Casual Businessman

London Aug 10, 2011

2011-08-10T02:27:00.001-07:00

We have had an excellent last several days in London. We are in our home now and (mostly) have our things sorted out. We got lucky in that the last few weeks we have enjoyed the company of several friends. We had some photographer friends of Kjrsten's over for dinner on the weekend. We also had the a jolly breakfast at "The Breakfast Club" in SoHo with some friends from Texas. It is good to hang out with friends from America and share in the fun, excitement, and quirkiness of London.

I took Monday and Tuesday off to make for a long weekend. We went to Bath on Monday. It is about a two-hour trip each way via metro and train. It is a beautiful, smaller city with a Roman history. The girls enjoyed the Museum of Fashion and the Roman baths, and of course ice cream. On our way home the train goes through the town of Clapham. Unbeknownst to us some looting had started up around London and in Clapham and other outlying areas. We had no idea from our view of the city and station from the train. Then we get home and hear all about the riots. Tuesday we were due to meet up with the photographers to model for their workshop. We had some concerns about the looters and the state of affairs, but all we could gather was that it was mainly in the "bad parts of town" where there are lots of jobless youth (and apparently no discipline). It was a beautiful sunny day and we were to be with a large group during the day so we didn't worry too much about it. We had a lot of fun having our pictures taken by a large group of people from all over the place. Our girls were digging it big time!

After that we went for a stroll in the park and the girls played on the playground. It was a beautiful day and so there were lots of families and kids about. At around 4:30 or 5pm we decided to grab some dinner and head home. At the restaurant they warned us that they might close early because the rumours were that the "west end" was going to be targeted and they were gathering about 10mins away. We didn't want our meal disrupted so we left for home.

The metro line to our home was "severely delayed" due to some malfunction and we didn't want the hassle of taking a longer ride home so we got off at the center junction and went to dinner. It was very pleasant, many shoppers and a few coppers on the street. Then we walked up through a really posh neighbourhood and caught the bus the rest of the way home.

The attached photos are of our day yesterday. (sorry no burning buildings)

London July 10 2011

2011-07-11T00:24:00.001-07:00

We arrived family and lots of luggage on an over night flight direct from Seattle. Meredith thought the plane ride with her own video on demand screen was about as good as life could get. But the girls didn't really like the British Airways version of chix nuggets and mac n cheese - hopefully not foreshadowing, but we all know how kids are! They are resilient as ever about so many things in life, yet picky about the small things. We got to our temporary digs about 3pm in the afternoon. Temporary because we are still waiting on our container full of stuff (including my shotgun I accidentally shipped). Once we get our beds and some kitchen supplies we can settle in to our real life. For now we are still living out of suitcases (going on several weeks now including a 7 day camping trip).

Last night for dinner in order to avoid too much culture shock for our girls, and to make life easy, we walked to the McD's about a half mile down the road from our serviced apartment. The girls complained about those chix nuggets too! We then went to the corner Tesco and bought as much cereal and PB&J as we could carry and walked back home. Everyone stayed up late, and then woke up at 4:30 AM. The girls are off to do errands and some discovery London. they plan to be the first people on the London eye this morning. We'll see how late they stay up tonight!

Cheers!

Pete

saying goodbye at the airport:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSmnN2Ikd_c

2011-01-07T17:46:00.000-08:00

Kjrsten and I were staring into each others eyes when we heard Beach House cover a classic Built To Spill song ("Somethings Last a Long Time"). I'll leave that for you to discover on your own some how. But let this sweet 25min concert video be an appetizer.

Now Beach House reminds me of Kjrsten and Built to Spill! New favorite!? I miss you!

Quantitative Easing; is it printing money or not?

2011-01-06T14:54:00.000-08:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

The Big Bank Theory

http://www.thedailyshow.com/

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog</a>

The Daily Show on Facebook

Alpental

2010-12-31T15:22:00.000-08:00

Have a Stylin Christmas boy !

2010-12-25T20:28:00.000-08:00

WWII Era Christmas Card

2010-12-21T22:07:00.000-08:00

Do you recognize the buildings?

Greedy Innkeeper or Generous Capitalist?

2010-12-20T11:54:00.000-08:00

Greedy Innkeeper or Generous Capitalist? To view this article, Click Here
Brian S. Wesbury - Chief Economist
Robert Stein, CFA - Senior Economist
Date: 12/20/2010

The Bible story of the virgin birth is at the center of much of the holiday cheer at this time of the year. The book of Luke tells us Mary and Joseph traveled to Bethlehem because Caesar Augustus decreed a census should be taken. Mary gave birth after arriving in Bethlehem and placed baby Jesus in a manger because there was “no room for them in the inn.”

Over the centuries, people have come to believe that because Jesus was born in a stable, and not in a hotel room, Mary and Joseph must have been mistreated by a greedy innkeeper. This innkeeper only cared about profits and decided this young couple was not “worth” his best accommodations. This angle on the traditional story is repeated in just about every play, skit, or sermon on the subject.

These stories persist even though the Bible records no complaints at the time and there was apparently no charge for the use of the stable. It may be that the stable was the only place available. Bethlehem, like other small towns, was overflowing with people who were returning to their ancestral homes for the census, which was ordered by the Romans for the purpose of levying a tax.

If there was a problem, it was caused by the unintended consequences of government policy. However, a political spin has been added to the story and it blames capitalism and capitalists for being greedy and uncaring, even evil.

A different narrative could be easily generated. The innkeeper was generous to a fault – a hero even. He was over-booked, but he charitably offered his stable, a building that would not have existed if it weren’t for his foresight and industriousness. And don’t forget, the government officials who ordered the census slept in their own beds with little care for the wellbeing of those who had to travel regardless of their difficult life circumstances.

