12/31/11
I posted the following comment on Jon Huntsman’s campaign website’s blog:
Even though I would hardly be classified as a moderate Republican, I have long been intrigued by the candidacy of Jon Huntsman. In Mr. Huntsman, I saw a man who truly believes in the basic tenets to which other GOPers only profess fealty, such as small government, individualism, free enterprise, the power of communities to solve problems that the government can only exacerbate, and a foreign policy that truly advances the interests of the United States rather than its defense contractors. While I have long supported Ron Paul and will probably continue in this practice in 2012, I have to admit, however, that my loyalties in this year’s presidential sweepstakes were somewhat divided…until Mr. Huntsman’s comments on Iowa.
While I live in the suburbs of Chicago, I am an Iowan at heart. As an alum of the University of Iowa, a father of a U of I student, and a relative by marriage of a farm kid from outside of Shenandoah who is one of the best people I know, I have grown to love the Hawkeye state. Why on earth did Jon Hunstman, a normally sensible and sober minded fellow, a family man and a successful businessman who would seemingly have a great deal in common with the hardworking and almost eerily friendly and helpful people of Iowa, have to fire his gratuitous dig “In New Hampshire, they pick presidents; in Iowa they pick corn”?
A man with Mr. Huntsman’s intellect could have easily said something like “New Hampshire’s voters have a much better history of selecting the eventual GOP nominee than do Iowa caucus participants. Given the disparate track records of the two states in the nominating process, while I regret not spending more time in the Hawkeye state, I have to focus my campaign’s limited resources in the Granite State.” But, no, Mr. Huntsman had to make his snotty comment about Iowans’ picking corn. Perhaps he really does have a deep down disdain for people who are welcoming, friendly, intelligent, genuinely good, and embody the values of family and community that made this country great. If this is the case, any honesty he displayed by his comments regarding Iowans would be trumped by the hypocrisy he shows any time he professes his love for the very values Iowans embody.
Mr. Huntsman’s people will doubtless counter with disingenuous contentions disguised as questions like “What’s wrong with picking corn? Mr. Huntsman supports the efforts of Iowa’s, and America’s, farmers.” But such a retort would only further the impression that Mr. Huntsman thinks the good people of Iowa, who feed much of the nation and the world, who participate in a vibrant and dynamic economy that transcends its agricultural roots, and who exemplify the types of values that our country must retain, or rediscover, if we are to survive as a society, are a pack of yokels who are incapable of seeing past a condescending, disingenuous attitude and detect when they are being insulted.
Since Mr. Huntsman finds it appropriate to denigrate a state that ought to be emulated rather than castigated, I find it impossible to support this man for the nation’s highest, or any, office.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Thursday, December 29, 2011
“…I SAID ‘CANAPES MY A--; WHERE’S THE SAUSAGE AND PEPPERS!?”
12/29/11
Today’s (i.e., Thursday, 12/29’s) Chicago Sun-Times reports that 2012’s Taste of Chicago, having been returned to the tutelage of the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs after being managed by the Park District in 2011, will run for only five days and will not coincide with the Independence Day holiday. This is, of course, great news; the only better news would have been for this annual Taste of Ptomaine to have been canceled altogether. (See my iconic 6/22/11 post, TASTE OF DYSPEPSIA.)
The good news regarding “the Taste” ends there, however. As the Sun-Times reports
In October, (Cultural Affairs) department commissioner Michelle Boone told the Sun-Times to expect a shorter festival with more focus on the city’s cutting edge culinary scene.
“Cutting edge culinary scene”? Yours truly, who is, as is readily apparent from his considerable girth, quite attuned to things culinary, has, after years of observation, determined that “cutting edge,” as applied to the “culinary scene,” is determined by the ratio of the price of the cuisine to the size of the portion served. The higher the ratio, the more “cutting edge” the cuisine. When one ends up paying $75-$100 dollars for a portion of sufficient size to fill one’s tooth, one has achieved the apex of cutting edgedness, if you will. But I digress.
It seems, according to the Sun-Times, that Department of Cultural Affairs (The moniker “Department of Cultural Affairs” has a distinctively Soviet flavor to it, don’t you think? But I digress again.) is looking to something called Chow Town, an appendage to something called Lollapalooza, as a template for “the Taste” in its effort to achieve cutting edge nirvana. The cited Chowtown last summer featured such faire as “endamame with soy cumin hemp seed vinaigrette,” “scallops with torched ponzu aioli,” and, in another apparent hapless in-crowd bid to appear blue collar hip, "lobster corndogs.”
Huh? Don’t ask me what “endamame with soy cumin hemp seed vinaigrette” or “torched ponzu aioli” are; I have no idea, either. But this is the type of thing we should have expected when we replaced our wannabe yuppie mayor with a genuine yuppie mayor, the kind of guy who doubtless is vastly more familiar with “endamame with soy cumin hemp seed vinaigrette” than with a Snyder’s hot dog, a Wonderburger, a Tom-Tom Tamale, a World’s Finest chocolate bar, or a golabki from the late and lamented Busy Bee or the still up and running Sawa’s Old Warsaw.
Not only does the mayor’s minions’ seeking to transform the Taste of Chicago into a display case for “the city’s cutting edge culinary scene” symbolize the degeneration of our great city from an ethnic blue collar heaven into a dystopia of gentrified predictability; it also makes no economic sense. As I pointed out in my seminal 6/22/11 post, TASTE OF DYSPEPSIA, a good measure of “the Taste’s” reason to exist is to provide an avenue for suburban and transplanted suburban types to sample our great city’s ethnic cuisine without actually having to leave the north shore or the near north side to venture into areas that might even be (EGADS!) situated south of Congress and west of Hyde Park. No one, other than those who are too sensible to pay ludicrous prices in a desperate attempt to appear to be hip, is afraid to venture into neighborhoods in which the “neighborhood” restaurants feature “endamame with soy cumin hemp seed vinaigrette.” So why should those seeking “scallops with torched ponzu aioli” have to brave the crowds in Grant Park when they can sample such faire on Fullerton Avenue or in dear old Lake Forest?
What is really perplexing about the changes signified by the transformation of Chicago from a kielbasa and czernina town into an “endamame with soy cumin hemp seed vinaigrette” bastion of yuppie artificiality is that the mayor, his dazzling young urbanite staff, and the consanguineous media seem to regard such a defenestration as a sign of progress.
Today’s (i.e., Thursday, 12/29’s) Chicago Sun-Times reports that 2012’s Taste of Chicago, having been returned to the tutelage of the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs after being managed by the Park District in 2011, will run for only five days and will not coincide with the Independence Day holiday. This is, of course, great news; the only better news would have been for this annual Taste of Ptomaine to have been canceled altogether. (See my iconic 6/22/11 post, TASTE OF DYSPEPSIA.)
The good news regarding “the Taste” ends there, however. As the Sun-Times reports
In October, (Cultural Affairs) department commissioner Michelle Boone told the Sun-Times to expect a shorter festival with more focus on the city’s cutting edge culinary scene.
“Cutting edge culinary scene”? Yours truly, who is, as is readily apparent from his considerable girth, quite attuned to things culinary, has, after years of observation, determined that “cutting edge,” as applied to the “culinary scene,” is determined by the ratio of the price of the cuisine to the size of the portion served. The higher the ratio, the more “cutting edge” the cuisine. When one ends up paying $75-$100 dollars for a portion of sufficient size to fill one’s tooth, one has achieved the apex of cutting edgedness, if you will. But I digress.
It seems, according to the Sun-Times, that Department of Cultural Affairs (The moniker “Department of Cultural Affairs” has a distinctively Soviet flavor to it, don’t you think? But I digress again.) is looking to something called Chow Town, an appendage to something called Lollapalooza, as a template for “the Taste” in its effort to achieve cutting edge nirvana. The cited Chowtown last summer featured such faire as “endamame with soy cumin hemp seed vinaigrette,” “scallops with torched ponzu aioli,” and, in another apparent hapless in-crowd bid to appear blue collar hip, "lobster corndogs.”
Huh? Don’t ask me what “endamame with soy cumin hemp seed vinaigrette” or “torched ponzu aioli” are; I have no idea, either. But this is the type of thing we should have expected when we replaced our wannabe yuppie mayor with a genuine yuppie mayor, the kind of guy who doubtless is vastly more familiar with “endamame with soy cumin hemp seed vinaigrette” than with a Snyder’s hot dog, a Wonderburger, a Tom-Tom Tamale, a World’s Finest chocolate bar, or a golabki from the late and lamented Busy Bee or the still up and running Sawa’s Old Warsaw.
Not only does the mayor’s minions’ seeking to transform the Taste of Chicago into a display case for “the city’s cutting edge culinary scene” symbolize the degeneration of our great city from an ethnic blue collar heaven into a dystopia of gentrified predictability; it also makes no economic sense. As I pointed out in my seminal 6/22/11 post, TASTE OF DYSPEPSIA, a good measure of “the Taste’s” reason to exist is to provide an avenue for suburban and transplanted suburban types to sample our great city’s ethnic cuisine without actually having to leave the north shore or the near north side to venture into areas that might even be (EGADS!) situated south of Congress and west of Hyde Park. No one, other than those who are too sensible to pay ludicrous prices in a desperate attempt to appear to be hip, is afraid to venture into neighborhoods in which the “neighborhood” restaurants feature “endamame with soy cumin hemp seed vinaigrette.” So why should those seeking “scallops with torched ponzu aioli” have to brave the crowds in Grant Park when they can sample such faire on Fullerton Avenue or in dear old Lake Forest?
What is really perplexing about the changes signified by the transformation of Chicago from a kielbasa and czernina town into an “endamame with soy cumin hemp seed vinaigrette” bastion of yuppie artificiality is that the mayor, his dazzling young urbanite staff, and the consanguineous media seem to regard such a defenestration as a sign of progress.
LET’S RUN THIS THROUGH THE OLD MAYTAG FIRST
12/29/11
This morning’s (i.e., Thursday, 12/29’s) Wall Street Journal featured a page C1 article outlining two concerns regarding the European Central Bank’s (“ECB’s”) collateralized lending to European banks. The headline concern is that the banks, and especially the smaller banks, may run out of collateral for such loans and thus spark a liquidity difficulty. (As loyal readers know, I prefer the term “difficulty” to the hideously overused “crisis,” but I digress.) A second concern is that the increasing reliance of European banks on secured lending degrades the quality of the banks’ unsecured debt, which also could lead to liquidity, and possibly solvency, problems.
Perhaps there is nothing especially insightful or unique about this observation, but, at least to yours truly, a larger concern with the ECB’s collateralized lending to European banks seems to be a macro concern. Naturally, the ECB takes European sovereign debt as collateral for its loans. Perhaps not so naturally, the ECB takes the sovereign debt of any European country, including, according to the aforementioned article, debt “…from financially weak countries such as Greece and Ireland”. The ECB continues to take such collateral despite the ECB’s heretofore “limited” direct purchases of sovereign debt and its protestations that it will not bail out spendthrift European governments, at least not until it gets some kind of eurozone wide fiscal rectitude pact as a fig leaf for engaging in such wholesale monetizing of bad debt. Such willingness to take sovereign debt as collateral leads one to question the difference between directly bailing out European governments and taking their paper as collateral for loans to banks. It would seem that, under such a rubric, banks can buy all the European sovereign debt they want, even from the PIIGS, and then present such debt to the ECB as collateral. Not only is the ECB creating the money to lend to European governments, regardless of the latters’ fiscal conditions, but if the fiscal situations in the PIIGS improve, the banks make a sizable profit and, if the situations don’t improve, the banks can simply default on their collateralized loans and stick the ECB with the consequences. If this isn’t a bailout of profligate European banks and sovereigns, perhaps we ought to revisit the definition of bailout.
An opinion piece in yesterday’s (i.e., Wednesday, 12/28’s) Journal by Gerald O’Driscoll contended that the Fed’s dollar swap arrangement with the ECB amounts to a Fed bailout of the European banks and sovereigns, and it’s hard to disagree with Mr. O’Driscoll’s argument. However, the ECB’s willing to take any European sovereign credit as collateral seems to be an even more naked bailout of profligate eurozone countries. It’s a good thing this operation doesn’t include the Fed…yet.
This morning’s (i.e., Thursday, 12/29’s) Wall Street Journal featured a page C1 article outlining two concerns regarding the European Central Bank’s (“ECB’s”) collateralized lending to European banks. The headline concern is that the banks, and especially the smaller banks, may run out of collateral for such loans and thus spark a liquidity difficulty. (As loyal readers know, I prefer the term “difficulty” to the hideously overused “crisis,” but I digress.) A second concern is that the increasing reliance of European banks on secured lending degrades the quality of the banks’ unsecured debt, which also could lead to liquidity, and possibly solvency, problems.
Perhaps there is nothing especially insightful or unique about this observation, but, at least to yours truly, a larger concern with the ECB’s collateralized lending to European banks seems to be a macro concern. Naturally, the ECB takes European sovereign debt as collateral for its loans. Perhaps not so naturally, the ECB takes the sovereign debt of any European country, including, according to the aforementioned article, debt “…from financially weak countries such as Greece and Ireland”. The ECB continues to take such collateral despite the ECB’s heretofore “limited” direct purchases of sovereign debt and its protestations that it will not bail out spendthrift European governments, at least not until it gets some kind of eurozone wide fiscal rectitude pact as a fig leaf for engaging in such wholesale monetizing of bad debt. Such willingness to take sovereign debt as collateral leads one to question the difference between directly bailing out European governments and taking their paper as collateral for loans to banks. It would seem that, under such a rubric, banks can buy all the European sovereign debt they want, even from the PIIGS, and then present such debt to the ECB as collateral. Not only is the ECB creating the money to lend to European governments, regardless of the latters’ fiscal conditions, but if the fiscal situations in the PIIGS improve, the banks make a sizable profit and, if the situations don’t improve, the banks can simply default on their collateralized loans and stick the ECB with the consequences. If this isn’t a bailout of profligate European banks and sovereigns, perhaps we ought to revisit the definition of bailout.
An opinion piece in yesterday’s (i.e., Wednesday, 12/28’s) Journal by Gerald O’Driscoll contended that the Fed’s dollar swap arrangement with the ECB amounts to a Fed bailout of the European banks and sovereigns, and it’s hard to disagree with Mr. O’Driscoll’s argument. However, the ECB’s willing to take any European sovereign credit as collateral seems to be an even more naked bailout of profligate eurozone countries. It’s a good thing this operation doesn’t include the Fed…yet.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
I’LL BET PARK CHUNG HEE NEVER TORTURED SMALL ANIMALS!
12/20/11
Now that Kim Jong Eun has succeeded his father, Kim Jong Il, who in turn succeeded his father, Kim Il Sung, as tinhorn of North Korea, we are suddenly hearing all sorts of lurid stories about the 27 year old Mr. Kim, including reports in this morning’s (i.e., Tuesday, 12/20/11’s) Wall Street Journal that
senior intelligence analysts believe, for instance, that Kim Jong Eun “tortured small animals” when he was a youth.
Perhaps this latest scion of the Kim family is some kind of nutcake; after all, nutcakery is in his genes. But before we start swallowing whole the story that this guy is the kind of weirdo who is so unstable that he got his jollies torturing animals and therefore is likely to vaporize us with nuclear weapons unless we DO SOMETHING!!!!!, let’s pause and take a deep breath.
None of us is old enough, and few of us are sufficiently interested in history (“History, schmistory! When do the Kardashians come on?”), to remember the tales war hawks and/or Anglophiles of the early 20th century told us about the German forces of the Kaiser tossing Belgian babies in the air and then catching them on their bayonets which, of course, turned out to be complete fabrications. Most of us are old enough, but few of us are sufficiently interested in current events and politics (“Politics, schmolitics! When does ‘Two Men and A Boy’ come on? And have you seen that great, HIGHlarious new comedy, ‘Broke Girls’?”), to remember the tales spun by toadies of the Kuwaiti royal family of Iraqi soldiers ripping Kuwaiti children from incubators just for the sport of it, which, of course, also turned out to be utter fictions. Both lurid tales did their jobs; they persuaded gullible Americans to expend blood and treasure on battlefields in on which neither belonged.
But now Kim Jong Eun tortured small animals! And he might, just like Saddam Hussein, have weapons of mass destruction! Why, we better DO SOMETHING… BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!!!! WHAT…DO YOU WANT TO JUST WAIT UNTIL THEY DROP A BOMB ON US???? WHAT ARE YOU…CRAZY?
Now that Kim Jong Eun has succeeded his father, Kim Jong Il, who in turn succeeded his father, Kim Il Sung, as tinhorn of North Korea, we are suddenly hearing all sorts of lurid stories about the 27 year old Mr. Kim, including reports in this morning’s (i.e., Tuesday, 12/20/11’s) Wall Street Journal that
senior intelligence analysts believe, for instance, that Kim Jong Eun “tortured small animals” when he was a youth.
Perhaps this latest scion of the Kim family is some kind of nutcake; after all, nutcakery is in his genes. But before we start swallowing whole the story that this guy is the kind of weirdo who is so unstable that he got his jollies torturing animals and therefore is likely to vaporize us with nuclear weapons unless we DO SOMETHING!!!!!, let’s pause and take a deep breath.
None of us is old enough, and few of us are sufficiently interested in history (“History, schmistory! When do the Kardashians come on?”), to remember the tales war hawks and/or Anglophiles of the early 20th century told us about the German forces of the Kaiser tossing Belgian babies in the air and then catching them on their bayonets which, of course, turned out to be complete fabrications. Most of us are old enough, but few of us are sufficiently interested in current events and politics (“Politics, schmolitics! When does ‘Two Men and A Boy’ come on? And have you seen that great, HIGHlarious new comedy, ‘Broke Girls’?”), to remember the tales spun by toadies of the Kuwaiti royal family of Iraqi soldiers ripping Kuwaiti children from incubators just for the sport of it, which, of course, also turned out to be utter fictions. Both lurid tales did their jobs; they persuaded gullible Americans to expend blood and treasure on battlefields in on which neither belonged.
But now Kim Jong Eun tortured small animals! And he might, just like Saddam Hussein, have weapons of mass destruction! Why, we better DO SOMETHING… BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!!!! WHAT…DO YOU WANT TO JUST WAIT UNTIL THEY DROP A BOMB ON US???? WHAT ARE YOU…CRAZY?
WHY DON’T WE JUST INSTALL ANOTHER SYNGMAN RHEE?
12/20/11
Presumed GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney (See my characteristically remarkably prescient 7/19/11 piece MICHELE AND SARAH, MAKE ROOM FOR THE FAT LADY.), never one to let an opportunity to preen and grandstand pass him by, used the death of North Korean tinpot Kim Jong Il to urge President Obama
“Cancel your Christmas vacation. This is one of the greatest opportunities of the last twenty five years as relates (sic) to that part of the world. And the president should be actively engaged with China, South Korea, Japan, and potentially even trying to establish dialogue with North Korea.”
Oh really? It looks like Mr. Romney is either displaying a stunning lack of knowledge of matters concerning the Korean peninsula, a propensity toward the starry-eyed naiveté that characterizes most Republicans (most politicians, really), especially those of the neo-con variety, or the political opportunism that afflicts just about every politician.
Does Mr. Romney really think that anything has changed in northeast Asia with the death of Kim Jong Il and his supposed replacement with his barely pubescent son, Kim Jong Eun? It looks to this admittedly non-expert observer that the same autarkic approach to policy initiated by the late Kim Il Sung will remain in place and that policy will be implemented by the same cabal that has run the country for at least the last twenty years, led by the armed forces, in the person of Vice Marshal Ri Yong Ho, and by Kim Jong Il’s sister, Kim Kyong Hui and her husband, Jang Song Thaek, who is now euphemistically referred to as having been Kim Jong Il’s “closest adviser” for at least the last five years. Does anyone think that the generals and the hacks who run a patronage driven machine that would make Tony Cermak, Pat Nash, and Vito Marzullo envious would actually change anything because some 27 year old misfit (See today’s other post on young Mr. Kim,I’LL BET PARK CHUNG HEE NEVER TORTURED SMALL ANIMALS!.) might want to make nice with the president of the United States? Does Mr. Romney really think this kid will have any power?
