Great Michael Lewis Article on the mishegoss in Iceland

Wall Street on the Tundra

Iceland’s de facto bankruptcy—its currency (the krona) is kaput, its debt is 850 percent of G.D.P., its people are hoarding food and cash and blowing up their new Range Rovers for the insurance—resulted from a stunning collective madness. What led a tiny fishing nation, population 300,000, to decide, around 2003, to re-invent itself as a global financial power? In Reykjavík, where men are men, and the women seem to have completely given up on them, the author follows the peculiarly Icelandic logic behind the meltdown.

by MICHAEL LEWISApril 2009

Good article that I HOPE is right

http://www.thestreet.com/story/10464211/1/kass-fear-and-loathing-on-wall-street.html

Martha's First Car

Before we even bought the VW Van, while Martha was bartending @ Christophers in Cambridge IIRC, tho I am not positive about that. I do remember taking a trip with Steven and Mike to Bar Harbor in the middle of winter. 4 six footers stuffed into it.
FWIW: Martha's had Orange and White pinstripes. Behold the first generation Honda Accord. I think at the time my MG was tits-up in Pierres garage on Newbury St.

Blimey I've been made redundant

In other words Laid Off or Furloughed if you prefer.

Personally I prefer neither, but non the less I joined the ranks of the unemployed.  

Needless to say, I am none to pleased, what a Buzz Kill after the inauguration.

Scathing Editorial from Financial Times

Bush damage can be undone - Financial Times

Published: January 18 2009 18:57 | Last updated: January 18 2009 18:57


George W. Bush, who barely scraped into office but ran a presidency marked by executive hubris, imperial overreach and epic incompetence, leaves the stage on Tuesday to a national and global sigh of relief. The “decider” and self-styled “war president” who relied on his gut got many things terribly wrong, even if it is fair to say he did face some extraordinary challenges.

With his preternatural ebullience, fathomless lack of curiosity and disdain for empirical reality, Mr Bush compromised America’s reputation as a power that stands by the rule of law – giving real succour to an enemy he helped multiply.

After offering himself to voters as a conciliatory and compassionate conservative, he deliberately polarised US politics in search of a durable new Republican majority. After preaching humility in foreign policy, he preferred unilateralism and superficial muscularity.

The attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon in 2001 would have tested the mettle of the greatest statesman. Mr Bush was not that. But he was right – and widely supported – in going into Afghanistan to deal with Osama bin Laden and his followers, a long-standing problem he has left unresolved.

But his war of choice on Iraq, and the very concept of the global war on terror, misidentified the nature of the strategic threat facing the US and the liberal international order of which it is the lead custodian. The late Roman republic was once badly defeated by the Parthians, who ruled most of today’s Iraq and Iran. But no historian records that the Romans thereafter declared a global war on the Parthian shot.

Iraq was the Bush administration’s single worst error of judgment. The invasion and subsequent occupation broke a state, dissolved a society and created a new incubator of jihadi extremism far worse than the Afghanistan of the Taliban, as well as uncorking a Sunni-Shia sectarian rift from the Levant to the Indian subcontinent.

As Anthony Cordesman, a strategist in favour of the invasion, ruefully summarised three years into the occupation, “We essentially used a bull to liberate a china shop.”

The stain of Abu Ghraib and the lawlessness of Guantánamo; the idea you can bomb people into moderation from high altitude; and the loss of nerve on Arab democracy and the “freedom agenda” – all this is a terrible setback for the ideas and values that have so long made America a beacon for the world. The security gains of the troops “surge”, moreover, are still too fragile and reversible for us to know if Iraq can be put back together again.

Domestically, the Bush team, led by the overmighty vice-president, Dick Cheney, sought to expand executive power and dismantle checks and balances. Torture and rendition abroad were accompanied by warrantless snooping at home.

Loyalty and ideological zeal rather than competence were the path to preferment. That exacerbated already difficult challenges.

Social security reform sank without trace. The response to Hurricane Katrina was bungled as Mr Bush sunnily acclaimed a “heck of a job”. From a team that manufactured the case for war, it was unsurprising when officials with no scientific training doctored administration climate research to play down the link between fossil fuel emissions and global warming. Mr Bush’s real achievements in aid to Africa look less impressive once one realises it is a principal victim of the climate change he long denied and has done so little to address.

