crimes attributable to Greed like it was bespoke on Jermyn Street in London.

We now know that when motivated by truly important matters, like the collapsing of America’s financial sector or the pulling of Terri Schaivo’s plug, Congress is able to pass landmark legislation lickety-split.  Who can forget the Patriot Act?

When hard-core, bullet-ridden drug traffic hit Ireland, Ireland just said NO and, unlike us, meant it.  Seizure of assets…not only those proven to be ill-gotten but those that could not be traced to legitimate sources…nipped that action virtually in the bud.

We can do the same here, AND make a dent in our deficit at the same time.  Are you kidding me?  We LOVE two-for-one specials.

But the Truth is, though they care about money more than anything, taking their money is not enough.  Y’know why?  Because they think they are above the law, at the same time that they are diabolically clever.  Because their measure of self is obtained via their holdings, they will be motivated unto greater dastardliness to reclaim their greatness.  I was once told by a Player that their idea of gossip is counting one another’s money.

Rather than get into long, drawn-out Marcia Clark-style legaleze over which assets were ill-gotten and which were honorable, seize everything except:

1.) the cost of running the family’s lifestyle and primary residence for one year

2.) one million dollars for when the Bad Guy emerges from his year in prison, hopefully reformed. 

That is what I propose…seize their assets and send them to federal penitentiaries for one year; their families will be covered while they’re “inside” and they’ll have a million bucks to work with when they get out.  Nuthin’ cruel or inhuman about that.  

The sins of the father will be visited upon their sons.  If families are AT the table, families are ON the table.  It is sad about the children, I agree, but the Scoundrels should have given that more thought.  Spouses, on the other hand, get no sympathy from me.  Think aiding and abetting, think accomplices.

It can be hoped that a year in prison will teach humility, but that is out of our control.

This is not.

I heard on the radio within the past year that the literacy rate of our extraordinary prison population is…get this…THREE PERCENT.  It doesn’t even seem possible.  MAYBE it was the literacy rate of a convict subset, but I don’t think so, I think it was system-wide.

How on earth do we propose that illiterate people with prison records will earn a living, once they are returned to Society?  It practically guarantees reversion to a life of crime and a return to prison.  Three strikes, they’re out, you say?  And they have two strikes against them at the gate?  Who on earth hires illiterate ex-cons?  Our credit is shot, so now we borrow trouble.

Like-minded people resonate with one another.  Athletes, I think, have more regard for coaches who played the game.  Soldiers, I presume, respond better to military officers than to gardeners.  Alcoholics, I would know this, get through to other drunks. 

Let the criminals teach the criminals.  The Bad Guys are bad, not stupid.  Let them spend one year in federal penitentiaries teaching those illiterate convicts their letters and numbers.  How to fill out a job application, what is an interest rate, stuff like that.

I’ll bet half a dozen disgraced executives won’t have to be raped before there will be a long overdue call for reform of our Draconian prison system.  Incarceration Incorporated is decidedly not Christian, it’s not American…it’s not even decent.

 

 

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Nag Nag Naggity Nag

Posted on 21 October 2008 by Admin| 1 Comment

That’s what I feel like, harping on the Criminal Element…nag, nag, naggity, nag.  I thought, in this blog, I would only compose fresh and clever thoughts as to stimulating a floundering economy but, really, what’s the point? 

Sayings like “one bad apple spoils the whole bunch” didn’t become Truisms because they are false.

To what purpose shall we scramble to concoct innovative, sustainable commerce when the same Bad Guys who gummed up the works are still in the game?  What…like they only know how to cook up nefarious schemes?  I’m pretty sure that Bad Guys can convolute and corrupt a Good Plan to skew the benefits in their favor.

I go back to Society’s not being able to have it both ways…certain Players are either among the most brilliant or the most dense men on earth.  I’m pretty sure it’s not the latter, or they wouldn’t be the ones holding the money.

I previously took exception with French Finance Minister Chritine Lagarde diplomatically declining to participate in “the Blame Game,” when she was asked whether U.S. activity had prompted the global turmoil.  I am hopeful that the following precipitates a shift in her thinking toward the more time-honored Let The Punishment Suit The Crime.

 

PARIS, Oct 17, (Reuters) – France ordered an audit of all its banks after Caisse d’Epargne, which is merging with Banque Populaire to become the country’s second-largest retail bank, disclosed a 600 million-euro ($808 million) trading loss.

Savings bank Caisse d’Epargne (CdE) said the loss on share derivatives earlier this month was detected during normal controls. It took immediate action to close the position.