Even if Mr. Romney were so naïve as to think that things might be subject to change in the Hermit Kingdom, what makes him think we would have any influence over there? We have NEVER had any influence with the Kim dynasty. We have tried to buy some influence with food aid, energy aid, and all the other blank checks that we have used in futile attempts to influence the Kims, but the result has always been well-fed armies of soldiers and patronage lackeys, continuing deprivation, or worse, of the general North Korean population, and, doubtless, much rolling around laughing on the floors of the presidential palace by Kim toadies. The people with real influence in North Korea are the Chinese and, to a far lesser extent, the Japanese, the former through trade, the latter through ethnic ties. Since China shares a border, and the Japanese share a sea, with North Korea, both have not only influence on North Korea but a strong interest in maintaining a stable North Korea; who needs tides of impoverished and desperate refugees pouring across one’s borders or onto one’s shores? Most Americans who are not starry-eyed dreamers seeking the GOP presidential nomination would agree that our primary interest in North Korea is in preserving stability. So why not let the Chinese and the Japanese do what they can to further our goals?
Given that nothing will change in North Korea and that, even if there were a chance at some kind of metamorphosis in the Hermit Kingdom, we would have no influence over that change, why is Mr. Romney so insistent that Mr. Obama drop whatever he is doing and try to seize “one of the great opportunities of the last twenty five years”? Easy. The death of Kim Jong Il provides the perfect rationalization for those who insist on sticking America’s growing proboscis into every nook and cranny in which it demonstrably not belong. Mr. Romney, being of the party (the GOP) and the mindset (the Bush/Obama philosophy of “Everyone deserves ‘democracy’ so we will force it down their throats whether they want it or not.”) that constantly seeks to expend American blood and treasure on some idiotic, quixotic, imperial quests the inevitable consequence of which is the destruction of our once great Republic, sees in Korea the perfect excuse to meddle.
Presumed GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney (See my characteristically remarkably prescient 7/19/11 piece MICHELE AND SARAH, MAKE ROOM FOR THE FAT LADY.), never one to let an opportunity to preen and grandstand pass him by, used the death of North Korean tinpot Kim Jong Il to urge President Obama
“Cancel your Christmas vacation. This is one of the greatest opportunities of the last twenty five years as relates (sic) to that part of the world. And the president should be actively engaged with China, South Korea, Japan, and potentially even trying to establish dialogue with North Korea.”
Oh really? It looks like Mr. Romney is either displaying a stunning lack of knowledge of matters concerning the Korean peninsula, a propensity toward the starry-eyed naiveté that characterizes most Republicans (most politicians, really), especially those of the neo-con variety, or the political opportunism that afflicts just about every politician.
Does Mr. Romney really think that anything has changed in northeast Asia with the death of Kim Jong Il and his supposed replacement with his barely pubescent son, Kim Jong Eun? It looks to this admittedly non-expert observer that the same autarkic approach to policy initiated by the late Kim Il Sung will remain in place and that policy will be implemented by the same cabal that has run the country for at least the last twenty years, led by the armed forces, in the person of Vice Marshal Ri Yong Ho, and by Kim Jong Il’s sister, Kim Kyong Hui and her husband, Jang Song Thaek, who is now euphemistically referred to as having been Kim Jong Il’s “closest adviser” for at least the last five years. Does anyone think that the generals and the hacks who run a patronage driven machine that would make Tony Cermak, Pat Nash, and Vito Marzullo envious would actually change anything because some 27 year old misfit (See today’s other post on young Mr. Kim,I’LL BET PARK CHUNG HEE NEVER TORTURED SMALL ANIMALS!.) might want to make nice with the president of the United States? Does Mr. Romney really think this kid will have any power?
Even if Mr. Romney were so naïve as to think that things might be subject to change in the Hermit Kingdom, what makes him think we would have any influence over there? We have NEVER had any influence with the Kim dynasty. We have tried to buy some influence with food aid, energy aid, and all the other blank checks that we have used in futile attempts to influence the Kims, but the result has always been well-fed armies of soldiers and patronage lackeys, continuing deprivation, or worse, of the general North Korean population, and, doubtless, much rolling around laughing on the floors of the presidential palace by Kim toadies. The people with real influence in North Korea are the Chinese and, to a far lesser extent, the Japanese, the former through trade, the latter through ethnic ties. Since China shares a border, and the Japanese share a sea, with North Korea, both have not only influence on North Korea but a strong interest in maintaining a stable North Korea; who needs tides of impoverished and desperate refugees pouring across one’s borders or onto one’s shores? Most Americans who are not starry-eyed dreamers seeking the GOP presidential nomination would agree that our primary interest in North Korea is in preserving stability. So why not let the Chinese and the Japanese do what they can to further our goals?
Given that nothing will change in North Korea and that, even if there were a chance at some kind of metamorphosis in the Hermit Kingdom, we would have no influence over that change, why is Mr. Romney so insistent that Mr. Obama drop whatever he is doing and try to seize “one of the great opportunities of the last twenty five years”? Easy. The death of Kim Jong Il provides the perfect rationalization for those who insist on sticking America’s growing proboscis into every nook and cranny in which it demonstrably not belong. Mr. Romney, being of the party (the GOP) and the mindset (the Bush/Obama philosophy of “Everyone deserves ‘democracy’ so we will force it down their throats whether they want it or not.”) that constantly seeks to expend American blood and treasure on some idiotic, quixotic, imperial quests the inevitable consequence of which is the destruction of our once great Republic, sees in Korea the perfect excuse to meddle.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
“BE MY FRIEND…GODFATHER?”
12/13/11
One does not have to be a student of organized crime in this country to realize how the protection racket worked and doubtless continues to work. Send a few relatively green thugs from the neighborhood, known as “associates,” to a local business and have them cause some minor trouble, perhaps stealing some merchandise, breaking some furniture and fixtures, refusing to pay tabs, or scaring away customers with brutish and scary behavior. Then send a soldier to talk to the owner, disingenuously sympathizing with the man, explaining that theirs can be a rough neighborhood, commenting on the advisability of being grateful that nothing worse has befallen the hapless victim, and offering to provide a form of insuance against such further peril for a price that might even seem modest…at first. It’s been going at least since the Black Hand, so beautifully characterized by Fanucci in The Godfather, Part II, preyed on Italian immigrant communities in the big cities of our then great country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and probably longer.
With the passage by the Illinois Senate, and the sending to Governor Pat Quinn (no relation) for his signature, of designer tax breaks for CME, Sears, and UCI International, we see the latest manifestation of the same old racket conducted on what is called a much more sophisticated level by those who like to flatter politicians: Make doing business difficult at best by imposing huge regulatory and tax burdens, but offer to make at least a part of that burden go away for those businesseses that play ball. What a great way for a politician to raise campaign money and otherwise enrich himself!
This scam is often portrayed in the media as the businesses’ blackmailing the politicians with threats to leave the state. There is something to this line of reasoning, but bear in mind that those threats usually have their origins in the imposition of a new or increased tax or a regimen of new or increasingly obnoxious regulations. So perhaps a more nuanced view is that these new taxes/regulations are a signal from the politicians to those friendly quarters of the business community who have invested heavily in clout that times have been lean and the pols are hungry; therefore, it is time to begin the usual kabuki dance that exonerates the businesses that cooperate, enriches the pols, and leaves the relatively cloutless with the bill. So perhaps an at least as apt analogy as that to Fanucci would be an analogy to Buonasera, the undertaker in the the opening scene of The Godfather, Part I, who asks a favor of Don Vito Corleone and thus begins a symbiotic relationship that works out very well for both Buonasera and the Don.
One, however, does not have to get too artsy in describing what is going on in Springfield. This is the old protection racket, this time practiced not be enterprising young immigrants who lacked the morality or the decency to refrain from preying on their own people but, rather, by gangsters with law degrees who lack the morality or the decency to refrain from preying on those they are convinced they were elected to protect.
This isn’t the first time I have written on this topic (See, inter alia, my 11/6/11 piece “HEY, THIS IS A DANGEROUS NEIGHBORHOOD. WHAT YOU NEED IS A LITTLE PROTECTION, YOU KNOW, INSURANCE AGAINST BAD THINGS HAPPENING TO YOUR LITTLE STORE HERE.”) and I am quite sure it won’t be my last; this is the type of topic that deserves (needs, really) repetition so that people can see the enormity of the crimes being committed here. And, no, “crimes” is not too strong a noun in this instance.
One does not have to be a student of organized crime in this country to realize how the protection racket worked and doubtless continues to work. Send a few relatively green thugs from the neighborhood, known as “associates,” to a local business and have them cause some minor trouble, perhaps stealing some merchandise, breaking some furniture and fixtures, refusing to pay tabs, or scaring away customers with brutish and scary behavior. Then send a soldier to talk to the owner, disingenuously sympathizing with the man, explaining that theirs can be a rough neighborhood, commenting on the advisability of being grateful that nothing worse has befallen the hapless victim, and offering to provide a form of insuance against such further peril for a price that might even seem modest…at first. It’s been going at least since the Black Hand, so beautifully characterized by Fanucci in The Godfather, Part II, preyed on Italian immigrant communities in the big cities of our then great country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and probably longer.
With the passage by the Illinois Senate, and the sending to Governor Pat Quinn (no relation) for his signature, of designer tax breaks for CME, Sears, and UCI International, we see the latest manifestation of the same old racket conducted on what is called a much more sophisticated level by those who like to flatter politicians: Make doing business difficult at best by imposing huge regulatory and tax burdens, but offer to make at least a part of that burden go away for those businesseses that play ball. What a great way for a politician to raise campaign money and otherwise enrich himself!
This scam is often portrayed in the media as the businesses’ blackmailing the politicians with threats to leave the state. There is something to this line of reasoning, but bear in mind that those threats usually have their origins in the imposition of a new or increased tax or a regimen of new or increasingly obnoxious regulations. So perhaps a more nuanced view is that these new taxes/regulations are a signal from the politicians to those friendly quarters of the business community who have invested heavily in clout that times have been lean and the pols are hungry; therefore, it is time to begin the usual kabuki dance that exonerates the businesses that cooperate, enriches the pols, and leaves the relatively cloutless with the bill. So perhaps an at least as apt analogy as that to Fanucci would be an analogy to Buonasera, the undertaker in the the opening scene of The Godfather, Part I, who asks a favor of Don Vito Corleone and thus begins a symbiotic relationship that works out very well for both Buonasera and the Don.
One, however, does not have to get too artsy in describing what is going on in Springfield. This is the old protection racket, this time practiced not be enterprising young immigrants who lacked the morality or the decency to refrain from preying on their own people but, rather, by gangsters with law degrees who lack the morality or the decency to refrain from preying on those they are convinced they were elected to protect.
This isn’t the first time I have written on this topic (See, inter alia, my 11/6/11 piece “HEY, THIS IS A DANGEROUS NEIGHBORHOOD. WHAT YOU NEED IS A LITTLE PROTECTION, YOU KNOW, INSURANCE AGAINST BAD THINGS HAPPENING TO YOUR LITTLE STORE HERE.”) and I am quite sure it won’t be my last; this is the type of topic that deserves (needs, really) repetition so that people can see the enormity of the crimes being committed here. And, no, “crimes” is not too strong a noun in this instance.
Monday, December 12, 2011
“THE WORD IS FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FOR IOWA, UNTIL THE GAME IS WON!”
12/12/11
As a political junkie and lover of the Hawkeye State, I have long been a huge fan of the Iowa caucuses. Besides my aforementioned affinities, the caucuses provide the most wide open contest of any year’s presidential race, at least in the sense that the caucuses generally feature the largest number of candidates because the contest takes place before the winnowing process begins in earnest. Furthermore, the caucuses demand more from the voters than simply entering a voting booth and punching out names at random for who knows what reasons. In order to participate in the caucuses, one must care enough to actually spend some time, often more than an hour, to express one’s views and support one’s candidate. Would that all our elections be held in a similar manner! But I digress. Organization and commitment pay off in Iowa and, since the caucuses count only the votes of those who actually care, surprising and counter-intuitive results are not at all surprising and counter-intuitive at the caucuses. Note the victories in 2008 of Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee.
This year’s Democratic caucuses will, of course, be a snoozer with no one challenging the President, but the GOP caucuses look to be among the most interesting in the last few election cycles. Right now, Newt Gingrich looks to have the lead, but Mitt Romney has, over the last several weeks, decided to make a contest of it and hence might still be able to pull this one off despite at least feigning lack of commitment to Iowa in the wake of the Huckabee surprise the Hawkeye State delivered him in 2008. But the most interesting story line in the race might be the chances of Ron Paul. Dr. Paul has run strong, or at least stronger than the naysayers thought he would (or should), in virtually every poll taken this election season. He remains among the top three candidates and there is talk that, with all the money and time he and his people have spent in Iowa and all the ground troops he has in the Hawkeye State, Dr. Paul might just “pull a Huckabee” this time around, winning the caucuses and thus throwing the entire race into upheaval.
Before those of us who love a political horse race and/or support Dr. Paul get excited at the prospect of a Ron Paul victory in my second favorite state, we should consider something that, as far as I have read (and I am at least fairly well informed on the politics of our once great nation), no one has mentioned: The caucuses take place this year on January 3, as they did last year. Note that Iowa’s three big state universities and its nearly innumerable small and medium-sized colleges and universities are on semester break at that time. There are a lot of potential votes among college students in the Hawkeye State; both the University of Iowa and Iowa State have enrollments in the mid 20,000 range, Northern Iowa has over 10,000 students, and Iowa boasts one of the largest and best assortments of small and mid-sized colleges and universities in the country. All of these students over the age of 18 are eligible to vote in Iowa. Of course, only a small fraction would participate in the caucuses; many are not registered, many are registered in other states, and even many, probably most, of those who are registered in Iowa would not put forth the effort necessary to participate in the caucuses. Still, if even a small fraction of those students participate in the caucuses, they could have a big impact on a political process in a small state in which only a relatively small number of eligible voters participate.
This is a problem for Dr. Paul, ironically, because he is so popular on college campuses despite his being the oldest candidate in the race. Apparently, college students like the idea of genuine adherence, rather than lip service, to the Constitution…or at least they like that idea this year; in 2008, they turned out big for Barack Obama. But again I digress. However, if the kids are back home in Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, etc., during the caucuses, a large measure of Dr. Paul’s support will not be there for him. This could make a difference in a tight race.
On the other hand, one of the reasons then Senator Obama surprised then Senator Clinton in Iowa in 2008 was because of his support from Iowa’s vast student population; in fact, there was a lot of grousing that Mr. Obama won due to the votes of students from Illinois who were bussed back to Iowa on January 3 by Obama forces, many of whom were from Chicago and had loyalties that ran to Mr. Obama via a guy named Daley. It was kids from Illinois, that argument went, and, to a lesser extent, from other surrounding states, rather than Iowans, who won the Iowa caucuses for Mr. Obama.
If Dr. Paul’s ground forces in Iowa are as good as they are purported to be, one would hope to see convoys of busses plying I-80 and I-88 on the evening of January 2. If they aren’t, or if weather becomes a factor, the chances for Dr. Paul’s pulling off a Hawkeye State surprise on January 3 will be diminished, perhaps not greatly, but diminished nonetheless.
As a political junkie and lover of the Hawkeye State, I have long been a huge fan of the Iowa caucuses. Besides my aforementioned affinities, the caucuses provide the most wide open contest of any year’s presidential race, at least in the sense that the caucuses generally feature the largest number of candidates because the contest takes place before the winnowing process begins in earnest. Furthermore, the caucuses demand more from the voters than simply entering a voting booth and punching out names at random for who knows what reasons. In order to participate in the caucuses, one must care enough to actually spend some time, often more than an hour, to express one’s views and support one’s candidate. Would that all our elections be held in a similar manner! But I digress. Organization and commitment pay off in Iowa and, since the caucuses count only the votes of those who actually care, surprising and counter-intuitive results are not at all surprising and counter-intuitive at the caucuses. Note the victories in 2008 of Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee.
This year’s Democratic caucuses will, of course, be a snoozer with no one challenging the President, but the GOP caucuses look to be among the most interesting in the last few election cycles. Right now, Newt Gingrich looks to have the lead, but Mitt Romney has, over the last several weeks, decided to make a contest of it and hence might still be able to pull this one off despite at least feigning lack of commitment to Iowa in the wake of the Huckabee surprise the Hawkeye State delivered him in 2008. But the most interesting story line in the race might be the chances of Ron Paul. Dr. Paul has run strong, or at least stronger than the naysayers thought he would (or should), in virtually every poll taken this election season. He remains among the top three candidates and there is talk that, with all the money and time he and his people have spent in Iowa and all the ground troops he has in the Hawkeye State, Dr. Paul might just “pull a Huckabee” this time around, winning the caucuses and thus throwing the entire race into upheaval.
Before those of us who love a political horse race and/or support Dr. Paul get excited at the prospect of a Ron Paul victory in my second favorite state, we should consider something that, as far as I have read (and I am at least fairly well informed on the politics of our once great nation), no one has mentioned: The caucuses take place this year on January 3, as they did last year. Note that Iowa’s three big state universities and its nearly innumerable small and medium-sized colleges and universities are on semester break at that time. There are a lot of potential votes among college students in the Hawkeye State; both the University of Iowa and Iowa State have enrollments in the mid 20,000 range, Northern Iowa has over 10,000 students, and Iowa boasts one of the largest and best assortments of small and mid-sized colleges and universities in the country. All of these students over the age of 18 are eligible to vote in Iowa. Of course, only a small fraction would participate in the caucuses; many are not registered, many are registered in other states, and even many, probably most, of those who are registered in Iowa would not put forth the effort necessary to participate in the caucuses. Still, if even a small fraction of those students participate in the caucuses, they could have a big impact on a political process in a small state in which only a relatively small number of eligible voters participate.
This is a problem for Dr. Paul, ironically, because he is so popular on college campuses despite his being the oldest candidate in the race. Apparently, college students like the idea of genuine adherence, rather than lip service, to the Constitution…or at least they like that idea this year; in 2008, they turned out big for Barack Obama. But again I digress. However, if the kids are back home in Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, etc., during the caucuses, a large measure of Dr. Paul’s support will not be there for him. This could make a difference in a tight race.
On the other hand, one of the reasons then Senator Obama surprised then Senator Clinton in Iowa in 2008 was because of his support from Iowa’s vast student population; in fact, there was a lot of grousing that Mr. Obama won due to the votes of students from Illinois who were bussed back to Iowa on January 3 by Obama forces, many of whom were from Chicago and had loyalties that ran to Mr. Obama via a guy named Daley. It was kids from Illinois, that argument went, and, to a lesser extent, from other surrounding states, rather than Iowans, who won the Iowa caucuses for Mr. Obama.
If Dr. Paul’s ground forces in Iowa are as good as they are purported to be, one would hope to see convoys of busses plying I-80 and I-88 on the evening of January 2. If they aren’t, or if weather becomes a factor, the chances for Dr. Paul’s pulling off a Hawkeye State surprise on January 3 will be diminished, perhaps not greatly, but diminished nonetheless.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
I DON’T SALUTE NEWT
12/11/11
A good and trusted friend asked me whom I would support, Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich, should it come down to a choice between the two. My reply turned out to be a tirade against Mr. Gingrich rather than an argument in favor of Mr. Romney; what is there to argue about, one way or the other, in Mitt Romney anyway? I thought that perhaps the thoughts I outlined to a friend were perhaps too strong to post on the blog, but then I figured “What the he(ck)? When have my readers ever known me to hold back much, if at all?” So here is the only slightly edited repeat of my reply to my pal Joe:
(By the way, the Peggy Noonan article in yesterday and today’s (i.e., 12/10 and 12/11/11’s) Wall Street Journal that I reference is, as are most of Ms. Noonan’s articles, a very worthwhile read.)