If you must find “evil” in either one of these narratives, remember that evil is ultimately perpetrated by individuals, not the institutions in which they operate.

And this is why it’s important to favor economic and political systems that limit the use and abuse of power over others. In the story of baby Jesus, a law that requires innkeepers to always have extra rooms, or to take in anyone who asks, would “fix” the problem of the evil innkeeper.

This regulation, which would be enforced by government, would have unintended consequences. Fewer people would become innkeepers because they would need to build larger structures (that could accommodate the crowd during a census). But because censuses are rare, the innkeeper would be forced to charge higher prices to cover costs. This, in turn, would cause many to complain that the innkeeper was greedy.

This does not mean that free markets are perfect or create utopia, they aren’t and they don’t. But, business can’t force you to buy a service or product. You have a choice – even if it’s not exactly what you want. And good business people try to make you happy in creative and industrious ways.

Government doesn’t always care. In fact, if you happen to live in North Korea or Cuba, and are not happy about the way things are going, you can’t leave. And just in case you try, armed guards will help you think things through.

This is why the framers of the US Constitution made sure there were “checks and balances” in the system. We’re now seeing that system operate. In reaction to the health care bill passed earlier this year, voters rejected many of the bill’s supporters and boosted the clout of its opponents. And the “new” majority favors lower taxes and less spending.

For many, this is not like having a savior. But it should give us all reason to hope for a better world in the years ahead.

This information contains forward-looking statements about various economic trends and strategies. You are cautioned that such forward-looking statements are subject to significant business, economic and competitive uncertainties and actual results could be materially different. There are no guarantees associated with any forecast and the opinions stated here are subject to change at any time and are the opinion of the individual strategist. Data comes from the following sources: Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Federal Reserve Board, and Haver Analytics. Data is taken from sources generally believed to be reliable but no guarantee is given to its accuracy.

Have an 80s Christmas!

2010-12-19T16:31:00.000-08:00

Fibonacci

2010-12-15T10:47:00.001-08:00

Nature by Numbers from Cristóbal Vila on Vimeo.

Karate Kid or Built to Spill?

2010-12-12T17:28:00.000-08:00

Last Christmas

2010-12-10T09:16:00.000-08:00

Someone at work shared this video. I can't get enough of that hairdo.

Traveling Wilbury

2010-12-01T19:06:00.000-08:00

My favorite analogy for the terrestrial kingdom is the business trip. Sure, you get BBQ pulled pork, coleslaw, mac n cheese, giant diet coke and homemade banana pudding. Nice hotel rooms are comfy but there is no hearth or heart of kith and kin. There are always a lot of people around but it is lonely as there is limited contact with loved ones and it is via technology.

I'll endure the night for the promise of light and with the help of Stubb's.

My family circa 1971

2010-11-14T22:35:00.000-08:00

Something was happening to our right and it made us smile

- Mitch Hedberg describing his family photo

“Cool It” – Bjorn Lomborg’s New Cinematic Rebuke to Global Warming Alarmists

2010-11-13T00:18:00.000-08:00

http://www.cfif.org/v/index.php/commentary/44-energy-and-environment/774-cool-it-bjorn-lomborgs-new-cinematic-rebuke-to-global-warming-alarmists

Recent events prove that orthodox environmentalists can be a really hateful, vindictive bunch.

We have the scandalous snuff video in which schoolchildren expressing global warming skepticism are literally detonated, their gory entrails splattered upon classmates. Or consider the "Climategate" scandal in which global warming activists doctored their research and targeted scientists inconveniently undermining their crusade.

Nothing, however, matches the vindictiveness that dogmatists direct toward renegades against The Cause. Exhibit A: Danish climate scientist Bjorn Lomborg.

Although Lomborg actually believes in anthropologic (human-caused) global warming, he was consigned to heretic status with his 2001 publication of "The Skeptical Environmentalist." In his book, Lomborg dared question the apocalyptic predictions of environmental alarmists, argued that worldwide environmental conditions were actually improving and that economically destructive cuts in carbon emissions were not the optimal way to approach the issue.

Things only got worse for Lomborg when he convened a 2008 summit of economists to apply cost/benefit analyses to ten of the world's most pressing problems "like malnutrition, unsafe drinking water, malaria and terrorism." Global warming ended up near the bottom, and they determined that "while every dollar spent on fighting malnutrition would yield nearly $20 in benefits, every dollar spent on cutting carbon would avoid much less than a dollar of global warming damage."

For this, Lomborg has been physically attacked at speaking appearances, and labeled such things as "traitor," "dangerous," "a massive negative force on this issue" and "someone who needs to be taken down."

With the release of his new film "Cool It," environmental extremists' collective seethe will only intensify.

This week, we at CFIF were fortunate to meet and speak with Lomborg during a private event in anticipation of the film's debut, and he is every bit as gracious in person as he appears on screen. That this man could be labeled "the devil incarnate" says much more about those doing the labeling than about the target of their vitriol.

"Cool It," which will be released in across the country on November 12 (and in additional theaters November 19), opens with simultaneously amusing but disturbing clips of children repeating the apocalyptic mantra fed to them by schools and popular culture. It then provides a compelling brief biography of Lomborg, whose father passed when he was an infant, and his first flirtations with environmental realism at a bookstore near the UCLA campus during a professorial conference.

Reading Julian Simon, Lomborg realized that environmental alarmism was undermined by the fact that lives were getting longer, air and water were actually getting cleaner and quality of life improving, particularly in wealthier advanced economies that were supposedly the perpetrators of global climate catastrophe. Lomborg had initially assumed that Simon was some sort of right-wing propagandist, but was taken by Simon's instruction not to take his word for it, but to "go check the data." Thus began Lomborg's mission to bring a greater sense of rationality to the debate.

