Not so far from the madding crowd...

“Never follow the crowd.”

—Bernard Baruch  (1870 – 1965)

American financier, speculator, & public figure

¢ $ ¢ $ ¢

Gratuitous embedded music video of the day:

“Who wants honey, as long as there’s some money?”

B¡lly C0rgan of the Smash¡ng Pumpk¡ns,
“¢herub R0ck,” S¡amese Dream  (1993)

¢ $ ¢ $ ¢

Here are two token positive quotes about market investment and speculation.

“A speculator is a man who observes the future, and acts before it occurs.”

—Bernard Baruch

“If there were no bad speculations there could be no good investments; if there were no wild ventures there would be no brilliantly successful enterprises.”

—Francis W. Hirst  (1873 – 1953)

British economic journalist

¢ $ ¢ $ ¢

In keeping with the times, the rest of the observations I include are inevitably more circumspect, cautionary, or outright negative.

“The main purpose of the stock market is to make fools of as many men as possible.”

—Bernard Baruch

“There are two times in a man’s life when he should not speculate: when he can’t afford it, and when he can.”

—Mark Twain  (1835 – 1910)

iconic American writer

“Another great evil arising from this desire to be thought rich; or rather, from the desire not to be thought poor, is the destructive thing which has been honoured by the name of ‘speculation’; but which ought to be called Gambling.”

—William Cobbett  (1762 – 1835)

British journalist & reformist thinker

“[T]he stock market has not come down to historical levels: the price-earnings ratio as I define it in this book is still, at this writing [2005], in the mid-20s, far higher than the historical average. … People still place too much confidence in the markets and have too strong a belief that paying attention to the gyrations in their investments will someday make them rich, and so they do not make conservative preparations for possible bad outcomes.”

—Robert Shiller  (b. 1946)

prominent American economist,
Irrational Exuberance, 2nd ed.  (February 2005)

This graph shows the recent housing hypervaluation
that helped to dramatically inflate 2000s securities values,
as derived from data included in Shiller’s 2005 book.
(The graphic was skillfully assembled by Wikipedian “Frothy.”)

“October.  This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in.  The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February.”

—Mark Twain

The hunt for dread October...

I cannot find the original context for Twain’s quip.  Of course, he never lived to see the most spectacular stock market crash of the twentieth century, spanning October 24 – 29, 1929, (or the “roar” that preceded it, which he likely would have laid waste to with his wit).

However, the 1907 stock market panic, which traced many of its roots to the previous year, unfolded dramatically in an October.  It also overlapped with a sudden monetary contraction and a widespread banking panic.

If you mention the “Panic of ’73” today, some baby boomers may think of the supply shock crisis that began in mid-October of 1973 when OPEC began waging a campaign of punitive crude oil pricing against the U.S.  From its period peak in January 1973 to its relative nadir in early December 1974, the DJIA lost almost half of its value.
[ (577.60_12/6/74 – 1047.59_1/5/73) / 1047.59  =  –44.86% ]

The “Black Monday” nose dive of October 19, 1987 was the largest single-day percentage market loss.  (Oddly, the related recession didn’t set in until a few years later.  Even now, the reasons for the speculative volatility of the latter ’80s and subsequent late-onset stall in the economy remain opaque, especially compared to other recent recessions.)

“Speculation is only a word covering the making of money out of the manipulation of prices, instead of supplying goods and services.”

—Henry Ford  (1863 – 1947)

American industrialist

“The speculation economy is one in which business management focused on production is replaced with business management focused on stock price.”

—Lawrence E. Mitchell

business/corporate law expert,
The Speculation Economy: How Finance Triumphed Over Industry  (2007)

“The short-termism of the late 1990s and early twenty-first century simply is an exaggeration of a quality that was embedded in the American economy a hundred years ago.  The typical public corporation we know today, what I will call the giant modern corporation, was created during the merger wave of 1897 to 1903.  It gave birth to the modern stock market.  As it did, it transformed speculation from a disruptive game, played by a few professionals and thrill-seeking amateurs that from time to time erupted into a major frenzy, into the very genetic material of the American stock market, American business and American capitalism.”

—Lawrence E. Mitchell

The Speculation Economy ...  (2007)

“Now, speculation — in which the focus is not on what an asset will produce but rather on what the next fellow will pay for it — is neither illegal, immoral nor un-American.  But it is not a game in which [the vice chairman] and I wish to play.  We bring nothing to the party, so why should we expect to take anything home?

The line separating investment and speculation, which is never bright and clear, becomes blurred still further when most market participants have recently enjoyed triumphs.
Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money.  After a heady experience of that kind, normally sensible people drift into behavior akin to that of Cinderella at the ball.  They know that overstaying the festivities — that is, continuing to speculate in companies that have gigantic valuations relative to the cash they are likely to generate in the future will eventually bring on pumpkins and mice.  But they nevertheless hate to miss a single minute of what is one helluva party.  Therefore, the giddy participants all plan to leave just seconds before midnight.  There’s a problem, though:  They are dancing in a room in which the clocks have no hands.”

—Warren Buffett  (b. 1930)

American executive, investor & philanthropist,
FY2000 Chairman’s letter to Berkshire Hathaway, Inc.

“In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do.  We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.”

—Charles Mackay  (1814 – 1889)

Scottish journalist & writer,
“National Delusions,” Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds  (1841)

“Money, again, has often been a cause of the delusion of multitudes.  Sober nations have all at once become desperate gamblers, and risked almost their existence upon the turn of a piece of paper.”

—Charles Mackay

“National Delusions,”
Extraordinary Popular Delusions ...

“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one!”

—Charles Mackay

“National Delusions,”
Extraordinary Popular Delusions ...

“Some in clandestine companies combine;
Erect new stocks to trade beyond the line;
With air and empty names beguile the town,
And raise new credits first, then cry ’em down;
Divide the empty nothing into shares,
And set the crowd together by the ears.”

—Daniel Defoe  (ca. 1660 – 1731)

English writer,
orig. publ. context unknown
(quoted by Mackay)

“If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer.  But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.”

—Henry David Thoreau 
(1817 – 1862)

American naturalist &
Renaissance man, Life Without Principle  (1854/62)

Absorbing more economic punches...

Econocratic brains everywhere recoil in fear as the zombie smorgasbord continues in Washington.  The administration persists in deflecting and downplaying criticism that it is coddling the investment banking industry and rewarding its reckless practices.  Instead, the president and his advisers seek to focus media attention on upcoming regulatory reforms.

But many of us still feel that the White House is essentially saying to Wall Street:  Don’t worry, we’ll cover your assets.  In unsettling ways, the federal government is taking over where AIG left off, assuming much of the risk burden produced by pooled toxic assets, while inviting sanguine investors to play the game with too little to lose.

