Taking the Easy Way Out

Normally, I would have yet another witty and thought-provoking post for you today. Unfortunately, today I am feeling neither witty nor thoughtful. Today, I am suffering The Cold From Hell, courtesy of my granddaughter (I told you yesterday that it was coming, and it didn't take long).

So...

In order to minimize the horrendous, ear-splitting noise of the keys crashing down on my keyboard, how about we do an extra edition of Cartoon Saturday this week? I'll refund the cost of your subscription if you want. Not.

I've been saving this one for a while; I love it because it's so ... well ... out there:

Another twist on the "Beware of Dog" theme:

Bilbo takes his car to the shop...

There's always 10% who either don't get the word, or get it but don't get it. Get it?



And finally, you know how I feel about organized religions. And insurance companies. Be very afraid when they intersect...

Tomorrow will be Cartoon Saturday, as usual. By Sunday, I should be feeling better and able to do the post I wanted to do today, which ought to spin up some of my readers. To get a preview of Sunday's topic, read this article on the Project Syndicate website.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

From the "Wonderful Headlines" Department

There's a wonderful book by a PhD teacher of English named Richard Lederer titled "Anguished English," which is his compendium of the most hideous assaults on the language by children, college students, and professionals who ought to know better. One section of the book is devoted to "Two-Headed Headlines" - those banners in the newspaper that may or may not be intentionally goofy. Some of Professor Lederer's examples include:

Police Discover Crack in Australia (watch out, Amanda!);

Doctor Testifies in Horse Suit (the trial date was probably October 31st);

Grandmother of Eight Makes Hole in One (after a while, even beloved grandchildren can drive you nuts);

Many Antiques Seen at D.A.R. Meeting (for those of you not in the U.S., "D.A.R." stands for "Daughters of the American Revolution"...draw your own conclusions);

Men Recommend More Clubs for Wives (the poll was probably taken among Pakistani and Saudi Muslims...see here for more information); and,

Robber Holds Up Albert's Hoisery (Albert's face must really have been red).

I thought about this topic when I saw this headline on the CNN website this morning: Stripper Wells Target Energy Crisis.

If you actually click the link, the title of the article is a bit different and makes more sense. But I like the front page headline better. Who is the stripper named Wells who is taking on the energy crisis? Can she (he?) do a better job than Congress? Or does it refer to the source from which we get strippers? Where do I sign up? And if I did own a stripper well at my age, wouldn't I end up with an energy crisis of my own?

Sigh.

Well, I've been on vacation the last three days, getting my in-laws settled in for their two-week visit. In honor of the occasion, super-cute great-granddaughter Leya has come down with a miserable cold, which I will no doubt contract in due course since she loves her grandpa and always wants to share everything with him...

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

At Last: The Financial Crisis Solved!

Just when I was losing hope that anyone would be able to solve the financial crisis gripping the nation and the world, I got a boost yesterday while I was listening to The Diane Rehm Show on NPR. At one point in a discussion titled "The Economy and the Presidential Campaign," one of the show's guests (I wish I could remember which one) said that it was not out of the question that Congress might be called back from its upcoming recess for a special session to deal with the economic crisis.

Hmmm...this would be the Congress that, through its reckless dependence on political orthdoxy and flagrant kowtowing to special interests with deep pockets, got us into this mess in the first place, would it not?

I feel soooooo much better!

I also felt good yesterday when the government finally drew yet another shallow and wavy line in the fiscal sand and elected not to bail out Lehman Brothers. But then the news this morning is that insurance giant AIG has been bailed out to the tune of 85 billion dollars.

I guess we should all feel better now...we can be recklessly irresponsible with our own money (if we have any left) and everyone else's and - as long as we've made the right contributions to the right politicians and parties - we'll never have to worry about losing our financial shirts.

Yeah, right.

Once again, Bilbo's First Rule of Economic Policy applies: "financial institutions" may be too big to fail, but Real People will always be too small to matter.

I think I'm going to move all my money to the First National Bank of Under the Mattress and depend on the old, established firm of Smith and Wesson to insure it, rather than relying on the notable economic acumen of the bloviating, devious fools who drove us to this point.

I can hardly do worse. I won't earn any interest, but then, I won't lose my interest and my savings so Congress can bail out a business more important than I am, either.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

P.S. - do you remember the old Loony Tunes cartoon in which one character kept drawing lines in the sand to taunt another into moving forward...and the last line was at the edge of a cliff? That's how I feel when I open the newspaper every morning.