The loss spurred French Finance and Economy Minister Christine Lagarde to ask for a special audit of all banking institutions in France. “I am particularly frustrated and discouraged by what happened,” Lagarde told reporters.

A spokesman for Caisse d’Epargne said the loss was caused by a “small team” which had been punished for exceeding its trading risk limit. The bank said an assistant of finance head Julien Carmona had been dismissed…

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I previously remarked that whether a kid’s study habits change is a positive function of whether his ill-preparedness has had any downside consequences.  In yet ANOTHER instance of banking baloney, couched in terms of our good-money-after-bad War On Drugs, dismissing an assistant is MAYBE the equivalent of arresting a Street Dealer.  Maybe just a User. 

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Consequences R Teachers

Posted on 16 October 2008 by Admin| Leave a comment

Anyone who has raised anyone, anyone who has trained anything knows that, you can talk ’til you’re blue in the face, it’s the follow-through that counts.  All else is pissing at the moon trying to make it more yellow. 

As a totally random example, let’s say a kid doesn’t keep up with his classwork all term…a cocky and ungrateful child of Privilege who is accustomed to all good coming to him irrespective of his attitude or performance.  The Entitled Teen’s customary remedy of cramming the night before an exam conflicts with a home game of Super Stars, loyalty to whom the Aristocratic Family of Four displays by purchase of season tickets that are more expensive than some people’s homes.  On the floor, the fifty-yard line, behind home plate, other box-type seats in cool venues.  High flyers.  The Good Life.  

Blah, blah, blah goes the speech about effective use of time.  Yada yada yada goes the speech about personal responsibility.  Blah, blah, blah goes the speech about the importance of education.  Yada yada yada goes the speech about The Future. 

Here is what matters.  Here is what determines whether and how the study habits change.  Do you leave the kid behind…perhaps inviting another to take his place since wasting his, alas, empty seat serves no purpose…or do you deliver those speeches all the way to the stadium, arena, field or other box-type seats in whatever cool venue?

That is what registers with the psyche…the rest is just a moving mouth.

All of our lip service to fair play, to honesty, to reliability, to responsibility, to conscientiousness, to free market enterprise, to prudence, to karma, to ethics, to Justice…out the friggin’ window with this bailout.

And what a misnomer that is, eh?  The idea that the boat has merely taken on a bit of lake is comforting.  I envision a flannel-shirted fisherman scooping the occasional pail of water out of the bottom of a trusty boat that has only sprung a slow leak…the aqua-equivalent of regularly adding a bit of air to the left rear tire.  Annoying but not alarming.

Changing the name from Bailout to Rescue Package more accurately reflects the severity but it also, I contend, attempts to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.  Rescue=good.  Unambiguously, straightforwardly good.  Not so, the bailout.  A dicey proposition cannot be reworded into goodness.  Well, I mean it CAN be done, it is done all the time.  Bad is continually packaged and presented as good…a practice that is facilitated, I expect, by our curious small=tall elasticity.   I’m saying it doesn’t fly, rewording a dicey proposition into goodness.  It doesn’t make it so.

Already we can see as additional billions of Rescue Dollars-not-to-be-confused-with-Monopoly-Money are sought and authorized, sought and authorized, sought and authorized, it is not the minor mop up implied by bailout, nor the unqualified good implied by rescue.  Euphemisms R Us.

This is the volume and force of a gusher, freshly tapped by wildcatters poaching on someone else’s land.  We are well-advised, I think, to seek Containment before Stimulus.  Otherwise, it’s turbo-charged Appeasement.

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Global Shortage of Turnable Cheeks

Posted on 11 October 2008 by Admin| Leave a comment

I would say ‘I can hardly believe my ears’ but my hearing is not yet among the several Minor Mutinies that characterize Middle Age.  I am listening to Secretary Goldman Sachs Paulson say on C-SPAN, “There is no reason for people not to be confident, in my judgment.”

Who in their right mind would be reassured by this?  Who but the most inside track of the Inner Circle that is the conglomeration of wealth and power in America would be rendered confident by Secretary Paulson’s assurance that, in his judgment, there is no reason not to be confident?  Secretary Paulson’s judgment is specifically at issue.

You can’t have this both ways…either the man is brilliant, or he’s a dope.  Someone from “The Street” recently remarked to me on Henry Paulson’s Smarts, “He’s REALLY smart…he’s from Goldman Sachs.”  I cannot be the only one noticing how often Goldman Sachs features in America’s New & Improved New Deal.  It puts me in mind of how often Harvard and Yale feature in our ongoing political saga.   

