what if?

Talkin' 'Bout My Generation

The celebration of my folks' 60th wedding annivesary this past weekend took many forms.  Friday night, my immediate family, along with my cousin Tony's family from Chicago indulged in corned beef, rye bread and matzoh ball soup.  Saturday night?  An elegant, dazzling party with Mom and Dad's nearest and dearest.

Sunday, Mom's brother and sister-in-law invited us to The Best Brunch Ever in America - followed by viewing of photos and old movies at their abode.  Everyone was struck by mom's beauty.  Only the blind could miss it.

I was also fascinated, however, at how frugal and conservative with finances my parents' generation had been.  Clothes were modest and one child received hand-me-downs from the older ones.  Entertaining meant cooking in the backyard, with kids playing on the swing set - rather than everyone heading out for some pricey restaurant.

We saw shots (many, many shots :)) of Mom and Dad's first "big" vacation:  several days in Mexico City.  The vacation was quite lovely.  But - it occurred after they had been together for 11 years.  Today, how many couples do you know who believe they are being deprived if they don't get at least one week a year on a cruise, jaunt to Europe - or at least several days at a luxurious spa?

A Lifetime Together

Sixty years may be a blip when it comes to climate change.  When you're talking about marriage, however, "sixty" becomes pretty significant.

Saturday night, my folks celebrated their sixtieth wedding annivesary.  Our group was small - but  choice.  Close family members, friends of sixty years or more, plus Mom's devoted friend and nurse were there.  Dinner was spectacular - but the company was even better.

In 2008, Mom and Dad don't look quite like they did in 1948. 

Yet - as much as they loved one another the year they were married - their love is at least sixty times stronger today.  And that may be an understatement!

Happy Sixtieth, Mom and Dad!  And thanks to our family and friends who were able to celebrate with us.  The night wouldn't have been the same had a single one of you not been there.

Not By the Color of Their Skin

Anyone who reads my blog is familiar with my distaste (polite term) for Hillary Clinton.  If I were a true blue Democrat or a liberal, choosing between Obama or Clinton would take all of about a fifth of a nanosecond.

Understanding why Michael Nutter would embrace Clinton over Obama is a serious toughie for me.  Yet, understanding this sort of sentiment from the mayor is a "gimme."

"Somehow, someway, for some people there's an automatic assumption that a mayor who is African-American or some other elected official has to support another African-American," Nutter said.

"I thought that when Dr. King said that he wanted people to be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character, I thought that's what he was talking about," Nutter added.

Bearing All

Bear with me.  My readers know I am a free marketer.  But, I am not someone who thinks that government regulation is never needed.  Surely it is; yet, with a light a hand as possible.  ("How light?"  Ah - that is the question!)

In any case - here is an excellent column on how viewpoints about issues can vary, depending upon whose ox is being gored.  Or - whose bear.

Well, isn't this rich: Max Baucus of Montana and Chuck Grassley of Iowa, chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the Senate Finance Committee are suddenly in a lather that taxpayer funds might be implicated in the Federal Reserve's rescue of Bear Stearns.

Would that be the same Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley who have made careers out of protecting and enhancing the lavish system of import restrictions, price supports and other subsidies that have transformed American farming and ranching into a vast socialist enterprise? You betcha.

Whatever you want to say about the sharpies on Wall Street, they are pikers compared to Max's and Chuck's friends down on the farm when it comes to picking the pockets of taxpayers and consumers, or concocting a system in which the farmers get all the gains while the government assumes most of the risk.

In case you hadn't noticed, this last year has been a banner one for farmers, thanks to bountiful harvests and record commodity prices. The average farm household income in 2006 was $77,654, or about 17 percent higher than the average for nonfarm households. And next year, that's expected to rise to $90,000.

But for Max and Chuck, that's no reason to cut back on farm socialism. No siree. Farmers are expected to pull in $13 billion in federal subsidies this year. And there will be plenty more once Congress gets around to passing a new five-year farm bill later this spring.

Beauty Is In the Eye of the Beholder

Intriguing conversation about Obama, Clinton, the election, political tactics and more. 

