Lawyer Up, part deux

I'm a big fan of Planet Money, and their series on "Toxie the Toxic Asset" might be taking a George Romero turn: it could be back from the dead.

If you haven't heard the series, you're missing out. Take some time to listen to it.

My heart does a quick little jig every time I hear about the banks involved with the crash getting sued. I've held some pretty waffling outlooks on the whole crash. I do understand and agree with the rescue of the banks by the Fed (secret loans) and the Treasury (TARP). Things could have been a lot worse if the financial system was allowed to crash. But I also, deep down, wanted to see BoA, Goldman, Citi, Chase, and the whole lot of them face the music. They made bad investments. They should go down, just like Lehman. I balked at the bail-out of GM and Chrysler after all, and rightly viewed it as government rewarding poor performance from bad companies, and punishing good performance from others (no help for Tesla? really?). How are they different from the banks? Well the banks had the economy hostage. Liquidity freeze is a serious issue, and it can lead to worse outcomes than 9% unemployment.

But there seemed to be no punishment for banks behaving badly. In fact BoA and Citi have been getting away with fraud and attempting to foreclose on homes that didn't even have mortgages, until some good people hired lawyers and proceeded to sue the hell out of them. Its important to remember that these banks are FRAUDS. And our current "Hope and Change" president is trying to pressure a settlement with these banks which would bar future litigation. The president apparently wants to negotiate with the banks for a general settlement in return for letting them get away with rampant fraud. This has worked out so well for him in the past, because our Nobel Prize Winning law professor has no balls when it comes to negotiations. No back-bone, no huevos, no intestinal fortitude, NO COURAGE. The man can't even get through a trivial schedule change without looking like an imbecile.

We did not have the chance, when the economy was crashing to punish these banks. So why not take the another route and sue them. The government won't regulate or punish them in any meaningful way, because they are corrupt and cowardly. Time for us to love the lawyers. Time for us to love every manipulative, scheming, greedy stereotype lawyer that we can find, because when I open up the paper they seem to be the last people with any decency left.

And as a fun one, let's review the accomplishments of our president that are worthy of his Nobel Peace Prize, something he shares with other greats like Yassir Arafat and Henry Kissinger:
1) kept Guantanamo Bay open, despite promising to close it "within a year" of his election,
2) signed an extension of the Patriot Act, allowing for the continuance of violation of privacy of his own citizens under the guise of "security,"
3) signed into law a mandate that all Americans purchase insurance, without providing an affordable public alternative (imagine requiring everyone to go to school, but then not providing public schools and how that might affect one's budget),
4) delayed free trade agreements (how is that "strengthening international diplomacy"?)

and now (5), he is attempting to interfere with people's right to sue through our legal system large organizations who have defrauded and harassed them. We're past the crash, and we're into stagnation. A little (or even a lot ) of litigation isn't going to be the end of the world; in fact it might give some of the medium and small size banks, who have been competitively disadvantaged by the government's and Federal Reserve's favoritism to the large banks, get a leg up and compete with the big boys.

Love your lawyer, sue the banks.

Office...

Have taken over the one desk with drawers, as well as the corner. Moved my fridge, and changed bookshelves. Will clear out my filing cabinets and put my papers in the desk drawers. Let the two newbies fight over the space left.

Awesome.

Edit: Have also removed names of the two office mates who left from the office door. Until August, this room is all mine officially.

Up

If Up loses "Best Picture" to Avatar, I will never in my life watch another Oscar program again.

That is all.

Think of It As An Investment.

So, I get the benefit of what we at the Econ Department like to call "poor people's internet." The local cable company is offering a lifeline internet service to those who make less than $21,000 for a two person household (yo).