Thanks.
12/11/11
I simply can't vote for Gingrich for four reasons, one of which might seem petty and one of which is no reason to support him over Romney because his stance on this issue is not all that different from Romney’s:
--Newt Gingrich’s character is abominable. I guess I should believe more in redemption than I do in this case, but three marriages, two of which were the result of illicit affairs and one of which resulted in his serving his first wife with divorce papers while she was in a cancer ward, are things I can’t overlook. And then he has the temerity to campaign among those who espouse “family values,” and they support him! Yes, there is no perfect person, but there is a great distance between a “perfect person” and three marriages and serial extramarital affairs and then being hypocritical about it. The man is a moral pygmy.
--As Peggy Noonan said in yesterday’s (Saturday, 12/10’s) Wall Street Journal,
What is striking is the extraordinary divide in opinion between those who know Gingrich and those who don't. Those who do are mostly not for him, and they were burning up the phone lines this week in Washington.
The clincher was Tom Coburn, the senator from Oklahoma and one of the few people in either house of Congress for whom I have any respect, who said, according to the same article.
that Mr. Gingrich was "the last person I'd vote for for president of the United States."
Note that Coburn has few, if any ideological problems with Newt. Neither do I, except for that outlined in my last bullet point.
--This might sound petty, but it means a lot to me. We learned earlier in the campaign that Mr. Gingrich and his wife Callista once owed $600,000 to Tiffany’s. Newt defended (!) himself by stating that it was a revolving line of credit that he paid off. As you can probably determine by reading my blog, in my opinion ANYONE who spends $600,000 at Tiffany’s spends like a fool and is a fool. To defend such an excerebrose peeing away of resources by saying that “I can afford it” only doubles down on the imbecility. He (or she) would never get my support for ANYTHING, political, business, or otherwise. He (or she) is a fool, an idiot, a popinjay, a poltroon, a spiritless, hopeless lost soul desperately trying to fill some kind of void with a useless, trashy, ostentatious trinket that indicates nothing but utter stupidity and overarching insecurity, a reflection of the moral vapidity that is destroying our country in so many ways. Think of all the ways that $600,000 could have been spent for something worthwhile, helping someone who really needed help, rather than for some worthless, valueless, tacky, reeking bauble or assortment of worthless, valueless, tacky, reeking baubles. Strong enough for you? How do you think I REALLY feel about this?
Maybe other candidates have spent $600,000 on the utter crap dispensed at places like Tiffany, but I haven’t learned of it yet; if I do, I will similarly dismiss them as serious human beings, let alone serious candidates.
--I obviously disagree with Newt on foreign policy, as you can deduce from our conversations on the topic. Newt seems to want to ramp up the disastrous Bush/Obama approach to foreign policy (“You’ll do what we tell you to do because it’s good for you because we say so (and besides, we owe our political careers to the defense contractors)!”), a policy that will only expedite our utter ruin as a nation. Unfortunately, Romney feels the same way, so this, perhaps my only substantive policy difference with Mr. Gingrich (except, of course, for the marvelous efficacy of Fannie and Freddie, which Mr. Gingrich used to espouse but apparently no longer believes in now that there is nothing monetary in it for him), is no reason to support him over Romney…six of one, half a dozen of the other.
Sure, if one takes no account of the utter gormlessness displayed by his imbecilic excretion of money on worthless symbols of the rot of the society he purports to want to save, Gingrich is smart in the ways our modern society judges smartness. Nixon, Carter, and Wilson also had considerable intellects. So that oft-mentioned argument for Mr. Gingrich holds little water.
So I could never support Gingrich for the reasons outlined above. Furthermore, from a practical perspective, Mr. Gingrich is likely to blow up and say something stupid (like the Palestinians are an “invented...people.” Who does he think the Philistines were? But I digress.) AFTER he gets the nomination, handing the presidency to President Obama. Mr. Romney may not be to my ideological liking (if there were any ideology there, but that is another issue), but I would surely support him over Gingrich, as I would (even) Bachmann (sp?), Perry, Santorum and (especially) Huntsman and Paul. If (Naperville professional homeless celebrity) Scott Huber were the only alternative candidate to Newt Gingrich, I’d have to think long and hard before voting for Newt.
All that having been said, I will not vote for either Mr. Romney or Mr. Gingrich, one of whom (and I still think Romney; see my 7/19/11 piece, MICHELE AND SARAH, MAKE ROOM FOR THE FAT LADY, and, while you’re at it, for more reasons to oppose Newt, see my 11/17/11 piece “I WISH YOU COULD HAVE COME UP WITH A BETTER STORY; I FELT DISTINCTLY LIKE AN IDIOT REPEATING IT.”) will wind up with the GOP nomination. I will, as I (almost) always do, vote Libertarian, regardless of who the candidate is, and I hope it’s Ron Paul, unless, of course, Dr. Paul somehow pulls off a miracle and gets the GOP nod.
A good and trusted friend asked me whom I would support, Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich, should it come down to a choice between the two. My reply turned out to be a tirade against Mr. Gingrich rather than an argument in favor of Mr. Romney; what is there to argue about, one way or the other, in Mitt Romney anyway? I thought that perhaps the thoughts I outlined to a friend were perhaps too strong to post on the blog, but then I figured “What the he(ck)? When have my readers ever known me to hold back much, if at all?” So here is the only slightly edited repeat of my reply to my pal Joe:
(By the way, the Peggy Noonan article in yesterday and today’s (i.e., 12/10 and 12/11/11’s) Wall Street Journal that I reference is, as are most of Ms. Noonan’s articles, a very worthwhile read.)
Thanks.
12/11/11
I simply can't vote for Gingrich for four reasons, one of which might seem petty and one of which is no reason to support him over Romney because his stance on this issue is not all that different from Romney’s:
--Newt Gingrich’s character is abominable. I guess I should believe more in redemption than I do in this case, but three marriages, two of which were the result of illicit affairs and one of which resulted in his serving his first wife with divorce papers while she was in a cancer ward, are things I can’t overlook. And then he has the temerity to campaign among those who espouse “family values,” and they support him! Yes, there is no perfect person, but there is a great distance between a “perfect person” and three marriages and serial extramarital affairs and then being hypocritical about it. The man is a moral pygmy.
--As Peggy Noonan said in yesterday’s (Saturday, 12/10’s) Wall Street Journal,
What is striking is the extraordinary divide in opinion between those who know Gingrich and those who don't. Those who do are mostly not for him, and they were burning up the phone lines this week in Washington.
The clincher was Tom Coburn, the senator from Oklahoma and one of the few people in either house of Congress for whom I have any respect, who said, according to the same article.
that Mr. Gingrich was "the last person I'd vote for for president of the United States."
Note that Coburn has few, if any ideological problems with Newt. Neither do I, except for that outlined in my last bullet point.
--This might sound petty, but it means a lot to me. We learned earlier in the campaign that Mr. Gingrich and his wife Callista once owed $600,000 to Tiffany’s. Newt defended (!) himself by stating that it was a revolving line of credit that he paid off. As you can probably determine by reading my blog, in my opinion ANYONE who spends $600,000 at Tiffany’s spends like a fool and is a fool. To defend such an excerebrose peeing away of resources by saying that “I can afford it” only doubles down on the imbecility. He (or she) would never get my support for ANYTHING, political, business, or otherwise. He (or she) is a fool, an idiot, a popinjay, a poltroon, a spiritless, hopeless lost soul desperately trying to fill some kind of void with a useless, trashy, ostentatious trinket that indicates nothing but utter stupidity and overarching insecurity, a reflection of the moral vapidity that is destroying our country in so many ways. Think of all the ways that $600,000 could have been spent for something worthwhile, helping someone who really needed help, rather than for some worthless, valueless, tacky, reeking bauble or assortment of worthless, valueless, tacky, reeking baubles. Strong enough for you? How do you think I REALLY feel about this?
Maybe other candidates have spent $600,000 on the utter crap dispensed at places like Tiffany, but I haven’t learned of it yet; if I do, I will similarly dismiss them as serious human beings, let alone serious candidates.
--I obviously disagree with Newt on foreign policy, as you can deduce from our conversations on the topic. Newt seems to want to ramp up the disastrous Bush/Obama approach to foreign policy (“You’ll do what we tell you to do because it’s good for you because we say so (and besides, we owe our political careers to the defense contractors)!”), a policy that will only expedite our utter ruin as a nation. Unfortunately, Romney feels the same way, so this, perhaps my only substantive policy difference with Mr. Gingrich (except, of course, for the marvelous efficacy of Fannie and Freddie, which Mr. Gingrich used to espouse but apparently no longer believes in now that there is nothing monetary in it for him), is no reason to support him over Romney…six of one, half a dozen of the other.
Sure, if one takes no account of the utter gormlessness displayed by his imbecilic excretion of money on worthless symbols of the rot of the society he purports to want to save, Gingrich is smart in the ways our modern society judges smartness. Nixon, Carter, and Wilson also had considerable intellects. So that oft-mentioned argument for Mr. Gingrich holds little water.
So I could never support Gingrich for the reasons outlined above. Furthermore, from a practical perspective, Mr. Gingrich is likely to blow up and say something stupid (like the Palestinians are an “invented...people.” Who does he think the Philistines were? But I digress.) AFTER he gets the nomination, handing the presidency to President Obama. Mr. Romney may not be to my ideological liking (if there were any ideology there, but that is another issue), but I would surely support him over Gingrich, as I would (even) Bachmann (sp?), Perry, Santorum and (especially) Huntsman and Paul. If (Naperville professional homeless celebrity) Scott Huber were the only alternative candidate to Newt Gingrich, I’d have to think long and hard before voting for Newt.
All that having been said, I will not vote for either Mr. Romney or Mr. Gingrich, one of whom (and I still think Romney; see my 7/19/11 piece, MICHELE AND SARAH, MAKE ROOM FOR THE FAT LADY, and, while you’re at it, for more reasons to oppose Newt, see my 11/17/11 piece “I WISH YOU COULD HAVE COME UP WITH A BETTER STORY; I FELT DISTINCTLY LIKE AN IDIOT REPEATING IT.”) will wind up with the GOP nomination. I will, as I (almost) always do, vote Libertarian, regardless of who the candidate is, and I hope it’s Ron Paul, unless, of course, Dr. Paul somehow pulls off a miracle and gets the GOP nod.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
CLEAN UP YOUR ACT
12/10/11
Saturday, 12/10/11’s edition of the Chicago Sun-Times contained a page 5 article, complete with a page 1 headline, entitled “From Dumping Ground to City Playground.” The article outlines plans by various government agencies and levels of government to transform 140,000 acres on the southeast side from an environmental dumping ground into a sort of environmental paradise, complete with hiking trails, woodland areas, and habitats for the black crowned night heron. The project was, of course, hailed by the usual suspects (Governor Pat Quinn, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Senate Majority Leader John Cullerton, and Congressman Mike Quigley), and, an even have sentient read would indicate, by the Sun-Times and other media organs, as the type of affirmative, positive government that only the most curmudgeonly among us could oppose. So here goes:
Is this a good project? Being familiar with the area in question, I will easily concede this is a good project; the area in question is beyond bleak and dirty; it reminds one of a kind of moonscape or post-apocalyptic killing field with tons of toxins tossed in for good measure. The area ought to be cleaned up. But is this a vital project? No. The area, the city, and the state have lived with the area as it is for a long time now and surely we can continue to live with it indefinitely or at least until flusher times.
So if it’s not vital, why are we engaging in this project? The aforementioned politicians are always telling us how broke the city, the county, and the state are when they want to increase our taxes, and I believe them; after the number they and their colleagues have done on the finances of every governmental body in this state, who could argue that we aren’t broke? And if we’re broke, why are we about to embark on a project that will cost billions? If anyone tries to tell you that it won’t cost billions to clean up the area in question, he is talking through his hat or hasn’t yet talked to the guys who will win the projects for the clean-up, largely due to their friendship with and willingness to cut in the aforementioned pols and their pals, but I digress.
The governor, the mayor, the senator, and the congressman were quick to come up with anodyne assurances that the money would be no problem, especially, of course, for such a “vital” project. The state, they told us, will come up with $17.9 million in seed money, as if to reassure us that city taxpayers will not be stuck with the bill. But on the page immediately prior to the page containing this article, the Sun-Times reports that Cook County comes up with 40% of the income taxes and 36% of the sales taxes raised in the state of Illinois, so Chicago and Cook County taxpayers surely will come up with a large chunk of the spondulicks necessary to achieve this modern day edenization of an open dump. And even if, by some miracle, Chicago were completely off the hook, would it be such a good thing for the rest of the state, or the rest of the country, to pick up the bill to clean up portions of the southeast side? No wonder downstate lawmakers would like Cook County to secede from the state! (“The Great State of Chicago,” page 4, Chicago Sun-Times, 12/10/11) And even the pols are not so brazen as to label that $17.9 million as anything more than seed money; this is going to get more expensive…a LOT more expensive. But those costs are down the road, don’t you see, and, after all, it’s an “investment” in “our children’s children.”
Anyone who opposes this project will be accused by the likes of Pat Quinn, who, in his whole life, has never has had to deal with any money but other people’s money, of being environmental criminals, pursuing profits over “our children,” or not being focused on the future. Why be concerned about the money when “our planet” and “our children” are at stake? It is this type of thinking that has driven the state, our city, and our country broke, a situation that does not bode well for the environment, the planet, or the children.
Politicians simply cannot stop spending money; even in the worst of fiscal times, they can justify spending your money, and imperiling the economic future of “our children’s children,” by declaring any project, even those projects even more postponable than this one, to be vital, necessary, and morally imperative.
And we continue to elect these clowns.
Saturday, 12/10/11’s edition of the Chicago Sun-Times contained a page 5 article, complete with a page 1 headline, entitled “From Dumping Ground to City Playground.” The article outlines plans by various government agencies and levels of government to transform 140,000 acres on the southeast side from an environmental dumping ground into a sort of environmental paradise, complete with hiking trails, woodland areas, and habitats for the black crowned night heron. The project was, of course, hailed by the usual suspects (Governor Pat Quinn, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Senate Majority Leader John Cullerton, and Congressman Mike Quigley), and, an even have sentient read would indicate, by the Sun-Times and other media organs, as the type of affirmative, positive government that only the most curmudgeonly among us could oppose. So here goes:
Is this a good project? Being familiar with the area in question, I will easily concede this is a good project; the area in question is beyond bleak and dirty; it reminds one of a kind of moonscape or post-apocalyptic killing field with tons of toxins tossed in for good measure. The area ought to be cleaned up. But is this a vital project? No. The area, the city, and the state have lived with the area as it is for a long time now and surely we can continue to live with it indefinitely or at least until flusher times.
So if it’s not vital, why are we engaging in this project? The aforementioned politicians are always telling us how broke the city, the county, and the state are when they want to increase our taxes, and I believe them; after the number they and their colleagues have done on the finances of every governmental body in this state, who could argue that we aren’t broke? And if we’re broke, why are we about to embark on a project that will cost billions? If anyone tries to tell you that it won’t cost billions to clean up the area in question, he is talking through his hat or hasn’t yet talked to the guys who will win the projects for the clean-up, largely due to their friendship with and willingness to cut in the aforementioned pols and their pals, but I digress.
The governor, the mayor, the senator, and the congressman were quick to come up with anodyne assurances that the money would be no problem, especially, of course, for such a “vital” project. The state, they told us, will come up with $17.9 million in seed money, as if to reassure us that city taxpayers will not be stuck with the bill. But on the page immediately prior to the page containing this article, the Sun-Times reports that Cook County comes up with 40% of the income taxes and 36% of the sales taxes raised in the state of Illinois, so Chicago and Cook County taxpayers surely will come up with a large chunk of the spondulicks necessary to achieve this modern day edenization of an open dump. And even if, by some miracle, Chicago were completely off the hook, would it be such a good thing for the rest of the state, or the rest of the country, to pick up the bill to clean up portions of the southeast side? No wonder downstate lawmakers would like Cook County to secede from the state! (“The Great State of Chicago,” page 4, Chicago Sun-Times, 12/10/11) And even the pols are not so brazen as to label that $17.9 million as anything more than seed money; this is going to get more expensive…a LOT more expensive. But those costs are down the road, don’t you see, and, after all, it’s an “investment” in “our children’s children.”
Anyone who opposes this project will be accused by the likes of Pat Quinn, who, in his whole life, has never has had to deal with any money but other people’s money, of being environmental criminals, pursuing profits over “our children,” or not being focused on the future. Why be concerned about the money when “our planet” and “our children” are at stake? It is this type of thinking that has driven the state, our city, and our country broke, a situation that does not bode well for the environment, the planet, or the children.
Politicians simply cannot stop spending money; even in the worst of fiscal times, they can justify spending your money, and imperiling the economic future of “our children’s children,” by declaring any project, even those projects even more postponable than this one, to be vital, necessary, and morally imperative.
And we continue to elect these clowns.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
FIRST THOUGHTS ON THE ROD-BOY’S GOING AWAY
12/17/11
Before we all go into high dudgeon about how awful Rod Blagojevich is and how terrible the corruption is in the Land of Lincoln, remember…
--Every major Democratic politician in Illinois (with the exception of Attorney General Lisa Madigan, who claimed her endorsing Blagojevich for a second term would be a conflict of interest because her office was investigating him. After you read my last bullet point, please re-read Ms. Madigan’s rationale, or rationalization, for not supporting Mr. Blagojevich. I do not digress in this instance.), and every national Democrat who was asked, endorsed Blagojevich. And we keep electing these guys.
--The Republican Party in this state made only the slightest of feints toward opposing Rod Blagojevich, putting up first perennial political loser, but nice guy, Jim Ryan and then the likeable and somewhat competent, but not to be taken all that seriously Judy Baar Topinka. The GOP was very comfortable with the political arrangements in Illinois, including having Dick Mell’s son-in-law, and then Dick Mell’s estranged son-in-law, comfortably ensconced in the West Ravenswood governor’s mansion. They were, after all, getting their share. And we keep electing these guys.
--By far the most important…We, the voters of Illinois, elected this portrait of arrested development…twice.
Before we all go into high dudgeon about how awful Rod Blagojevich is and how terrible the corruption is in the Land of Lincoln, remember…
--Every major Democratic politician in Illinois (with the exception of Attorney General Lisa Madigan, who claimed her endorsing Blagojevich for a second term would be a conflict of interest because her office was investigating him. After you read my last bullet point, please re-read Ms. Madigan’s rationale, or rationalization, for not supporting Mr. Blagojevich. I do not digress in this instance.), and every national Democrat who was asked, endorsed Blagojevich. And we keep electing these guys.
--The Republican Party in this state made only the slightest of feints toward opposing Rod Blagojevich, putting up first perennial political loser, but nice guy, Jim Ryan and then the likeable and somewhat competent, but not to be taken all that seriously Judy Baar Topinka. The GOP was very comfortable with the political arrangements in Illinois, including having Dick Mell’s son-in-law, and then Dick Mell’s estranged son-in-law, comfortably ensconced in the West Ravenswood governor’s mansion. They were, after all, getting their share. And we keep electing these guys.
--By far the most important…We, the voters of Illinois, elected this portrait of arrested development…twice.
H.L. MENCKEN AND ME…
12/7/11
My nephew, an insightful observer of and participant in the political scene, recently shared a thoughtful letter concerning the “housing crisis” that he sent to the Chicago Tribune. One of his fans (and there are many) responded that he ought to run for president. I decided to reproduce my reply to this worthy observation because this reply so encapsulates the, if there is one, overriding theme of the Insightful Pontificator. As loyal readers know, that theme is not sunny optimism based on chest-thumping while chanting “USA! USA! USA!”:
12/7/11
I agree that Jay ought to run for president and if I had any money I would be an enthusiastic financial contributor.