The public is right to want a change from the bullying hyperpartisanship of Bush-era Republicanism. I'm not saying that Obama should take the low road. But I'm old enough to remember the last time the voters got tired of divisiveness and went shopping for a politician with a purifying personality. We don't need another Jimmy Carter.

Carter, humph. Have you considered that Obama might be a JFK? Kennedy, like Carter, was elected more for his personality than his platform, but he worked out well.

Maybe. I'd feel more confident if the folks at the Democratic Leadership Council didn't have a point. I can't think of a single major issue on which Obama has bucked the orthodoxy of his party's liberal base. His persona reaches out to the middle, but his policies look like old liberal wine in a new bottle.

In 1992, Bill Clinton used his campaign to move his party toward the center. He ran on law and order, saying he'd put 100,000 more cops on the streets. He called for ending welfare as we know it, a proposal that shocked his party's Left. He favored the North American Free Trade Agreement. A candidate can specialize in rhetoric, but a president will need to offer policies. How can President Obama reach across party lines if he's elected on a mandate to stay safely within liberal Democrats' comfort zone?

There's more!  Enjoy!
 

Do The Right Thing?

One might think that if you owed someone money, and if you could not pay them what you owed them, and you had pledged collateral against that debt - that you would then turn over that collateral to them.  Moreoever, one would assume that you would hand over the collateral in the shape in which you had received it.

You might, however, be assuming incorrectly.....

The stucco subdivisions of Las Vegas are caught up in the nation's foreclosure crisis. These days, bankers and mortgage companies often find that by the time they get the keys back, embittered homeowners have stripped out appliances, punched holes in walls, dumped paint on carpets and, as a parting gift, locked their pets inside to wreak further havoc. Real-estate agents estimate that about half of foreclosed properties to be sold by mortgage companies nationwide have "substantial" damage, according to a new survey by Campbell Communications, a marketing and research firm based in Washington, D.C.

Human nature being what it is, I suppose we should not be terrifically shocked.  That lenders are thus offering borrowers essentially bribes not to trash the house they purchased may be a sad commentary on our frailties - yet, a reality of the marketplace.

Personal Responsibility

Why do some of us continually harp about personal responsibility?  It's not because we're mean-spirited jerks.  It's because the functioning of society is improved when the role of personal responsibility is kept strong.

Successful attempts to shift the responsibility for bad decisions toward others and to society more generally create a "moral hazard" in behavior. If individuals are not held accountable for decisions and actions that harm themselves or others, they have less incentive to act responsibly in the first place since they will escape some or all of the bad consequences of their actions. It does not matter greatly whether this moral hazard resulted from the shifting of blame for unsuccessful actions to the "small print" in a contract, to an abused childhood, to a mental state, or to many other efforts to shift responsibility away from oneself.

An important foundation of the philosophy behind the arguments for private enterprise, free economies, and free societies more generally, is that these societies rely on and require individual decision-making and responsibility. This philosophy not only emphasizes the moral hazard reasons to require individual responsibility, but also "the use it or lose it principle", a colloquial expression indicating that various mental and physical capacities wear down and erode if they are not used on a regular basis. This principle implies that people who are accustomed to having other persons or governments make their decisions for them lose the ability to make good decisions for themselves. Free societies lead to better decision-making partly because men and women accumulate more experience at making decisions that affect their well-being and that of others.

Do read the whole thing.

What Might Have Been

Victor Davis Hanson, on the speech Obama might have given.

Today's America has evolved into a multiracial society unlike anytime in our long history. Each of America's groups has unique grievances, based on their own past ordeals.

So now more than ever in American history, there is need to establish a universal, absolute standard of public discourse in which no individual or group claims extenuating circumstances to demonize other Americans. Otherwise, the bar will have been lowered -- and Rev. Wright will be followed by merchants of hate of every sort, each citing his allowance as a pass for his own hate speech.