Well, when my wife and I went down to negotiate this, I distinctly remember bringing in my tax returns, all my documentation, and discussing the "cable transport fee" with the young woman behind the counter. Now I asked her, on several occasions if I still needed to pay the "cable transport fee" of $10 since I was not a television subscriber, and I got the distinct and clear message that yes, I was going to have to pay it, unless I subscribed to both the TV and internet services. Even though I was very obviously dirt poor (as all good GTA's are). So I figured "well, 10 bucks a month for internet is better than 40." So we have been paying this amount. Apparently up until tonight.

I was paying the bills, and realized I had not seen a Sunflower bill recently. I panicked. Checked my desk, the basket of papers and bills, and went online looking for how much they were going to ding me in rent fees. Well after going online and not finding any bills since August 6th, I notice the "amount due" line.
"-$131.00".

My lovely, beautiful, intelligent wife, while I am about to go medieval points out, "But doesn't that mean a credit of 131?" which calms me down. We call the good people at the local cable company, spend fifteen minutes on hold, and then talk to a very nice young woman who informs me that apparently there had been an "internal audit" which found that I had been wrongly charged $10 a month for the lifeline services. For about... 11 months. Soooooooooooooo... they credited my account. And seeing as my new lifeline payment for my "dirt poor" cable is $0 and NADA, the only charge I get from them is if we go over the bandwidth limit (1 gigabyte for poor people cable. No online movies for us :(.... until now....).

Yeah... or I guess we could go down there, get a refund check from them and pay the buck or so whenever we do go over the limit but... I'm a lazy man... a lazy, sexy man...

San Valentin

Happy Valentine's Day to the most wonderful woman I know. A woman who put up with quite a bit this past year just so we could "officially" be together according to the US government. Seems a like Facebook has a little less paperwork, no?

Happy Valentine's Day to the woman who has given me the best days of my life, and will give me the next contender for "best day ever" on March 14th.

Te amo mucho, mi vida. We are almost there.

Injustice anywhere...

Michael Phelps is being roundly criticized in the press, and might possibly be arrested for taking a bong hit at a party, while Bernie Maddoff is home in his penthouse, thanks to paying a 10 million dollar bail (where did that money come from?) still living off the millions of dollars he cheated out of charity organizations and retirees.

Feliz anniversario

So in keeping with tradition of the second Friday of September:

Feliz anniversario, amor!

Thanks for three wonderful years of random adventures, strange people, and good times.

Entertainment Value

Best

Election

Ever.

Plagiarism, out-of-wedlock-underage pregnancy, illegitimate children, all-to-vague promises of "change", grumpier old men, inexperience, OVERexperience, outsiders, insiders, PUMAs, polar bears, and Ralph Nader yet again on the ballot to top it all off (by the way, I signed the petition for my local county to get him on the ballot in 2008. God bless America.)

This is going to be a very long month. Better to have a sense of humor about it now.

Back from the East

La Ardilla graduated from Harvard last week :) Congrats, sweety!

Her parents came up through Providence, and we got see this nice... sculpture... performance... ritual thing on the canal. They lit a bunch of torches on the water as the sun set. It was pretty cool. We have pictures.

Once we got her parents back and settled, we had to wait for her friend to come up from Houston. Although is plane was delayed. And delayed... and delayed. He got in at two in the morning, and a very kind gentleman dropped him off in Milton so we wouldn't have to drive out to the airport. There are good Samaritans out there.

We then had to wake up at 4 AM to find parking (illegal parking at that, but no ticket!), and get in line for the Commencement, which we had forged tickets too the day before. They didn't even look at the forgeries. Oh those crazy Bostonians. So much effort with no appreciation.
After the procession through, we sat through a few speeches, and then headed over to get lunch with the other Divinity grads. Ardilla got her fancy diploma all in Latin too. Very nice. Too bad none of us could read it.

After that we sat through the Harvard President chastise the state of Massachusetts in a speech to the alumni association for even the thought of taxing the Harvard endowment (a ludicrous idea for sure, but she's preaching to the choir). FINALLY she yields, and we got to hear a very lovely speech by JK Rowling for the "Graduates" still in the audience. Which really it was a bunch of young kids with their parents. Which made the prior "endowment soap box" speech a bit... well... even more out of place.

