Beyond Rivalry - finance_and_business

Bankruptcy

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 15:18:54 -0500

Bill Gorton: "How did you go bankrupt?"

Mike Campbell: "Gradually, and then suddenly."

-- Ernest Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises

What's the U.S. Economic Bailout Costing?

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 10:50:00 -0500

At the conservative estimate of $4.6165 trillion, so far (including the Citi bailout) (Bloomberg estimates the bailout even higher, at over $7 trillion already, which is $24,000 for every person in the country), the bailout would cost more in inflation-adjusted costs than:

the Marshall Plan,

the Louisiana Purchase,

the Race to the Moon,

the 1980s S&L Crisis,

the Korean War,

The New Deal,

the Invasion of Iraq,

the Vietnam War,

and NASA [hope that doesn't include The Race to the Moon ...],

which together total $3.92 trillion.

"The only single American event in history that even comes close to matching the cost of the credit crisis is World War II: Original Cost [to U.S.]: $288 billion, Inflation-Adjusted Cost: $3.6 trillion."

More scary details here, courtesy Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture

Yes, taxpayers could get some of the money back (the Chrysler 1.5 billion bailout loan in the early 1980s was repaid in full with interest) (maybe), but even if taxpayers are on the hook for only $1-2 trillion, that's still between $3,200 and $6,500 per every man, woman, and child in the country.

Others suggest we should look at the cost of the bailout in terms of GDP, or in…

Recent Reading

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:55:00 -0500

Woman killed by husband's coffin (11 Nov.)

God's Facebook Wall (12 Nov.)

Apparent 6th severed foot found in British Columbia (12 Nov)

Two Dead in Argument Over 'Bama-LSU Game (10 Nov.)

The Essential 007: A Recap of all 22 Bond Movies (13 Nov.)

Unregulated Credit Default Swaps Led to Weakness (31 Oct.)

Exxon Mobil: Biggest profit in history (30 Oct.)

The age when children begin attempting to appear racially colour-blind (27 Oct)

The Quest for the Perfect Morning Routine: The first in a series on lifehacking, at Slate (12 Nov): "The advice here is not my own, but I have clicked on it."

When Alzheimer's Hits at 40 in the WSJ (14 Nov.)

and

"I don't remember a whole lot about that period; I appear to have bought a couple of truly depressing sweaters, the kind you only wear when all you really want is to curl up under the bed for several years..." (The Likeness, p. 47, Tana French)

(Photo: Recent Drinking: Ironstone Cabernet Franc 2004)

A Dog Can Change Your Life

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:36:00 -0500

"Then, last week, I went to see an acupuncturist as a last resort for back pain I’ve had for over a year. The woman asked me how old I was. When I told her I was 42, she said, “You look so old! I thought you were much older.” I would have been offended, but I felt like she was saying what I felt and that the back pain was making this true. My face evidently was showing tough times too. She promised to fix me—that remains to be seen—and, as I was leaving, she said, You need to change your life today. Go outside. Not so much sitting anymore. You need to be happy, find a way. I walked out thinking I’d gone to a therapist or a fortune-teller. I felt sick for a few hours after that, possibly more from what she’d said than from the needles, and when I woke from a nap, I went directly to the animal shelter." -- Hard Times Dog by Colette LaBouff Atkinson

U.S. Economic Timeline

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 05:42:00 -0400

U.S. Economic Timeline: All on one sheet, which Good magazine is distributing through Starbucks stores. Brief review of GDP, the national debt and the national deficit, business cycles (booms and busts), recession - stagflation - inflation, etc.

Thoughts To Ponder

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:16:00 -0400

"You can't model human behavior with math."

-- Frank Partnoy, a former derivatives broker and corporate securities attorney, who now teaches law at the University of San Diego, explaining why investments made up of unreliable mortgage loans failed to eliminate the risk inherent in the loans.

A 12-minute clip on 60 Minutes explains the financial mess we're in.