What should we nickname this pool of little orphaned assets now being pushed by the U.S. Treasury?  The Federal Fools’ Fund (FFF)?  Shall we call these new arrangments Debt Unlimited Miscellaneous Public-Private Partnerships (DUMPPPs)?

Meanwhile, the U.S. GDP contracted by 6.3% in the 4th quarter of 2008, while the national unemployment rate will likely hit ~8.3% by the end of the current quarter.

* * *

Here’s a flashback from last fall, when the economy seemed a lot more intact, even if the credit system was on the rocks:

“Credit markets do not function.  Why not?  Because the word ‘credit comes from ‘credibility.’

The left side of the balance sheet has nothing right and the right side of the balance sheet has nothing left.  But they are equal to each other.  So accounting-wise we are fine.

Transparency is ‘what you see is what you get.’  And what you don’t see gets you.”

Now who was the witty wiseacre behind this wry wordplay?  Why that would be the AIG vice chairman entertaining his financier friends at a luncheon on October 11, 2008.

The hoi polloi have mostly stopped calling for the heads of these AIG goons.  For now, their righteous rage is subsiding as popular sentiment retreats to more familiar territory — seething impotent outrage, frustrated disgust, and reluctant resignation.

But quiet terror simmers, particularly among those who distrust the exuberant overtures of obscurantist optimists.

By the way, if you still want your zombie fix, check out cartoonist Mark Fiore’s “Zombie Bank” animation.

* * *

De bankier en zijn vrouw (The Banker and His Wife)  [cropped]
(after Quentin Matsys)
oil on wood, date unknown
Marinus Claesz van Reymerswaele, ca. 1490 – 1567
Netherlands
collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes, France

Instead of continuing the zombie theme, I’ve included an early Northern Renaissance painting.  Bankers, money-changers, and other monetary specialists were often regarded with suspicion and wariness back then, too.

* * *

Today I recommend a very thorough and eloquent piece written by a thoughtful liberal-leaning progressive:

“This Crisis Is Way Bigger Than Dead Banks and Wall Street Bailouts”
(AlterNet.org / Washington Monthly,  3/23/2009)

James K. Galbraith :

Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin

senior scholar, Levy Economics Institute

author, The Predator State:  How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too  (Free Press, 2008)

For focus on the banking industry debacle, skip down to the 11th paragraph in the article and/or search for the lead sentence:

The chance of a return to normal depends, in turn, on the banking strategy.

Here Galbraith joins the chorus of people who insist that the current financial crisis resembles the banking system failures of the 1930s more closely than the credit stumbles of the previous three decades.

He reminds us of the current plight of middle class Americans who have to rely on our government entitlements safety net now more than ever.

Galbraith also adds to the colorful metaphors enlivening the debate by characterizing the recent wanton behavior of Wall Street speculators as a “poisonous game of abusive mortgage originations followed by rounds of pass-the-bad-penny-to-the-greater-fool.”

He points out that the FDIC could justifiably take over distressed Wall Street institutions by placing them in full receivership.

He also implies that a “state of denial” that began in the waning days of the Bush administration persists within the current Treasury leadership.

Galbraith also reminds us of why former SecTreas Henry Paulson eventually began to back off the throw-the-money-in-the-hole approach.  First there was the sheer scale of the potential losses involved (as suggested by the ravenous appetites of certain cash-flow-starved financial institutions feeding at the TARP trough).  In addition, the task of discovering the true value of these mysterious assets was highly arbitrary and rife with risk and wishful thinking.

He is blunt about so-called “troubled assets”:

“The reasonable inference would be that many more of the loans will default.  Geithner’s plan to guarantee these so-called assets, therefore, is almost sure to overstate their value; it is only a way of delaying the ultimate public recognition of loss, while keeping the perpetrators afloat.”

He also implies that delaying the inevitable may lead us into further financial and economic hazards while sidelining “normal prudent banking.”

For example, instead of soundly restructuring, reforming and restoring our lending systems to health, delay and enabling may provoke investors to wreak havoc in other risky markets or indulge in additional rounds of klepto-capitalism.

Galbraith also cautions us that the shortsightedness of the plan signals that the White House’s economic brain trust fails to recognize that we are faced with “a true crisis -- an integrated, long-term economic threat.”

(Many of us felt similarly when we heard Fed chairman Ben Bernanke utter the following prediction/prescription on CBS’s “60 Minutes” ten days ago:  “We’ll see the recession coming to an end, probably this year.  We’ll see recovery beginning next year.”)

As a liberal, demand-side economic thinker, Galbraith challenges the primacy of what I’d call “mechanical” or “system flow” economics.  He stresses the importance of “creditworthiness” anchored in consumer economic fundamentals such as asset prices.  He also states that Americans who find themselves suddenly asset- and cash-poor don’t tend to rush headlong into more credit, even if the lending spigot is set at full blast again.  He argues that this reluctance to spend and borrow will dampen any multiplier effects triggered by cash and credit injections into consumer markets.

And then Galbraith ventures into that misunderstood decade of our economic history, the 1930s.

He quotes a December 2008 paper (“Time for a New ‘New Deal’” [PDF, 59k]) by economist Marshall Auerback.  (Interestingly, Mr. Auerback appears to be a global portfolio manager fluent in areas like equities trading.)

Again, I encourage you to read Galbraith’s piece.  He argues for public investment and relief initiatives that borrow the most productive and redemptive aspects of FDR’s New Deal.  However, like many others, he credits the war mobilization, not the New Deal, for helping to stoke enough consumption, investment, and trade to propel the United States out of the rut of the Depression.

The current thinking among many social liberals is that a millenial “Newer Deal” could revive our economy.

However, many of us believe that this assumption is fatally flawed.  We fear that such an audacious undertaking could yield few immediate results, while plunging our country further into debt.

Such programs should be supported as standalone public relief and investment measures, without being hitched to false hope and inflated promises.

* * *
To be continued ...

Zombie Bankers Feast on Brains of White House Economic Brain Trust

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Bankers at major living-dead Wall Street investment firms have continued to graze on the gray matter of prominent members of the new administration’s economic crisis team.

Among the reported victims are:

• Timothy Geithner, SecTreas

• Larry Summers, NEC Director

• Neel Kashkari, Interim Asst SecTreas for Financial Stability

Financial jocks jumped on news of Geithner’s proposed “public-private partnership.”  Investors delighted, noting that the plan preserved the sanctity of business-as-usual investment market culture without any threat of significant “change.”  High fives were heard everywhere throughout global trading floors and boiler rooms.  Whether they were genuinely grateful for the plan, or just looking to make a few gratifying long sales before Friday, Wall Street profiteers rallied and the Dow climbed 500 points on Monday.