The movie proceeds to examine worldwide legislation enacted to combat climate change, such as the infamous Kyoto Protocol's mandate to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 5.2% below 1990 levels by 2012. Lomborg notes that achieving that mandate would cost $180 billion per year, but would only reduce temperatures by 0.008 degrees by the year 2100 even if compliance was achieved. Other European mandates will cost approximately $250 billion every year through the end of this century, only to achieve a 0.1 degree temperature reduction.

For every dollar spent in climate compliance, according to Lomborg, European requirements will prevent just half a cent of climate damage. He also places predictions of a one-foot rise in sea level in their proper context by noting that sea levels have already risen over the past 150 years by: one foot.

"Cool It" specifically addresses that legislative darling of environmentalists, cap-and-tax schemes. According to Lomborg, such laws merely invite government cronyism by awarding carbon credits (Enron, he notes, aimed to profit via carbon trading), pass the costs on to strapped consumers in the products we buy, protect obsolete technologies and are flatly unacceptable to modernizing nations like India and China because they will prevent economic ascent.

The film's most jarring scenes arrive during juxtapositions of third-world schoolchildren who suffer from such rudimentary maladies as malnutrition and contaminated drinking water versus pampered European schoolchildren who tell Lomborg that they are kept awake at night by terror tales about Antarctic penguins and ice caps. Levity is also provided, often by merely showing clips of alarmist films whose absurdism and self-parody speak for themselves without any mockery from Lomborg.

"Cool It" also places global warming scare tactics in humorous perspective by highlighting 1970s clips predicting catastrophic… global cooling.

As for Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," a featured Princeton professor says, "a lot of it isn't true, and a lot of it that is true is misinterpreted." It is, he says, "a great piece of propaganda."

But "Cool It" isn't simply a hit piece on environmentalists. Instead of wasting so many trillions of dollars in the sinkhole of global warming mandates, Lomborg shows that we can alleviate far more human suffering at far less cost by targeting such simple miseries as contaminated drinking water, malnutrition and illnesses like malaria. Further, such developments as nuclear generators fueled by radioactive waste offer a potential future alternative to fossil fuels so demonized by orthodox alarmists. Lomborg's preference for government research "incentives" will collide head-on with contemporary fiscal realities, but even technophobes will enjoy the segments discussing future energy ideas.

Want to really make a difference?

Forget about replacing that incandescent bulb with a compact florescent. Instead, take a global warming hysteric to see the entertaining and informative "Cool It" come November 12.

How to Travel

2010-11-12T19:51:00.000-08:00

This is from Stratfor a political consulting firm. I am taking it a bit out of context but this section struck me as worthy of sharing. When m'lady and I travel we love to walk everywhere and anywhere. We love to just cruise around for the sake of random exposure. I can't wait for the future when we can spend more time in more places together learning about each other and all of God's creations. Just imagine taking a train ride to the Black Sea and reading Dostoevsky while picnicking in the mountains.

From Stratfor:

There is another part of geopolitical travel that is perhaps the most valuable: walking the streets of a city. Geopolitics affect every level of society, shaping life and culture. Walking the streets, if you know what to look for, can tell you a great deal. Don't go to where the monuments and museums are, and don't go to where the wealthy live. They are the least interesting and the most globally homogenized. They are personally cushioned against the world. The poor and middle class are not. If a Montblanc store is next to a Gucci shop, you are in the wrong place.

Go to the places where the people you will never hear of live. Find a school and see the children leave at the end of the day. You want the schools where there is pushing and shoving and where older brothers come to walk their sisters home. You are now where you should be. Look at their shoes. Are they old or new? Are they local or from the global market? Are they careful with them as if they were precious or casual with them as they kick a ball around? Watch children play after school and you can feel the mood and tempo of a neighborhood.

Find a food store. Look at the food being offered, particularly fruits and vegetables. Are they fresh-looking? What is the selection? Look at the price and calculate it against what you know about earnings. Then watch a woman (yes, it is usually a woman) shopping for groceries. Does she avoid the higher priced items and buy the cheapest? Does she stop to look at the price, returning a can or box after looking, or does she simply place it in her basket or cart without looking at the price? When she pays for the food, is she carefully reaching into an envelope in her pocketbook where she stores her money, or does she casually pull out some bills? Watch five women shopping for food in the late afternoon and you will know how things are there.

Go past the apartments people live in. Smell them. The unhealthy odor of decay or sewage tells you about what they must endure in their lives. Are there banks in the neighborhood? If not, there isn't enough business there to build one. The people are living paycheck to paycheck. In the cafes where men meet, are they older men, retired? Or are they young men? Are the cafes crowded with men in their forties drinking tea or coffee, going nowhere? Are they laughing and talking or sitting quietly as if they have nothing left to say? Official figures on unemployment can be off a number of ways. But when large numbers of 40-year-old men have nothing to do, then the black economy — the one that pays no taxes and isn't counted by the government but is always there and important — isn't pulling the train. Are the police working in pairs or alone? What kind of weapons do they carry? Are they everywhere, nowhere or have just the right presence? There are endless things you can learn if you watch.

All of this should be done unobtrusively. Take along clothes that are a bit shabby. Buy a pair of shoes there, scuff them up and wear them. Don't speak. The people can smell foreigners and will change their behavior when they sense them. Blend in and absorb. At the end of a few days you will understand the effects of the world on these people.

First the Maple Bacon Bar and Now This?