Unfortunately, Jay would go nowhere with such common sense and keen insight. The "American people" just want to be told that nothing is their fault. It's the greedy banks, the evil derivatives traders, the barnacles on the ship of state in Washington, those damn Chinese, anybody but them, who has caused our problems. The new American motto is no longer "Don't Tread on Me" or "Live Free or Die;" rather, the new motto is "It's Not My Fault." It is our right to spend money we don't have on things we don't need in order to impress people we don't care about, send the bill to someone else, and go back to anesthetizing our brains with the like of "Two Men and A Boy," "Dancing with the Stars," or Jay Cutler's thumb while whining about how everyone has it in for us and voting for the guy who either has the best sounding name, features the slickest thirty second commercial, or who promises to protect the programs that benefit us while promising “fiscal responsibility.” And Americans will only elect politicians that feed these tendencies and provide anodyne reinforcements of the crazy notion that no one is responsible for his or her actions; they have no use for the likes of Jay (or his uncle) who tell the truth.
This ain't your father's America any more; it is Alec Baldwin's, Paris Hilton's, Glenn Beck's, Sarah Palin's, Dick Durbin's, Barack Obama's, Jesse Jackson's, Keith Olberman’s, Michael Moore’s, Lady Gaga’s, or any number of excerebrose celebrities' you can name, America. It's over and it ain't coming back.
On that happy note, everybody have a wonderful, blessed Christmas (in today's materialistic, silly, and self-obsessed and idiot celebrity obsessed America a herculean task, I know) and a prosperous new year (equally difficult).
My nephew, an insightful observer of and participant in the political scene, recently shared a thoughtful letter concerning the “housing crisis” that he sent to the Chicago Tribune. One of his fans (and there are many) responded that he ought to run for president. I decided to reproduce my reply to this worthy observation because this reply so encapsulates the, if there is one, overriding theme of the Insightful Pontificator. As loyal readers know, that theme is not sunny optimism based on chest-thumping while chanting “USA! USA! USA!”:
12/7/11
I agree that Jay ought to run for president and if I had any money I would be an enthusiastic financial contributor.
Unfortunately, Jay would go nowhere with such common sense and keen insight. The "American people" just want to be told that nothing is their fault. It's the greedy banks, the evil derivatives traders, the barnacles on the ship of state in Washington, those damn Chinese, anybody but them, who has caused our problems. The new American motto is no longer "Don't Tread on Me" or "Live Free or Die;" rather, the new motto is "It's Not My Fault." It is our right to spend money we don't have on things we don't need in order to impress people we don't care about, send the bill to someone else, and go back to anesthetizing our brains with the like of "Two Men and A Boy," "Dancing with the Stars," or Jay Cutler's thumb while whining about how everyone has it in for us and voting for the guy who either has the best sounding name, features the slickest thirty second commercial, or who promises to protect the programs that benefit us while promising “fiscal responsibility.” And Americans will only elect politicians that feed these tendencies and provide anodyne reinforcements of the crazy notion that no one is responsible for his or her actions; they have no use for the likes of Jay (or his uncle) who tell the truth.
This ain't your father's America any more; it is Alec Baldwin's, Paris Hilton's, Glenn Beck's, Sarah Palin's, Dick Durbin's, Barack Obama's, Jesse Jackson's, Keith Olberman’s, Michael Moore’s, Lady Gaga’s, or any number of excerebrose celebrities' you can name, America. It's over and it ain't coming back.
On that happy note, everybody have a wonderful, blessed Christmas (in today's materialistic, silly, and self-obsessed and idiot celebrity obsessed America a herculean task, I know) and a prosperous new year (equally difficult).
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
“DON’T YOU WANT TO BE A (FINANCIAL) ENGINEER, LIKE YOUR UNCLE OTTO?”
12/6/11
The Wall Street Journal reported in a page A1 article in today’s (i.e., Tuesday, 12/6’s) edition that German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy agreed to
never again pressure private investors into agreeing to voluntary losses on euro-denominated bonds.
I don’t think that’s what Ms. Merkel and Mr. Sarkozy meant; I think what they meant was that they won’t pressure private investors to agree to voluntary losses on euro-denominated bonds issued by European sovereigns. The new Dynamic Duo couldn’t possibly mean that they never want any investor to lose money on any euro-denominated bond, regardless of the issuer, ever again. Given the rabbit hole into which the world’s financial system seems to have fallen, maybe the feckless Franco-German freres did mean the latter. But let’s assume for purposes of this piece that euro-estimables were referring to sovereign credits. I digress, of course.
Mr. Sarkozy, while at least figuratively beating his chest, proclaimed
“The message to investors from across the world is that in Europe we pay back our debts.”
Hmm…
It seems that the message to investors across the world is more like
Moral hazard be damned; toss your money at the most profligate spendthrifts you can find and we’ll make their markers good.
Some readers are doubtless saying that, in making the last statement, yours truly is merely being his usual outrageous self. Why, these guarantees, implicit or explicit, will be given only when a viable and enforceable mechanism for mandating fiscal discipline is in place. But what these ingénues seem to miss is that the pious pronouncement that “we pay back our debts” works against whatever legitimate mechanism for enforcing fiscal discipline might be put into place.
What would be the sanction against any country that decides it doesn’t want to abide by the Franco-German fiscal prescriptions? Denial of credit? Withdrawal of the guarantee? What would be the result of such a sanction? Default on the part of the miscreant debtor. Such a result would be bad enough, resulting in the impairment of pan-European credit and, possibly, the dissolution, or at least the shrinkage, of the euro that the French, Germans, and, apparently, the whole world are going through these machinations to avoid. But now that Mr. Sarkozy and Ms. Merkel, the latter of whom has a very un-German like tendency to fold like a cheap card table, have proclaimed that there can be no sovereign European default because “we pay back our debts,” such a default is unthinkable. Therefore, so is a viable mechanism for enforcing fiscal discipline.
Trying to enforce fiscal discipline under these circumstances is like holding a bomb while sitting in a room with a churlish opponent and declaring that, if he doesn’t do what you would like, you will explode the bomb, thus killing both you and your opponent. You won’t do it, and your foe knows it. So he merely laughs in your face while making a rude gesture. You, meanwhile, accede to his demands.
So the message to creditors is that every European sovereign credit is a German credit. The message to all European governments is to party on and put everything on Uncle Otto’s tab. The message to the German, French, Dutch, Finnish, etc. taxpayer, and saver, is to bend over and take another and another and another and another. And, perhaps most importantly, the message to the European Central bank is “You’ve got your fig leaf; now get those printing presses into high gear.”
And the masters of the financial universe cheer. O tempora, o mores.
The Wall Street Journal reported in a page A1 article in today’s (i.e., Tuesday, 12/6’s) edition that German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy agreed to
never again pressure private investors into agreeing to voluntary losses on euro-denominated bonds.
I don’t think that’s what Ms. Merkel and Mr. Sarkozy meant; I think what they meant was that they won’t pressure private investors to agree to voluntary losses on euro-denominated bonds issued by European sovereigns. The new Dynamic Duo couldn’t possibly mean that they never want any investor to lose money on any euro-denominated bond, regardless of the issuer, ever again. Given the rabbit hole into which the world’s financial system seems to have fallen, maybe the feckless Franco-German freres did mean the latter. But let’s assume for purposes of this piece that euro-estimables were referring to sovereign credits. I digress, of course.
Mr. Sarkozy, while at least figuratively beating his chest, proclaimed
“The message to investors from across the world is that in Europe we pay back our debts.”
Hmm…
It seems that the message to investors across the world is more like
Moral hazard be damned; toss your money at the most profligate spendthrifts you can find and we’ll make their markers good.
Some readers are doubtless saying that, in making the last statement, yours truly is merely being his usual outrageous self. Why, these guarantees, implicit or explicit, will be given only when a viable and enforceable mechanism for mandating fiscal discipline is in place. But what these ingénues seem to miss is that the pious pronouncement that “we pay back our debts” works against whatever legitimate mechanism for enforcing fiscal discipline might be put into place.
What would be the sanction against any country that decides it doesn’t want to abide by the Franco-German fiscal prescriptions? Denial of credit? Withdrawal of the guarantee? What would be the result of such a sanction? Default on the part of the miscreant debtor. Such a result would be bad enough, resulting in the impairment of pan-European credit and, possibly, the dissolution, or at least the shrinkage, of the euro that the French, Germans, and, apparently, the whole world are going through these machinations to avoid. But now that Mr. Sarkozy and Ms. Merkel, the latter of whom has a very un-German like tendency to fold like a cheap card table, have proclaimed that there can be no sovereign European default because “we pay back our debts,” such a default is unthinkable. Therefore, so is a viable mechanism for enforcing fiscal discipline.
Trying to enforce fiscal discipline under these circumstances is like holding a bomb while sitting in a room with a churlish opponent and declaring that, if he doesn’t do what you would like, you will explode the bomb, thus killing both you and your opponent. You won’t do it, and your foe knows it. So he merely laughs in your face while making a rude gesture. You, meanwhile, accede to his demands.
So the message to creditors is that every European sovereign credit is a German credit. The message to all European governments is to party on and put everything on Uncle Otto’s tab. The message to the German, French, Dutch, Finnish, etc. taxpayer, and saver, is to bend over and take another and another and another and another. And, perhaps most importantly, the message to the European Central bank is “You’ve got your fig leaf; now get those printing presses into high gear.”
And the masters of the financial universe cheer. O tempora, o mores.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
THE BOSS IS BACK; BACK THE BOSS
12/4/11
In my instantly seminal 10/21/11 piece entitled …AND MAYBE THEY COULD HAVE COME UP WITH A MORE ORIGINAL NAME, TOO, I was at best minimally charitable to the new Starz series, ostensibly about Chicago politics, entitled Boss and starring Kelsey Grammer. Indeed, about the only good things I could cite in that post were the performances of Mr. Grammer himself (spectacular and getting better…see below), the wonderful views and backdrops of the world’s most beautiful city that are prominent features of at least the show’s introductions, and a clever piece of cinematography in the first episode in a scene in which Mayor Tom Kane expostulates on the legacy of Mayor Tony Cermak. My main complaint about the series was, as I put it so eloquently then,
The most salient and overriding observation about “Boss” is that it is hopelessly and, more importantly, needlessly over the top. The annals of Chicago politics contain enough true stories that are entertaining, compelling, and thought provoking. We don’t need to make up silly stuff…
However, I also stated in that post
I will doubtless watch “Boss” again because it was entertaining, at least for an hour.
and I have done so. Yes, there is indeed plenty of silly stuff still going on in the show, the usual banality that permeates television drama and that could have been set anywhere in America. For example we are insulted by the idea that the Mayor’s daughter, who is both an Episcopal priest and recovering drug addict, decides to (once again) consummate her curious relationship with her drug dealing boyfriend at the precise moment the aforementioned boyfriend is under hot pursuit by the Chicago cops. Talk about wham, bam…Sorry about that. And we still are confronted with the preposterous notions that there is real opposition in the Chicago City Council and that we have an articulate mayor. On the other hand, I am pleased to report that mayoral aide Kittie O’Neil, who dresses and acts like the Admiral Theater would be an entirely more appropriate workplace venue than the Fifth Floor, has managed to refrain in the last few episodes from removing her clothing and going about her usual task of servicing one of the series’ other major characters. I realize that the last comment has sent probably half my readers racing to the “on demand” channel to view earlier episodes, and I digress anyway.
My major point is that, despite the aforementioned, the show has gotten much better over the last few episodes as the plot line has progressed to Mayor Kane’s culpability for a toxic dump in Bensenville and the ramifications that culpability is having for his political survival. Viewers are treated to scheming ward bosses, set-up ingénues, outclassed amateurs, venal and hypocritical journalists, mercenary spouses and other family members, ruthless political suzerains of various stripes…the type of stuff that makes you think, sometimes leaves you agape at the characters’ boldness rather than the scriptwriter’s silliness, and could have come right from the pages of my novels The Chairman and The Chairman’s Challenge. Indeed, many of Mayor Kane’s ruminations on his job could have come straight from the first chapter of The Chairman, the chapter that has been panned by some as being “too slow” while being effusively praised by those who watch the politics of our city closely as being right on the mark. Further, while Boss lacks the fidelity of my novels, it borders on the amazing how closely some of the scenes in the series, including the completely gratuitous scene in which we learn of a certain character’s proclivity for private female on female sexual performances, come right from the amazing annals of the politics of our town.
So my hat is off to the creators of Boss. The Chairman and The Chairman’s Challenge remain better, but Boss is quickly becoming a great series as it nears the end of its first season. I’m glad I didn’t give up on it.
In my instantly seminal 10/21/11 piece entitled …AND MAYBE THEY COULD HAVE COME UP WITH A MORE ORIGINAL NAME, TOO, I was at best minimally charitable to the new Starz series, ostensibly about Chicago politics, entitled Boss and starring Kelsey Grammer. Indeed, about the only good things I could cite in that post were the performances of Mr. Grammer himself (spectacular and getting better…see below), the wonderful views and backdrops of the world’s most beautiful city that are prominent features of at least the show’s introductions, and a clever piece of cinematography in the first episode in a scene in which Mayor Tom Kane expostulates on the legacy of Mayor Tony Cermak. My main complaint about the series was, as I put it so eloquently then,
The most salient and overriding observation about “Boss” is that it is hopelessly and, more importantly, needlessly over the top. The annals of Chicago politics contain enough true stories that are entertaining, compelling, and thought provoking. We don’t need to make up silly stuff…
However, I also stated in that post
I will doubtless watch “Boss” again because it was entertaining, at least for an hour.
and I have done so. Yes, there is indeed plenty of silly stuff still going on in the show, the usual banality that permeates television drama and that could have been set anywhere in America. For example we are insulted by the idea that the Mayor’s daughter, who is both an Episcopal priest and recovering drug addict, decides to (once again) consummate her curious relationship with her drug dealing boyfriend at the precise moment the aforementioned boyfriend is under hot pursuit by the Chicago cops. Talk about wham, bam…Sorry about that. And we still are confronted with the preposterous notions that there is real opposition in the Chicago City Council and that we have an articulate mayor. On the other hand, I am pleased to report that mayoral aide Kittie O’Neil, who dresses and acts like the Admiral Theater would be an entirely more appropriate workplace venue than the Fifth Floor, has managed to refrain in the last few episodes from removing her clothing and going about her usual task of servicing one of the series’ other major characters. I realize that the last comment has sent probably half my readers racing to the “on demand” channel to view earlier episodes, and I digress anyway.
My major point is that, despite the aforementioned, the show has gotten much better over the last few episodes as the plot line has progressed to Mayor Kane’s culpability for a toxic dump in Bensenville and the ramifications that culpability is having for his political survival. Viewers are treated to scheming ward bosses, set-up ingénues, outclassed amateurs, venal and hypocritical journalists, mercenary spouses and other family members, ruthless political suzerains of various stripes…the type of stuff that makes you think, sometimes leaves you agape at the characters’ boldness rather than the scriptwriter’s silliness, and could have come right from the pages of my novels The Chairman and The Chairman’s Challenge. Indeed, many of Mayor Kane’s ruminations on his job could have come straight from the first chapter of The Chairman, the chapter that has been panned by some as being “too slow” while being effusively praised by those who watch the politics of our city closely as being right on the mark. Further, while Boss lacks the fidelity of my novels, it borders on the amazing how closely some of the scenes in the series, including the completely gratuitous scene in which we learn of a certain character’s proclivity for private female on female sexual performances, come right from the amazing annals of the politics of our town.
So my hat is off to the creators of Boss. The Chairman and The Chairman’s Challenge remain better, but Boss is quickly becoming a great series as it nears the end of its first season. I’m glad I didn’t give up on it.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
A (V)OLT FROM THE BLUE
11/27/11
This morning’s (i.e., Sunday, 11/27’s) Chicago Sun-Times reports that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating cases of the lithium-ion batteries’ in Chevy Volts starting on fire after a severe crash involving the vehicles in which they are housed. The NHTSA says it’s too soon to determine whether there will be a recall of the vehicle, but quickly added
“NHTSA continues to believe that electric vehicles have incredible potential to save consumers money at the pump, help protect the environment, create jobs and strengthen national security by reducing our dependence on oil.”
Hmm…
One does not have to be too much of an aficionado of conspiracy theories to believe that, for the reasons it outlined in that statement, the NHTSA will be under tremendous pressure not to recall the Volt regardless of what the agency’s investigations reveal. The Volt is indeed a job creator, an energy saver, and a genuine green machine. It is also one of the rare, but not as rare as the general public might think, instances in which an American car company substantially moved the technological goal posts. Given all that, and the Bush/Obama administration’s continuing interest in seeing the post-bailout GM survive and prosper, somebody had better keep a close eye on the NHTSA’s investigation of these battery fires. One hopes, and suspects, there is little or nothing to these battery fires, but diligence is warranted given the political pressure for the Volt to succeed.
This morning’s (i.e., Sunday, 11/27’s) Chicago Sun-Times reports that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating cases of the lithium-ion batteries’ in Chevy Volts starting on fire after a severe crash involving the vehicles in which they are housed. The NHTSA says it’s too soon to determine whether there will be a recall of the vehicle, but quickly added
“NHTSA continues to believe that electric vehicles have incredible potential to save consumers money at the pump, help protect the environment, create jobs and strengthen national security by reducing our dependence on oil.”
Hmm…
One does not have to be too much of an aficionado of conspiracy theories to believe that, for the reasons it outlined in that statement, the NHTSA will be under tremendous pressure not to recall the Volt regardless of what the agency’s investigations reveal. The Volt is indeed a job creator, an energy saver, and a genuine green machine. It is also one of the rare, but not as rare as the general public might think, instances in which an American car company substantially moved the technological goal posts. Given all that, and the Bush/Obama administration’s continuing interest in seeing the post-bailout GM survive and prosper, somebody had better keep a close eye on the NHTSA’s investigation of these battery fires. One hopes, and suspects, there is little or nothing to these battery fires, but diligence is warranted given the political pressure for the Volt to succeed.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
“IT TAKES MORE THAN THAT TO STOP A BULL MOOSE!”
11/26/11
This morning’s (i.e., Saturday/Sunday, 11/26, 11/27’s) Wall Street Journal featured, on page A6, the first, or the latest, in an inevitable series of articles from various quarters of the media speculating about the possibility of a third party run for president in 2012. One especially startling statistic is that, when Ross Perot ran in 1992, winning nearly 20% of the vote and thus becoming the most successful third party presidential candidate in modern American political history, 39% of Americans told pollsters they were dissatisfied with the way the country was being governed. The same figure today is 81%.
This all sounds promising for a third party run, and those of us who are both fed up with the pompous nonentities who presume to govern us and intrigued with the horse race aspects of politics are heartened and intrigued by the prospect of a two decade year later Perot. But, sad to say, we can forget about a third party candidacy, or at least a successful third party candidacy, for a number of reasons.
First, of course, our electoral system, and the college that is a big part of it, makes third party runs difficult. Fundraising, ballot access, entrenched party machinery, etc., all make the likelihood of a third party winner miniscule. And the fifty contest nature of the race that the electoral college produces, while having obvious virtues, makes it nearly impossible, at least in these times of two entrenched parties, for a third party candidate to win outright and completely impossible to win a race that is thrown into the Congress.
Second, and more important, a lot of people are unhappy out there and a lot more people would like to throw the rascals out. But throwing the rascals out involves replacing them with somebody, and that is where the third party ardor falls apart. The Journal article noted that the two most talked about potential third party candidates are Michael Bloomberg, the moderate mayor of New York City who knows how to say the things needed to get elected and make the deals necessary to run the nation’s largest city, and Ron Paul, the delightfully incorrigible libertarian congressman who means what he says and says what he means. Would people, or at least a lot of people, who would vote for Ron Paul vote for Michael Bloomberg? If that doesn’t convey my point, two people whose names keep popping up in connection with Americans Elect, a group that is actively promoting an online convention to pick a third party candidate, are former Senator Chuck Hagel, one of the few GOP officeholders with the courage to oppose George Bush’s exercises in self-aggrandizement that have had such severe repercussions for our once great nation, and former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, who at least nominally quarterbacked Mr. Bush’s excellent adventures. Anyone who thinks seriously about foreign policy would be about as likely to be indifferent between these two as a typical Chicago baseball fan is to be indifferent between the White Sox and the Cubs.
