Blog category: Economy

Jackson, McNamara, Deficit, Scuderi, The Heather Graham – Mike Tyson – Pat Stack Connection | July 7th, 2009

My iPod started acting ill today, and now I’m in the middle of restoring the factory settings. Since I have to completely re-upload all of my music, photo and backed-up files, I got some time to write. First, the news:

• At first today, it really annoyed me that the entire media-swilling world spent the day rending its garments and pulling out its hair over Michael Jackson. (It’s 10 p.m. here, and the funeral is still the top story on CNN.com.) But then I thought, “Parts of the U.S. have been doing this for more than 30 years for Elvis, so this is really nothing new,” and I felt better about our modern era — or worse about past eras, I can’t decide.

• I’ve been asking people for a percentage: how many people watching Michael Jackson’s funeral know who Robert McNamara is, and they have to understand that he was far more historically important than MJ. The common response is less than 1 percent, but I would think it’s actually up around 4 percent. Call me an optimist.

In fairness to that other 96 percent, I did call him “George McNamara” at lunch today. But to burnish my own history-nerd credentials with an even bigger bit of nerdness, I was also thinking of McGeorge Bundy at the time.

• Key line from this good budget deficit rundown:

If policy now tilts too far toward deficit cutting, some argue, that would treat job creation as an option the nation somehow cannot afford, in contrast to “must haves” like tax cuts for wealthy Americans and unpopular foreign military entanglements.

True, but you also can’t ignore the fact that those tax cuts and unpopular entanglements were put in place, and now they are indeed making the job creation that much more financially difficult. I fall reluctantly in line with the spending advocates — I don’t think now is the time to pay down the deficit, because government spending at the moment really is a big portion of the money flowing into the economy. But if things do turn around, raise my taxes. It sucks, but it’s better than betting our economic livelihood on the whim of the Chinese government.

And on to frivolous stuff:

• I’m sorry to see the Penguins lose Rob Scuderi to the L.A. Kings, but they were right not to pay what the Kings paid. The dude is good, but not $13.6 million good.

• I got a Lollapalooza ticket for Sunday, August 9, hombres. Jane’s Addiction original lineup? I am hella there.

• This past Friday I went to see The Hangover. Verdict: four phats. Definitely some gross humor; definitely a weird Zach Galifinakis; and most likely worth seeing. (Though don’t take your parents.)

Even stranger, the movie featured both Heather Graham and Mike Tyson in prominent roles. Why is this strange? Those two were both guests at a 2004 arts-benefit party at the Guggenheim in NYC attended by yours truly, who by all rights should not have been there in the first place. (I’m pretty sure this Heather Graham photo is from that very night.) Mike Tyson is somehow even scarier when he wears fur, and I even made eye contact with Ms. Graham — or as I have no right to call her, Heather — for a full second.

The moral here? I really should have been offered at least a cameo appearance as the third part of that party trifecta, Hollywood.

The Bailout Methodology That Had to Happen | March 3rd, 2009

The government is finally about to start buying up the garbage assets that all the big banks are holding. From the WSJ, still owned by the same people who brought you When Animals Attack:

‘Bad Bank’ Funding Plan Starts to Get Fleshed Out

This one is going to be a public-private partnership, wherein the government will pony up a lot of the capital ($500 bil to $1 trizillion) and private investors will pick up the rest. Ideally I assume this would make a portfolio of 2,000 distressed credit-card receivables cheaper than current prices, such that someone out there would still be able to collect on enough of them to make it worthwhile.

I think this is what needed to happen all along, and for all the correct arguments about moral hazard — I met enough arrogant bankers in New York to know that they completely disregarded the idea of consequence long before this debacle — the Republican preference to let the national ship sink for the sake of principle is callous and stupid. I don’t know about you, but if I was just some working-class Detroit guy chillin’ homeless and broke in the event of a complete financial crash, I wouldn’t be telling myself, “Dude, I really showed those bankers.”

And as for tax increases to fund the spending, there’s always the Chinese and Japanese, who will keep lending us money as long as we buy their stuff and maintain a favorable exchange rate for their exports. That fact worries me more than the rest of this, but hey, one thing at a time here!