Twice in the last week friends asked me if I were optimistic about the economy. Do they think my degree in economics and a career as a business journalist qualifies me to know more than, say, the pinheads at Standard & Poors who made a $2 trillion mistake when calculating their assessment of the credit worthiness of the United States? Do they think I know more than the complicit bean counters at S&P who valued Lehman Bros. AAA worthy even as it imploded and who gave favorable reviews to toxic mortgage-backed securities at the heart of the financial freefall of the last few years?
I’d like to say I responded with a positive take on the economy. But I would be as guilty as those fabricators at S&P who have done more to ruin our economy than a dozen Bernie Madoffs could. Yet even in their obfuscations there is a kernel of truth—there is little to be confident about the will or power of our elected officials to bring a sane, rational approach to a resolution of our financial crisis.
I’m perplexed about several parts of this unfolding story.
First, does S&P believe we need a balanced approach to setting a national budget? Does it believe only more program cuts are required, or are higher taxes on the rich and closing corporate and personal loopholes necessary as well?
Second, several interviews portrayed ordinary citizens understandably lamenting the debt ceiling deal. But in the same breadth they said they wouldn’t favor higher taxes, as desired by President Obama and the Democratic leadership. Do they not understand taxes would have gone up just for those households making more than $250,000? Have Republicans so brainwashed the common folk they believe their taxes would go up?
Third, given we live in a global economy where it is generally cheaper to manufacture in Third World countries than here in America, how long will it take for our citizenry to comprehend we are not going back to the time when the United States was the foundry of the universe. Think of most consumer products, from iPhones to digital cameras, from Christian Louboutin shoes to Nike cross trainers—they’re not made in America. During the last century we shifted from an agricultural to a manufacturing economy. Now we’re a service and information economy. Yes, there are remnants of our production prowess. But most new jobs will require the ability to say “would you like fries with that” or will rely on one’s skill to create platforms that aggregate consumers into marketable segments (at least those who retain enough money to spend on discretionary items). Or you will need to be part of the financial community that doesn’t produce an ounce of goods but earns dollars by the pound based on an ability to jimmy-up trades and market fluctuations (case in point: oil speculators with no tangible assets in the energy business who have driven up the price of gasoline and home heating oil).
Fourth, if Republicans are interested in putting Americans back to work, why don’t they push for legislation to benefit companies that hire more U.S. workers and tax those that outsource jobs?
Fifth, how can anyone see value in a bifurcated society? It wasn’t good when we discriminated based on color, or ethnicity, or sex. Yet our leaders are letting us devolve into a nation of haves and have-nots. Riots like in London, as well as the Arab Spring revolts, are demonstrations of the hopeless and destitute seeking relief against the accumulation of wealth in an elite. Verizon land-line workers are on strike. Even if you believe the company that the average Verizon workers makes $150,000 in salary and benefits, it is 120 times less than the $18.1 million compensation of the company’s CEO last year. It’s an obscene differential. Ivan Seidenberg makes $50,000 a day, every day of the year. Is his three-day compensation equal to an average worker’s full year? It’s not as if he invented a new form of communication, or discovered the cure for cancer, or helped solve world hunger. His job is to run a profitable company, even if it means squeezing his employees to pay more for health care coverage and their retirement plans. I’m not advocating wealth redistribution, but there really should be a limit on corporate compensation.
Showing posts with label Madoff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Madoff. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Observations While Sitting Around
Sitting Observation: A few years ago Charmin brand toilet tissue came out with a jumbo roll, so big it didn’t fit in standard-issue bathroom holders. Not to be deterred, Charmin overcame the operational problem by distributing free adaptors to extend the depth of the tissue holder. A thoughtful marketing solution.
Except, no one had the foresight to ask, what happens if we subsequently downsize our toilet tissue rolls? What happens when the adaptors are constant reminders we’re providing less product per roll but charging the same (or more)? (Indeed, at Costco the jumbo Ultra Soft roll is now just 173.2 sq. ft. long, down 7.6% from its previous real jumbo size 187.5 sq. ft. Of course, the price has gone up, 2.6%.)
It’s the type of business problem one ponders while just, er, sitting around...
Bernie Madoff has been getting lots of ink and air time lately (e.g, this profile in New York magazine: http://nymag.com/news/features/berniemadoff-2011-3/). Which prompted two questions in my mind:
First, are the Feds monitoring the stock trades of Bernie’s fellow inmates?
Second, which video clip has been shown more often during the last two years—Osama bin Laden crouching while shooting a Kalashnikov rifle, or Madoff in baseball cap shoving a cameraman while walking in New York?...
