29. December 2008 by admin.

Now that our esteemed Senator Clinton will be moving on to bigger things as Secretary of State in the Obama administration, the next question is who will fill her Senate seat. That responsibility lies with Governor Paterson, who can name someone to fill her seat on an interim basis until a special election can be held in 2010.

Senator Clinton, in spite of everyone who complained that she was a ‘carpetbagger,’ managed to be an effective Senator for New York, and in these difficult times, we need an effective replacement.

Caroline Kennedy, JFK’s daughter, has been proposed in the press as a plausible candidate.  And on many of the measures of what would make a good Senator, she scores well.  She has written about the Constitution; she knows many of the players; and as the daughter of  a President, those who don’t know her will be more inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt.

And yet…

Are we becoming a country where your political future is determined by your surname?  The principle would have been odious to the Founding Fathers, but we came this close to having a second Clinton follow Bush, then Clinton, then Bush.

More basically, as far as our next Senator, is there nobody else out there who can do the job? I know that I’d be a rotten Senator: I have no patience for committees and very little tolerance for bushwa.  But I’m sure that there’s at least one other person out there who would be a plausible candidate.

Or are we really that short on talent?

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28. December 2008 by admin.

For Christmas, my son bought me the last installment of the collection of original James Bond movies (Sean Connery through Pierce Brosnan).  The package included On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, with George Lazenby as Bond.  I suspect that it didn’t do well at the box office, and Lazenby did not reappear in the next movie (Sean Connery returned in Diamonds Are Forever).  I saw the movie once on the tube as a teenager: the rest of the movie seemed OK, but the ending was a terrible downer.

After my recent experience with Quantum of Solace, it was time for a fresh viewing.  And if you simply disregard the last two minutes, it turns out that On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is actually a good movie.  Among James Bond movies, it’s solidly in the middle of the pack, safely above the dogs: Thunderball, For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy,  and Licence to Kill.

It’s even better than the current film, Quantum of Solace.  Telly Savalas is Blofeld, a villain with a real plan for world domination, unlike the business-school wannabes of Quantum.  There’s just enough violence to make us feel the situation that Bond is experiencing, unlike the newer pictures in which Bond is the Energizer Bunny, waltzing through machine-gun fire.  And the instrumental theme music kicks ass, even almost 40 years later, while the theme from Quantum is, well, mush.

George Lazenby is actually a good Bond.  He would have been better if the scriptwriters hadn’t confused James Bond with Derek Flint.  And unfortunately, he was saddled with what is probably the lamest Bond-movie gadgets ever: an automatic safe-opener that requires a half-hour to work, and a photocopier.  But he presents himself well.  OK, he still comes in last, but he’s in very strong company.  I wouldn’t have minded seeing him again.

But the ending (or more specifically, the end of the ending) is so bad as to be throughly stupid: one of the basic tenets of the old-school Bond film is that it ends on a high note, with Our Hero saving the world yet again, and running off with the girl.  The current generation of Bond films with Daniel Craig don’t follow this convention, but at least leave one with a sense of accomplishment.

So dust it off and watch it, but find something else to do for the last two minutes.

Posted in Movies | No Comments »

27. December 2008 by admin.

It’s a little late, I know, but Merry Christmas to all.  Or Happy Holidays.  Or whatever.  I hope all is well for whomever might be reading.

Christmas was pretty quiet in our house; we had a nice dinner for Christmas Eve, and on Thursday, my wife and I went to church, and we went with the choir to a home for the sick and sang some Christmas songs, to spread a little holiday cheer.

We performed the music first during the church service, and my wife introduced the songs in Korean.  Afterwards, she asked me to introduce the songs in English when we went to the home for the sick.  I live it when she drops things like that on me.  But the performance went well.

I had done a lot of running around on Wednesday (’Why didn’t you do some of that beforehand?’ my wife asked), and Friday was a day of rest.  Today, we’ll probably go shopping, taking advantage of the after-Christmas sales. 

Posted in Life Goes On | No Comments »

18. December 2008 by admin.

Yesterday’s news report noted that the Federal Reserve Bank was reducing the federal funds rate to the range of zero to 0.25%.  And in the next breath, the newscaster noted that the Fed was going to spend $2 trillion to buy up assets.  (’They’d buy up Picassos if they thought it would help the economy,’ a commentator quipped.)

A couple of months ago, we were told that the world would come to an end if Congress didn’t pass a measure allocating $750 billion for the purpose of purchasing ‘toxic’ assets.  Since then, some of the money has been spent buying ownership stakes in banks, and the White House has been contemplating using some of the money to help the automobile manufacturers, but none of it was actually used to buy assets, i.e. what it was allocated for.