Either Henry Paulson didn’t see It coming, in which case he is incompetent and just about the last person whose stewardship we want now.  Not seeing economic imbalance of this magnitude, with all the financial measurement tools and analysis skill available for determination of financial conditions, seems about as plausible as not knowing that a hurricane is coming with all the measurement tools and analysis skill available for determination of atmospheric conditions.  

Or Henry Paulson is a wizard, in which case he DID see it coming…as many did…and he is, again, just about the last person whose stewardship we want now.

I also listened to Christine Lagarde, the French Minister of Economy, Finance and Employment.  VERY impressive, she is…intelligent, articulate, logical, likable.  But I disagree with her on this.  She pointedly declined a question about the U.S. role in the International Crisis, saying that it serves no purpose now to play the Blame Game.

She is right in a sense, of course…survival first.  I only just yesterday came across this quote attributed to Henry Kissinger, “While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive.”

But we are a high-speed, multi-tasking people…we can walk and chew gum at the same time.  We can prosecute capital letter Wrongdoers concurrent with bailing out lower case wrongdoers and upper case Dummies.   It would be a pretty ironic time for us to get all focused and first-things-first-y but, if we WERE inclined to sensible orderliness…which would have averted a Mortgage Meltdown…we would whisk the Bad Guys off the board BEFORE introducing a Rescue Package to the game.  

Ms. Lagarde anticipates the burgeoning of Ethics in university curriculum…again…as there was pursuant to an earlier episode of As The World Turns On Its Axis Of Evil.  If the bit of history about Organized White Collar Crime has repeated itself, and the bit about absence of ethics has repeated itself, we have every reason to suppose that they will both repeat themselves again.  

IN PARTICULAR can we expect Organized White Collar Crime (a.k.a. Racketeering) and Absence of Ethics to reassert themselves if they have been profitable in the past.  Again.  If we will not aggressively pursue the several crimes that UNMISTAKABLY “underpin” this man-made disaster, but instead will effectively and substantially REWARD the crimes, then all the Ethics classes in the world won’t mean a thing.  The theory is blah, blah, blah.  The reality is that criminal behavior is lucrative.  People gravitate to that which is lucrative, they are quite reliable that way.

Ms. Lagarde points out practically that there would be so MANY fingers to point, as support for the argument against playing the Blame Game.  I see it oppositely.  Because there are so many fingers to point is EXACTLY why some heads must roll.  No economy, no country, no civilization and therefore no individual can afford to throw in the towel by lamenting that there is SO much wrong, there is no point in correcting ANY wrong.  

It would not be feasible to prosecute every shifty real estate agent and indiscreet loan officer even if it were necessary, which it is not.  The buck stops somewhere in every chain of command.  For what reason would people in those positions be paid big bucks if not to make sure companies and economies don’t fall into preventable crisis?  Who ELSE would be culpable for a wide-ranging, far-reaching, ongoing lapse of sound business practice?

I would have to watch the segment again to know whether Christine Lagarde reported this as her own experience, or whether she was relaying an experience reported by another.  Indeed, the remark directly preceded her welcoming “Senior” minds into the discussion…people who have lived through previous crises, people with experience…and her thanking one distinguished gentleman in particular.  It is possible that she was relaying his experience, also thanking him for his insight.

Whether it was Ms. Lagarde or the distinguished gentleman she personally thanked, the story was that “these young guys” came from America to explain the whole derivative market thing.  This goes here like that, that goes there like this, yada yada yada about “scattered risk” until, voila, “I was buying something without any risk at all…and I thought, ‘well, this is bollocks.’”  The room erupted in an appreciative laugh…THANK YOU, an official who is not lying…but the Truth is, it’s not funny.

It is the Bollocks, the Corrupt Executives and Corrupt Officials, who should be thrown behind the same bars that they are so free and easy about slamming other people behind.  OUT, in disgrace, the “merely” inept…sans parachutes.  Let that be a lesson to Middle Management and tangential providers.  Hanging horse thieves is part of our Wild West heritage.  Public stockades are part of our Pilgrim past. 

This is a fine time to quit worrying about what the neighbors think.  Have we not been sold on a War On Terror these many years?  Implicit in that War On Terror is an abiding threat that Terrorists mean to harm us if they can, is it not?  We are meant to be constantly vigilant for sign of infiltration or attack, are we not?  If we will not fearlessly round up our OWN Bad Guys, if we will not compel our OWN People unto observance of Law by smiting our OWN Bad Guys, how else can our enemies construe it but that we are a bunch of weenies?

We are talking about Executive Compensation when we should be acting on Executive Consequences.

And we are NOT talking about Economic Terrorism…why is that?  Usually Homeland Security is everywhere you don’t want to be.  For sure, I haven’t seen this many people terrified people since the run-up to War in Iraq…the last time Administration, Congress and Media worked in concert to scare the bejeezus out of the citizenry.