Baby Blues: Mike Huckabee recently criticized Academy Award winner Natalie Portman, saying she was a poor role model because she will have a child out of wedlock. Shades of Vice President Dan Quayle attacking Murphy Brown 20 years ago (for those too young to know, or too old to remember, Murphy Brown was a fictional TV newscaster portrayed by Candace Bergen. In the TV sitcom, the unwed Murphy Brown had a baby, prompting Quayle’s admonishment).
Huckabee is entitled to his value system but wouldn't a more appropriate example of adolescent misbehavior be Bristol Palin’s baby-making fling with Levi Johnston? Bristol and Levi were high school students, with no visible sources of income (though she now is a money-machine, and dancer, thanks to our country’s warped reward system. Levi, as well, has cashed in on his notoriety). Natalie Portman, on the other hand, is 29 with a successful career forged while earning a BA degree in psychology from Harvard; her fiancé and father of her future child is a professional dancer. Not exactly the PWT model Bristol and Levi project. But then, Huckabee might be reluctant to call out the daughter of Grizzly Bear mom Sarah Palin...
Speaking of Huckabee, he's either very dumb or very sly like a fox. In erroneously saying President Obama grew up in Kenya near madrasas, Huckabee showed ignorance of his opponent.
Or, as I heard the other day, he pulled a cagey lawyer’s trick by purposely planting misinformation in his audience’s mind. He knew he'd be corrected, but just as a lawyer asks a question he knows will be objected to, Huckabee aired the false information to further the campaign to de-legitimize Obama’s presidential qualifications.
Me? I don't think Huckabee possesses such guile. I think he's just dumb and biased against anyone with a cultural background different than his Arkansasian narrow-mindedness. He can't relate to an Obama. Or Portman. Or to a Bill Clinton who went to Yale and became a Rhodes scholar. It's amazing how many Republicans want to be the leader of the most important country on earth but have almost no exposure to the rest of the world. At least Sarah Palin can see Russia from her front door...
Blow Up Debate: Or, my terrorist is better than yours. At least that’s what one must assume, given U.S. Rep. Peter King’s intention to hold hearings beginning Thursday on home-grown Islamic terrorists, despite his personal support for Irish Republican Army bombers back in the 1980s.
The GOP congressman believes the IRA was not a terrorist organization. It never attacked the U.S., as have Islamic terrorists. But anyone killed by an IRA bomb is just as dead as someone killed by an Islamic terrorist. It really is irrelevant who they were or where they were killed. Dead is dead, in any language or country.
Except, no one had the foresight to ask, what happens if we subsequently downsize our toilet tissue rolls? What happens when the adaptors are constant reminders we’re providing less product per roll but charging the same (or more)? (Indeed, at Costco the jumbo Ultra Soft roll is now just 173.2 sq. ft. long, down 7.6% from its previous real jumbo size 187.5 sq. ft. Of course, the price has gone up, 2.6%.)
It’s the type of business problem one ponders while just, er, sitting around...
Bernie Madoff has been getting lots of ink and air time lately (e.g, this profile in New York magazine: http://nymag.com/news/features/berniemadoff-2011-3/). Which prompted two questions in my mind:
First, are the Feds monitoring the stock trades of Bernie’s fellow inmates?
Second, which video clip has been shown more often during the last two years—Osama bin Laden crouching while shooting a Kalashnikov rifle, or Madoff in baseball cap shoving a cameraman while walking in New York?...
Baby Blues: Mike Huckabee recently criticized Academy Award winner Natalie Portman, saying she was a poor role model because she will have a child out of wedlock. Shades of Vice President Dan Quayle attacking Murphy Brown 20 years ago (for those too young to know, or too old to remember, Murphy Brown was a fictional TV newscaster portrayed by Candace Bergen. In the TV sitcom, the unwed Murphy Brown had a baby, prompting Quayle’s admonishment).
Huckabee is entitled to his value system but wouldn't a more appropriate example of adolescent misbehavior be Bristol Palin’s baby-making fling with Levi Johnston? Bristol and Levi were high school students, with no visible sources of income (though she now is a money-machine, and dancer, thanks to our country’s warped reward system. Levi, as well, has cashed in on his notoriety). Natalie Portman, on the other hand, is 29 with a successful career forged while earning a BA degree in psychology from Harvard; her fiancé and father of her future child is a professional dancer. Not exactly the PWT model Bristol and Levi project. But then, Huckabee might be reluctant to call out the daughter of Grizzly Bear mom Sarah Palin...
Speaking of Huckabee, he's either very dumb or very sly like a fox. In erroneously saying President Obama grew up in Kenya near madrasas, Huckabee showed ignorance of his opponent.