Then we had dinner... then we had to get up early again to drive her parents back to Providence to catch their plane.
So let me just say at this point that in three days, Ardilla and I had about 8 hours of sleep. Nice. On top of that, her friend's plane back was delayed. So we got another day hanging out with him which was good. We got lost in traffic. Ardilla figured out that my secret "horrible frustration" point is sitting in the passenger seat. I am a horrible side-seat driver. Don't ask me why. In the back seat I'm fine. Maybe its because I can see things better :P Or in the back seat I can at least see any cars about to slam into us from behind (as my brother I"m sure remembers happened back on Memorial that day after he just got his car out of the shop).
But she did great with the graduation. She rented a car, she figured out where to go, she did some GREAT driving in Boston. I was very proud of her, and she should be very proud of herself. She's graduated, she's done, she's home.

Now we just have to get through the wedding ;)

Te amo mucho, sweety. Feliz cumple a tu mama.

Catching Up

Seeing as this is my first blog post in a while I will be brief and to the point on my usual obsessions. Except on corn ethanol... which I seem to rant about pretty regularly and at length.

1. "Corn Ethanol" or "It's a Sad Sad Day When I Agree With Chavez."
The BBC has an entire special web project on the shortages of food. Look, its very simple. Staple crops were cheap. Then certain countries got nuts over the fraud known as ethanol. We started using farmland for the ethanol-du-jour which has no actual fuel saving ability, and selling corn at higher prices to the new subsidized Iowa feedbag that is ethanol processing. Corn becomes more expensive due to rising demand. Drought in the Midwest leads to falling supply. Demand increases for substitute goods such as wheat, rice, and soy. Meanwhile the rising middle class in China and India are demanding more food (i.e. rice) due to large population increases. Demand for the substitutes is going up. Guess what else? Price on meat, bread, ANYTHING that requires a staple crop. That leads to large supply decreases across the board on food products. This is called cost-push inflation (no, I am not a Keynesian). Price increases while quantity demanded simultaneously decreases. Quantity demand decrease implies unemployment. Price increases imply inflation. What is that also called ladies and gentlemen?
STAGFLATION! Quijote's prediction for the next two years: Ben Bernanke will curl up into the fetal position and cry, since his policy of inflation targeting will be successful, but the unemployment increases will make him extremely unpopular among the general voting public. We keep crying, "Benny, Benny, please." The worst part is Ben will be doing the right thing (and will probably get fired for it). Inflation is what we want to get under control, while unemployment will be the demon that has to be let loose to keep the economy from crashing further. Who will actually be blamed for unemployment? The usual suspects. Greedy corporations (aka "The Man") treading on the "little guy", Mexican immigrants, Republicans (let's face it, we just don't care if you have a job or not), and of course that awful thing called "trade liberalization." Yes. Let's solve the economy's problems with isolationism. It worked so well in the 1930s.

This is of course not helped by oil price increases, which as we all know from the lovely time known as the 70's also leads to Stagflation.

Why am I not too worried? Aside from people starving for no good reason, the political and social turmoil caused by this, and the general horror of the situation there is hope. Economic incentives lead to technological development. That leads to increased production. The human race proved Malthus wrong 200 years ago. It will do so again. Prices of food will drop again. Although to help that along, please write to your senator about the ludicrous amount of subsidies going into ethanol production across the US.

Disclaimer: As all economic problems, the food price increase is a very complex and delicate problem. Iowa is of course not to blame entirely for simply wanting to improve their state economy and maintain their unjustified clout over the Presidential primaries. However costs to every policy must be weighed, and not ignored under the banner of "eco-friendly development". Especially when it is neither eco-friendly, nor development. Energy independence is also a crock (what do you think they use to break the corn down to its sugar? Oil. Where did they get the oil? Take a guess). We're better off sticking with straight up gas when compared to ethanol.