B.

What Were They Thinking?

Hurricane Ike, this year's reincarnation of Hurricane Katrina, has devastated Galveston and marched up though the nation's midsection, leaving problems in places you don't usually associate with hurricanes - yesterday, my daughter-in-law called us from Ohio to let us know they'd had 80-mph winds, lost some shingles from their roof, and are without electricity indefinitely. The crowning indignity is that both her place of work and my son's have electricity and are open...but the schools are without power and closed.

But let's return to Galveston and today's lesson in utter and complete stupidity.

As Ike was rolling across the Gulf of Mexico gathering strength as it headed for Texas, the National Weather Service started using expressions like certain death to describe what awaited those who ignored the mandatory evacuation order and decided to ride out the storm in Galveston. Satellite photos showed a storm so huge it filled the Gulf. Huge storm surges were predicted. Certain death was mentioned over and over. The mandatory evacuation was implemented, and the authorities were very clear that those who chose not to evacuate shouldn't expect anything.

Did I mention the parts about certain death and mandatory evacuation?

Well, what do you suppose happened?

According to this CNN article, and reporting on NPR over the last few days, about 15,000 to 20,000 people stayed on Galveston Island, ignoring a mandatory evacuation ordered in the face of a storm promising certain death...and now comes the whining about how FEMA isn't providing them with supplies and the government isn't helping them and nobody told them the storm was coming and blah, blah, blah.

My comment: too damn bad. You were warned for days that the storm was coming. You were told you faced certain death. You decided you were tougher than some old storm.

You were wrong.

You decided to act like an idiot, and I don't think it's my problem to bail you out of the fruits of your stupidity.

Why is it always this way? Why do we end up having our policies and efforts driven by the dumbasses from the shallow end of the gene pool?

I don't want to seem heartless, but in cases like this, I am. Having to rescue people who refuse to evacuate in the path of a monster hurricane is just as bad as ... oh ... rescuing fat cat CEO's that run their financial institutions into the ground and then stick the rest of us with the bill.

AARRGGHH!!

And it gets better - now the petroleum industry has a golden excuse to jack up the price of gasoline again. Aren't you glad?

Okay, I'm done ranting. For now. Somehow it's appropriate that today is the day I get to enjoy the sublime pleasure of my routine flexible sigmoidoscopy exam. If you don't know what that is, look it up. Or wait until you're a certified old goat like Mike and I.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

P.S. - Agnes's parents arrived yesterday - safe and sound, if a bit the worse for wear. Agnes is in a state of controlled fury because she'd arranged for the airline to meet her parents (86 and 90) with a wheelchair and assistance in getting through immigration and customs...and no one showed up to help them. Today would be a bad day to be the person she arranged all this with.

B.

Update - Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac CEOs May Not Get Golden Parachutes!

I feel a little better based on this article I just read in this morning's Washington Post: "No 'Golden Parachutes' for Fannie, Freddie's Ex-Chiefs." Let's hope my optimism is not premature...

B.

My New Retirement Plan, and Accompanying Economic Rant

My new retirement plan is very simple. My 401k and IRA are in the toilet, and I'm too small for the Feds to worry about bailing out, so I'm going to take my last assets and start up my own investment bank, run it into the ground, and then ask for a bailout. It can't miss.

Given the marvelous economic news of the last few months, my current retirement plan involves looking for a nice, big refrigerator box to live in. I may as well just sign everything over to rich investment bankers now rather than wait for the government to do it later.

That's how it works, of course. They're too big to fail, but you and I are too small to matter.

I thought there was hope today when the government decided not to bail out Lehman Brothers, but then I realized that Lehman Brothers was in the same boat the rest of us are - they weren't too big to fail, so the feds cut them loose.

And just so you can feel better about the Fat Cats' raids on your savings, here's a quote from the CNN Money article about the Lehman Brothers collapse:

"The Federal Reserve announced a series of steps to support the financial markets. The Fed said it would expand its short-term lending to banks by starting to take all investment-grade debt as collateral - instead of just Treasurys and other high-grade securities."

The emphasis is mine.

Now let's be sure I understand this...the Fed is going to lend to banks which have already demonstrated their irresponsibility and greed by accepting "all investment-grade debt" as collateral. What's "investment-grade debt?" Isn't that what got all these greedy bastards into trouble in the first place?