2010-11-12T17:10:00.000-08:00

By way of plansponsor.com:

Seattle-based Jones Soda Co. has brought to market a bacon-flavored soda made in partnership with J&D's Foods (maker of such bacon flavored products as Bacon Salt, Baconnaise, BaconPOP and Bacon Gravy). Yes, for that hard-to-buy-for-bacon fan, you can now purchase two bottles of the salty new soda; a bag of J&D's Cheddar BaconPOP bacon and cheddar flavored popcorn; J&D's Bacon Lip Balm AND a package of J&D's Bacon Gravy for just $9.99 (plus shipping and handling).

p.s.

I had two Voodoo donuts today! I’ll let you guess which ones. If you don’t know Voodoo you need to review the menu. Below are a few. Cupcakes got nuthin’ on these!

http://www.voodoodoughnut.com/menu.php

Voodoo Doll Raised yeast doughnut filled with raspberry jelly topped with chocolate frosting and a pretzel stake! (characteristics of Voodoo Dolls are all different)
	Bacon Maple Bar Raised yeast doughnut with maple frosting and bacon on top!

	Captain my Captain Raised yeast doughnut with vanilla frosting and Captain Crunch!
	The Loop Raised yeast doughnut with vanilla frosting and Fruit Loops!
	Triple chocolate penetration Chocolate cake doughnut with chocolate frosting and coco-puffs!
	Grape Ape Raised yeast doughnut with vanilla frosting, grape dust and lavender sprinkles!
	Diablos Rex Chocolate cake doughnut with chocolate frosting, red sprinkles, vanilla pentagram and chocolate chips in the middle!
	Mango Tango Raised yeast doughnut filled with mango jelly and topped with vanilla frosting and tang!
	Gay Bar Raised yeast doughnut chocked full of luscious cream and all the colors of the rainbow!
	Dirt doughnut Raised yeast doughnut with vanilla frosting and Oreos!
	Maple Blazer Blunt It's a raised doughnut rolled into a blunt with maple frosting and red sprinkle ember, prices vary due to Blazer Mania!
	Marshall Matters Plain cake doughnut with vanilla frosting and mini M&M’s!
	Lemon Chiffon crueller French crueller with vanilla frosting, lemon dust and three marshmallows!

	Texas Challenge Giant Doughnut equals 6 of our dougnuts in size. If you can eat this doughut in 80 seconds or less...You get your money back!
	Memphis Mafia Fried dough with banana chunks and cinnamon sugar covered in a glaze with chocolate frosting, peanut butter, peanuts and chocolate chips on top!
	Cock-N-Balls Cock-n-balls shaped raised yeast doughnut triple filled with Bavarian cream and topped with chocolate frosting!
	Old Dirty Bastard Raised yeast doughnut with chocolate frosting, Oreo’s and peanut butter!
	Tangfastic Plain cake doughnut with vanilla frosting, tang and three marshmallows!
	Dirty snowballs Chocolate cake doughnut with marshmallow topping, dipped in coconut and a dollop of peanut butter in the middle!

	Arnold Palmer Plain cake doughnut with vanilla frosting and lemonade/ice tea dust on top!
	Butterfingering Chocolate cake doughnut with vanilla frosting and Butterfinger crumbles!
	Dubble Bubble Raised yeast doughnut with vanilla frosting, bubble gum dust and a piece of bubble gum!
	Miami Vice Berry Raised yeast doughnut with vanilla frosting, blue raspberry powder and pink sprinkles!

You've come a long way baby, and now you're back

2010-11-10T23:35:00.000-08:00

Chris Cornell has always had a place in my heart. I'm not really sure if it was because I saw Soundgarden a few times "back in the day" when long hair was as cool as crowd surfing and slamming turned into moshing, or because he has worked to evolve over the years. I'll let you be the judge of his success. But since they are on a reunion tour I was reminded of the young and vibrant Chris Cornell, the Cornell of the early aughts, and then WHAM it hit me. The Cornell of 2009 scooped Sufjan! To much controversy, but little acclaim, Cornell wrote an electronic album in 2009 with Timbaland and toured a bunch of small clubs. People hated him for it. Who wants to hear a rock god push the power button and plunk the Casio? Well, they were right because it wasn't so awesome.

Here is the evolution:
Soundgarden (started circa 1986)
Actor (movie Singles)
Solo
Audioslave
Solo
Soundgarden

The long-hair-no-shirt days: (be patient with the VHS quality)

The mellow middle: (I couldn't find Sunshower which isn't as old as this one, but you know you love this anyway)

Electronic Cornell:
- Well, I am going to spare you. The idea of Timbaland and Cornell jamming together with all that processing power seems like it would come up with something sweet, but I couldn't really represent that for you here. Just imagine. It is better than way.

Other Cornell:
I'm tired now, but you can find Sun Shower, Burden in My Hand, from the mellow middle, lotsa Audioslave, and even a Billie Jean and Led Zepplin cover...BUT I did find the hair timeline:

It's QE II - It's Real Stimulus

2010-11-08T22:17:00.000-08:00

NOVEMBER 6, 2010

The Perfect Stimulus: Bad Management

If no one had a hamster-brained sociopath for a boss, who would start new businesses?

By SCOTT ADAMS

One of my earliest childhood jobs involved shoveling manure at my uncle's dairy farm in upstate New York. Things were going well until my uncle explained that no matter how well I performed, I would never be promoted to farmer. Or even cow. I had hit the manure ceiling.

I consider that experience my first economic stimulus package—the unwelcome realization that my current job was a dead end. While my classmates were building snowmen with carrot noses (mostly the girls) and carrot genitalia (mostly the boys), I started to do some serious career planning about how to get out of the fecal relocation profession and into the warm embrace of a loving corporation. I studied hard, and I earned money for college by mowing lawns, shoveling snow, shoveling even more manure, and (my personal favorite) shoveling frozen manure covered with snow. I saved my meager funds, and with the help of my parents, who both took extra jobs, plus a few scholarships, I clawed my way into college.