Second, we are in our fifth decade since the landmark civil-rights legislation of the 1960s. And while the African-American community has made enormous strides, it still has not achieved parity with either the white majority or some other minorities. The reasons are complex, but they cannot be simply reduced to white racism or the purported pathologies of the United States as Rev. Wright supposed. We African-Americans must be as vigilant in demanding an equality of opportunity for all Americans as in ensuring that crime, illegitimacy, drug use and the failure to finish high school are no higher in the African-American community than in others.

Third, Americans were appalled, as was I, at my minister cursing the United States. But we must always appreciate the unique nature of America, an experiment that unites a multiplicity of religions, races and ethnicities, and endures only to the degree we all adhere to a common set of values. We must never think that because the United States has sometimes not been perfect, it is not good.

Sixty Years

Speaking of marriage, today I leave for Florida to spend the weekend with my parents, much of my family and life long family friends.  We chose this time to gather for one excellent reason:  it's my parents' sixtieth wedding anniversary!

Oftentimes, my mom has told me that many of their friends thought that my mom and dad's marriage was the one that would never last.  They bickered, they fought...  Their crowd guessed that one day, the attorneys would be contacted.

Love, however, is something not open to easy analysis.  Who knows why some of the "ideal" relationships founder?  Who knows why a couple who battled about what to wear when, how to discipline children and a myriad of other topics would stay together for sixty years? 

I do know that, despite their skirmishes at the bridge table and yelling about whether my dad should wear a navy jacket or a cotton sweater, my parents have been deeply in love for over half a century.  At many points throughout their sixty year commitment, ties might have been "tenuous".  But, their love for one another, combined with caring responsibility for my sister and me and their circle of friends patched over the pain and knitted the marriage stronger.

Please excuse light blogging over the weekend, as our family and dear friends celebrate a most happy event!

Who Says Incentives Don't Work?

If you think that marriage is like the fairy tales in books you read as a child, well - you must be someone who never married!  Nevertheless, few would argue against marriage being the most stable backdrop for raising children and helping to keep society stable and committed.

In Britain, however, marriage is reaching historical lows.  Why, you might ask?

Advantages for married couples have gradually been withdrawn, joint taxation-ended in the 1980s and Gordon Brown withdrew the last tax break for couples, the Married Couples Allowance, shortly after Labour came to power in 1997.

Benefits such as tax credits now favour individuals living with children rather than couples and the bias against couples is thought to have contributed to the growing numbers "living apart together".

Around a million couples are thought to consider themselves an item but to remain living in separate homes.

Labour family policy has for a decade maintained that all kinds of families are equally valuable and ministers have campaigned for all references to marriage to be removed from state documents.

The Tories promised they would provide incentives for couples to get and stay together.

David Davis said: "This is a sad indictment of the Government's policies which have penalised families and fuelled family breakdown.

"Stable families are the best formula for bringing up children and preventing delinquency, anti-social behaviour and crime.

No one ever said balancing tax policies is easy.  Still - if you look at this, and what the U.S. encouraged with its tax policies of the Great Society vis a vis marriage .... Is anyone really that surprised at what we have sown?

Is The Economy Troubled?

Yep.  But - how bad is it?

Not that bad, says Robert Samuelson.

Those who think the economy is highly unstable talk now of an alarming "negative feedback loop" -- a "vicious circle" to most people. Housing prices fall, creating more foreclosures; losses on mortgages increase, eroding the capital of banks and causing them to curtail lending -- which weakens the economy, depresses housing prices and causes more foreclosures and losses. Just as in the Depression, a crippled financial system spreads the slump. Only forceful government intervention can break the downward spiral.

Not necessarily, if most markets self-correct. As housing prices fall, more buyers come into the market; sales and construction revive. If inventories get too high, production slows and surpluses are sold; then production accelerates. If consumers or businesses are overindebted, they reduce spending to repay loans; spending speeds up when debt burdens drop. Government can help smooth business cycles and prevent financial panics. But if it's too aggressive, it may make matters worse. That occurred in the 1970s when easy credit created double-digit inflation -- and then required harsh recessions to suppress it.

As a Realtor, I feel the pain of clients and friends who purchased property in the last few years and who need to sell now.  To do so, they may have to take something out of their pocketbook, instead of the "piggy bank" that homes have been for the last decade prior to this slump.

