Archive for October 31st, 2008
Scary Thoughts on the Lack of Size and Humor
Disparate issues linked by their overwhelming smallness.
It’s been a few of weeks since our last post, and such a long gap is highly unusual as we’re rarely at a shortage for words. We’ve been busy, but more importantly, we didn’t feel compelled to write about our normal topics of interest; despite the market volatility, little has changed in the intervening days.
In addition, the accumulated effect of seeing so many behave in such small ways over large matters was and is rather sad and depressing. No, we’re not talking about the election campaigns, which, by the grace of God do have a definite endings – if only for a year or so until the next ones begins.
The Smallness of Our Leaders: in the financial crisis, few individuals took right, reasoned, and principled courses of action or bothered to think before they spoke. While we expect such fallen behavior on a day-to-day basis, we do hope that our elected and appointed officials are able to rise to the occasion. Their failures to do so – their panic and expediency – remain sources of disappointment. Here is a very, very, very small example that has stuck with us for nearly a month and was likely unnoticed by most.
In the days between the two Congressional votes on the bailout, we saw a Congressman from Tennessee rant about mark-to-market accounting. He knew no more about accounting issue than he did about anything else, except talking perhaps, but that didn’t stop him.
While we listened to his diatribe against it, we thought, hmmm, not a single specific reference to the underlying issues of relevancy, reliability, economic efficiency, etc. Replace “mark-to-market accounting” in his otherwise generic spiel, “we have to something about mark-to-market accounting before it…,” and he had a ready-made speech for all that is evil du jour: AIDs in Africa, the lack of clean water in villages, illegal drugs, legal drugs, drunk driving, international piracy, child labor, greed, foreign car manufacturers, cancer, diabetes, Wall Street executives, oil prices, etc., and no other words would have changed. He had a handy demonization template, and that made actual contemplation superfluous; so, he had changed his mind and would vote for the bailout.
A the time, we thought, unfortunately, there are no literacy or poll tests for voting in Congress. Or was it another example of voter fraud.
As we mentioned, it is a very small example, but it suffices for small men and their lack of depth, and it also relates to the main purpose of this post.
A Few Words on Financial Markets: By the way, on those market and incentive topics – our normal blog fodder – we stand by everything that we’ve written and continue to believe the bailout was and is a mistake. Even if it does mitigate the liquidity crisis – and we’re not sure that it has – we ask, at what cost to our economy and our freedom?
For example, we’ve been musing that many government officials have been able to quite inadvertently meet their election year promise of substantially reducing energy costs – even before the election. But at what cost? They can rightly argue that their actions – whether planned or not – have saved billions for the American people as oil has moved from its peak of $147 dollars per barrel to its current range in the mid-60s. Unfortunately, it has been at the cost of trillions of dollars of wealth.
On that topic, in April, we predicted (wildly guessed) that oil could be at $40 per barrel by year end. We could actually see it quite lower – even in the $25 per barrel range. Our rationale: the cohesion of OPEC and its partners, particularly Russia, will likely failure, and we expect large investment funds – like CALPERS – to continue to liquidate their commodity holdings since equity values have plummeted.
We’ll have more to say about economic issues in the next few days, particularly with respect to the recent change in tax policies that provide a benefit – the absorption and use of loss carryforwards – that the IRS is permitting acquiring banks to take in the recent mergers.
That policy change, while far less graceful and efficient, is not much different than our idea to solve the mortgage crisis – but not the liquidity crisis; so, provides a small bit of hope. (Search the archives or read just about anything we wrote in September and early October. We’ll still not sure that officials realize that these two crises are distinct._ It is not nearly as clean or as precise as our approach, but that’s not why we are writing.
Sarah Palin: as we wrote almost two months ago, we continue to be amazed at the senseless vitriol and sheer hatred spewed towards Mrs. Palin, particularly among Hollywood and New York celebrities, who put forth as much thought as the above-referenced Congressman from Tennessee. As we wrote in our initial post, they hated her before they knew her, and they could hate her with such ease because of who she is – someone very similar to many people we know, like, and love: conservative, pro-family, pro-life, middle-aged, religious and gun-totin’.
But, we must add, we’re not surprised that so many thoughtless and dull folks dismiss her small town mayoral experience and her small population gubernatorial experience. It says more about them and their lack of experience and intellectual empathy than it does about her.
We spent ten years in academia, but it didn’t take that nearly long to appreciate the validity of Henry Kissinger’s quote that – and we paraphrase – the fighting in academia is so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
What’s true in universities it is also true in small towns and most other organizations as well, including the staff departments of large corporations.