Years later, my dream came true. I got a job with a large bank, and I never again needed to shovel manure. Corporations use something called PowerPoint instead. Thanks to my farm training, I was so good at designing PowerPoint slides that my coworkers called me "The Natural." Jaws dropped when I introduced my signature move: the frozen PowerPoint slide with snow on top.

In those days, I was a furious bundle of ambition and determination. The old-timers told me I had a "rocket strapped to my ass." All I needed to do was get my "ticket punched." It wasn't long before I was able to enjoy my second economic stimulus package: bad management.

Though most of my immediate bosses were entirely reasonable and competent, the organization at large was riddled with hamster-brained sociopaths in leadership roles. Surely, I thought, this must be a problem that exists no place else on Earth. Otherwise we'd all be living in caves and holding long meetings on the feasibility of using sticks as stabby things.

One day, a position opened above me, and I was the most obvious candidate to fill it. My boss called me into her office and said she had some bad news. She explained that the media was giving our company a lot of heat because almost all of our managers and executives were white males. Promoting me, she explained, would only make things worse. I asked how long I might need to wait for all of this to blow over. My boss was vague, but she said the timeline involved smoothing out the effects of two centuries of corporate discrimination.

I decided to jump ship and go where my talent and hard work would be rewarded. I took a job at the local phone company and soon discovered, to my horror, that banking was not the only industry in the world managed by hamster-brained sociopaths. Once again, my immediate bosses were quite capable, but interacting with other departments was like being the last human in Zombieville and trying to buy groceries at dusk. Still, it was marginally better than shoveling manure, so I doubled down. I finished my MBA classes at night and distinguished myself as an up-and-comer.

One day my boss called me into his office and explained that the media was giving the phone company a lot of heat because almost all of the managers and executives were white males. So, he explained, promoting me would only make things worse. You might say that was the day that the "Dilbert" comic strip was born, although I had not yet drawn one. Let's call it a tipping point. From that day on, I considered myself an entrepreneur. All I had to do was figure out what business I was in. The phone company was willing to pay for almost any sort of semi-relevant training or education that I was willing to endure. It was like an accidental school for entrepreneurs. From an economic viewpoint, I was in exactly the right place, with exactly the right amount of career discomfort.

I wasn't suffering alone. Many of my co-workers already had active side businesses and ambitious expansion plans. The guy in the cubicle behind me was running a concert equipment rental business. Across from me was a guy running a computer tech support business. We had Amway dealers, Mary Kay sales people, inventors, authors and just about any other business you can imagine. That's not counting all of the business plans in the incubation phase. I think we all understood that working in a cubicle and being managed by Satan's learning-challenged little brother was not a recipe for happiness.

The way I describe it may sound pessimistic, but consider the alternative. Imagine a parallel universe where employees enjoy going to work. They feel empowered and fulfilled—so much so that they don't care about the size of their paychecks and never want to leave their jobs. That's exactly the sort of nightmare scenario that would destroy the economy. The last thing this world needs is a bunch of dopey-happy workers who can't stop humming and grinning. Our system requires a continuous supply of highly capable people who are so disgruntled with their jobs that they are willing to chew off their own arms to escape their bosses. The economy needs hamster-brained sociopaths in management to drive down the opportunity cost of entrepreneurship. Luckily, we're blessed with an ample supply.

To put it in plainer terms: The primary purpose of management is to kill any hope that staying in your current job will work out for you. That sort of hope is like gravel in the engine of progress. The economy needs workers who are fed up, desperate and willing to quit their jobs for something better. Remember, only quitters can be winners, because you can't do something great until first you quit doing something that isn't.

You see this same dynamic with countries. The United States is a nation founded by people who couldn't stand the leaders of their old homelands. I'm no geneticist, but I suspect that the "screw it, I'm out of here" attitude can get passed on. We're probably the most disgruntled, self-loathing, hard-to-satisfy people on Earth. It's no wonder our GDP is awesome.

Israel is another perfect example. The entire nation is full of people who were displeased with their last situation. And Israel's economy is one of the most vibrant in the world. If every Israeli became satisfied at once, they couldn't keep the lights on for a week.

I have always assumed there's a correlation between imagination and risk-taking. You wouldn't leave an unpleasant but relatively safe situation unless you could imagine a better outcome. So the people who leave a company first tend to be the visionaries who can best imagine entrepreneurial success. The last wave of people who leave are usually excreted just before the door is chained. They didn't imagine it would happen so soon. Bad management is how imagination gets wings.

—Scott Adams is the creator of 'Dilbert.'

"It's Rare to Feel This Expensive...

2010-11-06T11:56:00.000-07:00

...but not with a girl like her!"
Minus the Bear

Casimir Effect

2010-11-05T21:51:00.000-07:00

So by now you have probably formed an opinion on Sufjan’s new work, and maybe even revised your opinion of him as an artist. My opinion of him increased by a huge amount after seeing him perform this new stuff. As the author below says, “Where has this Sufjan been?” It is much closer to who I am or how I feel on occasion, or just what I look for in music = a bit visceral, a bit dark or edgy, some up tempo, and if done well something not harmonious (time signature, atonality, singing off key). I saw a brief glimpse of it over the last few years as Kjr would listen and I would reluctantly agree. As an example, at one point Kjrst says she likes how in “Casimir” Sufjan points out that God takes our place in our suffering, I agreed and said that this was in the first part of the song, but the last part “and he takes, and he takes” is more like the element of “we lift our hands and pray over her body but nothing ever happens”. God takes from us as well. He prunes us so that we can grow.