He showed a surer touch in Asia: with China, after the tricky start of the Hainan island spy-plane crisis; and with India, although his consecration of Delhi as a new, nuclear-armed power and counterweight to Beijing is itself a gamble as well as a blow to nuclear non-proliferation.

Mr Bush cannot be cast as the principal villain for the financial meltdown and recession that resulted in good part from the loose monetary policies and regulation of the Alan Greenspan era spanning several presidencies. But the US would clearly have been in better shape to confront it had President Bush not spent like President Johnson while cutting taxes like President Reagan. This most fiscally incontinent of presidents took a wrecking ball to the public finances.

This economic crisis will be extremely difficult to resolve. Conflicts such as Afghanistan and the Middle East are intractable for any president, even if the Bush approach has made them more so.

George W. Bush did enormous damage to America’s standing in the world and its strength at home. Yet the vitality of the US system resurfaced, and American voters have chosen in Barack Obama a man of vision and statesmanship. It now falls to him to renew the confidence and restore the reputation of the American republic.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

It's staggering how much things have changed in one generation

This photo of the Obama girls being escorted to their first day of school by the Secret Service

brought to mind a previous instance of the armed federal troops escorting a black child to high school. 

Quite a juxtaposition.

The Little Rock Nine 1957.  I believe this photo is of the Arkansas 

guard preventing them from attending.  The 101st Airborn would

later be called on to enforce the integration of Little Rock High.

Elizabeth Eckford Today

Full Disclosure

In the winter my hands get so dry and cracked that I need to super-glue the cracks.

Fresh Start to the New Year

Here is a good example of Mark Bittmans writing for his NYT Blog

Fresh Start to the New Year

Happy New Year

I have been very remiss about blogging lately, but I have been doing alot of reading and here are a few bits I think you will find worthwhile.

The End of the Financial World as We Know It - NYT

By MICHAEL LEWIS and DAVID EINHORN

Published: January 3, 2009

Fighting Off Depression -NYT

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: January 4, 2009

Pointless Peace Proposals -SlateThe Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a war, and it won't be over until someone wins.

By Anne ApplebaumPosted Monday, Jan. 5, 2009, at 7:55 PM ET

The Man in the Rockefeller Suit

By snatching his seven-year-old daughter from her mother’s custody, after a bitter divorce, the man calling himself Clark Rockefeller blew the lid off a lifelong con game which had culminated with his posing as a scion of the famous dynasty. The 47-year-old impostor charmed his way into exclusive communities, clubs, and financial institutions—marrying a Harvard M.B.A.; working at Kidder, Peabody; and showing off an extraordinary art collection—until his arrest brought him face-to-face with his past and with questions regarding skeletal remains dug up in a California backyard.

by MARK SEALJanuary 2009

Wall Street Lays Another Egg

Not so long ago, the dollar stood for a sum of gold, and bankers knew the people they lent to. The author charts the emergence of an abstract, even absurd world—call it Planet Finance—where mathematical models ignored both history and human nature, and value had no meaning.

by NIALL FERGUSONDecember 2008

Stupid Inconveniences

Two of my Pet Peeves from recent years.

Having to show a license and have your NPI copied to get a package of Sudaafed. 

No I am not talking about the weak ass Sudafed PE, I am talking the real old school

Psuedophedrine-the truck driver jacking, sinus clearing stuff.  I don't know who's

brainstorm this was, but it's re-god-damn-diculous.  I seriously doubt the meth lab

folks spend their days pushing little red pills out of blister packs. I mean for fucks sake,

I can pick up a codiene prescription without showing a license AND without my name even

being 0n the script.

Taking your shoes off at the airport security line and then not having a place to sit down

to put them back on.  How long do those TSA geniuses have to watch octegenarians hopping around on one leg frantically trying to shoe the other foot before they realize a bench or two might be a good idea.

Keanu Fracking Reeves

Why do major movie studios give this guy roles?  Have they not seen  a Walk in the Clouds? 

I can't tell you how gobstruck I was when I learned that he was going to be in The Day the Earth Stood Still.   