People are fed and disappointed; they know what they don’t like. But they can’t agree on what they like. Any third party candidate will need the support of a significant majority, or more, of the unhappy electorate is s/he is to have a chance at getting elected. It’s nearly impossible to envision a candidate who could channel that anger into his or her single candidacy.
This morning’s (i.e., Saturday/Sunday, 11/26, 11/27’s) Wall Street Journal featured, on page A6, the first, or the latest, in an inevitable series of articles from various quarters of the media speculating about the possibility of a third party run for president in 2012. One especially startling statistic is that, when Ross Perot ran in 1992, winning nearly 20% of the vote and thus becoming the most successful third party presidential candidate in modern American political history, 39% of Americans told pollsters they were dissatisfied with the way the country was being governed. The same figure today is 81%.
This all sounds promising for a third party run, and those of us who are both fed up with the pompous nonentities who presume to govern us and intrigued with the horse race aspects of politics are heartened and intrigued by the prospect of a two decade year later Perot. But, sad to say, we can forget about a third party candidacy, or at least a successful third party candidacy, for a number of reasons.
First, of course, our electoral system, and the college that is a big part of it, makes third party runs difficult. Fundraising, ballot access, entrenched party machinery, etc., all make the likelihood of a third party winner miniscule. And the fifty contest nature of the race that the electoral college produces, while having obvious virtues, makes it nearly impossible, at least in these times of two entrenched parties, for a third party candidate to win outright and completely impossible to win a race that is thrown into the Congress.
Second, and more important, a lot of people are unhappy out there and a lot more people would like to throw the rascals out. But throwing the rascals out involves replacing them with somebody, and that is where the third party ardor falls apart. The Journal article noted that the two most talked about potential third party candidates are Michael Bloomberg, the moderate mayor of New York City who knows how to say the things needed to get elected and make the deals necessary to run the nation’s largest city, and Ron Paul, the delightfully incorrigible libertarian congressman who means what he says and says what he means. Would people, or at least a lot of people, who would vote for Ron Paul vote for Michael Bloomberg? If that doesn’t convey my point, two people whose names keep popping up in connection with Americans Elect, a group that is actively promoting an online convention to pick a third party candidate, are former Senator Chuck Hagel, one of the few GOP officeholders with the courage to oppose George Bush’s exercises in self-aggrandizement that have had such severe repercussions for our once great nation, and former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, who at least nominally quarterbacked Mr. Bush’s excellent adventures. Anyone who thinks seriously about foreign policy would be about as likely to be indifferent between these two as a typical Chicago baseball fan is to be indifferent between the White Sox and the Cubs.
People are fed and disappointed; they know what they don’t like. But they can’t agree on what they like. Any third party candidate will need the support of a significant majority, or more, of the unhappy electorate is s/he is to have a chance at getting elected. It’s nearly impossible to envision a candidate who could channel that anger into his or her single candidacy.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
SOCIAL INSECURITY
11/22/11
In the wake of the miserable but predictable failure of the Committee of Dolts (er, sorry, the Supercommittee) to even begin to address our budget deficit problems (See today’s other post, OH YEAH…HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN ALRIGHT.), several other pieces of unfinished business loom for our selfless public servants. One of these is the pending (12/31/11, I think, but I could be wrong) expiration of the FICA payroll tax holiday that was instated in yet another attempt by your government to solve a problem that had its origins in too much spending by encouraging more spending.
It’s hard to see how the denizens of the Den of Iniquity on the Potomac are going to let the payroll tax holiday end. The Democrats, including President Obama, support the holiday as a tax cut that directly benefits lower income earners. The Republicans, though seemingly against anything the Democrats oppose in the proud Washington tradition of never letting a good idea get in the way of hair-shirted partisanship, would have a hard time letting the payroll tax be reinstated for a few reasons. First, they are reflexively, and understandably and, generally, laudably, in favor of any kind of tax cut and, conversely, against any kind of tax increase. Second, the GOPers would have a hard time taking the political flak that would result from opposing a tax cut at the low end while fighting hard to preserve a tax cut at the upper end of the income scale. Further, congresspersons from both parties would have a hard time letting the payroll tax expire while the economy is still sputtering along, at best. As Nixon once said, we are all Keynesians now and even those who would deny that observation by one of our most brilliant yet failed presidents have enough common sense, and/or sense of political survival, to not put the drag that would accompany such a tax increase on an already struggling economy.
To take this a step further, it’s hard to see how the payroll tax will ever be reinstated. This is an onerous (about 7.65% on the employee side, the side currently being suspended) tax that affects just about everyone who earns a dollar in this country. Reinstating such a tax would amount to a huge tax increase and the profiles in courage who can’t cut 3% out of a budget (Again, see today’s other post, OH YEAH…HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN ALRIGHT.) surely cannot take the heat that would result from such a move. So it might be safe to say that the payroll tax as we understood it since the days of FDR is gone forever.
So what will happen to social security? God only knows, and He’s not talking. However, it might be a good thing to eliminate the tax that ostensibly supports social security but in reality merely supports every other government program. Then we could eliminate the fiction that social security is somehow an off-budget program supported by “contributions” from participants and so need not be financed out of given year’s revenues. Only when we realize that there is no “trust fund” and that, ultimately, social security payments can only be made from the revenues generated in the year they are paid can we begin to address this badly mismanaged program’s problems. So this might be an instance in which the politicians’ very timidity ironically forces them to summon up the courage to address one of our real fiscal problems. But I am probably being hopelessly optimistic, not one of my most salient faults, in thinking that anything can force the poltroons we have sent to Washington to address the problems they have created.
In the wake of the miserable but predictable failure of the Committee of Dolts (er, sorry, the Supercommittee) to even begin to address our budget deficit problems (See today’s other post, OH YEAH…HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN ALRIGHT.), several other pieces of unfinished business loom for our selfless public servants. One of these is the pending (12/31/11, I think, but I could be wrong) expiration of the FICA payroll tax holiday that was instated in yet another attempt by your government to solve a problem that had its origins in too much spending by encouraging more spending.
It’s hard to see how the denizens of the Den of Iniquity on the Potomac are going to let the payroll tax holiday end. The Democrats, including President Obama, support the holiday as a tax cut that directly benefits lower income earners. The Republicans, though seemingly against anything the Democrats oppose in the proud Washington tradition of never letting a good idea get in the way of hair-shirted partisanship, would have a hard time letting the payroll tax be reinstated for a few reasons. First, they are reflexively, and understandably and, generally, laudably, in favor of any kind of tax cut and, conversely, against any kind of tax increase. Second, the GOPers would have a hard time taking the political flak that would result from opposing a tax cut at the low end while fighting hard to preserve a tax cut at the upper end of the income scale. Further, congresspersons from both parties would have a hard time letting the payroll tax expire while the economy is still sputtering along, at best. As Nixon once said, we are all Keynesians now and even those who would deny that observation by one of our most brilliant yet failed presidents have enough common sense, and/or sense of political survival, to not put the drag that would accompany such a tax increase on an already struggling economy.
To take this a step further, it’s hard to see how the payroll tax will ever be reinstated. This is an onerous (about 7.65% on the employee side, the side currently being suspended) tax that affects just about everyone who earns a dollar in this country. Reinstating such a tax would amount to a huge tax increase and the profiles in courage who can’t cut 3% out of a budget (Again, see today’s other post, OH YEAH…HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN ALRIGHT.) surely cannot take the heat that would result from such a move. So it might be safe to say that the payroll tax as we understood it since the days of FDR is gone forever.
So what will happen to social security? God only knows, and He’s not talking. However, it might be a good thing to eliminate the tax that ostensibly supports social security but in reality merely supports every other government program. Then we could eliminate the fiction that social security is somehow an off-budget program supported by “contributions” from participants and so need not be financed out of given year’s revenues. Only when we realize that there is no “trust fund” and that, ultimately, social security payments can only be made from the revenues generated in the year they are paid can we begin to address this badly mismanaged program’s problems. So this might be an instance in which the politicians’ very timidity ironically forces them to summon up the courage to address one of our real fiscal problems. But I am probably being hopelessly optimistic, not one of my most salient faults, in thinking that anything can force the poltroons we have sent to Washington to address the problems they have created.
OH YEAH…HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN ALRIGHT
11/22/11
The committee of super poltroons, formed by a timid Congress in its latest effort to avoid the responsibility that comes with taking their public paychecks, failed to achieve the paltry ($1.2 trillion) it was charged to find. The utter failure of this pack of hyenas came as no surprise to most people or to any readers of the Insightful Pontificator.
Consider these numbers for a moment. Unless there is something wrong with my math or my understanding of the cuts, $1.2 trillion over ten years amounts to $120 billion per year out of a budget that totaled, in FY 2011, $3.6 trillion. That works out to 3% of the FY 2011 budget, which will, of course, grow, making the $120 billion an even smaller percentage of future budgets. So this Superdolt Committee could not cut the budget by 3%! I digress, but I do so to reinforce a very important point: These guys can’t cut anything. Even the guys who scream and holler about how important it is to cut spending cannot find any spending they would like to see cut. We are doomed.
Now that the committee has crashed and burned, the Congresspersons who designed this abomination before God and man are busying themselves with removing the sanctions, in the form of $1.2 trillion in mandatory cuts, split evenly between “defense” and domestic spending, that are to kick in, but not until 2013 when the elections are safely behind our public servants. The War Party, led by estimables John McCain (Did you know he was a POW in Vietnam?) and Lindsey Graham are in full whoop-whoop, equating any suggestion of removing any dollars at all from the defense budget with treason. Democrats are doubtless doing the same thing about programs that address “vital needs” that seem to arise when the money becomes available, or, in modern American political parlance, when such spending can be slipped by a prime time network TV addled American public, which is always, but, again, I digress.
President Obama, on the other hand, has pledged to veto any effort to undo the mandatory cuts; he wants to keep the pressure on Congress to do something about our deficit problems. So we find ourselves in the odd position in which it is President Obama who is the proverbial adult in the room. We are, ladies and gentlemen, in deep, deep trouble when Barack Obama is the adult in the room.
Humor was not my sole objective in writing that last sentence. In the old days, when this country was great, a guy with President Obama’s limited background (“community organizer,” one and a half term state senator, two-thirds of a term U.S. Senator, and no, zero, private sector experience of any type) would not even qualify to be an obscure back bencher in Congress. Now, in our society preoccupied with “Dancing with the Stars” and Jay Cutler’s thumb, he is President of the United States, and now the mature, wise man in a Washington pullulating with preening poltroonish popinjays who would not ponder a position in the private sector, carnival barkers, chicken head chomping circus geeks, overeducated and underachieving ingénues whose most salient features are their lack of humility and their certainty of their having all the answers, and other assorted hangers-on and self-important twits and fops.
And then we have this same cast of mountebanks and charlatans piously intoning that the “American people” want action, the “American people” want a responsive Congress, the “American people” want to do something about the sorry fiscal shape of their government. I have news for these professional caitiffs and bloodsuckers: it is the “American people” who sent you carnies in suits to the Washington. The “American people” want to be left alone to anesthetize their brains with the likes of “Mike and Molly,” “Two Men and a Boy,” “Poor Girls,” or whatever these glaring examples are called of the utter decline of our society to the public debauch of indifference and overindulgence it has become.
This country is finished, done, over with. Certainly, the estimables in Washington have had a great deal to do with the decline of this once great country. But far more culpable are the people who sent them there. Self-government takes work, sacrifice, and attention to one’s duties as a responsible citizen in a self-governing polity, not shameless self-indulgence, insufferable, dolorous whining, and feckless, gormless displays of crass materialism.
The committee of super poltroons, formed by a timid Congress in its latest effort to avoid the responsibility that comes with taking their public paychecks, failed to achieve the paltry ($1.2 trillion) it was charged to find. The utter failure of this pack of hyenas came as no surprise to most people or to any readers of the Insightful Pontificator.
Consider these numbers for a moment. Unless there is something wrong with my math or my understanding of the cuts, $1.2 trillion over ten years amounts to $120 billion per year out of a budget that totaled, in FY 2011, $3.6 trillion. That works out to 3% of the FY 2011 budget, which will, of course, grow, making the $120 billion an even smaller percentage of future budgets. So this Superdolt Committee could not cut the budget by 3%! I digress, but I do so to reinforce a very important point: These guys can’t cut anything. Even the guys who scream and holler about how important it is to cut spending cannot find any spending they would like to see cut. We are doomed.
Now that the committee has crashed and burned, the Congresspersons who designed this abomination before God and man are busying themselves with removing the sanctions, in the form of $1.2 trillion in mandatory cuts, split evenly between “defense” and domestic spending, that are to kick in, but not until 2013 when the elections are safely behind our public servants. The War Party, led by estimables John McCain (Did you know he was a POW in Vietnam?) and Lindsey Graham are in full whoop-whoop, equating any suggestion of removing any dollars at all from the defense budget with treason. Democrats are doubtless doing the same thing about programs that address “vital needs” that seem to arise when the money becomes available, or, in modern American political parlance, when such spending can be slipped by a prime time network TV addled American public, which is always, but, again, I digress.
President Obama, on the other hand, has pledged to veto any effort to undo the mandatory cuts; he wants to keep the pressure on Congress to do something about our deficit problems. So we find ourselves in the odd position in which it is President Obama who is the proverbial adult in the room. We are, ladies and gentlemen, in deep, deep trouble when Barack Obama is the adult in the room.
Humor was not my sole objective in writing that last sentence. In the old days, when this country was great, a guy with President Obama’s limited background (“community organizer,” one and a half term state senator, two-thirds of a term U.S. Senator, and no, zero, private sector experience of any type) would not even qualify to be an obscure back bencher in Congress. Now, in our society preoccupied with “Dancing with the Stars” and Jay Cutler’s thumb, he is President of the United States, and now the mature, wise man in a Washington pullulating with preening poltroonish popinjays who would not ponder a position in the private sector, carnival barkers, chicken head chomping circus geeks, overeducated and underachieving ingénues whose most salient features are their lack of humility and their certainty of their having all the answers, and other assorted hangers-on and self-important twits and fops.
And then we have this same cast of mountebanks and charlatans piously intoning that the “American people” want action, the “American people” want a responsive Congress, the “American people” want to do something about the sorry fiscal shape of their government. I have news for these professional caitiffs and bloodsuckers: it is the “American people” who sent you carnies in suits to the Washington. The “American people” want to be left alone to anesthetize their brains with the likes of “Mike and Molly,” “Two Men and a Boy,” “Poor Girls,” or whatever these glaring examples are called of the utter decline of our society to the public debauch of indifference and overindulgence it has become.
This country is finished, done, over with. Certainly, the estimables in Washington have had a great deal to do with the decline of this once great country. But far more culpable are the people who sent them there. Self-government takes work, sacrifice, and attention to one’s duties as a responsible citizen in a self-governing polity, not shameless self-indulgence, insufferable, dolorous whining, and feckless, gormless displays of crass materialism.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
“I WISH YOU COULD HAVE COME UP WITH A BETTER STORY; I FELT DISTINCTLY LIKE AN IDIOT REPEATING IT.”
11/17/11
Now that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has become nearly viable in the GOP race for the 2012 presidential nomination, his ethics are drawing new scrutiny, and not those aspects of Mr. Gingrich’s ethical life that seem to most titillate the public.
It seems that a “consulting” firm run by Mr. Gingrich was paid $1.6 million by Freddie Mac, off an on from 1999 to 2006, for what Mr. Gingrich calls “strategic advice” on how to portray the company to skeptical conservatives who wanted to cap the firm’s growth, according to the Wall Street Journal (Thursday, 11/17/11, page A5). Mr. Gingrich insists that he was not paid to lobby, not for his clout, no sir. He was paid for “strategic advice.”
Let’s just say that we are to buy Mr. Gingrich’s story, that his “consulting” practice was not, as are about 99% of such consulting practices by former office-holders and current hangers-on, a thinly veiled way of selling his influence, designed not only to line his pockets but to enable him, and his ilk, to brag of his “private sector experience” when next pushing for a spot at the public trough. Let’s stipulate that Mr. Gingrich was indeed being paid for “strategic advice” on how to fend off conservatives who wanted to curb the growth of Freddie Mac and who were, in retrospect, clearly onto something. Even if Mr. Gingrich’s at best semi-plausible and at worst ludicrous defense is somehow legitimate, he is still admitting that he (and his firm, of course; this was not a one man operation, no sir) helped Freddie to grow. Since Mr. Gingrich and his fellow Republicans insist, with some (but not as much as they think) justification, that Freddie and Fannie were at the root of the financial problems from which we are supposedly emerging, Mr. Gingrich’s defense is that he was only helping to put the U.S. housing market in the tank and thus abetting what most are calling a financial disaster.
One would think that a guy with Mr. Gingrich’s obviously abundant intellectual firepower could have come up with a better story.
Now that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has become nearly viable in the GOP race for the 2012 presidential nomination, his ethics are drawing new scrutiny, and not those aspects of Mr. Gingrich’s ethical life that seem to most titillate the public.
It seems that a “consulting” firm run by Mr. Gingrich was paid $1.6 million by Freddie Mac, off an on from 1999 to 2006, for what Mr. Gingrich calls “strategic advice” on how to portray the company to skeptical conservatives who wanted to cap the firm’s growth, according to the Wall Street Journal (Thursday, 11/17/11, page A5). Mr. Gingrich insists that he was not paid to lobby, not for his clout, no sir. He was paid for “strategic advice.”
Let’s just say that we are to buy Mr. Gingrich’s story, that his “consulting” practice was not, as are about 99% of such consulting practices by former office-holders and current hangers-on, a thinly veiled way of selling his influence, designed not only to line his pockets but to enable him, and his ilk, to brag of his “private sector experience” when next pushing for a spot at the public trough. Let’s stipulate that Mr. Gingrich was indeed being paid for “strategic advice” on how to fend off conservatives who wanted to curb the growth of Freddie Mac and who were, in retrospect, clearly onto something. Even if Mr. Gingrich’s at best semi-plausible and at worst ludicrous defense is somehow legitimate, he is still admitting that he (and his firm, of course; this was not a one man operation, no sir) helped Freddie to grow. Since Mr. Gingrich and his fellow Republicans insist, with some (but not as much as they think) justification, that Freddie and Fannie were at the root of the financial problems from which we are supposedly emerging, Mr. Gingrich’s defense is that he was only helping to put the U.S. housing market in the tank and thus abetting what most are calling a financial disaster.
One would think that a guy with Mr. Gingrich’s obviously abundant intellectual firepower could have come up with a better story.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU, BUT I CAN HEAR SHIRLEY BASSEY BELTING ONE OUT AS I WRITE THIS POST
11/10/11
Gold was off yesterday, albeit only a touch, on a day when, by most conventional reckonings, it should have been skyrocketing; the news out of Italy was bad, the news out of Greece wasn’t any, if at all, better, and the equity markets were in full retreat, with the S&P down 3.67%. It would have seemed that yesterday was the perfect day to be long gold.
While looking for answers regarding the movement of any commodity, stock, etc. on a given day is pointless given the randomness of any given investment’s movements on any given day, gold’s counterintuitive action yesterday got me to musing. What if gold were to continue to trade down even if the news coming out of Europe, and points east, west, and south, were to continues to be bad but gold were to continue to trade down. What could cause such a phenomenon? Note that I am not predicting such action for gold; indeed, my holdings in GLD and kindred investments remains vastly outsized. But with a position this large in a metal so vital to reading the markets, a little musing is advisable, indeed necessary.
The obvious explanations for weakening gold in the face of circumstances that would dictate a strong market for the ancient object of kingly desire might hold in such a circumstance. The first is increasing margin requirements for gold futures contracts; indeed, it was such an increase in margin requirements that caused gold to drop in the late summer and early fall before plateauing and then resuming a slow climb the last few weeks. The second such explanation is the old investing truism that nothing climbs to the sky; gold has roughly doubled over the last three years, so it’s not surprising that it might be hesitant to continue trading up aggressively, even when it seems like it should. A third is that hedge funds and other investors sell what they can when they can’t sell what they’d like. While this is a popular theory with a degree of credence, one wonders how far it goes; for example, if people sell what they can when the defecatory product hits the wind motivation device, why don’t they liquidate their treasury positions? It would have been easy to unload those positions on a day like yesterday!