But - every market has its upside for someone.  I also have several buyers with whom I am working.  This market is their dream come true!  Some of these buyers would not be able to purchase now without a reduction in real estate values.  And - do be sure.  The odds are great that this difficult period will alter and real estate prices will rise again.  The real question is:  when?  Not "if".

The Billionaire's Game

Playing bridge will not make you a billionaire.  (Alas!) 

Nevertheless, being attracted to competition against keen minds is a characteristic of the exceptionally wealthy.  See if you have future billionaire status in your life!

Consigned to Truth-Telling

For your enjoyment:  the week's finest column.

Mamet has grasped the nettle. He will come to find out just how small-minded, exclusionary and intellectually corrupt many on the left can be. Colleagues might abandon him; theater critics will contrive to ignore and attack him; his dependable audience might turn away.

But he also will discover a right wing he never knew. He will discover thinkers who seek historical and moral truth as if it really mattered, and writers who defend liberty as if it were what in fact it is: the prerequisite of full humanity. Rather than the low and tiresome obsession of the left with the color of people's skins, he will find people who embrace a philosophical colorblindness. He will meet women of intelligence and competence who -- mirabile dictu -- don't despise men and manliness but openly admire them. Yes, he will find that a gathering of right-wingers is less welcoming to gay people than the left is, but he also will watch something astounding unfold. Unlike liberals, rightists, after a period of open discussion and thought, actually will admit when they're wrong and change their minds. This antigay prejudice will fall -- it's falling now.

The Media Lies

And people die.

Researchers at Harvard say that publicly voiced doubts about the U.S. occupation of Iraq have a measurable "emboldenment effect" on insurgents there.

Periods of intense news media coverage in the United States of criticism about the war, or of polling about public opinion on the conflict, are followed by a small but quantifiable increases in the number of attacks on civilians and U.S. forces in Iraq, according to a study by Radha Iyengar, a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in health policy research at Harvard and Jonathan Monten of the Belfer Center at the university's Kennedy School of Government.

The increase in attacks is more pronounced in areas of Iraq that have better access to international news media, the authors conclude in a report titled "Is There an 'Emboldenment' Effect? Evidence from the Insurgency in Iraq."

The researchers studied data about insurgent attacks and U.S. media coverage up to November, tracking what they called "anti-resolve statements" by U.S. politicians and reports about American public opinion on the war.

"We find that in periods immediately after a spike in anti-resolve statements, the level of insurgent attacks increases," says the study, published earlier this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a leading U.S. nonprofit economic research organization.

In Iraqi provinces that were broadly comparable in social and economic terms, attacks increased between 7 percent and 10 percent following what the researchers call "high-mention weeks," like the two just before the November 2006 election.

But - if it helps get a Democrat elected next November - worth it!

"Worse Than Horrible"

No.  I am not talking about the market in which I am involved with daily:  the housing market.  Actually, sales were up a bit as of last February.

Rather, the industry which is hurting big time is professional journalism; newspapers, to be precise.

“The news business is something worse than horrible. If that’s the future, we don’t have much of a future,” Sam Zell, who bought the Tribune Company last year, said recently in The Baltimore Sun.

“I’m an optimist, but it is very hard to be positive about what’s going on,” said Brian P. Tierney, who bought The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News in 2006.

“The near term and medium term at the paper is more negative than what we expected,” said OhSang Kwon of Avista Capital Partners, which bought The Minneapolis Star-Tribune in late 2006.

These are all smart businesspeople, with significant success in other endeavors, who took a hard look at the wave-tossed publishing sector and appointed themselves as life savers. And very soon after jumping in, they too began foundering in the tall waves.

On Thursday, it was reported in Crain’s New York Business that Mr. Zell has put Newsday, one of Tribune’s more lucrative assets, on the auction block. In January, Mr. Tierney told unions at his papers that the company was confronting a “dire situation” and needed to cut expenses by 10 percent to meet debt payments.

And in Minneapolis last week, the paper’s publisher, Chris Harte, met with union leaders to discuss a “precipitous” drop in revenue that will make it difficult for the company to meet its obligations, according to MinnPost, a daily news site.