Mainstream media talking heads rejoiced, then promptly phoned their brokers for updates at the bottom of the hour.

* * *

In other news, marginalized economists and scholars successfully thwarted the zombies by donning lampshades and sitting in the corner while the weekday party took off.  However, a few of them snuck out earlier this week and reported their close call with the financial undead on various op-ed pages, blogs, and public broadcasts.

* * *

Okay, kidding aside, here’s a sampling of various experts’ reactions to these recent developments:

First we have Paul Krugman’s early rejection of the plan as details were leaked over the past few days:  “Despair over financial policy” (The Conscience of a Liberal [NYT blog], 3/21/2009).

He declares, “The zombie ideas have won” and repeats the refrain that the Treasury Department is tempting fate by preserving a systemic moral hazard.

Then we also have other reactions of disappointment and disbelief, like those aired Monday morning on NPR’s Boston-based current affairs program, On Point.  I excerpt some of the discussion below, representing typical objections to the plan from both the left and the right:

“[Geithner, Summers, et al] have decided that the way to get private money, to rescue these toxic assets, is to double down on the same kind of strategy that Hank Paulson unveiled back in October that didn’t work, which was to have the government put up guarantees — in this case [the] government’s providing as much as 94% of the capital.  I think there’s an echo chamber effect going on where Larry Summers and Tim Geithner are talking to each other, and they’re talking to the likes of Goldman [Sachs] and Citigroup.  They’re talking to the very same people who created the mess, and they’re not talking to the critics of this approach.  My sources say they’re not even talking to Paul Volcker — who nominally heads a task force appointed by the president, that has never met — who’s a critic of this.  They’re certainly not talking to Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize laureate at Columbia [University], Nouriel Roubini at NYU, Paul Krugman — well-informed people who think this whole approach of having government put up a lot of the capital, guarantee almost all of the loss in the hopes of bringing hedge funds and private equity — the least transparent part of the system, the most underregulated and prone-to-abuse part of the system — back to the party, to do the same kind of convoluted deals that helped cause this mess.  And it’s incredibly risky, it’s incredibly expensive, it may well not work, and there’s also the risk of political backlash.”

“Let me just say:  If this were to work and a lot of rich guys got even richer, I would hold my nose and say, ‘If that’s the price that it takes to get the banking system running again, I can live with it.’  My concern is more that it’s not going to work and furthermore that it’s rife with potential for abuse.  Let me give one little example and I hope this is not too technical:  So, a hedge fund — or private equity company — comes in and says, ‘We will buy this toxic asset at fifty cents on the dollar.’  It’s a pool of loans.  Then [the company] buys a credit default swap.  So, it’s ‘heads I win, tails you lose.’  If the value of the asset goes up, [the] hedge fund makes out.  If the value of the asset goes down, the government eats the loss, and the hedge fund collects on the credit default swap.  There is all kinds of potential for these gains.  And make no mistake about it, this was not designed [in] the best interest of the U.S. taxpayer.  This was designed on Wall Street, by Wall Street, for Wall Street.  .... If you look at the transition from Paulson to Geithner, it’s the same team.”

“This [current approach] is the worst of both worlds.  The Treasury, which does not have the resources to do this properly, is intervening in an episodic and ad hoc way.  If you're going to have this degree of government involvement, it’s better to do it with your eyes open, with some transparency there.”

“[Hedge funds and private equity firms] exist to do deals — complicated, highly leveraged deals.  This [plan] gives them a chance, gives them a new lease on life.  Better yet, it’s guaranteed by the government.  Hedge funds — people are deserting hedge funds in droves — this gives them a new lease on life.  And I think the administration is underestimating the populist backlash against using taxpayer money and taxpayer guarantees, so that a whole new round of rich guys — in some cases the same old rich guys — can get even richer, at taxpayer expense.  I also think that the government is going to need more money one way or the other and, if you do it via an RFC, where you don’t enrich private speculators but you help ordinary people and you do it directly, there’s going to be much more popular consent for spending taxpayer money and putting taxpayer loan guarantees at risk, if you don’t do it by enriching a lot of middlemen, but you do it more straightforwardly.  And, you know, Citi, what Citigroup worries about — since they are, I mean, if anybody’s insolvent, Citi’s insolvent, right?  The government has put about 65 billion dollars into Citi.  You can buy the thing by buying up all of its shares for 17 billion right now.  If that’s not insolvent, I don’t know what’s insolvent, because if it weren’t for all this government money, they’d be out of business.  So we’re really not talking about 12,000 banks.  We’re talking about a handful of large banks — Citi, maybe Bank of America, possibly Wells Fargo — that would have to go through some kind of receivership project and come out the other side.  [It’s] much better to do this straightforwardly.”

—Robert Kuttner

co-founder & co-editor, The American Prospect

distinguished senior fellow, Dēmos public policy research and advocacy organization

columnist, The Boston Globe

“Any time we subsidize the banks, like this plan does, we are giving some money to those long-term debt holders and to the equity investors in the banks.  If you forced the long-term debt holders to convert into equity — which is sort of a receivership, sort of a Chapter 11, but could be done somewhat differently so that the government wasn’t necessarily running things — you get a private sector solution and the banks become potentially quite solvent, ’cause there’s a lot of long-term debt out there and it doesn’t cost the government anything.”

“I have to agree with Bob [Kuttner] — which I don’t often do — on most of what he said.  This is not a good solution, there are better solutions out there, and the plan is flawed.  ... I think that the thing to understand is [that] there are two possible scenarios:  The scenario number one, which the administration is banking on, is that the toxic assets — and they are ‘toxic’ assets, not ‘legacy’ — are undervalued, and that the banks are fundamentally solvent.  That was the assumption in the original Paulson plan; that is the assumption here.  The other scenario is that the toxic assets are correctly valued and the banks are not solvent.  This is where Paul Krugman is [coming] from, this is Nouriel Roubini, on the right you got Luigi Zingales, one of my colleagues, Ken Rogoff — former chief economist of the IMF — and in my view that’s probably the more likely scenario.  So now let’s look at what happens in this plan under those two scenarios.  If the scenario is that the toxic assets are correctly valued, and the banks are not solvent — meaning they don’t have enough equity to support their business — this plan is not going to help.  ’Cause the banks won’t sell, ’cause if they’ve got these things marked at a particular point, if the value that the hedge funds pay is not above those marks, this doesn’t help because it doesn’t give them more equity.”

“The whole idea here is to get the banks solvent, to get them more equity.  .... that I think is the most likely scenario, ’cause remember [that] the economy has deteriorated substantially since the first Paulson plan, and, you know, we were in trouble at that time [too].  Well, ... they take that gamble [under the current plan] and now you’ve created a situation where it’s heads, the hedge funds win, and tails, the government loses.  And this becomes a very, very expensive program.  And that’s also the case, by the way if we’re in the situation where it is a liquidity problem, not a solvency problem.  The hedge funds will either make a lot of money, which will create outrage at the other end, or the government will end up losing a lot of money, neither of which is great, and there are better solutions.  The government really doesn’t get anything here.”

