Are Americans worthy of being saved?
During this financial crisis I have been wandering the halls of academia, blog space and the business world and I'm shocked by our people's lack of comprehension about what is going on in the economy. The misperceptions about the current banking crisis, its seriousness, the implications, and potential solutions defy understanding. There are times when I just shake my head.
I have found that the groups of incomprehension fall into four camps...
As a follow on to my last post, and in the spirit of more regulation is good (the protest cry from the streets these days following Wall Street's crisis), here are two ideas where we might be able to do more with less:
Fedealize insurance regulation, and adopt principles based accounting.
As quaint as state insurance regulation is, and as well intentioned as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) was, its time for both to go. This is such a no brainer that it will never get done...
An angry and probably jealous nation is getting ready to make some big mistakes in financial industry regualtion.
Given that the media has been driven into a psychotic incoherent rage, first over the popularity of Sara Palin, and then by the incomprehensibility of a credit crunch that they really don’t understand but are absolutely convinced was done deliberately by people richer than they, to this there will be only one tolerable response: Criminalize more behavior.
The results will not be good...
I lost Saturday, Sunday and Monday to the cutest little game called Tower Defense. It completely mesmerized me for three days. I was told that during that period I hardly moved and there is no question that on Friday when I looked down to start playing it was morning, and when I again looked up, it was night. I haven't been this engrossed in a game since Stronghold devoured weeks of my life back in 2002.
What is it about this game and why is it so cool...
A Post-postmodernist with Objectivist leanings, fighting to catch up with his art after serving time as a capitalist oppressor of the people.
Doug Barone retired from corporate life after 20 years in the finance industry and is fooling everyone into thinking he is a writer. Having been a corporate strategist, finance executive, and IT executive he has found almost nothing of use to him from those years except the zany people and crazy stories that no one in their right mind could ever dream up. He uses these real life experiences in his work and this separates him from other writers who never really worked a day in their lives either.
His work, his prose fiction, is focused on power, its entanglement with emotional fulfillment, the impact of institutional concentrations of authority, and our struggles in the space created between. It deals with the ontological-deontological tension of existence in a post-postmodern world, where ideas have re-emerged as vastly powerful things even in the simple acts of everyday life. Sometimes his work allows just a bit of the mystical to cross over into reality, breaking the barriers of perception, heightening a sense of the possible.
Since this is all antithetical to the held narrative of our time, he fully expects to be pilloried by the academic left as well as the religious right, and looks forward to every lashing.
Congress to America: Drop Dead
I’m not sure I know how to react to the news today that the House of Representative defeated the bill giving Treasury the ability to purchase mis-priced assets from the banking system.
As the market collapsed, $1.1 trillion was destroyed in falling share values held by Americans. That is much more than the $700 billion that Treasury requested. So we no longer have the $700 billion, and we lost another $400 billion. I can't think of a better definition of "stupid"...