I really wish I knew more about economics. No, actually, I don't. If I really understood the depth of the greed of the "financial institutions" and the level of smug arrogance that leads white-collar thieves to assume they can get the government to crush us to save themselves, I'd probably either kill myself or want to declare open season on "investment bankers."

Washington Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein wrote an article last week titled "Don't Like Bailouts? Consider the Alternatives" that spun me up in several ways:

First was his assertion that "History shows that rather than costing taxpayers, the rescues have often wound up making money." He then listed bailouts he claimed actually benefited the government, concluding that "...if (the government) is willing to wait until housing markets finally recover, there's a good chance the government will recoup most of its investment, along with a 10 percent annual dividend and a hefty guarantee fee." I find that very comforting as I look at the wreckage of my retirement accounts. Even if this long-term fairy tale is true, it will do nothing toward helping those of us who have been fleeced first by the crooks, and then by the government that helps them out.

Second was Mr Pearlstein's tossoff of "moral hazard" (the argument that those who abuse their trust must bear the consequences) by suggesting that "...using moral hazard to argue against the carefully structured rescues of Bear Stearns or Fannie and Freddie is a bit likely arguing that any sentence short of capital punishment is insufficient to deter bank robbery."

And then was this statement: "Remember that even with the rescues, top executives at Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac lost their jobs, their reputations, and most of their net worth, while long-term investors lost all but a tiny fraction of their money." You may recall my discussion a few days ago about the severance packages of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac CEOs...if I lose my job, I doubt that I'll get a severance package valued in the millions to cushion the supposed loss of my reputation. And I may be wrong, but I believe the losses those long-term investors suffered ("all but a tiny fraction of their money") are the losses you and I are being expected to make up through our hard work and taxes.

Was the cost of the alternative worse than the vast cost of bailing out these greedy fools? Perhaps. But unless we make some real, fundamental structural changes to how the financial markets are operated and regulated, we'll just keep riding this same old fiscal merry-go-round to a future of continuing financial chaos.

And you and I will keep buying the tokens to pay for the big guys to ride.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

P.S. - Agnes's parents arrive this afternoon for a two-week visit, and so my posts may be a little irregular as we spend time with them. Bear with me. I'm still out here.

B.

Going to the Dogs

Zipcode had a very thought-provoking post last Friday about dog owners and their responsibility for how their dogs turn out. It got me to thinking about how we relate to pets in general and dogs in particular.

To the extent that I'm a pet person of any sort, I'm a dog guy. With a dog, what you see is what you get. You know when they're happy and when they're sad. You know what they like and don't like. A dog's affection for you is about as close to unconditional love as you'll find in this life...and no less an authority than former president Harry Truman once famously said, "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog."

Cats, on the other hand, are in it for themselves. When you come home, a dog will run to greet you joyfully and make you feel like a million dollars. A cat will peer around a corner, note that you're home, sigh at the invasion of its space, and go back to hacking up hairballs on your pillow. If you're a cat lover, I'm sorry. I'll take a dog any day.

Our first dog was Wooly, a mixed-breed (Yorkshire and Scots) terrier who was the world's best family dog. She was loving and cheerful, and much smarter than any Republican or Democrat. Our daughter taught her all the standard tricks (sit, lie down, roll over, play dead, etc), but Wooly figured out early on that it was too difficult to remember all those dumb commands...if you told her to do something, she'd just go ahead and do all the tricks she knew, one after the other, figuring that one of them was the one you wanted. She also played Hide and Seek...we'd hide, she'd find us, we'd hide again, and she'd carefully examine all the places we'd hidden before - in order - before wasting her time looking in new places. Wooly lived to be nearly 16, and when she was so old and sick that she was miserable all the time, we sat in a circle in the kitchen and sent her on her way with a lot of tears and good memories.

Our next dog was Sidney, a purebred Siberian Husky, a beautiful dog with a brown-and-white coat, blue eyes, and the personality from Hell. When our daughter put her out of her room one night because she was making too much noise, Sidney tried to dig her way back in under the door...ripping up the downstairs hallway carpet beyond salvation. He also dug holes in the living room (both the carpets and a queen-sized sleeper sofa) and tore up the carpet on the first step from the foyer up to the main level of the house (to provide a nice view for arriving visitors). The year of our miserable back-to-back snowstorms here in DC (I think it was 1996), the only happy creature in the area was Sidney, who dragged my wide white fanny seven hundred miles through deep drifts on endless walks. Sidney eventually had to go, as my legs were only seven inches long from all the walking, and we couldn't afford the exorcism to get his unlimited energy under control.