—Steven Kaplan

Neubauer Family Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business

To be continued...

Wedding Crashers Don’t Have to #%$@ing RSVP

Check out this D.C. Craigslist RNR flamebait:

washington, DC craigslist > northern virginia > rants & raves

Couple in need
----------------------------------------------------------------
Reply to: [please-dont-flame-the-happy-hubby-2-b]@craigslist.org
Date: 2009-03-21, 8:08AM EDT

This is a long shot, but here goes. I am 38 year old dealing with overwhelming task of getting married for the first time. My future wife and I are both employed, hard working tax paying citizens. She owns a condo in Las Vegas which unfortunatley has be to be short sold to get out from under that burden. At our age we basically are paying for our wedding by ourselves, which is putting further and further in debt. I can easily say it is the best investment we both have ever made! Unfortunatley we are still in need of help. With only 1 month till the big date. That is why I am posting this. If find you can donate, even a little bit I could not thank you enough.

God Bless
Jason
----------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Couple in “need”                      (the courthouse steps)

“Love:  A temporary insanity curable by marriage.”
—Ambrose Bierce

Regarding this beggar bridegroom and his “long shot” at satisfying his nuptial “need”:

Maybe “Jason” still believes in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, too.

Otherwise, why is he begging a bunch of strangers on Craigslist to help pay for his catering bills?  Is he even trying to hit up his parents or his fiancée’s parents?  Is he shaking down his buddies and his girlfriend’s girlfriends?  After all, at least those folks can look forward to attending this blessed celebration that he’s not even inviting us to crash in his charmless appeal.

When “Jason” and his lovely bride-to-be made these wedding arrangements many months ago, there were obvious signs that we were already heading into a recession, if we weren’t there already.

Besides that, if he’s 38, that means he was in his early twenties when the last recession hit.  Of course, it could very well be that it didn’t hit him too hard back then, either.

Perhaps like a lot of D.C.-area workaholics, he is already married—to his career—and doesn’t have a concrete idea of how dire things are out here for many people.

Maybe he somehow thinks that asking anonymous strangers to help finance a wedding is not an asinine thing to do in an economy where anonymous strangers are losing their jobs, having to drop out of school to pay their bills, postponing retirement because their life savings are depleted, witnessing their businesses fold, and sacrificing their health while trying to stay afloat.

He may believe that asking for donations to carry on a lavish rite-of-passage party is not a tacky thing to do at a time when people are getting kicked out of their housing, watching their marriages & relationships fail, trying to explain unsettling new realities to their kids without upsetting them, having their “friends” turn their backs on them, losing their minds and their identities, becoming victims of crime as those with less scruples grow even more selfish and desperate, and more.

To be fair to “Jason,” so many people in our generation get suckered in by our parents, our friends, our sad-sack middle-class assumptions about the “American Dream,” and the extortionists of the wedding & hospitality industries who prey upon the princess-for-a-day fantasies of brides-to-be.

I’ve been to a few weddings in the last ten years where the families blew tens of thousands of dollars on a weekend—only to find out that the blessed couple filed for divorced within 3-5 years anyways...  Many of these were extravagant affairs that were almost embarrassing to participate in because of all of the tasteless excess.  Half the time we didn’t even know why these conspicuous consumers and careless carousers invited us to these over-the-top shindigs, as we barely knew the couple or the family.

“In economics, a study (done by Pew Charitable Trusts, the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Urban Institute) challenged the notion that each generation will be better off than the one that preceded it.[16] The study, 'Economic Mobility: Is the American Dream Alive and Well?' focuses on the income of males 30-39 in 2004 (those born April, 1964 – March, 1974) and is based on Census/BLS CPS March supplement data.[17]

The study, released May 25, 2007, emphasized that in real dollars, this generation made less (by 12%) than had their fathers at the same age in 1974, thus reversing a historical trend. The study also suggests that per year increases in the portion of father/son family household income generated by fathers/sons have slowed (from an average of 0.9% to 0.3%), barely keeping pace with inflation, though increases in overall father/son family household income are progressively higher each year because more women are entering the workplace, contributing to family household income.[18]”
—http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X

I don’t know what the facts on Gen Y are but they can’t be very good either.

Our baby boomer parents have done a lot of us a huge disservice.  Their rules no longer apply to many of us but they still keep at it, urging us to follow in their footsteps and hit all the adult milestones in the correct order, at the right time, just like they did.

I just want all you older (boomer and Gen Jones) folks to know that we are not all as blissfully oblivious and shameless as “Jason” appears to be.

“State unemployment at a glance” (3/11/09)

The Associated Press released this historical unemployment data a week and a half ago.  For some reason they didn’t bother to format it in a table; it just looks like their journalist smart alecks exported the data from a spreadsheet or something.

Maybe this is what happens when the newspaper industry fires too many of its key IT people.

Here I’ve performed a humble public service by putting this information in a table for your edification and analysis.  Enjoy, fellow armchair labor economists.

(DC-metro states are shown in medium blue; regional neighbors in pale blue.)

A:  “rank of each state based on the January 2009 unemployment rate, with a lower number indicating a lower rate”

B:  “state's unemployment rate for January 2009”

C:  “[unemployment] rate for December 2008”

D:  “[unemployment] rate for January 2008”


E:  “the month and year unemployment peaked [from January 1976 onwards]”

F:  “peak unemployment rate since January 1976”