Regardless of all the many ways that one can describe functions of governments, at a minimum it involves resource allocation and gathering (funding). In other words, who gets what the government has and who has to give for the government to have.
Does the reader think that resource allocation decisions are easier in a small town than in the naiton’s capital? One’s purchase decisions in a small town may aid or bankrupt a neighbor, an acquaintance or a former classmate who walks or drives by your home everyday or attends the same church or shops at the same stores or eats in the same restaurants. Consider that as opposed to doing this or that to a nebulous and abstract groups like “small businessmen” or “big corporations?” in a locale where almost everyone – mostly strangers – are representing something or someone else: rather than directly feeling the pain of actions and decisions.
Does the reader think that taxing decisions are easier in small towns than within the federal government? Raise property assessments and earn the wrath of those same neighbors, acquaintances, and former friends.
[Where is one more likely to receive the immediate feedback from uncomfortable conversations and cold stares? In Washington or Wasilla? Where is one more likely to receive negative feedback filtered and diluted through a staff of gutless, careerist sycophants? Washington or Wasilla? Yeah, the questions really do answer themselves. (Our hypothesis: local politicians find more dog waste in their front yards than average citizens do.)
In one of our own volunteer activities, we allocate a precious, scarce, and first-class resource among a group of individuals who do not pay for its use. Such a setting is, of course, a recipe for excessive demand. Based upon that experience we’d certainly argue in Mrs. Palin’s favor over someone whose main private sector experience seemed to be organizing begging efforts directed towards the federal government. (In our case, we joke that the best evidence of fair treatment is when every user is annoyed with us so try to ensure it.)
Of course, the contentious reader might always argue that such small towns are so corrupt that there is no notion of taking actions that annoy friends and acquaintances, i.e., the whole objective is to enrich them (and oneself) while in town hall. In that case we’d then argue that it, indeed, provides excellent training for work in the nation’s capital. But, that’s not really why we’re writing, either.
Our point is much smaller though it is related to Mrs. Palin.
Mr. Letterman’s Persistent Lack of Humor: we were too involved in our work to change the channel when David Letterman’s show began last night. We don’t recall any of the monologue bits, but they were as lame as usual. (No one, in good conscience, could call his lines jokes.)
What we do recall was a skit where one of the child actors wore an over-sized version of Sarah Palin’s passport as a Halloween costume. It was stamped Mexico and Canada (and the USA) and nowhere else, and that was it. That was the whole “joke.”
The cardinal that flies into and bangs its head on the family room windows hundreds of times each morning exhibits about the same level of wit.
I guess the point of the passport costume was to show that Mrs. Palin hasn’t traveled much outside of Alaska or the US. Presumably, such travel is now a qualification for Vice President because…well, who knows why. It must be something that only someone as sophisticated and learned and cultured as our Ball State grad, Mr. Letterman, could appreciate. Personally, we’ll take someone willing to kill a moose. It takes more skill and courage.
Now, maybe we’re slow or just don’t pay enough attention, but that’s when it finally hit us.
Mr. Letterman has been unfunny for years; that’s not news, we and many others have written about that, and it seems to be true since at least the Reagan administration.
No, what we’ve concluded is last night was not only is Mr. Letterman inherently unfunny, but to do that night-after-night, year-after-year, requires a staff. He can’t be doing the very little that he does alone. It is very likely that he has a very large and equally untalented staff of writers excreting such material like elephants with dysentery five nights a week.
As we see it, it would take a substantial number of insecure and untalented individuals to generate the group think required to permit such crap to air. Why, at its essence, it almost seems like government work.
If it were only a few writers, it seems that they would be more likely that they would be able (1) to maintain their self-respect and dignity and judgment, which would then permit killing such lame ideas when they were initially discussed or (2) to have the discretion not to mention them to others in the first place.
Of course, we must consider all possibilities, and it could be the case that Mr. Letterman only hires degraded individuals willing to do anything for money or noxious household chemicals. (In that case, he might be a bit more efficient than we suspect and is able to generate his (albeit low-quality) output with only a few comrades.)
So, why does he get the big money? Well, this is one time when we must propose a labor theory of value as the answer. Perhaps, the personal effort and sacrifice required to associate with Paul Shaffer for an hour a day justifies the compensation. Better he than we.
Happy Halloween, and don’t worry, it gets worse before it gets better. The election is next week.
