Some of us may feel challenged to count blessings these days. In life's difficult moments I take a strange comfort from knowing that things can always be worse. Applying this practice with the slightest imagination makes blessings easy to spot. I'll illustrate:
Not too long ago, and certainly not long enough, I'm walking the dogs in the woods and notice Coonhound Bob has disappeared. This isn't unusual. After all, that's why we're there. Soon he comes trotting up, grinning and obviously pleased with himself. Bob stinks to high heaven and back. From his jowls to his flanks, Bob's coat bears a sickly green slime he has acquired from very ripe deer carcass.
I get queasy. As we head back to the car and I insist that Bob remain downwind. I get my lovely wife on the cell phone and gasp, "Bring the pickup. There's no way Bob is getting in my car."
Once home I begin dousing, scrubbing and cursing Bob in the yard while Lovely Wife starts dumping cans of tomato products into a blender. Though Bob gets fully treated he still stinks. I put two nylon leashes on him, each secured near the juncture of a chain link fence, his naughty nose pointed toward the corner to keep him stable and standing.
From the neighbor's house the tomato goop must look like we are field dressing the dog. Bob is left to contemplate his misbehavior while the tomato goop does its magic. I go in to check email.
Five minutes later Lovely Wife screams like she herself is being slaughtered. In the next room both she and Bob are frozen in time. Bob really hates to be chained, having used super canine strength to rip through both nylon leashes, he has entered the house through the dog doors. He is tip-toeing onto the white living room carpet beside the wood paneled walls where my prized big screen TV and home entertainment components and speakers are enshrined.
You can see the wheels turning in Bob's head. He's conflicted. He so wants to shake stinky tomato goop all over our vulnerable interior. However, he is confronted from across the room by Lovely Wife, silent and motionless as a statue, a cooking utensil in her hand and terror in her eyes. Someone carefully and forcefully commands, "No. Stay."
Here's where the elusive blessings come in. Sure, Bob's stench made me gag. And yes, he interrupted our afternoon in the most unpleasant way possible. On the upside, Lovely Wife and I have cell phones and a pickup, the neighbors did not report us for slaughtering our dog, and Bob's understands "no" and "stay," preventing him from strewing disgusting tomato goop onto countless valuable and difficult-to-clean surfaces.
Sometimes blessings are hard to find, but they are almost always there. If you will have a Thanksgiving dinner, that's a conspicuous start. If loved ones will share it with you, life doesn't get much better than that. In my personal situation, I live in a beautiful corner of a relatively free country, most folks I meet are friendly, kingfishers still find our river fit enough to skim it for dinner, and proper dog training inevitably pays off.
Happy Thanksgiving to us all!
Friday, November 28, 2008
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Failed Financial Geniuses
Five weeks ago Wall Street joined various federal officials in sounding a fire alarm to convince taxpayers to support more than $700 billion to buy up the bad mortgage loans that caused the economic mess we're in.
I am not old enough to remember the crash of 1929. I had to learn from history books not to borrow money to buy stocks. Too bad today's financial geniuses skipped those lessons. They leveraged bundles of bad loans to invest in other securities, diluting the value of the mortgage bundles and over-inflating the value of the other assets.
Now Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has changed his mind about how to use the bailout funds. Apparently Paulson figures the best thing to do is give the bailout money directly to the same failed financial geniuses who got us into this mess.
And now the Federal Reserve refuses to disclose what they did with more than $2 trillion in additional taxpayer dollars or to disclose what assets provide collateral for the loans. Bear in mind that Congress chartered the Federal Reserve in 1913 specifically to avoid exactly the same kind of massive bank failures we have seen in recent months. And now they refuse to account for two trillion dollars?
These reports come immediately after 80% taxpayer-owned AIG is caught trying to conceal a third post-bailout executive bash at a posh resort in Arizona which cost AIG, and therefore taxpayers, $334,000. AIG execs justify these lavish events by explaining, essentially, that this is how they are accustomed to doing things.
Meanwhile, since US auto manufacturers haven't managed to make competitive products for 20 years, Congress wants to open another bailout fire hose for them without even waiting for any bankruptcy filings.