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I Want It, And I Want It NOW

Posted on 10 October 2008 by Admin| Leave a comment

Among children’s books that I had the great fortune of reading and re-reading was “Which Witch Is Which?” Similarities despite differences, differences despite similarities…the trusty “appearance versus reality” theme, if memory serves.

My point is, which Nuts are craziest?  The lunatics who are running the asylum…or the OTHER lunatics who are LETTING them?  If the enemy of my enemy is my friend, who’s on first?

The people who claim not to have seen “This” coming announce promptly upon its arrival that they are precisely the ones to chart where we go from here.  Really?  Good old-fashioned horse sense doesn’t get enough credit, it really doesn’t.  Here’s something I’ve gleaned in a half-century of life experience: if something doesn’t make sense, it’s usually because something is wrong.  Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke overseeing the oh-so-aptly named Rescue makes about as much sense as…well, as breweries advertising at NASCAR events.  

I would point out the obvious that “This” is an accumulation of months and years of market activity colored by official and clandestine contrivances…it didn’t happen overnight.

But, somehow, the same people who got us into This Mess…propped up, nay elevated, by the Usual Suspects in Big Media…are further riling up an agitated people by wailing that the record-setting Bailout Bonanza didn’t fix things in the 72-hour turnaround that we think, frankly, is slow even for mini-blinds.

Fixing the mighty American economy, surely there is same-day service…with an express lane?

The answer is No, there is not.

I once heard a guy quote another guy as saying, “If you walk five miles into the woods, you have to walk at least five miles to get out.”  Once when I quoted the guy who quoted the guy, a Smart Alec said, “Not if the woods is only six miles wide.”  He was so right that I disliked him instantly and wondered why I hadn’t thought of it.  But I am right about this: we didn’t walk five miles into a six-mile-wide woods.

The bankers, the executives, the officials and our reckless and counterproductive media need to CHILL.  They are like adults who lecture their children about not panicking in an emergency, then push and shove their way over fallen bodies to escape a crowded theater in an earthquake.

America has no street cred and Washington has less.  It is not a matter of persuading investors to feel more confident so that we can change and do business rightly, but the other way around.  Right Action will inspire Confidence before Confidence will inspire Right Action.  

As things stand, investors know that crime pays in America.  They don’t want to get ripped off, and you can’t blame them.  Imprisoning the Mortgage Fraud kingpins would go a long way to restoring investor confidence, also American morale.

A clean house is much more inviting than a dirty house.

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A Confidence Crisis, not a Credit Crisis

Posted on 10 October 2008 by Admin| 2 Comments

In a very real manner of speaking, the quote-unquote Credit Crisis already occurred.  It was the wild ride that was so darn fun while it lasted, we didn’t even realize we were on it until it was over.  Believe me, I know…I rode it to the end.  

The borrowed balances were staggering unto themselves.  I remember posting about America’s total credit card debt a couple YEARS ago…when it was “only” SEVEN HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS…with credit card after credit card after credit card run up to its limit.  But I will argue that it was the NATURE of the spending even more than the totals that heralded CRISIS!  

The urgency and profligacy of the spending, the fabrication of NEEEED, the Madison Avenue mantra of “new and improved.”  Even the revolutionary iphone?  Good for a season, then we “need” the “new” one.  

Shinier hair, whiter teeth, softer skin, bigger houses, greener pastures, happier pets, smarter kids, longer lives, faster credit, easier terms and, always, newer cars.  Go, go, go America, spend your way to a peace of mind that the State of the Union will never provide.  

It’s not that money buys happiness, we’re not stupid.  But money buys Stuff and…what?  The more, the merrier?  But for life preservers made of paperwork, we would be drowning in our stuff.

The spending crisis is over.

For whom is the solution to maxed-out credit cards more spending, on a different card?  America is SUPPOSED to be spending less.  America is SUPPOSED to be paying down those cards.

The credit crisis is a misnomer, the suggestion that there is no money to be lent a hoax.  Do stuff-starved Americans imagine that, when their own credit cards hit the limit, bankers the world over started burning money?  The money supply didn’t disappear, it changed hands.

The hands that hold the money are reluctant to invest?  Why?  Since when are Money Men not eager to grease the wheels of commerce, for a cut?  When they’re not sure they’ll get their cut, that’s when.