2. "Continental Sucks... wait... too rude... Continental is quite possibly the worst airline I have ever been cursed to fly on."
Stuck in the Newark airport for 17 hours. Then the Minneapolis airport for 8. While I got to spend a lot of time with my wonderful fiancee, I am never going to fly Continental again. The customer service was at times incompetent, disrespectful, and extremely vague on why exactly every flight out of Newark had been grounded. Airplanes seem to be grounded quite a lot lately due to "maintenance" checks that should have been done earlier.
Still waiting on those passenger trains to spring back up. Come on Warren Buffet. Get a move on.

3. Polar bears are awesome. Just saying.

4. My fiancee is more awesome than polar bears. Again. Just saying.

5. KU wins. Roy loses. All is right with the world again. Sorry K-State. Sorry Mizzou. There's always football. Oh wait...

6. Take home exams are fun and friendly. I nabbed a perfect score on my stats midterm, as well as a kudos from the professor about the "Creativity" involved in one of my answers. I think he means desperation, but it worked. Working on a take-home midterm for another class. Two questions. Seven days. Yeah... this is going to be fun.

7. Contacted the local labor guru of the department yesterday. She's an old prof. from where I got my MA. While a specialization in labor is not quite set for the department, she is working on it. We'll see if it goes anywhere.

8. Everyday I get up and log on to CNN hoping for that magical headline that starts with, "Bill Clinton Said Yesterday...". I swear, this campaign is like Christmas every morning with all the zingers flying around.

D.B. or T.S.?

So Argentina has just elected its first... well... elected female president. Bravo, Cristina. Good for you. Honestly its rather boring news compared to other recent South American elections. Her victory was expected, and pretty much uncontested.

Here's the juicy bit...
according to a BBC article, Argentine's are not given the choice of whether to vote or not. It's required. So certain industrious non-voters put up their votes on an e-bay like site. The prices range quite a bit (from about 30 cents to 95 dollars), and I'm sure an interesting article can come out for anyone with more time than a grad student studying for quals (this is a freebie if anyone is looking for a quick grant).

Here's the real kicker: The website is international. It's basically e-bay for the Southern Cone. Theoretically speaking, I could have bought a vote in the Argentine election (maybe I missed a few buying restrictions when I visited mercadolibre.com). Granted there's no guarantee the voter I "buy" will actually vote in that way, but if they're disillusioned enough with their own political system to auction off their vote at 30 cents, they've got no incentive to NOT vote the way I ask either. So if there is a country out there with mandatory voting systems, that actually gives the voters incentive and opportunity to sell their votes on the open market. This leaves the country up for possible foreign influence, given enough internet connection and working credit cards (or pay-pal accounts or whatever the kids are using these days).

So I think next November we should all appreciate those Americans who choose to abstain from voting. Cheers to you guys. I'd rather you not vote, then sell it to an Argentine.

Apologies to the Neighbors

This past weekend I proposed to the most beautiful, wonderful, and funny girl in the world. After standing in the street for a few minutes gasping and jumping up and down she finally said "yes."

Little known engagement fact:
the first people to hear the news, were the poor girls who live across from la Ardilla. They walked out of their house during the engagement. I don't think la Ardilla had any idea who they were, but that did not stop her from showing off the ring.

We'll get the ring resized soon, and she can show it off some more when she comes down on Thursday.

DOUBLE POST COMIN AT YA!

Why golden retrievers are awesome.

Although let's face it... if I was choking, Abbey would probably have just stared at me with a confused look on her face.

Still. Dogs rule. As much as Polar Bears even.

Knut is Cute

Just to give y'all an "awwwwwwwwwwwe" moment for the day.

By the way, it's 70, cloudy, and chance of rain in Texas. Perfect weather. Hehehe. Enjoy.