Or, as I heard the other day, he pulled a cagey lawyer’s trick by purposely planting misinformation in his audience’s mind. He knew he'd be corrected, but just as a lawyer asks a question he knows will be objected to, Huckabee aired the false information to further the campaign to de-legitimize Obama’s presidential qualifications.
Me? I don't think Huckabee possesses such guile. I think he's just dumb and biased against anyone with a cultural background different than his Arkansasian narrow-mindedness. He can't relate to an Obama. Or Portman. Or to a Bill Clinton who went to Yale and became a Rhodes scholar. It's amazing how many Republicans want to be the leader of the most important country on earth but have almost no exposure to the rest of the world. At least Sarah Palin can see Russia from her front door...
Blow Up Debate: Or, my terrorist is better than yours. At least that’s what one must assume, given U.S. Rep. Peter King’s intention to hold hearings beginning Thursday on home-grown Islamic terrorists, despite his personal support for Irish Republican Army bombers back in the 1980s.
The GOP congressman believes the IRA was not a terrorist organization. It never attacked the U.S., as have Islamic terrorists. But anyone killed by an IRA bomb is just as dead as someone killed by an Islamic terrorist. It really is irrelevant who they were or where they were killed. Dead is dead, in any language or country.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
What Price Glory?
Baseball has always had more than its fair share of colorful, if not controversial, team owners.
Calvin Griffith famously, infamously, moved the Senators from Washington, DC, to Minneapolis to become the Twins because he was under the impression no blacks lived in Minnesota. Walter O’Malley broke the hearts of Brooklynites by moving the Dodgers to Los Angeles, while orchestrating the shift of the Giants from Manhattan to San Francisco. In so doing, O’Malley brought major league baseball to the west. Charlie Finley and Bill Veeck were unique in their times; Finley transplanted the Kansas City Athletics to Oakland and won three straight World Series, 1972-74. He was an early proponent of inter-league play and using colored baseballs. Veeck was no promotional slouch—he originated exploding scoreboards after home team home runs and once sent a midget up to bat, telling him to crouch real low and, under penalty of being shot, not to swing at any pitch. He walked on four pitches.
Even before his death Tuesday at 80, George M. Steinbrenner III was acknowledged as the most renowned and influential team owner, of any sport, of the last three decades. He and his fellow investors bought the once proud but foundering NY Yankees for less than $9 million in 1973. Today, after 11 pennants and seven world championships, the team is said to be worth more than $1.6 billion. The papers and airwaves have been full of mostly fond remembrances of Boss George, of how he changed the face of sports, of how he brought a business mentality to baseball, of his “win at all costs” mantra.
As I write this on the night of July 14, it’s appropriate to recall this is Bastille Day, the commemoration of the start of the French Revolution when the peasantry and middle class rebelled against the tyranny of the privileged aristocracy. Boss George, or should I say, King George, treated all who worked for him as serfs. It doesn’t bother me that he made Oscar Gamble shear off his afro, or Johnny Damon his long locks. Anyone fortunate to play a child’s game and consider that a profession, a profession that pays them way beyond the income of the average wage earner, should swallow hard and live with such petty demands. But no one should be fired because they delivered coffee 20 minutes too late for their boss’s patience, as Steinbrenner once did to a secretary. It’s permissible to require discipline and accountability, even to have no tolerance for critical mistakes. But no one should lead an enterprise where everyone works in fear.
I’m an avid Yankees fan. I relish the titles won in 1977, 1978, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2009 during the Steinbrenner years. But at what cost? At what price of human dignity? Too many Yankees fans are either too young or too forgetful to remember how Steinbrenner shamelessly dumped Dick Howser as manager after the team won 103 regular season games but lost three straight in the playoffs to the Kansas City Royals. How he publicly ridiculed players like pitchers Ken Clay and Jim Beattie after poor games. How he tormented Billy Martin by demanding he fire his friend, pitching coach Art Fowler, how he undermined the authority of pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre, how he tried to discredit Dave Winfield, how he fired Yogi Berra after 16 games despite promising his job was safe for the season. Too young, too forgetful, or maybe too caught up in following a winning team instead of following a winning philosophy of life.
Yes, there are legions of stories about Steinbrenner’s charity, about his giving a second chance to people like Steve Howe, Doc Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, and to those he offended. Even Yogi forgave him. I’m not ready, just yet.
Winning at all costs. That’s the same credo behind Nixon’s Watergate, behind the current GOP’s anti-Obama strategy of roadblocking all Democratic initiatives even if it means the masses suffer and the country stays mired in economic turmoil. Winning at all costs was behind Madoff and other recent financial debacles.