State	A	B	C	D	E	F
Alabama	31	7.8	6.5	3.9	Dec. 1982	14.4
Alaska	34	7.9	6.8	6.4	July 1986	11.5
Arizona	24	7	6.6	4.4	Feb. 1983	11.5
Arkansas	17	6.4	5.7	4.8	Mar. 1983	10.2
California	48	10.1	8.7	6.1	Feb. 1983	11
Colorado	19	6.6	5.8	4.3	Nov. 1982	9.1
Connecticut	27	7.3	6.6	5	Jan. 1976	10
Delaware	21	6.7	5.7	3.9	Jan. 1977	8.2
District of Columbia	44	9.3	8.2	5.9	Mar. 1983	11.4
Florida	37	8.6	7.6	5	Mar. 1976	9.7
Georgia	37	8.6	7.5	5.2	Jan. 2009	8.6
Hawaii	15	6.1	5.1	3	Mar. 1976	10.2
Idaho	19	6.6	6.1	3.7	Feb. 1983	9.4
Illinois	34	7.9	7.2	5.8	Feb. 1983	12.9
Indiana	43	9.2	7.8	4.8	Nov. 1982	12.8
Iowa	6	4.8	4.4	3.9	May 1983	8.5
Kansas	13	5.8	5	3.9	Sept. 1982	7.4
Kentucky	40	8.7	7.6	5.5	Dec. 1982	12.1
Louisiana	8	5.1	5.5	3.8	Sept. 1986	12.9
Maine	31	7.8	6.5	4.8	Mar. 1977	9
Maryland	16	6.2	5.4	3.6	Aug. 1982	8.3
Massachusetts	29	7.4	6.4	4.6	Jan. 1976	10.9
Michigan	51	11.6	10.2	7.3	Nov. 1982	16.9
Minnesota	30	7.6	6.6	4.8	Nov. 1982	9
Mississippi	40	8.7	7.8	6	May 1983	13.7
Missouri	36	8	7.1	5.5	Apr. 1983	10.5
Montana	12	5.6	5	3.9	May 1983	8.7
Nebraska	3	4.3	3.9	3	Feb. 1983	6.8
Nevada	45	9.4	8.4	5.3	Dec. 1982	10.7
New Hampshire	8	5.1	4.3	3.5	June 1992	7.7
New Jersey	27	7.3	6.8	4.6	Feb. 1977	10.6
New Mexico	8	5.1	4.7	3.7	Apr. 1983	9.9
New York	24	7	6.6	4.7	July 1976	10.5
North Carolina	46	9.7	8.1	5	Feb. 1983	10.2
North Dakota	2	4.2	3.3	3	Mar. 1983	6.9
Ohio	42	8.8	7.4	5.7	Jan. 1983	13.8
Oklahoma	7	5	4.6	3.3	Aug. 1986	9.4
Oregon	47	9.9	8.3	5.3	Nov. 1982	12.1
Pennsylvania	24	7	6.4	4.6	Mar. 1983	12.9
Rhode Island	49	10.3	9.4	6.3	Jan. 2009	10.3
South Carolina	50	10.4	8.8	5.7	Jan. 1983	11.4
South Dakota	4	4.4	3.7	2.7	Oct. 1982	5.9
Tennessee	37	8.6	7.6	5.3	Dec. 1982	12.4
Texas	17	6.4	5.6	4.4	Oct. 1986	9.3
Utah	5	4.6	4.1	3.2	Mar. 1983	9.7
Vermont	22	6.8	5.9	4.3	June 1976	9
Virginia	14	6	5	3.4	Jan. 1983	7.8
Washington	31	7.8	6.5	4.6	Nov. 1982	12.2
West Virginia	11	5.3	4.5	4.1	Mar. 1983	18.2
Wisconsin	23	6.9	5.9	4.4	Jan. 1983	11.8
Wyoming	1	3.7	3.2	2.7	May 1983	10.1

More “Me decade” Redux and Madness

Happy Friday the 13th for the second month in a row.

“I’m as mad as a hatter and I’m not going to take you any more...”

You may or may not recognize that as a corruption of the famous line screamed by apoplectic news anchor Howard Beale in Network (1976):

“I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more...”

He builds up to this crescendo after saying other things that eerily resonate with our current climate of anxiety:
“I don’t have to tell you things are bad.
Everybody knows things are bad.
It’s a depression.
Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job.
....
Banks are going bust.
Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter.
Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere that seems to know what to do and there’s no end to it.
....
We know things are bad, worse than bad, they’re crazy.
It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy so we don’t go out anymore.
We sit in the house and slowly the world we’re living in is getting smaller and all we say is,
‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms ... just leave us alone.’”

When the madman utters the climactic line, he is exhorting the Everyman, the Silent Majority impassively assembled in the anemic blue glow of their living room television sets, to literally get up out of their seats and go scream their outrage out their windows.

Paddy Chayefsky, the creator of this timeless American character, explained his attitude about Network like this:

“People say to me: ‘Jesus, you moved into some pretty surreal satire.’  I say:  ‘No, I still write realistic stuff.  It’s the world that’s gone nuts, not me.  It’s the world that's turned into a satire."  We never lied.  Everything in the movie is true—with some extensions.  It's very hard to describe simply and realistically what is going on without being grotesque.  I think the movie is right now. .... I think the American people deserve some truth—at least as much truth as we can give them—instead of pure entertainment or pure addiction.”—“Chayefsky: ‘Network Is True’,” Time, 12/13/1976

I was reminded of the Network rant scene for the umpteenth time recently while checking out “Silver Spring, Singular,” a downcounty blog that attracts a lot of attention because of its whip-smart & candid writing, topical currency, and its connectedness to the goings-on of greater Silver Spring.  Plus, it’s got plenty of photos and graphics and the blogger keeps comments open to Anonymice, which makes things livelier and more engaging.

SSS introduces a recent post with the following:

“I don’t know about on yours, but the locals on my neighborhood message board are mad as hell about the ‘melee’ in [downtown Silver Spring] this past Saturday and they aren't going to take it anymore!”
[Acronym expansion, formatting, & linking all added.]

SSS accompanies the post with a movie still from the Angry Man classic Falling Down (1993), which left me scratching my head over the madman movie mixed metaphors.

SSS: “... the regularly expressed opinion that ‘it's just like that in Bethesda’ is total bulls***.  Anyone who says this has clearly never been to Bethesda.”

Springular sure got that right.  Downtown Bethesda invests a lot of money in attracting the right crowd of self-actualizing professionals and big spenders.  BUP and friends do a bang-up job of keeping baggy-pants, saggy-seat crews out of their scrubbed urban districts.

The most aggressive people you’ll encounter in Bethesda generally include the Type-A jerks that jockey for the plummest parking spots in the downtown garages, the aging frat boy drunks that frequent “Caddies” on Cordell Avenue, and the Valet Parking Mafia that extort fat tips out of west-county and NWDC gentry flush with an embarrassment of disposable income.  While some of these potential rowdies may threaten bodily harm if you make the mistake of wasting their time or delaying their gratification, none of them is very likely to break out in fisticuffs with you.

123cartoon on WashingtonPost.com quips:
“The ‘Stop the Violence’ concert is over. You may now return to your previous violent nature. Thank you for coming.”

»»»

Sublime Magic theatre. Entrance not for everyone. For madmen only.

«««

Here’s an English etymological enigma.  “Mad” variously means angry, crazy, and a combination thereof.  Why and how did this come about?  Is there psychological research that bears out the observation that raging makes can make you raving?

SSS: “Also, while people certainly have every right to be upset, some use this as an excuse to prop up their bogus theories about how these miscreants will invade Silver Spring throughout the week once the Fillmore is open. Yes, because those Seal (actual Fillmore performer) crowds can get completely out of hand.”