He flat out, full stop, can't act.  Keanu staring in the re-making of a sci fi classic like TDTESS, is a

travesty on the magnitude of Molly Ringwald in The Stand (Thanks Martha). I mean FFS, why not

just cast little Billy from The Family Circus.  America, we can do better.

In Support of Gay Marriage

I can understand many peoples reticence to embrace the notion of gay marriage.  I think most of the opposition is from primitive brain stem fear of the "other".  It might be dressed up as protection of the family, sanctity of opposite sex marriage, or any number of more high minded thoughts, but I am not buying it.  Why?, well it makes no rational sense for one.  In what way is my marriage diminished by what anyone else does or does not do. Equality in Marriage has been the law in MA for some time now, and near as I can tell the sky has not fallen and the sun still rises. Margaret Marshall and the MA Supreme Court (And John Adam's Constitution) got it exactly right IMHO. The equal protection clause is of course applicable to gay marriage. If a religion wishes to prohibit it that's their business. But this is the state and the constitution (federal and state) are bound to apply equal protection and in most states they do not when granting the privileges and protection of marriage. Does this also apply to plural marriage? In my opinion probably, but that is not the question. States that re-write their constitutions to subvert the very meaning of the documents will regret it. When was the last time Equality was wrong?

Election Day

- Someday a real rain is gonna come and wash all the scum off the streets

Red Angel Dragnet by the Clash came up on my ipod a few days ago and leading up to this election that quote has been on my mind. I have been waiting for this rain for the last 8 years, the Tom Delays, Rudy Giulianis, Alfredo Gonzales, Harriet Miers, Larry Craigs, Jack Abramoffs, Blackwater, Haliburton, Enron, Dick Cheneys, Mitch Brown, John Boltons, Scooter Libbys, Roves, Rumsfelds, John Yoos, Anne Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Mary Matlin and the rest of the Culture war-ing, Faux Religionists, Hate and Fear Mongering, Free Marketeers of Convenience, Bogus Populist lying scum finally washed down the gutter of history.

Good Riddance.

The Sad Part

You Know,

The sad part of this election for me is John McCain's campaign.  I used to respect him as an open minded man with a conservative bent.  I honestly thought he was different from the Rove/Limbaugh/Hannity/Focus on the Family/DeLay wing of the party.  I remember one time earlier in the year when he appeared on the Daily Show.  He had just given a speech at James Dobson's "church" (mall is more like it).  This is after he had publicly denounced this brand of evangelicals.  Asked by Stewart about this contradiction (specifically if McCain had gone to "crazy base land") he owned up to it in a very self effacing and endearing way.  You got the feeling he hadn't completely sold his soul.  I certainly preferred him to Mitt Romney or Rudy who to me are the most phony politicians I know, those two will say anything to get elected.

But then McCain ran a campaign that was arguably more disingenuous that GWB.  Including hiring the very people who smeared him in 2000 with "Black Baby" robocalls.  And then there was Sarah.  If she is not the canary in the GOP coalmine I don't know who is.  With her selection the GOP alienated every woman with a frontal lobe in the country.  Palin is the Archetypal cheerleeder know nothing who gets promoted because she was "cute".  She is the Anti Feminist.   Choosing her is so tone deaf as to be beyond belief.  Also, FWIW she is not hot.  WRT her running in 2012 I have this to say "Bring it Bayotch".  The GOP may not be dead this year, but it's on life support and the prognosis is not good.

Buttercups

While waiting for the coffee to finish brewing this morning, I heard a bit on NPR about a plant study taking place in Concord. This gist of it was that certain plants which cannot change their bloom time are dissapearing in certain areas. The Buttercup was one of the ones mentioned, thinking about that, I can't remember when I last saw one. Is it just me? When was the last time you saw one. Another sound I never hear anymore are Bob-Whites and Whipporwhills. On the plus side, Newton is over-run with Rabbits this year and I hadn't seen one of them in the city for years.

Moral Hazard

As an Economics major I have always been interested in the Freakonomics types of questions. To give you an example, not many of us are having any major problem with government handouts to the banks. I think we all understand that the economy overall is better served by supporting the banks so that they can continue to lend. But despite clear evidence suggesting that it is more cost beneficial to pay for an apartment for a homeless person to live in than to let them continue on the streets,this is still wildly un-popular. Why is this? Is it just me?