Inside Job, Twerp Alert, Happy Birthday

Gollum Crazy: I try to avoid depressing movies, excellent reviews notwithstanding.

Inside Job received excellent reviews. It is a documentary about the financial meltdown crisis. I went to see it yesterday while Gilda was at work. I am now depressed.

I’m not depressed because my savings were ravaged in the stock market fallout (they weren’t). I’m not depressed because my mortgage is higher than the value of my home (the mortgage was already paid off). I’m not depressed I lost my job because of the lousy economy (actually, the economy was a contributing factor to my “retirement,” but I’m happy to be retired).

I’m depressed because in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the vultures on Wall Street continue to believe they did no wrong and are just as powerful as before to screw our country and the rest of the world. I wonder how these people can sleep at night. Then I realize it must be easy to nod off into dreamland on a mattress stuffed with our dollar bills, make that our thousand dollar bills. Our system of finance rewards incompetence and chicanery. We have a system wherein credit rating companies (e.g., Moody’s, Fitch and Standard & Poors) are not accountable, hiding behind the argument their work is just “opinion,” therefore should not be construed as an endorsement of a company’s solvency. In other words, investor beware. Days before Lehman Brothers imploded, they still were issuing AAA ratings for its bonds.

Deregulation opened the gateway for financial excess and distress. Yet Wall Street and the banking community resist oversight. Republicans as well as Democrats share the guilt of blind acquiescence. Economists at prestigious universities have been co-opted by the lure of big bucks from financial institutions. Deregulation intensified a culture of greed and envy. Gross compensation (reportedly a record $144 billion in 2010) turned everyone into crazed Gollums, whose only thoughts are for “precious” bonuses to buy more, more, more that are “mine, mine, mine.”

It’s too painful to recount all the details. Go see Inside Job. You won’t be happy when you exit the theater, but you’ll be more informed.


Twerp Alert: Gilda is on a crusade, a jihad against twerps, who she defines as short, inconsiderate, measly-faced, well-tailored commuters who refuse to clean up after themselves.

On Metro North Tuesday morning she encountered a twerp who threw his discarded newspaper on the floor and refused to pick it up when the train reached Grand Central Terminal even after she and others admonished him and advised a newspaper receptacle stood right outside the door on the platform. Once before Gilda had remonstrated against this twerp, telling him it was not the conductor’s job to clean up after him. He’s apparently a slow learner, someone who believes he’s above participating in train car housekeeping, though he no doubt wants a clean environment during his commute.

Sounds to me like another one of those “entitlement” guys who got us into the financial mess we’re still in.


Happy Birthday: My father was a successful businessman. He sent his children to private schools, graduate schools, sleep-away summer camps, trips abroad. His one vice was buying a new car every five years. He bought Buicks all but the one time our mother talked him into a Cadillac. He was not stingy, not profligate. He provided for his family, friends and workers. He was charitable with his time and money for causes he believed in. He would have turned 100 today.