Hey now, once Seal starts singing some of his more provocative lyrics, what if the crowd starts to take it a tad too literally:

“But we’re never gonna survi-i-i-i-ve unless, we get a little crazy...”

Now back to more madcap madness:

Thayer Avenue said [on SSS’s blog]:
How did you gain such a penchant for drawing in the crazy people to the comment board? I never cease to be amazed.

And “Thayer Avenue” said this before I added my damage to the mix.

I splenically snorted in return:
“‘Thayer Avenue’?  Perhaps this proud member of the Nouveau Silver Spring gentry should try on the address and blogger moniker ‘Woodmont Avenue.’  It appears that Thayer doesn’t much care for the untidy opinings of us ‘crazy’ east-county riff-raff.

Springular, how did you gain such a penchant for drawing in the downcounty gentry to act as such wet blankets on the comment board?  I never cease to be crazed, er, amazed.”
[more crazy stuff followed this jabbering....]

Thayer Avenue said:
“Wow, Sleepless. I make an off-handed, generalized comment and you end up attacking me, The X-Files, *and* linking to classic Bernstein all in one fell swoop? Very impressive.

I think my work here is done!”

Indeed!

Springvale Roader informs us:
“Well folks, this is timely. This coming Sunday and Monday, AFI will be screening the documentary, ‘Crips and Bloods: Made in America.’ http://www.afi.com/silver/new/nowplaying/events.aspx#crips

I plan on wearing my red bandanna...or should I go with blue?”

Thomas Hardman weighs in:
“I was more hoping for a screening of ‘Lord of the Flies’.”

Well, here in the south-central loco-en-MoCo ’hood of west Wheaton, I guess we would have to sport blue bandannas to this cultural event, as MS-13 claims to be the dominant “click” in these here parts.

Yeah, so I’ve heard that the AFI Silver is trying to make it in this recession just like a lot of others arts-and-culture institutions.  May I suggest the following quadruple feature, curated by myself:

“The All-American Angry Man Film Marathon”
…featuring conniptive classics from the 1970s through the 2000s…
Network — 1970s
Ruthless People — 1980s
Falling Down — 1990s
Gran Torino — 2000s
Why, this could even be the basis for yet another AFI superlative list...

...“100 Years, 100 Rages” !

Reaction to Hardman’s latest Dist. 4 race post

County Council District 4 candidate Thomas Hardman just posted his responses to the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce’s special election candidate questionnaire this morning.

Below are some initial thoughts on the issues raised here.  I live just outside the Dist. 4 boundary but I find this race very interesting and pertinent nonetheless.

Here is a link to my “cribsheet” listing some basic information about each candidate, linked to each person’s campaign website, if available.

And click here for Maryland Politic Watch’s coverage of the race.

As far as Chamber’s “oversight” in not giving you a questionnaire, Hardman, perhaps that cadre of glad-handers is leary of your independent streak and your reluctance to put on a tacky pinstripe uniform.

* * *

Hardman states, “Montgomery is already a leader in biotechnology and medical research and this will continue into the future. We are part of a region that is a major driver of the global Information Technology industry.”

Now that the federal government is lifting restrictions on the use of stem-cell lines in federally-funded cellular microbiology research and hopefully investing greater money and resources in biotech, Maryland will hopefully be more competitive in the regional economy.  Virginia profited disproportionately from the Doom Boom of the ’00s, maybe Maryland can finally catch up a bit here.

As far as IT in Maryland, the pols seem intent on dampening the digital economy in Maryland.  This is why D.C., Virginia, and other localities will continue to beat out the Old Line State in terms of cultivating and nurturing computer/tech industry firms.

At least Maryland had the sense to cancel the computer services tax.

Here is an article from November 2007 that covered the original bill:
“Maryland To Tax Computer Support Services—
The computer industry is fighting the state's decision to add computer, data center, and disaster recovery support services to the state's new 6% tax rate.”
InformationWeek, 11/19/2007

One person wrote this comment in response to that article:

“I'm leading a small software company currently based in Silicon Valley. We've recently been looking to open an office in the Mid-Atlantic area to be closer to our East Coast customers. We'd been considering the Baltimore area, but with this development I can tell you we'll cross Maryland off the list. Why would we voluntarily choose to take an additional 6% off our service revenues when we could just as easily locate to another state?”

I guess Maryland pols also wanted “Geeks on Call” to get off their high horses and pick up their hefty share of the Maryland tax burden or something.  Yeah, all the tech “geeks” I know of are disproportionately heavy users of state/local services, not.

They better not pull this stunt in 2010 when this issue comes back to the General Assembly.

* * *

Hardman says, “We have so much business in Montgomery County that nearly half of the workforce has to reside outside of our jurisdiction and we thus have the country's second-worse commute. Until and unless this is resolved satisfactorily, we have no business offering incentives to attract companies to relocate here to add to our current woes.”

I would have to respectfully disagree a bit here.  Sure we have many businesses in Maryland, but the lousy climate for business (that Hardman alludes to under question #3) makes this area more suitable for plentiful “workforce housing” residential developments, including lots of sprawl, as well as tons of non-profits, as opposed to small or even medium-sized businesses.

And we certainly have a shortage of entry-level / cottage-industry innovation around here.

The questionnaire asks, “DO YOU BELIEVE THAT PROVIDING INCENTIVES FOR COMPANIES TO LOCATE IN MONTGOMERY COUNTY IS AN IMPORTANT PART OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY?”

Hell, yes!  Why don’t we also help entrepreneurial Marylanders get their businesses off the ground without so much red tape and so many strings attached?

* * *

Hardman says, “... we shall have to harness the unparalleled intellectual resources and educational achievement of our community.”

Many entrepreneurial technologically oriented people who grow up in Maryland leave the state for California, Virginia, Texas, etc.  This brain/talent drain is a big waste of our state’s educational investments; we are not reaping enough of the rewards of our purportedly excellent high-ranking “challenge index” public schools.

I personally think we should split the University of Maryland flagship campus at College Park into two schools.

The bottom 60-70 percentile of the student body should attend “Maryland State.”  This would retain the Smith School of Business, the sports franchises, Greek life, etc.  The top 30-40 percentile of students should attend an institution that retains the University of Maryland brand name, the honors program, and other top-notch academic/research initiatives, and this version of the school should be invested in as a highly competitive “state ivy” institution to rival the Universities of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, California, etc.

As for the “Maryland State University” idea proposed here:
Note that many élite public universities have at least one state counterpart that doesn’t practice as much admissions “gatekeeping” — VCU, Penn State, Mich. State, Cal State, etc.

This would go a long way toward the recruitment and retention of élite public school students in Maryland in college, grad school, and beyond.  Many people end up living where they go to college / grad school during their early adulthood.