But what if there could be more at work, either now or in the future? What if people, after buying, even hording, gold in anticipation of hard times are now liquidating those gold positions, or hoards, now that hard times, at least in the eyes of a sufficient number of those hoarders, have arrived? Could it be that gold could strengthen in the run-up to hard times and then fall when those hard times commence in response to liquidation of the stockpiles of those who bought gold as insurance against the evils that have now befallen them? In other words, could things get so bad that gold starts to weaken because people have to sell it? I’m not talking about hedge funds or professional investors here; I’m talking about investors, largely individuals, who buy gold for protection. One might call them gold bugs, but that description seems somehow incomplete or insufficiently inclusive.
Again, I’m not predicting gold’s demise, but, as a holder of gold in one form or another, I think I am duty bound to think about things that might cause gold to weaken. And, as my readers know, I like to think creatively. (If I were given to the triteness that permeates modern discourse, especially modern business discourse, I would say that I like to think “outside the box,” but I am not given to such mewing drivel, so I say that I like to think creatively. But that is grist for another mill, an upcoming mill that I have been planning for awhile, and a reason to close this post, awkwardly, parenthetically.)
Gold was off yesterday, albeit only a touch, on a day when, by most conventional reckonings, it should have been skyrocketing; the news out of Italy was bad, the news out of Greece wasn’t any, if at all, better, and the equity markets were in full retreat, with the S&P down 3.67%. It would have seemed that yesterday was the perfect day to be long gold.
While looking for answers regarding the movement of any commodity, stock, etc. on a given day is pointless given the randomness of any given investment’s movements on any given day, gold’s counterintuitive action yesterday got me to musing. What if gold were to continue to trade down even if the news coming out of Europe, and points east, west, and south, were to continues to be bad but gold were to continue to trade down. What could cause such a phenomenon? Note that I am not predicting such action for gold; indeed, my holdings in GLD and kindred investments remains vastly outsized. But with a position this large in a metal so vital to reading the markets, a little musing is advisable, indeed necessary.
The obvious explanations for weakening gold in the face of circumstances that would dictate a strong market for the ancient object of kingly desire might hold in such a circumstance. The first is increasing margin requirements for gold futures contracts; indeed, it was such an increase in margin requirements that caused gold to drop in the late summer and early fall before plateauing and then resuming a slow climb the last few weeks. The second such explanation is the old investing truism that nothing climbs to the sky; gold has roughly doubled over the last three years, so it’s not surprising that it might be hesitant to continue trading up aggressively, even when it seems like it should. A third is that hedge funds and other investors sell what they can when they can’t sell what they’d like. While this is a popular theory with a degree of credence, one wonders how far it goes; for example, if people sell what they can when the defecatory product hits the wind motivation device, why don’t they liquidate their treasury positions? It would have been easy to unload those positions on a day like yesterday!
But what if there could be more at work, either now or in the future? What if people, after buying, even hording, gold in anticipation of hard times are now liquidating those gold positions, or hoards, now that hard times, at least in the eyes of a sufficient number of those hoarders, have arrived? Could it be that gold could strengthen in the run-up to hard times and then fall when those hard times commence in response to liquidation of the stockpiles of those who bought gold as insurance against the evils that have now befallen them? In other words, could things get so bad that gold starts to weaken because people have to sell it? I’m not talking about hedge funds or professional investors here; I’m talking about investors, largely individuals, who buy gold for protection. One might call them gold bugs, but that description seems somehow incomplete or insufficiently inclusive.
Again, I’m not predicting gold’s demise, but, as a holder of gold in one form or another, I think I am duty bound to think about things that might cause gold to weaken. And, as my readers know, I like to think creatively. (If I were given to the triteness that permeates modern discourse, especially modern business discourse, I would say that I like to think “outside the box,” but I am not given to such mewing drivel, so I say that I like to think creatively. But that is grist for another mill, an upcoming mill that I have been planning for awhile, and a reason to close this post, awkwardly, parenthetically.)
Sunday, November 6, 2011
“HEY, THIS IS A DANGEROUS NEIGHBORHOOD. WHAT YOU NEED IS A LITTLE PROTECTION, YOU KNOW, INSURANCE AGAINST BAD THINGS HAPPENING TO YOUR LITTLE STORE"
11/6/11
It was bad enough when Governor Pat Quinn (no relation) and his fellow travelers in the state legislature increased the state income tax on individuals and corporations (though, as I said in my 1/7/11 post YOU MEAN ALL THAT STUFF GOVERNMENT DOES TO US ISN’T FREE?!, it would have been more fiscally realistic if those who screamed so loudly about the tax hike had used a little of that enthusiasm, and volume, when the spending that ultimately necessitated at least some form of tax hike was being done with reckless, carefree abandon and perhaps had given a touch more consideration to whom they were voting for than to the latest prospects on “Dancing With the Stars,” but I digress), the workings of the fisc in the Land of Lincoln have gotten progressively worse.
Predictably, those corporations that are large enough or politically connected enough (A large area of intersection exists between these two characteristics, as you might guess.), such as Sears, the CME, Caterpillar, etc., are appealing to their friends in Springfield and, voila, getting their tax bills reduced. So we have a situation in which life is made burdensome for the typical business in Illinois, but those who play ball, especially with their checkbooks, with the pols who inflicted these burdens upon them can have their burden mysteriously lightened. It’s the old protection racket, though this time not practiced by Machine pols who control various inspection processes or by enterprising ethnic businessmen who have no compunction about applying innovative and creative means of persuasion, but, instead, by our crusading goo-goo governor and his partners in extortion in the legislature. The typical businessperson, generally apolitical and just trying to stay in business and make a living roughly commensurate with the effort and the investment he or she expends, gets stuck with the bill and suddenly learns the downside of staying apolitical in this increasingly dystopic state. The message becomes clear: play ball with the pols, especially when they expect you to express your gratitude with your checkbook, or be forced to live under the conditions they, who have not the slightest clue as to how to conduct actual, for profit business, impose upon you, the economic engine of this state.
The situation outlined in the last paragraph would be bad enough, but it gets worse. It seems that, according the Chicago Sun-Times (Saturday, 11/5/11, page 9), the governor and the “four legislative leaders,” a description that presumably includes the two GOP leaders, “have settled on a framework” to finance the tax reductions for the likes of the CME and Sears. The framework involves decoupling the federal method of expensing equipment purchases for tax purposes from the state method of expensing such purchases for tax purposes. Currently, federal law allows certain companies to immediately expense the purchase of long lived equipment and the state of Illinois, in the interest of simplicity, allows those same companies to treat the expensing of equipment in the same way. But under the “framework” that the thugs in Springfield are going to put before the rank and file legislators, the state will require equipment purchases to be depreciated; i.e., charged against income at (hopefully) decreasing rates over a number of years. This seemingly arcane change in the state tax code will cost Illinois businesses $570 million. This is in addition to the additional spondulicks the increase in the state tax rate will require them to hand over to Governor Quinn (no relation) and his henchmen. (There is always the question of who the super-villain is here and who are the henchmen, but, for purposes of this post, we’ll go with Quinn being the arch-villain and the legislators being the henchmen. This does not reflect the reality of the way things are done here, but it does reflect the relative degrees of enthusiasm, in most cases, for taxing the businesses of Illinois. But I digress.)
So now we have the typical Illinois businessman forced to pay a higher income tax rate while large and politically connected businesses get at least something of a pass. In addition, the typical Illinois businessperson will be forced, by means of a $570 million tax increase, to pay for the pass given those large and influential businessmen. This can’t be right, can it? Perhaps the article I am citing does not have it right, because this “framework” seems akin to the practice of various totalitarian governments throughout history of having the families of those executed pay for the bullets (or gas, rope, or electricity) used in political executions and/or clean the area in which their family members were beaten and tortured of blood, body matter, and other detritus of the dictatorships’ cruel methods of enforcing adherence to their view of the world.
Note further that, if the Sun-Times article is correct, the ostensibly free market and/or pro-business GOP leadership is going along with this exercise in political coercion and enlightening benighted businessmen to the virtues of making sure that the pols enjoy a healthy portion of the fruits of their hard work. While the grassroots GOPer may mean it when he or she says she believes in free markets, the GOP leadership in this state, and in much of the country, is just another flavor of busybody, know-it-all politico.
While I am sure there are people out there who love this state and living in this state more than I do, there aren’t many of them. But even I am starting to wonder why anyone, at least anyone who manages and/or owns a business, continues to live in the Land of Lincoln.
It was bad enough when Governor Pat Quinn (no relation) and his fellow travelers in the state legislature increased the state income tax on individuals and corporations (though, as I said in my 1/7/11 post YOU MEAN ALL THAT STUFF GOVERNMENT DOES TO US ISN’T FREE?!, it would have been more fiscally realistic if those who screamed so loudly about the tax hike had used a little of that enthusiasm, and volume, when the spending that ultimately necessitated at least some form of tax hike was being done with reckless, carefree abandon and perhaps had given a touch more consideration to whom they were voting for than to the latest prospects on “Dancing With the Stars,” but I digress), the workings of the fisc in the Land of Lincoln have gotten progressively worse.
Predictably, those corporations that are large enough or politically connected enough (A large area of intersection exists between these two characteristics, as you might guess.), such as Sears, the CME, Caterpillar, etc., are appealing to their friends in Springfield and, voila, getting their tax bills reduced. So we have a situation in which life is made burdensome for the typical business in Illinois, but those who play ball, especially with their checkbooks, with the pols who inflicted these burdens upon them can have their burden mysteriously lightened. It’s the old protection racket, though this time not practiced by Machine pols who control various inspection processes or by enterprising ethnic businessmen who have no compunction about applying innovative and creative means of persuasion, but, instead, by our crusading goo-goo governor and his partners in extortion in the legislature. The typical businessperson, generally apolitical and just trying to stay in business and make a living roughly commensurate with the effort and the investment he or she expends, gets stuck with the bill and suddenly learns the downside of staying apolitical in this increasingly dystopic state. The message becomes clear: play ball with the pols, especially when they expect you to express your gratitude with your checkbook, or be forced to live under the conditions they, who have not the slightest clue as to how to conduct actual, for profit business, impose upon you, the economic engine of this state.
The situation outlined in the last paragraph would be bad enough, but it gets worse. It seems that, according the Chicago Sun-Times (Saturday, 11/5/11, page 9), the governor and the “four legislative leaders,” a description that presumably includes the two GOP leaders, “have settled on a framework” to finance the tax reductions for the likes of the CME and Sears. The framework involves decoupling the federal method of expensing equipment purchases for tax purposes from the state method of expensing such purchases for tax purposes. Currently, federal law allows certain companies to immediately expense the purchase of long lived equipment and the state of Illinois, in the interest of simplicity, allows those same companies to treat the expensing of equipment in the same way. But under the “framework” that the thugs in Springfield are going to put before the rank and file legislators, the state will require equipment purchases to be depreciated; i.e., charged against income at (hopefully) decreasing rates over a number of years. This seemingly arcane change in the state tax code will cost Illinois businesses $570 million. This is in addition to the additional spondulicks the increase in the state tax rate will require them to hand over to Governor Quinn (no relation) and his henchmen. (There is always the question of who the super-villain is here and who are the henchmen, but, for purposes of this post, we’ll go with Quinn being the arch-villain and the legislators being the henchmen. This does not reflect the reality of the way things are done here, but it does reflect the relative degrees of enthusiasm, in most cases, for taxing the businesses of Illinois. But I digress.)
So now we have the typical Illinois businessman forced to pay a higher income tax rate while large and politically connected businesses get at least something of a pass. In addition, the typical Illinois businessperson will be forced, by means of a $570 million tax increase, to pay for the pass given those large and influential businessmen. This can’t be right, can it? Perhaps the article I am citing does not have it right, because this “framework” seems akin to the practice of various totalitarian governments throughout history of having the families of those executed pay for the bullets (or gas, rope, or electricity) used in political executions and/or clean the area in which their family members were beaten and tortured of blood, body matter, and other detritus of the dictatorships’ cruel methods of enforcing adherence to their view of the world.
Note further that, if the Sun-Times article is correct, the ostensibly free market and/or pro-business GOP leadership is going along with this exercise in political coercion and enlightening benighted businessmen to the virtues of making sure that the pols enjoy a healthy portion of the fruits of their hard work. While the grassroots GOPer may mean it when he or she says she believes in free markets, the GOP leadership in this state, and in much of the country, is just another flavor of busybody, know-it-all politico.
While I am sure there are people out there who love this state and living in this state more than I do, there aren’t many of them. But even I am starting to wonder why anyone, at least anyone who manages and/or owns a business, continues to live in the Land of Lincoln.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
HE DIDN’T LEARN THIS IN DAVID KINLEY HALL
11/1/11
The Jon Corzine/MF Global situation (Some quarters of the media are, predictably, referring to this misstep as a “crisis.” As I have written ad nauseam in the past, everything in our softened society is a crisis nowadays. More sober observers, like yours truly, contend that, in my lifetime, there has been only one genuine crisis, the Cuban Missile Crisis, or perhaps two, the OAPEC Oil Crisis of 1974, and I’m not even sure that either of those two constituted a genuine crisis. But our modern, enlightened society, obsessed with overestimating its rapidly declining toughness and resilience, insists on calling every inconvenience a “crisis.” But I digress.) is fraught with irony.
The first of these ironies is that Jon Corzine is, according to reports, due to get a $12 million severance check (One wonders, however, how the bankruptcy courts will handle this.) despite his destroying the MF Global investing five times his employer’s capital in European sovereign debt. Yes, this investment bankrupted the firm, but it was worse than that. In an environment in which the regulators are demanding that banks lay off risk and in which banks, even if they are able to put on additional risk in a generic sense are not eager to increase their exposure to European sovereign risk, Mr. Corzine’s actions made a purchase of the company, as part of some kind of rescue, difficult nearly to the point of impossibility. So Mr. Corzine sort of brought the company to the brink of death and then made it virtually impossible for someone to save its life. Yet he gets $12 million, if the bankruptcy courts allow such a payment. It must be nice to be in the club.
The second of these ironies is that in MF Global’s investment grade rated bond issue of early August of this year, one of the covenants stated that if Jon Corzine were to leave the firm, the coupon on the bond would have to go up to compensate bondholders for the loss of Mr. Corzine’s services.
Hmm…
The next time you make the assumption that the rating agencies or the smooth talking investment professionals asking to manage your money have the slightest clue as to what they are doing, remember the manifest wisdom of both of the aforementioned parties in the MF Global deal.
The largest of these ironies, however, is that Jon Corzine’s call on European debt was ultimately correct. Note that former governor, former senator, former Goldman co-CEO, and University of Illinois graduate Jon Corzine was certain, given his background and contacts, that he was right in his assumption that “Europe wouldn’t let these countries go down.” In the Eurodeal that the media and the aforementioned investment professionals were slobbering over last week (See my instantly seminal 10/28/11 piece, GERMANS BEARING GIFTS…AGAIN), the Germans and the French (i.e., Europe, for these intents and purposes), made it perfectly clear that no country in Europe, no matter how profligate it chose to become, would be allowed to, as Mr. Corzine put it, “go down,” except for Greece, and even Greece would be allowed to “go down” in only a limited sense. Note further that MF Global, under Mr. Corzine’s tutelage, had no direct Greek exposure; Mr. Corzine bought the paper of Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and Belgium. The whole point of the deal concocted last week was to assure everyone that those countries would not go down if “Europe” had anything to say about it.
This is not to say that Mr. Corzine made a good trade; he made an awful trade. His timing was bad, he apparently bought at prices that reflected a more sanguine view of either the beneficence of the Germans or the fiscal health of the aforementioned countries, and, with spreads between bunds and Italian 10 years at 450 basis points, most people apparently haven’t caught on to the notion that the sick men in Europe are golden as long as Uncles Wolfgang and Francois are around. Further, Mr. Corzine had no business committing an amount equaling five times MF’s capital to his trades. His execution was lousy, terrible, awful, malodorous, wretched, and maladroit, probably the result of Mr. Corzine’s not having actually traded in about twenty years. But the ultimate basis of the trade, i.e., that the German and the French political elites are sufficiently foolish (my word, not Mr. Corzine’s) to allow their European brethren to continue to party on the German and French dime, was, and is, correct.
The Jon Corzine/MF Global situation (Some quarters of the media are, predictably, referring to this misstep as a “crisis.” As I have written ad nauseam in the past, everything in our softened society is a crisis nowadays. More sober observers, like yours truly, contend that, in my lifetime, there has been only one genuine crisis, the Cuban Missile Crisis, or perhaps two, the OAPEC Oil Crisis of 1974, and I’m not even sure that either of those two constituted a genuine crisis. But our modern, enlightened society, obsessed with overestimating its rapidly declining toughness and resilience, insists on calling every inconvenience a “crisis.” But I digress.) is fraught with irony.
The first of these ironies is that Jon Corzine is, according to reports, due to get a $12 million severance check (One wonders, however, how the bankruptcy courts will handle this.) despite his destroying the MF Global investing five times his employer’s capital in European sovereign debt. Yes, this investment bankrupted the firm, but it was worse than that. In an environment in which the regulators are demanding that banks lay off risk and in which banks, even if they are able to put on additional risk in a generic sense are not eager to increase their exposure to European sovereign risk, Mr. Corzine’s actions made a purchase of the company, as part of some kind of rescue, difficult nearly to the point of impossibility. So Mr. Corzine sort of brought the company to the brink of death and then made it virtually impossible for someone to save its life. Yet he gets $12 million, if the bankruptcy courts allow such a payment. It must be nice to be in the club.
The second of these ironies is that in MF Global’s investment grade rated bond issue of early August of this year, one of the covenants stated that if Jon Corzine were to leave the firm, the coupon on the bond would have to go up to compensate bondholders for the loss of Mr. Corzine’s services.
Hmm…
The next time you make the assumption that the rating agencies or the smooth talking investment professionals asking to manage your money have the slightest clue as to what they are doing, remember the manifest wisdom of both of the aforementioned parties in the MF Global deal.
The largest of these ironies, however, is that Jon Corzine’s call on European debt was ultimately correct. Note that former governor, former senator, former Goldman co-CEO, and University of Illinois graduate Jon Corzine was certain, given his background and contacts, that he was right in his assumption that “Europe wouldn’t let these countries go down.” In the Eurodeal that the media and the aforementioned investment professionals were slobbering over last week (See my instantly seminal 10/28/11 piece, GERMANS BEARING GIFTS…AGAIN), the Germans and the French (i.e., Europe, for these intents and purposes), made it perfectly clear that no country in Europe, no matter how profligate it chose to become, would be allowed to, as Mr. Corzine put it, “go down,” except for Greece, and even Greece would be allowed to “go down” in only a limited sense. Note further that MF Global, under Mr. Corzine’s tutelage, had no direct Greek exposure; Mr. Corzine bought the paper of Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and Belgium. The whole point of the deal concocted last week was to assure everyone that those countries would not go down if “Europe” had anything to say about it.
This is not to say that Mr. Corzine made a good trade; he made an awful trade. His timing was bad, he apparently bought at prices that reflected a more sanguine view of either the beneficence of the Germans or the fiscal health of the aforementioned countries, and, with spreads between bunds and Italian 10 years at 450 basis points, most people apparently haven’t caught on to the notion that the sick men in Europe are golden as long as Uncles Wolfgang and Francois are around. Further, Mr. Corzine had no business committing an amount equaling five times MF’s capital to his trades. His execution was lousy, terrible, awful, malodorous, wretched, and maladroit, probably the result of Mr. Corzine’s not having actually traded in about twenty years. But the ultimate basis of the trade, i.e., that the German and the French political elites are sufficiently foolish (my word, not Mr. Corzine’s) to allow their European brethren to continue to party on the German and French dime, was, and is, correct.