Then came Pip (aka Punky, aka Pizza, aka anything-starting-with-a-P). She was part of a litter of abandoned puppies at the vet clinic where our daughter worked, and Yasmin decided that since no one was likely to adopt a dog that was apparently a cross between a Black Lab and a Rottweiler/Pit Bull/etc, we'd have to do it. Pip grew into another great family dog like Wooly - even-tempered, friendly, and fiercely loyal. She didn't like most men, but loved me. You can see her in my profile photo:

And in this picture from a few years ago:

Pip has departed this life for the place good dogs go to chase sticks, lounge on sunny porches, and enjoy ever-full food dishes and water bowls while they wait for us to catch up, and I miss her. She could be frustrating, but as friends go, they don't come any truer.

What do dogs mean to us? In his poem The Power of the Dog, Rudyard Kipling knew. And I'd like to think that for every sadistic moron like Michael Vick who chooses to abuse dogs, there are a hundred people like our friend Jodi who, with her husband Charlie, works tirelessly to rescue and provide homes for abused Akitas.

Want a friend in Washington? Get a dog. If you treat that dog like the living, loving creature it is you will have a loyal friend for life. If you don't, well, it says something about you, doesn't it?

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

Hurricane Ike has crushed Galveston and is heading for Houston, we're getting to know Sarah Palin, we already know Joe Biden, and bookies are placing their odds on the next giant financial institution you and I will need to bail out.

Now, more than ever, you need Cartoon Saturday.

Sometimes when you're in uniform, things just go terribly wrong...

With the economy the way it is, and the chance of health care reform no more than a faint mirage shimmering on the horizon, it's only a matter of time until we reach the ultimate result...



In the picture that goes with my profile, which was taken in 2003, the dog with me is Pip, our Black Labrador. Pip was a great dog who, sadly, went to that great kennel in the sky last week after a long life as a beloved member of the family. One of Pip's characteristics was absolute terror of thunder, fireworks, distant explosions, or similar noises. This cartoon reminds me of her...

And finally, cartoonists have long mined the "taking the boy/girl home to meet the parents" theme. This one is especially good...

Interesting how much the Michelin Man looks like John McCain, isn't it?

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Odds and Ends

No, this post is not about psychotics and football linemen. It's just that I'm feeling unusually disorganized this morning, so I thought I'd just share a few random things from my Blog Fodder files with you. It's my blog. I can do that.

I have the good fortune to work with a group of tremendously intelligent, intellectually stimulating people. Not that I'd ever tell them that, of course, because they'd just get swelled heads and make fun of me. Nevertheless, we do have some very interesting discussions which often result in some seriously out-of-the-box thinking on the issues of the day. A few days ago a wide-ranging discussion of American foreign and defense policy, and how it gets encapsulated in glossy documents no one reads, resulted in this diagram of the Bush Administration's National Security Strategy:You never knew it was that simple, did you?

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My Daily Curmudgeon quotation list yesterday offered this wonderful summation from Orson Scott Card of how we approach electing our leaders: "If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected swineherd every time, no matter how much slaughtering he did on the side."

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One of my old college friends suggests that we really need to live our lives backwards:

You start out dead and get that out of the way right off the bat.

Then, you wake up in a nursing home feeling better every day.

When you are kicked out of the home for being too healthy, you spend several years enjoying your retirement and collecting benefit checks.

When you start work, you get a gold watch on your first day. You work 40 years or so, getting younger every day until pretty soon you're too young to work. So then, you go to high school: play sports, date, drink, and party.

As you get even younger, you become a kid again. You go to elementary school, play, and have no responsibilities.

In a few years, you become a baby and everyone runs themselves ragged keeping you happy.

You spend your last 9 months floating peacefully in luxury, spa-like conditions, with central heating and room service on tap.

And finally you finish off as an orgasm.

I could get into that.