* * *

Hardman says, “Given the current economic conditions and the near total collapse of the housing market, any discussion at all of ‘economic development’ is premature at best.”

As long as Maryland pols feed hungrily at the trough of federal payroll, contract, and grant money, many MoCo public and private sector leaders will continue to be obsessed with simplistic, short-sighted visions of “growth” and “development” that neglect or even stymie a lot of innovation.  We’ll also have more overcrowding, sprawl, and traffic nightmares.

Hardman adds: “... if we're going to be building or developing anything, we must build and develop affordable housing much closer in towards the business campuses and research/industrial cores.”

Before we start a fresh round of ingratiating handshaking and ribbon-cutting ceremonies with residential developers, how about “thinking outside the box” a little more?

I wonder what people would say if somebody proposed subdividing some of those large mid-county condo units into affordable/“MPDU” housing for all of the poor families that Maryland is becoming so well known for.

“How nifty, Barbie®’s fifty”

(WARNING: Skip this digressive post if you hate bubblegum pink and/or prefer to steer clear of the general morass of American popular culture.)

I watch the news semi-regularly and I’ll bet that more than a few Americans have noticed that the network news anchors have started softening their evening broadcasts with lots of uplifting, aw-shucks human-interest stories.

These segments are obviously meant to serve as antidotes to the steady stream of bad news bearishness bombarding us from the global marketplace.

Perhaps these salt-of-the-earth profiles of courage and altruism are there to inspire and shame the hoi polloi into staying put in their overstuffed couches instead of taking to the streets armed with steak knives and handguns.  (They could be right; many people seem to be pushing aside their woes and seeking comfort in entertainment and social connections right now.)

A few days back the well-coiffed talking head personality anchors were paying homage to that paragon of perfect, injection-molded plastic womanhood, Barbie^®, who débuted early in 1959.

Amidst the retrospective coverage of this pop culture milestone, I heard about a bizarre Mattel^® product launch from 1975, “Growing Up Skipper^®.”  This junior cousin of Barbie^® was an “action” figurine; if you cranked her arm, her torso elongated and her bust “grew.”

Actual marketing copy printed on the box:

“She’s 2 dolls in 1 for twice as much fun!”
“Make her grow from a young girl to a teenager in seconds!”
“Cute little girl! ... Tall, curvy teenager!”

This “toy” should have been packaged with a miniature paperback book:
Are You There God?  It’s Me, Body-Dysmorphic Skipper^®

For those of you who think that toys and play time don’t have a lasting impact on children, check out this caustically funny commentary [warning: language].  It’s a blistering account of mid-seventies childhood drama between the author and her cousin, allegedly the Growing Up Skipper^® doll’s “most fevered and devoted disciple.”

Incidentally, 1975 is the same year The Stepford Wives hit U.S. theaters, presenting Americans with an assault on the ideal of suburban domestic perfection by swapping pretty, docile, affluent suburban housewives with near-identical animatronic body doubles.

* * *
The media blitz on the Barbie^® merchandising empire & its cultural aftershocks led me to dig up an arty artifact from the eighties.
This unnamed cult film has a running time of about three-quarters of an hour and looks like it was partly shot on Super 8.  Official prints were yanked and destroyed in the wake of a copyright suit won about two decades ago.  Bootleg copies still circulate; I don’t name the filmmaker, title, or subject here because I don’t want the files to get pulled.  But if you have any familiarity with American popular music of the 1970s, then you can probably follow along here.

The film imaginatively dramatizes the real-life story of a woman was who the vocalist/drummer of a ubiquitous brother-and-sister pop powerhouse with lots of lush orchestral chart-topping hits throughout the early-to-mid-’70s.  (Can you guess which one?)

It’s a lovingly enacted 1:9-scale tragedy of female suffering, complete with painstakingly crafted miniature props and sophisticated mise-en-scène featuring Barbie^® line dolls outfitted in dead-ringer ’70s and early ’80s fashions.

Without further ado, click here (Youtube) if you’re still curious.  (Right after the page loads, try pausing the player in order to give the stream a chance to buffer footage a few minutes ahead.)

* * *

“The early seventies had felt like the last moment of pure, popular culture fantasy and fakeness that I shared with my parents, when we were still united in this image of happy American familyhood.  And The C________s’ music seemed especially emblematic of that time.”

—the auteur who directed and co-wrote the film linked above

What’s a little startling to me is this: as a child growing up in the Washington area in the late ’70s through mid-’80s, in many ways I lived in a late ’60s through mid-’70s time warp.  This is because my decidedly Establishment parents listened to a lot of WGAY* and their LP collection consisted of selections like the orchestral folk-pop stylings of The Sandpipers and the soundtrack to Ryan’s Daughter.

While my spouse’s boomer parents were more plugged into the “counterculture” and familiar with the mid-to-late Beatles catalogue and even ventured into the post-punk and new wave territory of bands like Talking Heads and the Clash, as a tyke I remember being enthralled by cheesy Las-Vegas-revue-like pop arrangements such as Steve Lawrence’s rendition of “Go Away Little Girl”.

This decade-lagging anachrony from early childhood may explain some of the chronic cultural disorientation and confusion that afflicts me to this day.

* * *
And finally we have Sonic Youth’s cover of a song that was a signature Top Ten hit by that same ’70s pop group.  (The Sonic Youth interpretation was originally released as part of a 1994 tribute album.)

The vid features Thurston Moore as Tragic Troubadour Ken™ and Kim Gordon as Rocker Chick Couture Barbie™.

* * *
So here’s wishing a belated happy birthday to that indestructible American icon, Barbie^®, and that princess of 1970s pop perfection, Karen C________ (March 2, 1950 – February 4, 1983).
* For those of you who didn’t live in the D.C. area before 1990 or so, WGAY was an adult contemporary easy-listening radio station.  (Its transmitter was located on Kemp Mill Road in Wheaton before it moved to the World Building in downtown Silver Spring.)

(More trivia:  According to this source, oddly enough, the “GAY” in WGAY originally stood for “Government And You” way back in the forties.)

Banking on a song and a prayer...

This past Sunday, CBS’s “60 Minutes” ran a segment about FDIC / Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) bank takeovers.  I think I heard or read somewhere that they’re calling in retired bank takeover specialists who are veterans of the S&L collapses of the ’80s.

Not surprisingly, the “60 Minutes” correspondent emphasized the overall stability of the retail banking sector, the continuity of customer service and asset guarantees once distressed banks are taken over by the feds, and the security of deposit accounts, now insured up to $250k as of 2006.

The piece didn’t really focus on which banks are vulnerable and why they have become insolvent.  However, Maryland was mentioned as the site of a recent bank failure, which prompted me to look up the story of Crofton-based Suburban Federal Savings Bank, whose employees now pledge fealty to a bank based in Virginia’s Tidewater region.