The industry may not be touching bottom any time soon. Last year, overall newspaper revenues dropped by about 7 percent, pushed along primarily by the secular change of readers and advertisers fleeing to the Web. And publishing, along with many other kinds of businesses, is now staring at a full-bore recession, led by the credit crisis that is fanning out across the economy.

For at least a couple of years, I have been predicting radical changes in both the formation of daily newspapers and their delivery.  At least 50% of what you receive on the front stoop every morning is history.  That is - it surely is when contrasted with what you can find in seconds by firing up your PC.  Add in the cost of print and delivery . . . . We're talking about a model which by pure logic seems to be defying the odds to survive.

I am not someone who is cheering for "professional journalism" to go under, nor for reporters to shrivel up and die.  Nevertheless, I am one who believes that we are undergoing radical changes in how news and opinion is delivered, and that those changes will continue for some time.  Furthermore, you can put me down as one who thinks that at some point in the not terrifically distant future, "newspapers" no longer will be available every morning by carrier.

While I'm not certain of how the industry will morph into the future, nor how journalists will survive down the road (and yes, I do feel confident that they shall!), the newspaper of today will not.  One day, it will be relegated to history books - along with buggy whips, typewriters and record albums.  You are witnessing the trip to the dustbin as I type.

Don't Give Up

Depressed?  Suicidal?  I beg of you; do not give up.

While you may not become the wealthiest woman in your nation and a world reknown author, fairy tales can and do come true.  If you are still around, your life can improve immeasurably.

And - if someone you know is struggling, do what you can to help.  Even something small can give someone hope.

Some Good Questions

This essay gets to the root of some of our problems today in this country with race.  It's not comprehensive, by any means.  Yet it highlights some of what gets swept under the rug.

Back in the late 1980s I was on a plane flying out of New Orleans and sitting next to me was a rather interesting and, according to Barack Obama, unusual black man. Friendly, gregarious, and wise beyond his years, we immediately hit it off.  I had been working on Vietnamese commercial fishing boats for a few years based in southern Louisiana.  The boats were owned by the recent wave of Vietnamese refugees who flooded into the familiar tropical environment after the war.  Floating in calm seas out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, I would hear tearful songs and tales from ex-paratroopers about losing brothers, sisters, parents, children, lovers, and beautiful Vietnam itself to the communists.

In Bayou country I lived on boats and in doublewide trailers, and like the rest of the Vietnamese refugees, I shopped at Wal-Mart and ate a lot of rice. When they arrived in Louisiana the refugees had no money (the money that they had was used to bribe their way out of Vietnam and into refugee camps in Thailand), few friends, and a mostly unfriendly and suspicious local population. 

They did however have strong families, a strong work ethic, and the "Audacity of Hope."   Within a generation, with little or no knowledge of English, the Vietnamese had achieved dominance in the fishing industry there and their children were already achieving the top SAT scores in the state. 

          

While I had been fishing my new black friend had been working as a prison psychologist in Missouri, and he was pursuing a higher degree in psychology. He was interested in my story, and after about an hour getting to know each other I asked him point blank why these Vietnamese refugees, with no money, friends, or knowledge of the language could be, within a generation, so successful.  I also asked him why it was so difficult to convince young black men to abandon the streets and take advantage of the same kinds of opportunities that the Vietnamese had recently embraced. 

His answer, only a few words, not only floored me but became sort of a razor that has allowed me ever since to slice through all of the rhetoric regarding race relations that Democrats shovel our way during election season:

"We're owed and they aren't." 

In short, he concluded, "they're hungry and we think we're owed.  It's crushing us, and as long as we think we're owed we're going nowhere."

A Cutie

Understanding the life of a bridge player can be trying for mere mortals.  We start competing at 1PM, strain our brains until about 11PM or 1AM, depending upon the particular venue, then try to fall asleep, despite our bodies being flooded with adrenaline.  After 3 or 4 or 5 hours of fitful sleep, punctuated by dreams of "why did I miss that 4 of clubs?" we start all over again.