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And finally, the sort of story you thought only Mike could dredge up for your entertainment: from MSNBC comes this amazing report - Cops: Burglar Wakes Men with Spice Rub; Suspect Also Strikes Sleeping Man with Sausage Before Fleeing. Datelined Fresno, California, the story begins, "Authorities say they've arrested a man who broke into the home of two California farmworkers, stole money, rubbed one of the men with spices and whacked the other with a sausage before fleeing."

Only in America.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

Bilbo's Republicratic Party Platform, Plank #5: Economic Policy

Economic policy is the hardest part of the platform for me to write, because I know so little about economics other than it revolves around greed and herd psychology. You don’t need an MBA from Harvard Business School or a PhD in Economics from Yale, though, to know that the economy is in trouble. I have a BA in Linguistics and an MS in International Relations, and even I can recognize that the economy is in the toilet. Why is this? While I’m untutored in the Mystical and Arcane Rites of the Holy Mysteries of Economic Policy, I nevertheless perceive a few things that ought to be obvious, and since lack of knowledge has never stopped any good blogger before, with a ruffle of drums and a blare of trumpets, here is the starting point of my proposed economic policy:

1. Spending More Than You Earn Is Bad. If you and I engage in reckless deficit spending, we go to jail. If the government does it, reinforced platoons of dry-as-dust economists with PhD’s, bow ties, and leather elbow patches will be marshaled to explain why it’s a good thing. Whether you’re a Tax-and-Spend Democrat or a Don’t-Tax-but-Spend-Anyhow Republican, balanced budgets are smart. You and I need to pay taxes and the government needs to spend responsibly. Unfortunately, only you and I are held to our part of the bargain.

2. Unrestricted Capitalism Is As Bad As Blind Communism. John Kenneth Galbraith once said that under capitalism, man exploits man, while under communism the exact opposite is true. A purely capitalistic society focused on the generation of wealth tends to emphasize the business community and upper classes at the expense of the middle and lower classes. A purely communistic society removes the incentive to work hard by removing its rewards. Sound economic policy lies somewhere between the two, and requires a free-market economy governed by rational regulations to prevent the sort of excesses with which we are now all too familiar.

3. Quarterly Earnings Reports Are Stupid. One of the biggest faults of US markets is that we lack a long-term perspective. Businesses driven by the need to show profits each quarter will focus only on short-term gain at the expense of long-term growth and health. The solution: eliminate quarterly reporting of all economic statistics and replace it with annual reporting. This will help focus on long-term economic health rather than short-term profit, and minimize the whipsawing of the markets in reaction to short-term problems.

4. “Too Big to Fail” Equals “Too Dangerous to Survive.” When a Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman, or Bear Sterns has grown so large that it’s failure can drag down large portions of the economy, something is wrong. Bigger is not necessarily better. The government must exercise some prudent judgment in determining how large a financial institution can grow before it becomes too much of a threat to the rest of the economy. Huge financial institutions are too big to fail, but you and I are too small to matter. Fired CEOs will get huge severance payments (see yesterday's post), but good luck getting your paltry 401k investments back.

5. Bring Back the Concept of “Moral Hazard.” In economic terms, “moral hazard” refers to the responsibility borne by economic decision makers for their performance, judgment, and prudent risk-taking. It implies that those who make the huge salaries should also bear the risk of punishment if their performance is poor. In practical terms, moral hazard is dead. The CEOs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were fired, but each will walk away from the wreckage with millions of dollars in severance payments. Real People who exercise judgment that bad go to jail.

6. Publish Every Congressional Earmark in The Congressional Record, Along With A Detailed Explanation and the Name of the Sponsor. Congress will never give up its power to ship federal money home to the states in the form of earmarks. But the American Taxpayer (dumbass emptypocketus) has a right to know how the money he pays in taxes is being spent. Perhaps shedding a little light on the process will help bring it under control. Yeah, good luck with this one, too.

Looking back, I can see that what I've written is less a coherent economic plan than a series of rants about individual aspects of economic policy. I'll go back to the drawing board and try to do better. In the meantime, and with a head-nod to Mike, who blogged today about quotations, remember that it was George Bernard Shaw who famously said that, "A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend upon the support of Paul."

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

P.S. - My son sent me this link yesterday to an animated feature called "Time for Some Campaignin'." Take a minute and visit. Turn on your speakers and prepare to laugh until the tears roll down your cheeks. At least once this election season, you'll cry for a reason other than the quality of your choices.

B.