Maybe it’s a generational thing. Maybe being over 60 means I just want people to respect each other. I want to respect people considered to be icons. It’s okay for them to have some warts. They’re people, after all, and nobody really is perfect.
Watching an ailing, aging George Steinbrenner pass from vibrancy to slow death was grim spectacle. My parents, similarly, lingered beyond productive, cognizant years. I can relate to the Steinbrenner family’s feelings of loss. But Yankee fans need to step back and view in perspective the pact they made with Boss George. Just as we continue to debate the wisdom of the bombings of August 6 and 8, 1945—the ultimate win at all costs actions—so too must we weigh the reign of King George.
Calvin Griffith famously, infamously, moved the Senators from Washington, DC, to Minneapolis to become the Twins because he was under the impression no blacks lived in Minnesota. Walter O’Malley broke the hearts of Brooklynites by moving the Dodgers to Los Angeles, while orchestrating the shift of the Giants from Manhattan to San Francisco. In so doing, O’Malley brought major league baseball to the west. Charlie Finley and Bill Veeck were unique in their times; Finley transplanted the Kansas City Athletics to Oakland and won three straight World Series, 1972-74. He was an early proponent of inter-league play and using colored baseballs. Veeck was no promotional slouch—he originated exploding scoreboards after home team home runs and once sent a midget up to bat, telling him to crouch real low and, under penalty of being shot, not to swing at any pitch. He walked on four pitches.
Even before his death Tuesday at 80, George M. Steinbrenner III was acknowledged as the most renowned and influential team owner, of any sport, of the last three decades. He and his fellow investors bought the once proud but foundering NY Yankees for less than $9 million in 1973. Today, after 11 pennants and seven world championships, the team is said to be worth more than $1.6 billion. The papers and airwaves have been full of mostly fond remembrances of Boss George, of how he changed the face of sports, of how he brought a business mentality to baseball, of his “win at all costs” mantra.
As I write this on the night of July 14, it’s appropriate to recall this is Bastille Day, the commemoration of the start of the French Revolution when the peasantry and middle class rebelled against the tyranny of the privileged aristocracy. Boss George, or should I say, King George, treated all who worked for him as serfs. It doesn’t bother me that he made Oscar Gamble shear off his afro, or Johnny Damon his long locks. Anyone fortunate to play a child’s game and consider that a profession, a profession that pays them way beyond the income of the average wage earner, should swallow hard and live with such petty demands. But no one should be fired because they delivered coffee 20 minutes too late for their boss’s patience, as Steinbrenner once did to a secretary. It’s permissible to require discipline and accountability, even to have no tolerance for critical mistakes. But no one should lead an enterprise where everyone works in fear.
I’m an avid Yankees fan. I relish the titles won in 1977, 1978, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2009 during the Steinbrenner years. But at what cost? At what price of human dignity? Too many Yankees fans are either too young or too forgetful to remember how Steinbrenner shamelessly dumped Dick Howser as manager after the team won 103 regular season games but lost three straight in the playoffs to the Kansas City Royals. How he publicly ridiculed players like pitchers Ken Clay and Jim Beattie after poor games. How he tormented Billy Martin by demanding he fire his friend, pitching coach Art Fowler, how he undermined the authority of pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre, how he tried to discredit Dave Winfield, how he fired Yogi Berra after 16 games despite promising his job was safe for the season. Too young, too forgetful, or maybe too caught up in following a winning team instead of following a winning philosophy of life.
Yes, there are legions of stories about Steinbrenner’s charity, about his giving a second chance to people like Steve Howe, Doc Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, and to those he offended. Even Yogi forgave him. I’m not ready, just yet.
Winning at all costs. That’s the same credo behind Nixon’s Watergate, behind the current GOP’s anti-Obama strategy of roadblocking all Democratic initiatives even if it means the masses suffer and the country stays mired in economic turmoil. Winning at all costs was behind Madoff and other recent financial debacles.
Maybe it’s a generational thing. Maybe being over 60 means I just want people to respect each other. I want to respect people considered to be icons. It’s okay for them to have some warts. They’re people, after all, and nobody really is perfect.
Watching an ailing, aging George Steinbrenner pass from vibrancy to slow death was grim spectacle. My parents, similarly, lingered beyond productive, cognizant years. I can relate to the Steinbrenner family’s feelings of loss. But Yankee fans need to step back and view in perspective the pact they made with Boss George. Just as we continue to debate the wisdom of the bombings of August 6 and 8, 1945—the ultimate win at all costs actions—so too must we weigh the reign of King George.
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