Aside from broadcasting to America and the world that crime and stupidity pay, the Great Bailout warns America and the world that charlatans and crooks still run amok in the marketplace.  We not only haven’t punished lying cheating conniving N’er-Do-Wells, we have rewarded them.  If we will not bring the full force of American jurisprudence to bear against the bullshit, investors know they are up against not only a dicey economy but also against wiley accounting practices, devious cross-collateralizing, blatant lying and a generalized absence of ethics.

Round up the heavy hitters of the Mortgage Mayhem, the ones who willfully rendered their nation’s economy and indeed the world’s economy a shambles in order to amass boupcoup bucks for their ego-ridden selves, and hold them without bail on suspicion of fraud, fiduciary malfeasance, price fixing, collusion, insider trading, conspiracies in restraint of trade and racketeering. 

Men worth hundreds of millions of dollars, men with investments and indeed homes abroad, constitute much more of a flight risk than the average bad-ass.  Hell, they have their own planes.

Hold them without bail and someone will talk.  Loose lips sink ships.

The day the world sees conscienceless Robber Barons locked up like other criminals is the day the world’s investors will know that it’s safe to go back into shark-infested waters.  One does not render the high seas navigable by getting rid of sharks.  Sharks are part of the market’s ecosystem.

It’s the pirates who must be annihilated.  Think gangplank, think a long walk off a short bridge.

As a bonus, American and global morale will inflate at indication that the “leader of the free world” means henceforth to prosecute economically advantaged Assholes as surely as we prosecute economically challenged Assholes.

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Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

Posted on 9 October 2008 by Admin| Leave a comment

What the presidential debate lacked in substance, it made up for in pettiness.  

“You said…”

“Unh uuunh, you said…”

Senator Obama avoided answering the very first question of the debate, an opening bell for the minuet of equivocation and prevarication that ensued.

Debate?  More like serial soliloquies.

Again and again, despite repeated advisements from Tom Brokaw, both candidates disregarded the “rules” they had both “signed off on.”  Arrogance.  Rules don’t apply to me.  Some people are more equal than others.  Where have I encountered all this before?  The same thing…as in, no change.

I read in one of yesterday’s newspapers an analysis of their truth-stretching, distortion and outright lying.  Instance after instance.  LYING.  Hello?  I keep saying only because it bears repeating: LIARS LIE.  IT’S WHAT THEY DO.  Liars lie even when they don’t have to.

Is it only me?  They are both documentable liars, and they both ducked out of the first Senate vote on the Great Bailout…that, my friends, is cowardice.  How many times did John McCain say “my friends” in that town hall of self-aggrandizement?  John McCain is so not my friend.

But neither is Obama, I fear.  FEAR.  More fear.  I am sick and tired of feeling violated and afraid.

It seems so straightforward to me that either one, lying OR cowardice, constitutes conduct unbecoming an officer.  A one-two combo?  For our Commander-in-Chief?  For real?  I will argue that the American People have been purposefully and steadily reduced…as by dastardly architecture much facilitated by a vapid and mercenary press…to a meaningless choice between rubber stamps for Business And Bullshit As Usual. 

I mightily object.  I declare my right to an alternative to being lorded over by either of these models of mediocrity.

As with the lunatic and larcenous bailout legislation, American voters are being rushed.  That sounds laughable, I realize, in light of a two-year campaign but my time traipsing up and down California and back and forth across the nation says that most people have only just started paying attention.  Americans are fourth quarter competitors.

Vote early!  Vote early!  That is the new battle cry, is it not?  Why?  

I get it why CANDIDATES want “their” people to vote early…so no one can change their mind.  But why would PEOPLE vote early, when conditions on the ground are plainly changing faster than CEO’s and stock option plans?  What a ridiculous notion, to decide ahead of time to stick to guns that are cocked on incomplete information…it is the very height of closed-mindedness.

One can speculate…and should, given rampant chicanery in American politics…that the cheerleading for early voting has also to do with dicey voter registrations.

Vote early and…what the hay…for the same price, vote often!  America is very big on two-for-one specials.

I strongly encourage my countrymen to solidify behind sanity, reject this charade of “choice” and demand the re-printing of November ballots to include alternative tickets that will not damn our country to kicking off the most harrowing four years of our modern history with roughly half the country hating the other half.

This is manipulated madness for which the people fall…duking it out with one another, the sick and tired fighting the oppressed and downtrodden, while the Ruling Elite take “much-needed” vacations to international resorts in order to rejuvenate themselves after the “unpleasantness” and “unrest” at home.

It is time for the Great Majority to get off its knees, and it is time for the Old Guard to stand down.  The Old Guard does not know from generalized peacetime prosperity…the Old Guard doesn’t even recognize it as a noble goal.  The Old Guard is not Right.

Feed the classes, dine with the masses.  Feed the masses, dine with the classes.

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