Friday, October 28, 2011
GERMANS BEARING GIFTS…AGAIN
10/28/11
The problems with the “big plan” to put to rest fears of a European financial collapse are myriad, and I feel to compelled to list at least few before I get to the meat of this post:.
--The plan to expand the EFSF (which does not stand for European Fops Still Fiddling, but, rather, the European Financial Stability Facility) does not expand the EFSF at all. Instead, it effectively levers the EFSF through extending guarantees on 20% of certain debts of troubled Eurogovernments and/or taking the first losses on a larger Special Purpose Vehicle (“SPV”) to be funded by the usual suspects: the sovereign wealth funds and/or other public or quasi-public institutions of China, Brazil, India, Japan, and other countries where people still engage in the quaint practice of saving money.
Hmm….
Isn’t it leverage that got the Europeans, and us, into so much trouble in the first place? Further, a 20% guarantee doesn’t go far in the event of a sovereign default; such “credit events” are all-or-nothing, usually all, proposition. And the EFSF will be fighting with the creditors it supposedly will be saving for the remaining collateral when it attempts to collect from the sovereign defaulters the spondulicks it extended to those same rescuees. Finally, the participants in the SPV have not agreed to anything yet, and, if they do, one has to assume that their motivation, in the cases of at least some of the participants, would be at least as political as it would be financial. Is Europe selling itself into serfdom?
Other than the above, the “expansion” of the EFSF sounds like just a terrific plan.
--There appears to be nothing voluntary about the “voluntary” 50% haircut Greek creditors are expected to take. That would be fine, since those who make bad loans should suffer the consequences; however, calling such haircuts “voluntary” forecloses the holders of credit default swaps (“CDS”s) from collecting on those swaps and thus spares the writers of such insurance from having to pay up on the bad bets they made on the solvency of Greece. (See, inter alia, my 6/8/11 piece, A TRAGEDY WORTHY OF AESCHYLUS.) This throws into question the whole concept of a CDS and the viability of the entire CDS market, certainly for sovereign bonds and maybe for any bonds. A severely impaired CDS market will make it harder for sovereigns, or perhaps for anybody, to borrow money.
Further, the 50% haircut will bring Greece’s debt to GDP ratio to 120% by 2020 (2020!), which is better than the 163% that it would have reached had nothing been done. This is mostly because 40% of Greek debt is held by public and quasi-public institutions, which will be taking no haircut, but partially because Greece has to borrow 30 billion euros from the EFSF to finance guarantees of the new bonds issued to those who “agree” to take the 50% haircut, which seems curiously circular. At any rate, Greece probably cannot sustain debt levels of 120% of GDP, and won’t even get there for eight years or so. Another default thus looms.
--The proposed recapitalization of the Eurobanks is turning out to be a non-event. A 9% Tier 1 capital ratio, at least as interpreted by this deal, will require most of the banks to perhaps reduce a few dividends (or maybe just postpone a few dividend increases), cut a few bonuses (perhaps the point of the exercise), and adjust a few bad loans provisions. Will this be enough? One supposes so if the Eurogovernments and Eurocrats insist on riding to the rescue every time these financial Olympians make another of their series of boneheaded decisions.
Nothing I have said so far is new; you’ve probably read of the above deficiencies of the plan. What caught my eye, however, were two quotes from two Euroestimables that perfectly sum up the problem with the “grand plan.” The first is from Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou:
“Tens of billions of euros have been lifted from the backs of the Greek people. The banks, rather than the citizens, will pay that cost. It is a more just distribution of the burden of our debt.”
Is it just me, or is Mr. Papandreou gloating over the perception that he has just pulled something over on everyone, that he has made his creditors suffer (justifiably; you will find no arguments from yours truly over making people pay for their mistakes, but it seems like in this deal the Eurotaxpayers, rather than the banks, will ultimately pick up much of the tab), and done so as a matter of some skewed perception of economic justice? The implied message is that the party is not over; Greece can continue to party on someone else’s dime, as it has since the founding of the modern Greek state after World War I.
The second quote comes from Bundesbank president Bundesbank President Jens Weidman:
“There can’t be any impression that the haircut or public aid from partner countries is a comfortable way out of self-inflicted problems.”
The problem is not so much that these two estimables are saying two different things. The problem is that Mr. Papandreou is correct; the Greeks have escaped a bullet courtesy of the German, Finnish, Czech, French, etc. taxpayers. Mr. Weidman, who is no fool, is lying to himself. This bailout, even if it works, is indeed a comfortable way out of self-inflicted problems. So it follows, as does the night the day, that we will witness more self-inflicted problems, and not only in Greece.
The problems with the “big plan” to put to rest fears of a European financial collapse are myriad, and I feel to compelled to list at least few before I get to the meat of this post:.
--The plan to expand the EFSF (which does not stand for European Fops Still Fiddling, but, rather, the European Financial Stability Facility) does not expand the EFSF at all. Instead, it effectively levers the EFSF through extending guarantees on 20% of certain debts of troubled Eurogovernments and/or taking the first losses on a larger Special Purpose Vehicle (“SPV”) to be funded by the usual suspects: the sovereign wealth funds and/or other public or quasi-public institutions of China, Brazil, India, Japan, and other countries where people still engage in the quaint practice of saving money.
Hmm….
Isn’t it leverage that got the Europeans, and us, into so much trouble in the first place? Further, a 20% guarantee doesn’t go far in the event of a sovereign default; such “credit events” are all-or-nothing, usually all, proposition. And the EFSF will be fighting with the creditors it supposedly will be saving for the remaining collateral when it attempts to collect from the sovereign defaulters the spondulicks it extended to those same rescuees. Finally, the participants in the SPV have not agreed to anything yet, and, if they do, one has to assume that their motivation, in the cases of at least some of the participants, would be at least as political as it would be financial. Is Europe selling itself into serfdom?
Other than the above, the “expansion” of the EFSF sounds like just a terrific plan.
--There appears to be nothing voluntary about the “voluntary” 50% haircut Greek creditors are expected to take. That would be fine, since those who make bad loans should suffer the consequences; however, calling such haircuts “voluntary” forecloses the holders of credit default swaps (“CDS”s) from collecting on those swaps and thus spares the writers of such insurance from having to pay up on the bad bets they made on the solvency of Greece. (See, inter alia, my 6/8/11 piece, A TRAGEDY WORTHY OF AESCHYLUS.) This throws into question the whole concept of a CDS and the viability of the entire CDS market, certainly for sovereign bonds and maybe for any bonds. A severely impaired CDS market will make it harder for sovereigns, or perhaps for anybody, to borrow money.
Further, the 50% haircut will bring Greece’s debt to GDP ratio to 120% by 2020 (2020!), which is better than the 163% that it would have reached had nothing been done. This is mostly because 40% of Greek debt is held by public and quasi-public institutions, which will be taking no haircut, but partially because Greece has to borrow 30 billion euros from the EFSF to finance guarantees of the new bonds issued to those who “agree” to take the 50% haircut, which seems curiously circular. At any rate, Greece probably cannot sustain debt levels of 120% of GDP, and won’t even get there for eight years or so. Another default thus looms.
--The proposed recapitalization of the Eurobanks is turning out to be a non-event. A 9% Tier 1 capital ratio, at least as interpreted by this deal, will require most of the banks to perhaps reduce a few dividends (or maybe just postpone a few dividend increases), cut a few bonuses (perhaps the point of the exercise), and adjust a few bad loans provisions. Will this be enough? One supposes so if the Eurogovernments and Eurocrats insist on riding to the rescue every time these financial Olympians make another of their series of boneheaded decisions.
Nothing I have said so far is new; you’ve probably read of the above deficiencies of the plan. What caught my eye, however, were two quotes from two Euroestimables that perfectly sum up the problem with the “grand plan.” The first is from Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou:
“Tens of billions of euros have been lifted from the backs of the Greek people. The banks, rather than the citizens, will pay that cost. It is a more just distribution of the burden of our debt.”
Is it just me, or is Mr. Papandreou gloating over the perception that he has just pulled something over on everyone, that he has made his creditors suffer (justifiably; you will find no arguments from yours truly over making people pay for their mistakes, but it seems like in this deal the Eurotaxpayers, rather than the banks, will ultimately pick up much of the tab), and done so as a matter of some skewed perception of economic justice? The implied message is that the party is not over; Greece can continue to party on someone else’s dime, as it has since the founding of the modern Greek state after World War I.
The second quote comes from Bundesbank president Bundesbank President Jens Weidman:
“There can’t be any impression that the haircut or public aid from partner countries is a comfortable way out of self-inflicted problems.”
The problem is not so much that these two estimables are saying two different things. The problem is that Mr. Papandreou is correct; the Greeks have escaped a bullet courtesy of the German, Finnish, Czech, French, etc. taxpayers. Mr. Weidman, who is no fool, is lying to himself. This bailout, even if it works, is indeed a comfortable way out of self-inflicted problems. So it follows, as does the night the day, that we will witness more self-inflicted problems, and not only in Greece.
YOURS TRULY’S APPEARANCE ON “WOMEN ON THE MOVE”
10/28/11
Wednesday night (i.e., 10/26/11) I appeared on “The Round Table,” an internet program that is one of the projects of Women on the Move, an organization run by my friend Leslie Harris. Other than my, for some odd reason, stating that the tenure of Richard M. Daley’s mayoralty was from 1989 to 2007 (or maybe I said 2009 or 2006; in any case, I did not, in one of my most salient brain cramps, say 2011), it was a great show in which we discussed the connections between Chicago politics and national politics. (The show is a national one, with my co-participants being stationed in south Florida, Washington, D.C., and Chicago.) The link to the show is
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/women-on-the-move/2011/10/26/women-on-the-move-presents-the-round-table
The program lasted an hour and a half, but you can listen to it in segments if you are so inclined.
Thanks.
Wednesday night (i.e., 10/26/11) I appeared on “The Round Table,” an internet program that is one of the projects of Women on the Move, an organization run by my friend Leslie Harris. Other than my, for some odd reason, stating that the tenure of Richard M. Daley’s mayoralty was from 1989 to 2007 (or maybe I said 2009 or 2006; in any case, I did not, in one of my most salient brain cramps, say 2011), it was a great show in which we discussed the connections between Chicago politics and national politics. (The show is a national one, with my co-participants being stationed in south Florida, Washington, D.C., and Chicago.) The link to the show is
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/women-on-the-move/2011/10/26/women-on-the-move-presents-the-round-table
The program lasted an hour and a half, but you can listen to it in segments if you are so inclined.
Thanks.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
"I’M GOIN’ TO (MICHIGAN) CITY, (MICHIGAN) CITY HERE I COME…"
10/27/11
I will be on Brian Brophy’s program on WIMS, AM 1420, Michigan City on Thursday, 10/27 just after the 8:00 PM (Chicago time) national news.
http://www.wimsradio.com/
We’ll be discussing national politics, Chicago politics and the latest attempt by Hollywood to portray the way things are done in the world’s greatest city, the Starz series “Boss.” See my 10/21/11 post …AND MAYBE THEY COULD HAVE COME UP WITH A MORE ORIGINAL NAME, TOO.
Thanks; I hope you can join us.
I will be on Brian Brophy’s program on WIMS, AM 1420, Michigan City on Thursday, 10/27 just after the 8:00 PM (Chicago time) national news.
http://www.wimsradio.com/
We’ll be discussing national politics, Chicago politics and the latest attempt by Hollywood to portray the way things are done in the world’s greatest city, the Starz series “Boss.” See my 10/21/11 post …AND MAYBE THEY COULD HAVE COME UP WITH A MORE ORIGINAL NAME, TOO.
Thanks; I hope you can join us.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
JUST GIVE MY CHECK TO THE GUY OUT THERE STARING THROUGH THE WINDOW AT THE REMAINS OF THAT SUMPTUOUS MEAL I JUST FINISHED
10/26/11
Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that European banks are negotiating with “euro-zone officials” over the size of the hit those banks will have to take on their Greek debt. So we are confronted with a situation in which those who are being bailed out are arguing with those who will bail them out over the size of the largesse of the latter. The financial sophisticates who run these banks are essentially saying that they don’t want to take too large a hit as a consequence of their very poor investment decisions; instead, they want the taxpayers to take the hit for them. No talk about any of those bankers suffering any consequences for those decisions that will ultimately put shareholders, but more saliently taxpayers, at risk. No, sir. These guys are smart, even when they make bad decisions, like loading up on the debt of a country that has been nearly transparently bankrupt for years, if not decades, and therefore deserve not only their jaw dropping compensation packages but also to have the hoi-polloi European taxpayers clean up the messes these masters of the universe leave after uttering the word “Whoops.”
The strange thing is that this utterly nonsensical set of circumstances was arrived at following a series of utterly logical steps, at least steps taken since those banks loaded up on the toxic assets that are somehow necessitating a bailout. The bankers know that if they take too big a hit on Greek debt, they will become at least regulatorily, if that is a word, and maybe actually insolvent. If that happens, the danger to the world financial system, of which these institutions are a lynchpin, will be sufficiently immediate and large that European (and, who knows, perhaps American and Asian) taxpayers will have to bail them out. So the taxpayers have been put in a position in a “pay me now or pay me later,” in which the “pay me later” option will, presumably, be far more expensive than the “pay me now” option. The banks have the taxpayers by the short hairs, and the banks know it.
The average person looks at this situation, sees its utter insanity, and thinks something like “Gee, it must be nice to be put in a position from which you can whine to those who are giving you a handout that the handout isn’t big enough, and do so with the desired results.” Yet, given the current rules, or lack thereof, of the world financial system, this is the rabbit hole into which we have fallen.
Unless…
Couldn’t we go back to a receivership situation, following something like the template that prevailed when we on these shores had to rescue the depositors in the S&Ls whose all-wise, all knowing executives bet recklessly, in some cases criminally, on grossly inflated real estate and junk bonds of questionable, in some cases fraudulent, credit quality? The government simply took over the banks, paid off the depositors, and sold off what assets they could. The animal spirits took over and the damage was limited to the point of being forgotten in a few years.
Yes, we are talking about institutions of a vastly different magnitude here. And we are no longer dealing only with satisfying the claims of depositors but also those of a myriad of counterparties. But something like the S&L model has to be put in place in order to make sure, or at least make a little more probable, that those who put the world financial system in such a state, and the shareholders and bondholders that looked the other way while they did so, suffer some of the consequences. Depositors could be paid and some counterparties could be made whole while others would also have to pay the piper. The system would stay up and running, and perhaps people will be more wary of excessive risk in the future.
We have to do something to make sure that it is made absolutely clear that the current system of socialized risks and privatized rewards no longer prevails. If not, we will continue to be confronted with situations in which the overly compensated and overrated miscreants can, with a straight face, demand that those whom they, in most circumstance, deem unworthy even of existence, pay for the mistakes of those who are certain that they have everything figured out. Such a situation is not only unjust but also will surely break us financially if allowed to continue.
Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that European banks are negotiating with “euro-zone officials” over the size of the hit those banks will have to take on their Greek debt. So we are confronted with a situation in which those who are being bailed out are arguing with those who will bail them out over the size of the largesse of the latter. The financial sophisticates who run these banks are essentially saying that they don’t want to take too large a hit as a consequence of their very poor investment decisions; instead, they want the taxpayers to take the hit for them. No talk about any of those bankers suffering any consequences for those decisions that will ultimately put shareholders, but more saliently taxpayers, at risk. No, sir. These guys are smart, even when they make bad decisions, like loading up on the debt of a country that has been nearly transparently bankrupt for years, if not decades, and therefore deserve not only their jaw dropping compensation packages but also to have the hoi-polloi European taxpayers clean up the messes these masters of the universe leave after uttering the word “Whoops.”
The strange thing is that this utterly nonsensical set of circumstances was arrived at following a series of utterly logical steps, at least steps taken since those banks loaded up on the toxic assets that are somehow necessitating a bailout. The bankers know that if they take too big a hit on Greek debt, they will become at least regulatorily, if that is a word, and maybe actually insolvent. If that happens, the danger to the world financial system, of which these institutions are a lynchpin, will be sufficiently immediate and large that European (and, who knows, perhaps American and Asian) taxpayers will have to bail them out. So the taxpayers have been put in a position in a “pay me now or pay me later,” in which the “pay me later” option will, presumably, be far more expensive than the “pay me now” option. The banks have the taxpayers by the short hairs, and the banks know it.
The average person looks at this situation, sees its utter insanity, and thinks something like “Gee, it must be nice to be put in a position from which you can whine to those who are giving you a handout that the handout isn’t big enough, and do so with the desired results.” Yet, given the current rules, or lack thereof, of the world financial system, this is the rabbit hole into which we have fallen.
Unless…
Couldn’t we go back to a receivership situation, following something like the template that prevailed when we on these shores had to rescue the depositors in the S&Ls whose all-wise, all knowing executives bet recklessly, in some cases criminally, on grossly inflated real estate and junk bonds of questionable, in some cases fraudulent, credit quality? The government simply took over the banks, paid off the depositors, and sold off what assets they could. The animal spirits took over and the damage was limited to the point of being forgotten in a few years.
Yes, we are talking about institutions of a vastly different magnitude here. And we are no longer dealing only with satisfying the claims of depositors but also those of a myriad of counterparties. But something like the S&L model has to be put in place in order to make sure, or at least make a little more probable, that those who put the world financial system in such a state, and the shareholders and bondholders that looked the other way while they did so, suffer some of the consequences. Depositors could be paid and some counterparties could be made whole while others would also have to pay the piper. The system would stay up and running, and perhaps people will be more wary of excessive risk in the future.
We have to do something to make sure that it is made absolutely clear that the current system of socialized risks and privatized rewards no longer prevails. If not, we will continue to be confronted with situations in which the overly compensated and overrated miscreants can, with a straight face, demand that those whom they, in most circumstance, deem unworthy even of existence, pay for the mistakes of those who are certain that they have everything figured out. Such a situation is not only unjust but also will surely break us financially if allowed to continue.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
MORE FINANCIAL HAIR OF THE DOG
10/25/11
Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal featured a page A1 story about the latest scheme concocted by the Bush/Obama administration to somehow revivify our moribund economy by facilitating refinancing of severely underwater mortgages. This latest brainstorm involves, essentially, expanding the existing HARP program to borrowers whose mortgage loans exceed the previous HARP limit of 125% of the value of the home that serves as collateral. Under this newest piece of Washington sleight-of-hand, banks will be able to refinance people, without fear that Fannie and Freddie will force those lenders to buy back the loans due to underwriting flaws, whose home loans exceed 125% of their home value if those borrowers can prove they have a job or an adequate source of passive income and that they have made their last six mortgage payment. One of the on time but upside down borrowers who stands to benefit from this program is quoted in the Journal as describing the program as a “win-win.” But this program, like most things that the Bush/Obama administration and other Washington denizens have come up with to “solve” our economic problems, is more like a “lose-lose.”
One of the problems with these easy refinancing programs was cited by Professor Anthony Sanders of George Mason University, who is quoted in the Journal article as saying
“Somebody’s going to get hit. This isn’t a free good.”
What Dr. Sanders was arguing was a point I brought up in my 9/6/11 piece “EXCUSE ME, SANDY, BUT IF I KILL ALL THE GOLFERS, THEY’RE GONNA LOCK ME UP AND THROW AWAY THE KEY”, i.e., that there is another side to this trade, the holders of the mortgage loans, that will lose from early refinancing of their asset that is paying an above market interest rate. But as the Journal reported,
“That doesn’t faze (one of the beneficiaries of such a program). ‘We’ve certainly done enough to prop the banks up. These are loans that everyone knew could prepay.’”