Partnoy sums it up succinctly towards the end of the clip:

"As bad as the mortgage crisis has been, 94 percent of all Americans are still paying off their loans. The problem is Wall Street placed its huge bets and side bets with all of those fancy securities on the 6 percent who are not. 'We wouldn't be in any of this trouble right now if we had just had underlying investments in mortgages. We wouldn't be in any trouble right now,' says Partnoy." The problem he says, is the side bets on the mortgages, which were operating in an unregulated environment.

Having

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 10:20:00 -0400

Seems sort of fitting, after thoughts on wanting, to offer (someone else's) thoughts on having. Plus, it showed up in my RSS feeder this morning and I liked it.

At Get Rich Slowly, JD writes an interesting post on having. Having stuff. A few excerpts:

"'You know why you can't get rid of Stuff, don't you?' Kris had asked.

"'Because I want it,' I said.

"'You think you want it,' she said. 'You like the idea of having certain things, but you don't actually use them. You've got dozens of books stacked in the guest room. They've been there since the last time you purged Stuff a year ago. Have you needed any of those books in that time?'
"'No,' I said.

"After I told my friend Amy Jo about our clutter conversation last week, she shared her own thoughts. 'We each have so many interests, and certain things — like books — keep us connected to those interests, or give us the illusion that they do,' she said.

"'But they also clog up our lives and make us less efficient at doing what we are and what we want to do right now. It's hard to let go of the…

Transactional Analysis

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 06:20:00 -0400

Nancy Hitt again, at Preaching Peace, writing about gifts, money, punitive damages, the culture of transaction, in the context of paying a craftsman for repair of a church organ.

What particularly interests me:

"It has become clearer to me of late why it's such an uphill climb to help people release transactional and penal understandings of what Jesus was doing on that cross. It's not only that we need to relearn our atonement theology. It's the warp and woof of culture in which we struggle to embrace something other than the party line that hampers us. When I was confronted with the anger of the church toward our craftsman, I was disillusioned. How could we, as a church, make a logical case for our punitive response being 'right'? Considering Jesus teachings seemed like the thing to do, but I was told in no uncertain terms, 'Don't ask what Jesus would do. I'm sure he's just as fed up as I am!' Clearly, the dissonance between the Truth and our desires was not even apparent to us. The idea that a gift is freely given, without strings, without a desire for a return on the investment, is almost impossible for us to…

Evolution and Conversion, cont'd (7)

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 12:25:00 -0400

(Previous posts on this topic: here, here, here, here, here and here.)

Chapter 7, Modernity, Postmodernity and Beyond

There's a lot of content in this chapter, and quite a lot that I couldn't assent to or felt wasn't consistent with what I know of mimetic theory (which, obviously, is a lot less than Girard knows!). It's very hard to articulate those differences -- my brain gets a little unhinged trying to follow the logic that some other part of me intuits, accurately or not -- and I may not be able to go into much detail there.

Finishing the book, I felt as I always do when reading Girard or listening to him in a video or audiotape: I have so many different questions from the ones he's addressing or is asked to respond to!

For instance, in chapter 6 he says that in myths there"always seems to be a good cause for hating the victim, but in reality it is a spurious, illusory cause." He never says in this book or anywhere else I've read/heard whether it's possible to be a victim and be guilty. Are no victims guilty or hate-able? Are we all innocent? To clear this up seems…

Who are the Victims? - II

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 07:30:00 -0400

Another ongoing series: News stories in which some group is labelled 'the victim' of a group, abstraction, or individual. I think it's educational and interesting to notice who or what are identified as victims and perpetrators in the media.

Recently,

People who tend not to know their rights are the victims: "'They're (collection agencies) very creative sometimes, and unfortunately, the consumers who tend not to know their rights under the Fair Credit Collections Act are the victims.'" [14 July]

Stamp vending machines are the victims: "'The stamp vending machines are the victims of technology, competition and aging parts,'" said Ray Daiutolo, a U.S. Postal Service spokesman. ... Consumers are buying postage on the Postal Service's Web site, and through its 'stamps by phone' and 'stamps by fax' services. People also can find stamps at most grocery stores, and some banks offer them at their ATMs." [18 July]

Students who borrow money to go to college, textile workers who lose their jobs to Chinese imports and kids who want to play baseball in fields near their homes are the victims of corporate welfare, according the to book Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with…