Sounds like real fun, eh?  To me and my strange bridge friends, it is.

As large, rich meals make thinking even tougher, many of us simply chow down on a small salad or burger in between our sessions.  At the food court, Burger King is a favorite of mine, as Whoppers have long been one of my most cherished delicacies. 

One day while waiting in line, I ran into this nice lady and her adorable little girl.  The little girl and I traded toothy grins for a while.  Here is what was recorded.

How Long?

When the Iraq war began, I strongly believed that it would take many years to judge its success or failure.  Even then, I appreciated that scholars and pundits would argue vociferously with opposing viewpoints.

Clearly, however, not enough time has passed to begin honest assessment of the gains or failures of the war in Iraq.  In addition - as long as we are still there, why not do our utmost to make our efforts as successful as possible?

Mark Moyar addresses this and more.

Today, on the fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, it's tempting to render all kinds of judgment on critical questions: Is America safer today because of the war? Are we winning? Was the decision to go to war flawed or purposely misleading? What went wrong with the occupation? What effect has the war had on America's allies and enemies? When will the war end? These are natural questions to ask. But answering them would be premature.

That's because conclusively evaluating the war requires much information that is not presently available. Published sources offer conflicting accounts of the Bush administration's prewar deliberations, leaving unclear what exactly top administration officials knew and believed about Iraqi WMD and Iraq's potential for democratization. Thus, we must await the release of classified government documents, several decades from now, to judge the decision on the basis of what was known at the time, which is one way that future historians will assess it.

Assessing the decision with the wisdom of hindsight, as historians will also do, likewise requires a decades-long period of waiting for critical facts to emerge. Reports that Saddam Hussein sent WMD to Syria before his downfall have yet to be verified or disproved. Only time will reveal whether Iraq has served as a magnet for terrorists who otherwise would have gone to the United States to perpetrate the next 9/11.

If Americans were asked on Sept. 12, 2001, what sacrifices they would make to prevent another massive terrorist attack, a large fraction no doubt would have been willing to accept the costs that have been incurred in Iraq. After all, 9/11 killed 3,000 people and caused economic damage that, according to some estimates, exceeded the costs of the Iraq war to date.

At the moment, we lack essential information about the war's impact on the international scene. The extent of foreign support and opposition, in 2003 and 2008, will not be known until the declassification of documents, since the true views of governments often differ sharply from their public postures. Libya and other countries may or may not have become more willing to cooperate with the US after watching Saddam Hussein fall.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

This column from Sunday's Minneapolis Star Tribune, written by its Editor, Nancy Barnes, asserts that journalists were asleep during the run up of the housing bubble.

Newspapers and their journalists owe it to readers to avoid getting caught up in the exuberance of the times. That frees them to ask important questions -- regardless of how unpopular those questions might be.

Earlier this week, we reported that local home values dropped about 8.9 percent in the last quarter of 2007, the biggest decline in 20 years. As Star Tribune reporters have dug into the meltdown in the mortgage industry, we have found evidence of straw buyers, outright fraud and speculation that drove home building and prices well beyond rational limits. What's remarkable about the cycle of the housing bubble is how quickly it followed the dot-com bubble.

In both cases, I would argue, many reporters across the country got swept up in the hype and failed to ask enough tough questions. Here are some that should have been asked repeatedly for the last five years:

If the economy is growing at a rate of 3 or 4 percent a year and home values are increasing 10 percent a year (or more in other parts of the country), is this rational? If the government keeps lowering interest rates and encouraging consumers to borrow money and spend patriotically, is it breeding irresponsible spending and personal debt levels? Is it rational to expect any economy to keep growing endlessly when the law of economics suggests a natural cycle of growth and recession? Who is buying all these houses anyway?

Were journalists asleep?  Yep.  But - a whole lot of the U.S. was asleep:  buyers, Realtors, lenders, investors, builders, developers ....  Somehow, a great many of all these people thought that it truly was possible for housing prices to continue to climb, ten, fifteen, twenty percent annually - while incomes crept up a modest 3% to 4% annually - if that.