There are at least two things wrong with that statement. First, while it is certainly fashionable, and in some (but not nearly as many as is popularly believed) cases justifiable, to bash the banks, as I said in the aforementioned 9/6/11 piece,
One must have to assume that the mortgages are held by those evil banks to think that refinancing will be the elixir that its proponents would have us believe it will be. But the despicable banks’ holding the lion’s share of this paper is highly unlikely; these mortgages have been packaged into mortgage backed securities (“MBS”s) that serve as the collateral for collateralized mortgage obligations (“CMO”s). These CMOs are held by a whole range of investors either directly or, more likely, indirectly through mutual funds, pension funds, hedge funds, or any number of investment vehicles more or less widely available to individual and institutional investors. When the mortgages are refinanced, these investors must accept even lower yields on their investments. These are people who spend money, or invest money, too; will not their reduced incomes have an impact on the economy?
Second, “everyone knew” these loans could prepay? Well, then, why didn’t they? If “everyone knew,” and, presumably, still knows, that these loans could prepay, why are the taxpayers being asked to subsidize refinancing? But this is something of a digression. The major point is that, like any other trade, a refinancing involves two parties; one wins, another loses. This is true even if one does not like the party that loses, but, in this case, the party that loses may be at least as meritorious, financially, economically, and ethically, as the party that wins. This is not a win-win trade.
Besides the holders’ of the mortgage paper being, er, disadvantaged courtesy of the taxpayers, there is another problem with this particular easy refinancing scheme. While the current standard Republican wisdom that the financial “crisis” from which we are supposedly emerging was the exclusive fault of government intervention in the mortgage markets is overstated and self-serving, such intervention was without a doubt one of the causes of the financial problems our nation, and the world, experienced. In the interest of promoting “putting people into their own homes,” a cause for which George W. Bush was at least as dewy-eyed and sweat browed as Barney Frank, Fannie and Freddie, along with other organs of the government, put the taxpayer on the hook for some very questionable loans. (Yes, I know that Fannie and Freddie were not technically organs of the government and that their guarantees were not guarantees of the U.S. Treasury. How did it turn out, though? That’s right; the implicit guarantee turned out to be quite explicit and the taxpayers were left holding the bag for the Bush/Frank experiment in social engineering.) This was a part, but only part, of the problem.
So what does the Bush/Obama administration propose as a solution to a problem that had part of its genesis in the government guaranteeing shaky loans? Having the government guarantee more shaky loans. One might argue these won’t be shaky loans, but it’s hard to argue that having a job and making one’s mortgage payments for the last six months makes one a stellar borrower. Furthermore, one of the reasons mortgage loans are the most advantageous loans the typical borrower will find in his lifetime, besides the government’s long history of putting its thumb on the scale in favor of "home ownership," is that such loans, properly underwritten, provide the lender with plenty of security, in the form of its mortgage on the underlying property, in the event something goes wrong. The loan, underwritten properly, is well secured. But under the latest Bush/Obama scheme, these loans will not be well secured; the collateral will be worth less, in some cases, far less, than the loan. When I was first being trained in banking, we were forbidden from calling such poorly collateralized loans “secured.” We called them “supported.” But that was a long time ago at a bank (the old National Bank of Detroit) that had a reputation for carefully looking out for the interests of its depositors and shareholders. Such quaint notions are increasingly non-existent now that the sophisticates have taken over the world of finance. But I digress. I don’t know if such terminology is in place in today’s brave new financial world, but, if it were, we would call such loans not “secured,” but “supported,” if indeed we could give them that much credit.
The Bush/Obama administration’s attempting to solve a problem partially born of the government backing lousy loans by having the government back more lousy loans is not at all unusual. In the wake of this crisis, caused not so much by a collapse in housing as by too much spending and too much debt, the braintrusts in both Washington and on Wall Street, broadly defined, have counseled solving the problem by, you guessed it, encouraging people to spend and borrow more. Such is that state of financial, economic, and political thinking today.
Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal featured a page A1 story about the latest scheme concocted by the Bush/Obama administration to somehow revivify our moribund economy by facilitating refinancing of severely underwater mortgages. This latest brainstorm involves, essentially, expanding the existing HARP program to borrowers whose mortgage loans exceed the previous HARP limit of 125% of the value of the home that serves as collateral. Under this newest piece of Washington sleight-of-hand, banks will be able to refinance people, without fear that Fannie and Freddie will force those lenders to buy back the loans due to underwriting flaws, whose home loans exceed 125% of their home value if those borrowers can prove they have a job or an adequate source of passive income and that they have made their last six mortgage payment. One of the on time but upside down borrowers who stands to benefit from this program is quoted in the Journal as describing the program as a “win-win.” But this program, like most things that the Bush/Obama administration and other Washington denizens have come up with to “solve” our economic problems, is more like a “lose-lose.”
One of the problems with these easy refinancing programs was cited by Professor Anthony Sanders of George Mason University, who is quoted in the Journal article as saying
“Somebody’s going to get hit. This isn’t a free good.”
What Dr. Sanders was arguing was a point I brought up in my 9/6/11 piece “EXCUSE ME, SANDY, BUT IF I KILL ALL THE GOLFERS, THEY’RE GONNA LOCK ME UP AND THROW AWAY THE KEY”, i.e., that there is another side to this trade, the holders of the mortgage loans, that will lose from early refinancing of their asset that is paying an above market interest rate. But as the Journal reported,
“That doesn’t faze (one of the beneficiaries of such a program). ‘We’ve certainly done enough to prop the banks up. These are loans that everyone knew could prepay.’”
There are at least two things wrong with that statement. First, while it is certainly fashionable, and in some (but not nearly as many as is popularly believed) cases justifiable, to bash the banks, as I said in the aforementioned 9/6/11 piece,
One must have to assume that the mortgages are held by those evil banks to think that refinancing will be the elixir that its proponents would have us believe it will be. But the despicable banks’ holding the lion’s share of this paper is highly unlikely; these mortgages have been packaged into mortgage backed securities (“MBS”s) that serve as the collateral for collateralized mortgage obligations (“CMO”s). These CMOs are held by a whole range of investors either directly or, more likely, indirectly through mutual funds, pension funds, hedge funds, or any number of investment vehicles more or less widely available to individual and institutional investors. When the mortgages are refinanced, these investors must accept even lower yields on their investments. These are people who spend money, or invest money, too; will not their reduced incomes have an impact on the economy?
Second, “everyone knew” these loans could prepay? Well, then, why didn’t they? If “everyone knew,” and, presumably, still knows, that these loans could prepay, why are the taxpayers being asked to subsidize refinancing? But this is something of a digression. The major point is that, like any other trade, a refinancing involves two parties; one wins, another loses. This is true even if one does not like the party that loses, but, in this case, the party that loses may be at least as meritorious, financially, economically, and ethically, as the party that wins. This is not a win-win trade.
Besides the holders’ of the mortgage paper being, er, disadvantaged courtesy of the taxpayers, there is another problem with this particular easy refinancing scheme. While the current standard Republican wisdom that the financial “crisis” from which we are supposedly emerging was the exclusive fault of government intervention in the mortgage markets is overstated and self-serving, such intervention was without a doubt one of the causes of the financial problems our nation, and the world, experienced. In the interest of promoting “putting people into their own homes,” a cause for which George W. Bush was at least as dewy-eyed and sweat browed as Barney Frank, Fannie and Freddie, along with other organs of the government, put the taxpayer on the hook for some very questionable loans. (Yes, I know that Fannie and Freddie were not technically organs of the government and that their guarantees were not guarantees of the U.S. Treasury. How did it turn out, though? That’s right; the implicit guarantee turned out to be quite explicit and the taxpayers were left holding the bag for the Bush/Frank experiment in social engineering.) This was a part, but only part, of the problem.
So what does the Bush/Obama administration propose as a solution to a problem that had part of its genesis in the government guaranteeing shaky loans? Having the government guarantee more shaky loans. One might argue these won’t be shaky loans, but it’s hard to argue that having a job and making one’s mortgage payments for the last six months makes one a stellar borrower. Furthermore, one of the reasons mortgage loans are the most advantageous loans the typical borrower will find in his lifetime, besides the government’s long history of putting its thumb on the scale in favor of "home ownership," is that such loans, properly underwritten, provide the lender with plenty of security, in the form of its mortgage on the underlying property, in the event something goes wrong. The loan, underwritten properly, is well secured. But under the latest Bush/Obama scheme, these loans will not be well secured; the collateral will be worth less, in some cases, far less, than the loan. When I was first being trained in banking, we were forbidden from calling such poorly collateralized loans “secured.” We called them “supported.” But that was a long time ago at a bank (the old National Bank of Detroit) that had a reputation for carefully looking out for the interests of its depositors and shareholders. Such quaint notions are increasingly non-existent now that the sophisticates have taken over the world of finance. But I digress. I don’t know if such terminology is in place in today’s brave new financial world, but, if it were, we would call such loans not “secured,” but “supported,” if indeed we could give them that much credit.
The Bush/Obama administration’s attempting to solve a problem partially born of the government backing lousy loans by having the government back more lousy loans is not at all unusual. In the wake of this crisis, caused not so much by a collapse in housing as by too much spending and too much debt, the braintrusts in both Washington and on Wall Street, broadly defined, have counseled solving the problem by, you guessed it, encouraging people to spend and borrow more. Such is that state of financial, economic, and political thinking today.
Friday, October 21, 2011
…AND MAYBE THEY COULD HAVE COME UP WITH A MORE ORIGINAL NAME, TOO.
10/21/11
For the last several weeks, there has been much talk around town of the new Starz series “Boss,” which features Kelsey Grammer as the fictional Mayor Tom Kane of Chicago. As you might guess, people have been asking me about the series for obvious reasons. So it was with great eagerness that I awaited the premier episode of “Boss” and thus the opportunity to say something at least halfway insightful about the production. While I cannot pretend to be entirely objective in my observations, I certainly approach the series with some degree of knowledge about the purported subject matter and an appreciation for a good story well told.
The most salient and overriding observation about “Boss” is that it is hopelessly and, more importantly, needlessly over the top. The annals of Chicago politics contain enough true stories that are entertaining, compelling, and thought provoking. We don’t need to make up silly stuff like
--the mayor and his daughter buying drugs either on the street from shady dealers or in run down, pathetic drug houses or what we used to call “shooting galleries”,
--aldermanic henchmen cutting off people’s ears and the cuttee delivering the product of such butchery (The thugs gave him his ears severed back as a souvenir? Really?) to the mayor at a formal dinner, with the mayor then flushing said ears down his garbage disposal, which breaks in the process,
--the mayor’s key aide looking and dressing like she just walked off the pages of Penthouse magazine, which was gratuitous enough without said appearance making one of its consequences as predictable as a Chicago mayoral election involving an incumbent named Daley,
--the mayor physically beating up an alderman in his office (Admittedly, give the incumbent enough time in office and such behavior may not be all that far-fetched.),
--an anonymous mayoral operative administering temporarily disabling drugs to the mayor’s personal physician whom, incidentally, the mayor manages to visit in an old slaughterhouse without the city’s press crew ever noticing,
--completely closing a City Council meeting to the press to the point of seizing all of the aldermen’s personal communications devices, and
--perhaps most preposterously, a substantial bloc of opposition aldermen in the City Council.
Stories of our great city’s politics don’t need such off the charts silliness. The real stories imbedded in Chicago’s political history are sufficiently interesting, entertaining, hilarious in some instances and tragicomic in others that we don’t need to make up story lines that could have been lifted from any number of the banalities that dominate television in this country. That is why my books, The Chairman and The Chairman’s Challenge, though they are works of fiction, are based on the real stories behind, and the real history of, Chicago politics. With very few exceptions, every story that makes up the tapestries of those books is based, with varying degrees of tightness, on a true story.
So what did I like about “Boss”?
--Mayor Tom Kane’s City Hall roof top oration on Mayor Anton Cermak, the founder, if you will, of the Chicago Democratic Machine, was pretty much on the mark, though Grammer’s character underestimated Pushcart Tony’s charisma; lines like “I admit I didn’t come over on the Mayflower, but I got here as soon as I could” didn’t emanate from a stiff. The camera effect (i.e., the replacement of the city’s current skyline with the skyline as it may have appeared in 1931) was stunning and helped the Cermak oration make its point with eloquence and almost eerie effectiveness. But even this high point of the show was diminished by the realization that a deal involving the betrayal of a sitting governor would never take place on the roof of City Hall. Such a meeting might take place in the back room of a restaurant in Mt. Greenwood or Bridgeport, but not on the roof of City Hall and not in a discussion directly between the two principals involved.
--Grammer is a great actor. His facial expressions as he was told the bad news at the very beginning of the story were a masterpiece, immediately dispelling any doubt that the man can carry a dramatic role with even more aplomb than he so adroitly handled his former comedic roles. He is spectacular, if a bit over the top, in keeping with the general tone of the series, in the role of Tom Kane. Perhaps he’d like to play a far better role, that of Eamon DeValera Collins. But I digress.
--The city of Chicago looked great, as it always does. But it would be nice if the people in Hollywood (I know the series was shot at the old Ryerson Steel facility, located, perhaps ironically, around Cermak and Rockwell, not in Hollywood. But I speak here of "Hollywood” as an industry, much like one speaks of “Wall Street” not as a physical location but as an industry.) would realize that there is more to Chicago than downtown, the generic ghetto, and the generic yuppieville that are depicted as the three facets of Chicago in any movie or television show attempting to depict the world’s greatest city.
I will doubtless watch “Boss” again because it was entertaining, at least for an hour. I fear, however, that it will ultimately prove about as compelling as the last show about Chicago that was such a flop I can’t even remember its name. Maybe you can help me: It centered on a tough, bad boy cop partnered with a rookie and reporting to a young, beautiful woman police commissioner who was fighting a corrupt mayor who in turn was battling a corrupt black alderman who was consorting with an Irish street gang. The show, whatever its name was, lasted about four episodes and the above description of it explains why. The show was supposed to be about Chicago’s unique political culture but instead was a boring assortment of banausic story lines that could have fit in any of the shows that pass for dramas on network television. I hope the same thing doesn’t happen to “Boss,” but I fear my hopes may be misplaced. Then again, I’ve only seen one episode, but the snippets of next week’s episode that followed tonight’s did not offer much promise that “Boss” will indeed be different from the tawdry yawners that comprise so much of today’s television, network or otherwise. “Boss” is no “Sopranos,” at least as far as I can tell from tonight’s episode.
What would be different would be a screen version of The Chairman and/or The Chairman’s Challenge. Such a production would be far more interesting, thought provoking, and, most important from Hollywood’s perspective, entertaining than what “Boss,” at least so far, seems to be. And a film version of one or both of my books would provide the viewer with a window to the reality of Chicago politics, to the way things really work around here, a story so compelling that it needs no added nonsensical fluff to provide the “wow” factor seemingly so necessary in today’s media world.
For the last several weeks, there has been much talk around town of the new Starz series “Boss,” which features Kelsey Grammer as the fictional Mayor Tom Kane of Chicago. As you might guess, people have been asking me about the series for obvious reasons. So it was with great eagerness that I awaited the premier episode of “Boss” and thus the opportunity to say something at least halfway insightful about the production. While I cannot pretend to be entirely objective in my observations, I certainly approach the series with some degree of knowledge about the purported subject matter and an appreciation for a good story well told.
The most salient and overriding observation about “Boss” is that it is hopelessly and, more importantly, needlessly over the top. The annals of Chicago politics contain enough true stories that are entertaining, compelling, and thought provoking. We don’t need to make up silly stuff like
--the mayor and his daughter buying drugs either on the street from shady dealers or in run down, pathetic drug houses or what we used to call “shooting galleries”,
--aldermanic henchmen cutting off people’s ears and the cuttee delivering the product of such butchery (The thugs gave him his ears severed back as a souvenir? Really?) to the mayor at a formal dinner, with the mayor then flushing said ears down his garbage disposal, which breaks in the process,
--the mayor’s key aide looking and dressing like she just walked off the pages of Penthouse magazine, which was gratuitous enough without said appearance making one of its consequences as predictable as a Chicago mayoral election involving an incumbent named Daley,
--the mayor physically beating up an alderman in his office (Admittedly, give the incumbent enough time in office and such behavior may not be all that far-fetched.),
--an anonymous mayoral operative administering temporarily disabling drugs to the mayor’s personal physician whom, incidentally, the mayor manages to visit in an old slaughterhouse without the city’s press crew ever noticing,
--completely closing a City Council meeting to the press to the point of seizing all of the aldermen’s personal communications devices, and
--perhaps most preposterously, a substantial bloc of opposition aldermen in the City Council.
Stories of our great city’s politics don’t need such off the charts silliness. The real stories imbedded in Chicago’s political history are sufficiently interesting, entertaining, hilarious in some instances and tragicomic in others that we don’t need to make up story lines that could have been lifted from any number of the banalities that dominate television in this country. That is why my books, The Chairman and The Chairman’s Challenge, though they are works of fiction, are based on the real stories behind, and the real history of, Chicago politics. With very few exceptions, every story that makes up the tapestries of those books is based, with varying degrees of tightness, on a true story.
So what did I like about “Boss”?
--Mayor Tom Kane’s City Hall roof top oration on Mayor Anton Cermak, the founder, if you will, of the Chicago Democratic Machine, was pretty much on the mark, though Grammer’s character underestimated Pushcart Tony’s charisma; lines like “I admit I didn’t come over on the Mayflower, but I got here as soon as I could” didn’t emanate from a stiff. The camera effect (i.e., the replacement of the city’s current skyline with the skyline as it may have appeared in 1931) was stunning and helped the Cermak oration make its point with eloquence and almost eerie effectiveness. But even this high point of the show was diminished by the realization that a deal involving the betrayal of a sitting governor would never take place on the roof of City Hall. Such a meeting might take place in the back room of a restaurant in Mt. Greenwood or Bridgeport, but not on the roof of City Hall and not in a discussion directly between the two principals involved.
--Grammer is a great actor. His facial expressions as he was told the bad news at the very beginning of the story were a masterpiece, immediately dispelling any doubt that the man can carry a dramatic role with even more aplomb than he so adroitly handled his former comedic roles. He is spectacular, if a bit over the top, in keeping with the general tone of the series, in the role of Tom Kane. Perhaps he’d like to play a far better role, that of Eamon DeValera Collins. But I digress.
--The city of Chicago looked great, as it always does. But it would be nice if the people in Hollywood (I know the series was shot at the old Ryerson Steel facility, located, perhaps ironically, around Cermak and Rockwell, not in Hollywood. But I speak here of "Hollywood” as an industry, much like one speaks of “Wall Street” not as a physical location but as an industry.) would realize that there is more to Chicago than downtown, the generic ghetto, and the generic yuppieville that are depicted as the three facets of Chicago in any movie or television show attempting to depict the world’s greatest city.
I will doubtless watch “Boss” again because it was entertaining, at least for an hour. I fear, however, that it will ultimately prove about as compelling as the last show about Chicago that was such a flop I can’t even remember its name. Maybe you can help me: It centered on a tough, bad boy cop partnered with a rookie and reporting to a young, beautiful woman police commissioner who was fighting a corrupt mayor who in turn was battling a corrupt black alderman who was consorting with an Irish street gang. The show, whatever its name was, lasted about four episodes and the above description of it explains why. The show was supposed to be about Chicago’s unique political culture but instead was a boring assortment of banausic story lines that could have fit in any of the shows that pass for dramas on network television. I hope the same thing doesn’t happen to “Boss,” but I fear my hopes may be misplaced. Then again, I’ve only seen one episode, but the snippets of next week’s episode that followed tonight’s did not offer much promise that “Boss” will indeed be different from the tawdry yawners that comprise so much of today’s television, network or otherwise. “Boss” is no “Sopranos,” at least as far as I can tell from tonight’s episode.
What would be different would be a screen version of The Chairman and/or The Chairman’s Challenge. Such a production would be far more interesting, thought provoking, and, most important from Hollywood’s perspective, entertaining than what “Boss,” at least so far, seems to be. And a film version of one or both of my books would provide the viewer with a window to the reality of Chicago politics, to the way things really work around here, a story so compelling that it needs no added nonsensical fluff to provide the “wow” factor seemingly so necessary in today’s media world.
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