Anyway, hat tip to Sister Marion for sharing this review which may help you out if you are still reeling from being dragged out of your world and into his:

http://www.beattheindiedrum.com/?p=2016

And if you are wondering about the “Casimir effect?” … Creating a wormhole of a size useful for macroscopic spacecraft, keeping it stable, and moving one end of it around would require significant energy, many orders of magnitude more than the Sun can produce in its lifetime. Construction of a wormhole would also require the existence of a substance known as "dark matter," or "negative matter", which, while not known to be impossible, is also not known to exist in forms useful for wormhole construction (but see for example the Casimir effect)...We now know that the universe has an intrinsic, bottom level of uncertainty that cannot be bypassed. Quantum mechanics also shows us that objects can appear out of nothing and then disappear back into nothing. Even in supposedly empty space, virtual particles are continuously appearing and disappearing. This is a real and measurable process, via what is known as the Casimir Effect.

Krugman Demotivator

2010-11-04T22:41:00.001-07:00

From Krugman's NYTimes post in 2002, available here.

When the results of this advice became apparent in 2008, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics.

http://falkenblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/krugman-demotivator.html

Vesuvius

2010-10-31T12:22:00.000-07:00

Still unsure if you want to see Sufjan on this tour? At a minimum watch this 7 minutes for a bit of the surreal performance art that you could participate in:

Sufjan's Stravinsky Moment

2010-10-30T01:19:00.001-07:00

My wife is an artistic genius. We were discussing our other-worldly experience with Sufjan and the reaction of those in attendance and that is how she described it. Granted the indie peeps wouldn't fist-to-cuffs but many are struggling. Auto tune isn't easy on the ears but was it ironic or sincere? He was wearing sparkle pants.

http://yfrog.com/027phz (spoiler alert - follow the link only if you dare)

Portland's Finest

2010-10-29T23:01:00.000-07:00

Pete

God, Liberals and Liberty - Dennis Prager - printer friendly - Townhall.com

2010-10-28T16:01:00.001-07:00

OCTOBER 28, 2010

God, Liberals and Liberty

By Dennis Prager

10/12/2010

In a recent column, New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow wrote: "It's sometimes easy to lose sight of just how anomalous our (America's) religiosity is in the world. A Gallup report issued on Tuesday underscored just how out of line we are."

Given Blow's leftwing politics and his point was that all rich countries except for the United States are secular and that all poor countries are religious, he was obviously not making this point in order to celebrate America's "anomalous" religiosity.

He should have. America's anomalous religiosity is very much worth celebrating -- not because it leads to affluence, but because it is indispensible to liberty. Had Blow made a liberty chart rather than an affluence chart, he might have noted that the freest country in the world -- for 234 years -- the United States of America, has also been the most God-centered.

Yes, I know that the Islamic world has also been God-based and that it has not been free. But that is because Allah is not regarded as the source of liberty, as the America's Judeo-Christian God has been, but as the object of submission ("Islam" means "submission").

Since the inception of the United States (and, indeed, before it in colonial America), liberty, i.e., personal freedom, has been linked to God.

America was founded on the belief that God is the source of liberty. That is why the inscription on the Liberty Bell is from the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible (Leviticus 25): (SET ITAL) "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof."(END ITAL)

The Declaration of Independence also asserts this link: All men "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Because the Creator of the world is the source of our freedom, no state, no human being, no government may take it away. If the state were the source of liberty, then obviously the state could take it away.

Both reason and American values therefore make these claims:

1. The more important the state is, the less the liberty.

2. The more important God is, the smaller the state.

3. Therefore, the more important God is, the more liberty there is.

A proof of the validity of these assertions is that as this country -- the country, not the government -- becomes more secular, it becomes less free, just as has happened in other Western countries. We have far more laws governing human conduct than ever before in America's history. And Western Europe has even more, including limitations on as basic a liberty as free speech.

So, too, every totalitarian state except Muslim ones (because a religious government is the Muslim ideal) seeks to abolish religion. Stalin, for example, murdered virtually every member of the clergy, and came close to destroying all religion, in the Soviet Union. He understood that a totalitarian state cannot allow a competing allegiance.

And in democratic Western Europe, the ever-expanding state is inevitably accompanied by an ever shrinking God and religion.

This is largely what the current culture war -- actually a non-violent civil war -- is about. The left seeks an ever-expanding state with, by definition, ever-expanding powers. And a fundamental aspect of that program is the removal of God and religion from as much of American life as possible. This is pursued under the noble-sounding goal of ensuring "separation of church and state." But whatever the avowed aim, the result is the same: secularize as much of society as possible, its institutions and, most importantly, its values.

Over time, much of America has belatedly awakened to the realization that two counter-revolutionary (as in American Revolution) trends were occurring at a breakneck pace: God was being replaced by the state as the source of liberty, and liberty was eroding.

To use a Civil War simile, the secular Fort Sumter took place in 1962, when the United States Supreme Court (Engel v. Vitale) overthrew the decision of the highest court of New York State, and ruled that the following prayer, said in New York State schools, violated the Constitution:

"Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our Country."

Few rational, let alone religious, Americans believed that this non-denominational prayer, which no school child had to recite, violated the American Constitution. The purpose of the ruling was to impose secularism on America.

Since then, the leftwing attack on religion in America has proceeded at a rapid clip:

-- Though Los Angeles ("the Angels") was founded by Christians, the tiny cross on the seal of Los Angeles County was removed by the three liberal members of the five-member Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

-- Wishing a fellow American "Merry Christmas" has been widely rendered unacceptable.

-- A speaker at public high school graduations may not say "God bless you" to the graduating class.