So now we have the Fed running around buying assets.

Does this mean that the Fed could have done this at any time, and it didn’t need an allocation from Congress?

(No, not at any time.  Only when it was funny.)

Then what was the point of the $750 billion that we needed to save the world–half of which is still sitting there, and the other half was used for stuff that had nothing to do with the purpose it was allocated for?

Our leadership is either fantastically stupid, or they’re robbing us blind.

And my problem is, from my perspective, I can’t discern which of those alternatives is actually the case.

Posted in Dysfunctional Government, Money | No Comments »

16. December 2008 by admin.

At this point, we’ve all seen the video of Our Fearless Leader’s recent press conference in Baghdad, an which an Iraqi reporter threw his shoes at President Bush.  (The shoes missed; nobody was hurt.)  The Iraqi government wants to throw him in jail for several years, but he’s a local hero in his neighborhood for standing up to power.

Does this mean that, much like travelers at US airports, reporters at Presidential press conferences will be henceforth required to remove their shoes?

Posted in Fearmongering, George Bush (43) | No Comments »

15. December 2008 by admin.

I was out on another business trip last week, to the same place I went in November.  It wasn’t practical to write, chiefly because the people there are given to working long days: on average, we started a little after 9:00 am and finished around 7:00 pm.  They’re aware of the economic crisis, and that it will befall them eventually, but it hasn’t quite seeped to their part of the world yet.  Some companies have made cutbacks, but life is quite clearly going on.

Meanwhile, the big question in this country is the bailout for the old-line American automobile manufacturers.  A bailout plan passed the House last week, but stalled in the Senate.  The  Bush administration contemplated using money from an earlier bailout scheme for financial institutions to help the car companies, but then decided to hold off.

From my perspective, General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler have been basket cases for years.  An infusion of cash will only prolong the agony.  And Federal aid with strings attached, in the form of requirements for gas mileage or environmental protection or something similar, results in the government trying to run the automobile industry, which is probably the only thing worse than the current management.  (A big part of the crisis now befalling us has its origins in regulations to get banks to open up lending to minorities, in the name of civil rights.)

Consider: if the price of gasoline stays low, people will want bigger cars.  I don’t like sport-utility vehicles: they drive like buses and are hard to park in the city.  But it’s a free country, and if people want them, and are prepared to pay for them, it’s their privilege to own and drive them.  The natural response of an automobile company would be to make bigger cars to match the demand.  The non-Big Three car companies, unconstrained by their bailouts, will happily comply.

For GM, Ford, and Chrysler, and their government handlers, the question then becomes whether to do what is economically prudent, but politically incorrect, or to press on with more efficient cars that nobody really wants.

Beyond that, the most compelling reason that anyone can come up for ’saving’ the Big Three, after the effects on the economy, is that they are icons of American industry.  Alas, the icons did it to themselves.  The GM, Ford, and Chrysler that we knew are gone: refinancing their shadows won’t bring them back.

So part of me wants to simply pull the plug on them.  If they went broke, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.  It would hurt, but the wheels of commerce would grind on, and their assets would go on to bigger and better things.

And yet….

It’s true that the other car companies are have productive advantages over the Big Three: they have newer factories, a better capacity for innovation, and lower labor costs.  But  what about the unproductive advantages?

The Big Three built their factories generations ago, on land that they bought, either with cash on hand, or by borrowing on their own account.  They pay taxes, when and as they are profitable (maybe not now, but the principle is there).   They considered themselves corporate citizens, with generally the same responsibilities as ‘natural person’ citizens.  While they lobbied against taxes and regulations that affected their operations, they accepted whatever was ultimately resolved into law.

A company that wants to construct a large industrial plant today will comparison-shop among the locations where it might build.  But beyond that, it will negotiate with state and local governments for tax abatements and benefits for its operation.  After all, only damned fools pay full price.

And once the abatements and benefits are gone, the modern company is free to pull up stakes and start the whole process over.

To what extent does this difference resolve into the survival or the failure of the Big Three?  If it really does make a difference, then perhaps some measure of government help is called for.  If, however, the tax abatements and other goodies represent only a minimal investment of ’seed money,’ as the proponents of such measures suggest,  then whatever rescue we might prepare for the Big Three will only be throwing good money after bad.

But does this mean that the old-school approach of the Big Three to build a factory, stay put, and be part of the community, as we expect of good corporate citizens, is one of the quaint practices that led them to ruin?

Perhaps….

Posted in Things Falling Apart, Money | No Comments »