Gifts From Jolly Old Papa John

Barrack Obama - A Photo of Bill Ayers, Rev. Wright and Tony Rezko sitting on Santa's "Chicagoland" lap.

George Bush - A "Get out of Washington" Free Card

Nancy Pelosi - A Job...any job or just a little more Botox.

Christopher Dodd & Barney Frank - Each other.

New York Times - A "Going out of Business Sale"

Sean Penn/Robert Redford/Bab's - A mansion in Iran or Cuba or Venezuela

Al Gore - A "Global Warming" expedition to the North Pole or South Pole, with only a bottle of sun screen and a bathing suit.

Bill Clinton - Hillary on long, long, long diplomatic trips.

UAW - A partnership...with the Detroit Lions.

MLB - A Yankee / Dodger World Series in '09

NY Yankees - An accountant.

Red Sox Nation - Get a life...nothing.

Wall Street - A "TARP" application

"East Coast Bias" - As usual, a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Mom & Dad - Another year of good health and good cheer.

My Wife - Me or course

Merry Christmas

Hiring Window Is Open at the Foreign Service

I pick Ireland. Or New Zealand.

Bailout Madness

Here's what's on my mind about the bailout:

• Cut out all executive bonuses for companies receiving bailouts. Don't encourage them to stay. Of course companies will say that bonuses are part of the comp plan. The companies we're propping up are failures, by any reasonable market measures. So encourage executives who have talent to find other jobs and help other companies or start new businesses. Isn't that supposed to be the upside of a downturn?
• Pay reasonable interest rates on savings accounts, including CDs. Tell the financial institutions to pay, oh let's say 5% on savings accounts under $50,000. This will encourage more savings and make more money available for local (read: housing and small business) loans. Use the bailout money to make up the difference between what banks are currently paying for savings and the target rate.
• Set a cap on total union benefits. Many public workers make more in total compensation in retirement than they did while working. And union workers in the private sector aren't any better. Let the unions negotiate a reasonable hourly wage. Then set a maximum cap of some percent of that money and tell the workers: you can take it to buy current benefits (health, vacation) or future benefits (retirement) or both. But once you reach the max, you're on your own. No lifetime benefits. And no double-dipping. How's that part of the bailout? It reduces taxes and cost of goods and puts more money into the economy.
  

That's it. That's my list.

My Civic Duty

I trudged through two feet of snow yesterday to do my civic duty: buy a large-screen television. I saw an ad for Best Buy that caught my attention and off I went. Unfortunately for me (actually, the rest of the family since I really don't want another TV), the TV was out of stock and needed to be ordered. But since I was looking for immediate gratification I promptly lost interest.

However, I'm not one to let a little decision like buying a TV pass by without some fretting. So fret I did. Not getting the television gave me time to think about the conflicting messages we're getting right now in the midst of a struggling economy.

The state of CT, for example, is begging for money, and needs sales tax revenues to allow over-paid state workers to continue accruing time towards retirement. So should I buy a TV to generate sales tax to keep paying Governor Rowland - among others - his ill-gotten retirement (how do you retire from a job you didn't do in the first place - and get paid for it?)?

Or should I buy a TV from a Japanese company in order to help the US fulfill its core mission as the economic engine of the world?

Or maybe, by driving to the store instead of ordering online, I can help keep gas prices just a little more stable.

What about the savings rate, on the other hand. Shouldn't I be saving money and thereby providing banks with capital that they can lend out to homebuyers and businesses in the area (shades of 'It's A Wonderful Life')?

I'll bet you never knew that a simple purchase could carry so much potential for angst.

Trend or Eye of the Storm?

It's possible to conceive that if the current price of gas remains stable for a while - a couple of months, let's say - that the economy could rebound by the middle of next year. But there are a lot of people rooting against the current price levels. Even as oil prices continue to trend downward, OPEC and industry analysts are sending signals that $45 oil is going to be short-lived.

“Commodities will be the place to be if and when we come out of” the downturn, Jim Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings, said yesterday (note: 12/4) in an interview on Bloomberg.com. “The only thing where fundamentals are unimpaired are commodities ... So we are going to have some serious, serious supply problems before too much longer.”

A Wall Street Journal blog reinforced that idea when they noted that Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries need oil prices in the range of $60-75 per barrel and have expressed a willingness to cut production to reach those levels. OPEC has generally been unable to dictate the price of oil in the past, and their public expression of concern might actually work against them.

Regardless, the economic climate - especially the price of gas - has an eye-of-the-storm feeling. The fundamental questions are when will the price rises begin and how steep will the climb be.

The (Auto) Bailout is Not in Our Best Interest

Snakeoil salesmen and gullible bumkins still exist.

You can't blame the auto execs for trying to grab a share of the money bleeding out of Washington these days. They see how easy it is to use the media to back Congress into a corner and they probably figured, why not. They may have made a public relations blunder when they hopped on their corporate jets three weeks ago. But believe me, they learned their lesson quickly. They probably figured that their corporate-jet excursion would soon be forgotten if they changed the headline. And they did. The new headline is: we want more money, and we need it quicker.

It seems to be a matter of sharp executives taking advantage of a Congress that does a poor job of showing any sense of discipline. Look at how easily Congress rolled over when President Bush wanted to start a war in Iraq. Every one voted for it. Until this election cycle when they all insisted that they really meant to vote against it. And of course, Congress jumped at the chance to fund the bank bailout. And only now are they figuring out that former Wall Street execs sold them a bill of goods.

I know it would be a shame to see iconic organizations like GM go out of business. But their best days are long behind them and even with a bailout, it's highly unlikely they're going to be a dominant player again any time soon.

And you know what? We've seen this before, right? Railroads have gone under, as have construction companies, universities, banks, insurers, retailers and, yes, automakers.

So would it be so bad if GM went bankrupt? It might actually be a good thing. It's possible to conceive of a US auto industry similar to the aviation industry in which one company seems to be alone building commercial jets (Boeing) but actually partners with lots of manufacturers to get the work done. It would be terrible, however, if we bailed out GM only to be left with the equivalent of Airbus.

Congress has to get out of the lending / bailout business. Government has demonstrated repeatedly that it makes knee-jerk, ill-informed judgements.

Pleeeeeeeeease

Pleeeeeeeeease

I can't take it anymore. Who the hell does ESPN think this Plaxico Burress guy is? Non-stop coverage of a true moron. With what's ailing us as a nation, this shouldn't get one second of airtime. Just put him and his kind where they belong.....JAIL.

Self-Marketing ... Self-Doubt

Truly one of the hardest jobs I've ever taken on is (drum roll, please)... marketing myself. I (think) I know exactly what other people need and I'm pretty good at communicating it. But when it comes to marketing myself, I'm beyond hopeless.

There are so many opportunities in the world and so little time. You'd think I could just focus on one. Or two.