-- The Bible, the basis of American values instruction for most of American history, is not taught at virtually any non-religious school in America.

Examples are too numerous to list.

And now, commensurate with the removal of God from American society, the most leftwing government in American history is expanding state powers to an unprecedented degree.

Our leftwing party has passed -- more accurately imposed, since it did so without a single vote from the opposition party -- legislation that will massively expand state powers. And it is preparing to govern more and more of Americans' lives without passing any legislation. As reported by the Los Angeles Times last week: "White House staff changes are being made with an eye toward achieving goals through executive actions rather than by trying to push plans through the next Congress."

It was inevitable.

From its inception, the left has regarded God and religion (especially the Judeo-Christian varieties) as impediments to its goals: "Trust in Us (Leftwing intellectuals)" has supplanted "In God We Trust." And so, God-based liberty gives way to state-based controls.

Whichever side you are on, at least you can now better understand why the non-left is fighting. For liberty's sake, not just for God's.

Dennis Prager

Dennis Prager is a radio show host, contributing columnist for Townhall.com, and author of 4 books including Happiness Is a Serious Problem: A Human Nature Repair Manual.

TOWNHALL DAILY: Be the first to read Dennis Prager's column. Sign up todayand receive Townhall.com daily lineup delivered each morning to your inbox.

My Time in Corpus Christi

2010-10-26T16:27:00.000-07:00

Pete
Battleships
Oil tankers
Seafood
Southern drawl
Spanish speaking
Cowboy boots
Gulf of Mexico
Hot and humid
Formal business suit not casual swimsuit
Old musty wall paper

1st grade geography

2010-10-25T18:37:00.000-07:00

I'll give you two hints:
- it isn't a maze
- it is a swap

JUAN WILLIAMS: I Was Fired for Telling the Truth

2010-10-23T16:50:00.000-07:00

I ways always annoyed with his hosting of talk of the nation on NPR. He is a good writer but didn't really have the voice for radio. Now I've gotten used to his presence but rarely agree with Juan Williams. Anyway I really appreciate his appearances on Fox. He provides a respectable perspective for liberals that keeps a conversation interesting. You got to give some props for a guy to go out of his political circle and take the loser liberal side of each discussion.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/10/21/juan-williams-npr-fired-truth-muslim-garb-airplane-oreilly-ellen-weiss-bush/print

"I asked why she would fire me without speaking to me face to face and she said there was nothing I could say to change her mind, the decision had been confirmed above her, and there was no point to meeting in person. To say the least this is a chilling assault on free speech. The critical importance of honest journalism and a free flowing, respectful national conversation needs to be had in our country. But it is being buried as collateral damage in a war whose battles include political correctness and ideological orthodoxy."

Jesse's Café Américain: Ben Davies: On Trading and the Markets

2010-10-22T09:46:00.000-07:00

Jesse's Café Américain: Ben Davies: On Trading and the Markets: "Not since the arrival of the Gutenberg printing press has humanity been so challenged by the printing of notes. Oh, the irony -- Gutenberg was himself a goldsmith by training. I am sure that he could never have envisaged the abuse the financial printing presses would have on mankind's development.

Ex scientia pecuniae libertas. Out of knowledge of money comes freedom..."

Principles for your business

2010-10-19T10:07:00.001-07:00

I appreciate these business values. Short and sweet. Ray Dalio of Bridgewater has his own 50 page document that I haven't fully read, which means it's too long. This will do just fine.

These are from a money manager, but you can easily apply them to your own business type.

HUBER CAPITAL MANAGEMENT VALUES

10)    Bigger is not necessarily better.
9)      Act with honesty and integrity. Be straightforward always.
8)      Be innovative, creative, and flexible.
7)      Admit mistakes. Learn from them and don't repeat them.
6)      Work hard. Your competitors are trying to catch up.
5)      Treat others as you would like to be treated.
4)      Remember that you have the onus of investing for the well-being of others.
3)      Fight complacency. Your past successes are in the past.
2)      The best investing styles are timeless, not timely.
1)      Clients come first. Think of them and you will always be successful.

Casual Business Advice

2010-10-14T16:20:00.001-07:00

I guess I have been going about it all wrong. More water cooler, less productivity is what is being suggested. I have a problem with it. I believe in “whatever the job, big or small, do it right or not at all”. Maybe I could modify that to: “whatever the job, big or small, do it well or not at all”. What would your grandfather say to you if you told him you were working really hard to do your job to the best of your ability, and were considering doing a poorer job and schmoozing more? It might depend on how old your grandfather is, but the “Greatest Generation” likely would have said, “we all have work let no one shirk” and quit complaining. Here is what Harvard is teaching these days:

“Tiziana Casciaro reports in the Harvard Business Review that people are not all that interested in you being super-good at your job. They care if they like you. And, Casciaro found that if someone does not like you, he or she will decide you’re incompetent whether you are or not. Sad, yes, but the converse is true as well. You can do a poor job and no one will notice if they like you. And, newsflash: In many instances, this is good for business — teams do better work when everyone on the team likes everyone else. So don’t worry about doing a perfect job. Do a decent job, but leave yourself enough time to manage your relationships at work. Take lunch. Participate in office politics, because office politics is really about being nice — which, frankly, is more healthy and certainly more achievable than being perfect.”

http://www.bnet.com/blog/penelope-trunk/perfectionism-is-a-disease-here-8217s-how-to-beat-it/250?promo=713&tag=nl.e713

How is this any different from Dale Carnegie? Should I listen?

Punkin' Patch

2010-10-13T21:03:00.000-07:00

Got an iPhone and still learning it. That is my excuse for slogging. (new word I just made up for slow or slacker blogging).