Is it just sheer gall that qualifies these fat cats for their exalted positions? Will we bailout Hollywood next? Is there no pattern of brazenly irresponsible practices that our elected officials are not willing to reward at taxpayers' expense?
What about responsible citizens who lived within their means and planned for a future which has now been shredded by these failed financial geniuses? They didn't buy stock on margin, like the fools who caused the 1929 crash. What should prudent Americans learn from this? What can we do to avoid this kind of debacle in the future?
Some say, "Nothing; there's nothing we can do." But that is wrong.
The ultimate culprit here is Congress. Congress deregulated the financial industry, then strong-armed lenders to make risky loans to unqualified homebuyers. It is Congress which can't think of any solution that does not involve confiscatory tax rates and profligate spending. Congress gave Paulson the power to override Congress itself. Congress empowers the Federal Reserve (which is neither Federal nor a reserve) to defy the people's will for federal governance conducted with transparency.
Yes, we are another marathon two-year reelection cycle away from our next opportunity to toss these jackals out on their ear. Meanwhile, voters should begin now to invest time, talent and treasure toward building a third party into political viability to permanently eliminate any single-party majority. That is our lesson. That is the only way to ensure that the two major political parties cooperate to serve taxpayer's interests rather than those of big campaign contributors.
Until then, elected officials in Washington deserve all our calls and letters explaining how we feel about bailing out failed financial geniuses.
I am not old enough to remember the crash of 1929. I had to learn from history books not to borrow money to buy stocks. Too bad today's financial geniuses skipped those lessons. They leveraged bundles of bad loans to invest in other securities, diluting the value of the mortgage bundles and over-inflating the value of the other assets.
Now Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has changed his mind about how to use the bailout funds. Apparently Paulson figures the best thing to do is give the bailout money directly to the same failed financial geniuses who got us into this mess.
And now the Federal Reserve refuses to disclose what they did with more than $2 trillion in additional taxpayer dollars or to disclose what assets provide collateral for the loans. Bear in mind that Congress chartered the Federal Reserve in 1913 specifically to avoid exactly the same kind of massive bank failures we have seen in recent months. And now they refuse to account for two trillion dollars?
These reports come immediately after 80% taxpayer-owned AIG is caught trying to conceal a third post-bailout executive bash at a posh resort in Arizona which cost AIG, and therefore taxpayers, $334,000. AIG execs justify these lavish events by explaining, essentially, that this is how they are accustomed to doing things.
Meanwhile, since US auto manufacturers haven't managed to make competitive products for 20 years, Congress wants to open another bailout fire hose for them without even waiting for any bankruptcy filings.
Is it just sheer gall that qualifies these fat cats for their exalted positions? Will we bailout Hollywood next? Is there no pattern of brazenly irresponsible practices that our elected officials are not willing to reward at taxpayers' expense?
What about responsible citizens who lived within their means and planned for a future which has now been shredded by these failed financial geniuses? They didn't buy stock on margin, like the fools who caused the 1929 crash. What should prudent Americans learn from this? What can we do to avoid this kind of debacle in the future?
Some say, "Nothing; there's nothing we can do." But that is wrong.
The ultimate culprit here is Congress. Congress deregulated the financial industry, then strong-armed lenders to make risky loans to unqualified homebuyers. It is Congress which can't think of any solution that does not involve confiscatory tax rates and profligate spending. Congress gave Paulson the power to override Congress itself. Congress empowers the Federal Reserve (which is neither Federal nor a reserve) to defy the people's will for federal governance conducted with transparency.
Yes, we are another marathon two-year reelection cycle away from our next opportunity to toss these jackals out on their ear. Meanwhile, voters should begin now to invest time, talent and treasure toward building a third party into political viability to permanently eliminate any single-party majority. That is our lesson. That is the only way to ensure that the two major political parties cooperate to serve taxpayer's interests rather than those of big campaign contributors.
Until then, elected officials in Washington deserve all our calls and letters explaining how we feel about bailing out failed financial geniuses.
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