A revealing follow-up story on the bank that ran in the Baltimore Sun shows us how this formerly modest and conservatively operated “community” bank mutated into a mortgage wholesaling monstrosity.

We learn about Maryland minister Samuel Burrow, Jr., who claimed in his loan documentation that he made something like $350k in annual earnings when he actually brought in an amount below the state median income of ~$65k.  Nevertheless, this self-styled man of the cloth goes on to sue the bank for seducing and trapping him in a loan he couldn’t afford.  Perhaps the good reverend was a proponent of prosperity gospel; he certainly ordered up a very worldly custom mega-McMansion.  Unless this man was speaking in tongues or drooling on the loan documents in the Title office, his lawsuit looks pretty baseless.

However, this “community” bank was wildly irresponsible as well.  After 2004, Suburban Federal grew very profligate very quickly while it aggressively fought for a piece of the action during the mid-decade asset commodification frenzy.  Perhaps the old hands from the elder generation of this family of bankers should not have handed the reins over to junior so eagerly.

“Court papers say that in April 2005, Burrow was constructing ‘a palatial, seven bedroom residential home on over five acres of property with amenities including a movie theater, recording studio, gym, and media room.’  Suburban agreed to refinance his existing $872,000 mortgage and give him $389,000 more to finish building.  Two months later, Burrow settled a loan for $1.3 million, bringing in $41,000 in points and fees to the bank and the mortgage broker.

[....]

“What burned Suburban more than anything - not just on that deal, but on scores of loans - was that the value of houses and construction projects dropped when the real estate market cooled, often to less than the amount of the loan, [Baltimore-based loan broker Sidney P.] Levin said.  Burrow's house was once appraised for $3 million.

“‘As long the value is going up, it doesn't matter,’ Levin said.

“Indeed, [deputy director of the Treasury Department’s Office of Thrift Supervision Timothy T.] Ward and other regulators say Suburban might have endured its foray into no-documentation lending if the real estate market hadn't crashed.  But as values dropped, the amount of bad debt on Suburban's books soared.  With capital of around $30 million, Suburban could not afford to have many large loans go into default.”

—“Suburban Federal’s short, sharp fall,”  Baltimore Sun,  February 22, 2009

The bank “might have endured if the real estate market hadn’t crashed”:  Wow, this statement makes me wonder how many people are still laboring under the delusion that this comprehensive “market correction” wasn’t inevitable, given the massive quantity of counterfeit wealth that was manufactured at so many levels of the American economy before the financial market collapse of ’08/’09.

Caught DUI/DWI? Don’t be caught DOA.

And we’re talking about political demise here as well.

* * *
This week many of us have done our level best to ignore how the Dow/S&P, the Nikkei, the Hang Seng, the DAX, the London Exchange, etc. are all plunging and anemically regaining value in paroxysms of wild panic.  Meanwhile the news on job losses and industry contractions is making many people seek oblivion in whatever form they can come by it, whether that’s a liquid, a capsule, a pulsating LCD display, or whatever.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been something of a train wreck these last few weeks.

So I fear that I have to resort to mordant humor and patent absurdity that may get me in trouble.  Please forgive this lunacy.

* * *
I tend to take drunk driving and alcohol abuse pretty seriously.  This position made me very popular among the carousers in my cohort of collegiate alcoholic conformists.  Well, if you grow up around a bunch of annoying gin-and-tonic-addled adults, the sXe lifestyle starts to look a tad appealing.  One only tends to get drunk to emulate Mom and Dad if one doesn’t hate their pickled guts too much.

You know, it’s a little like non-smokers who grow up associating foul ashtray smells with the rank stench of Mommy’s sweater or Daddy’s sportcoat.

* * *
Proud Papa-to-be Pagnucco over at MPW generously provides the text of Ike Leggett’s letter in support of stricter DUI/DWI enforcement measures using a clever ignition interlock device that only activates if the operator exhales a “clean” enough breath.

Are such devices hard to foil?  Can you get a (presumably sober) child to exhale into the thing, for instance?  Yes, it’s true, drunks will attempt stunts like this.  Let’s just hope they don’t try it in the Old Wine(-o) State.

* * *
We just have to make sure that these gadgets are simple enough that tipsy Maryland politicians like state Dels. Barve and Taylor can use them effectively.

Hmm, I think I feel a tickle of farce coming on.



Let’s start with the “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle” premise but replace the Jersey bit with some Old Line State flavor.

“Herman & Kumar Go to the House of Crabs” is more like it, the House of Crabs in question being the stale echo chamber occupied by Maryland Delegates.

Or what about the sequel: “Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay”?  Man, that’s so ’07/’08.  The Gitmo goons are closing up shop and Barve and Taylor probably won’t get profiled as enemy combatants unless (a) they go on a drunk driving spree in Carroll County and/or (b) Bobby “Persecution Complex” Ehrlich gets voted back into the Governor’s Mansion and jumpstarts another spying & profiling program directed at his mortal enemies.

Nope, we need to adjust the tone for a new era of dope, er, hope.

“Herman & Kumar Escape from Annapolis Soirée.”  Yep, that’s much better, plus it sort of rhymes with “Bay.”  “Chesapeake Bay” would be another obvious possibility, although then we have to explain how these two pols ended up in that pfiesteria-infested pond to begin with.  Crumbling infrastructure anyone?  A few certifiably shoddy bridges would be like money in the bank for Maryland Democrats.  We’re talking Federal Stimulus paydirt here, kids.  But that’s a topic for another long-winded post.

But, ahem.  Back to our DUI duo.

We’ve got the promise of a narrative here.  Picture this for starters:

Herman & Kumar stagger out of a stultifyingly boring engagement full of hobnobbing Maryland muckety-mucks.  The open-bar drinks and phony praises are pouring forth freely.  Then they stumble into the leather-upholstered bucket seats of their respective luxury vehicles, now outfitted with this clever breathalyzer “interlock” ignition device.

After spending too many hours in the dense, soporific fog of Maryland Democratic politics, Herman & Kumar breathe hearty sighs of relief into their ignition interlock mouthpieces.  The dense vapors of their winey breaths immediately trigger the fuel cell contacts to close; their keys fail to budge.  After screaming invective at their vehicles that would make Mike Subin blush, they each whip out their BlackBerrys and implore their long-suffering wives to come pick them up.

Hey, this could be the setup for a brilliantly staged candid-camera press conference on the new device.

If such a press conference were to occur, we’d hope that Herman & Kumar wouldn’t louse things up by doing something embarrassing like inserting their car keys in the wrong car holes or something.

Paging Parris “thwarted-by-the-child-proof-safety-lock” Glendening, anyone?