Definitely some drawbacks to the iPhone but I am still forcing down the Koolaid. One of the cool things about it is this photo app KJ found for me. This funky photo was taken on my phone.

the Journey

2010-10-13T18:44:00.001-07:00

Wow

http://www.kissesfromkatie.blogspot.com/

Political

2010-10-11T13:25:00.000-07:00

The Jerry Brown Tape, The MSM and Campaign 2010

Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 8:07 AM

Imagine if a GOP candidate for governor or senator in any high profile race in the land was heard on tape either uttering the word "whore" about his Democratic woman opponent or not reacting to his aide using the term in regard to that opponent --what would the reaction of the MSM be to the story?

Yesterday just such a tape surfaced of Jerry Brown and a senior aide discussing Meg Whitman, and the result is seen in this New York Times piece which begins not with a faithful account of what was said on the tape and by whom but with a glowing tribute to a Brown speech from days before. Not until the fourth paragraph is the major news from the California campaign even mentioned.

Even more amazing, amusing, or appalling depending on your point of view, the paper edition of the Lost Angeles Times has this major story about the governor's campaign in which voting has already begun buried deep --on page three of the second section! The headline "Allies Urge Apology By Brown" might have attracted some readers and informed some voters of a key controversy in the most important campaign in their state, so of course the gasping band of hard core lefties that still hang on at Spring Street sent the story to the news dungeon.

Thus does the MSM gird up for the last 24 days of the 2010 campaign.  The public gets every bit of old Christine O'Donnell tape from the 90s on an overnight delivery basis, but outbursts like this one from the Brown camp, major scandals such as those surrounding Charles Rangel and Maxine Waters are pushed through and off the headlines quickly, the genuine concerns over Minnesota's Mark Dayton (see the post below) aren't aired, and the devastating news about unemployment levels 18 months after the so-called "stimulus" passed are reported with nothing like the doom-and-gloom salvos of stories that accompanied any economic bad news during Bush or Reagan election seasons.

The media bias story is so old and so familiar that it doesn't even anger the right anymore. The MSM simply cannot help themselves. The Los Angeles Times is probably unaware of the risible placement of the Brown story, so non-existent is their self-awareness either of bias or of their insignificance. Which is why the MSM generally but especially the old, dying papers are no more in any real sense significant. The news gets out via Fox News, Breitbart and Pajamas. Rush, Sean, Mark and my colleagues at Salem and scores of key major market radio hosts add depth and humor, and the news gets out. Everyone already knows what Brown or his aide said about Whitman, and has for 12 hours. The MSM's refusal to develop the story doesn't change it, but only magnifies the loss of credibility of the papers etc that are burying the story, leading to more declines in readership, less revenue from advertisers etc.

America's new media could not put up a successful defense against Team Obama in 2008 because the president was so new and his record so thin, because he was so slavishly worshipped by the last guard of the old media, and because of the panic of the financial markets. But in media terms, the 2008 campaign was the Battle of the Bulge for the MSM --a last gasp, a last push of its combined efforts and arms.

Of course bad stories will still arise about conservatives, and those stories will be faithfully reported by new media and the remnant of the old that remains as delivery mechanisms for coupons and network news casts that simply don't drive stories anymore.

But MSM's ability to shield their candidates from the consequences of their behaviors or to torpedo conservatives has been reduced to almost nothing by the failure of the left-wing policies of the past two years. The con of the American public in 2008 has cost everyone too much. The MSM used to just annoy, now it no longer even matters because the consequences of governance by the left are everywhere to be seen and too devastating to be ignored.

So. Utah in the Fall

2010-10-09T19:48:00.000-07:00

Me feeling old and mortal.

Keith chasing a herd of wild jack asses.

Keith and Jenny trying to act normal in the middle of a herd of wild jack asses.

One of the coolest places on Earth is in the southern realms of the state of "Utahr" (that is the how Utah accent sounds). I've been many times in spring and fall, it is a renewal and affirmation that God is great and the Earth was made for our enjoyment, and we can learn from its beauty and to respect it. And the best thing about it is that you literally only have to drive 15 minutes and then walk another 5 to see the coolest stuff.

As I get old I also learn to respect my other earthly tabernacle. I wonder at the good old days when I could just get out and go -- run, hike, bike, ski, climb, stay up all night and do it all again. I could eat and drink whatever I wanted and I never got tired, or hurt, and my abilities only seemed to increase.

That has sure changed. Now that I am old I've found I need to respect this mortal coil, to appreciate it and care for it becomes more important each day. So I'll try a little bit harder to be a little bit better.

Soapbox put away.

P.S.

We saw Keebs and JJ down there too where Keith chased a herd of wild donkeys. He tried to catch one so that Jenny could ride it for their photo shoot. You know, Mary and Joseph (she's pregnant and Jewish-Cuban). Fun times!

Girl Shackled in Chains of Hell Fire

2010-10-08T16:46:00.000-07:00

When I was young I was fortunate that my parents were into music. I grew up as a kid listening to their music so I got a good taste of some classics of the blues, country, and rock spectrum of the 60s and 70s. My dad had a collection of albums that would be worth something today. However, I took them with me when I moved out at one point. (I moved in and out a lot). I eventually gave them all to my most musically devoted friend. I don't know why I did that. I guess I was a communist and figured my friend needed them more than my dad, and that I didn't have a record player. (Sorry dad, I guess I owe you.)

What was cool about this is that I got to listen to music way before my time, which influenced my taste in music later. (i.e. I was open and knowledeable (read cool) before my time, especially as a wanna be hippie type). I was also open to all music types because I had been exposed to so much so early on when I didn't have as discerning a taste.

(*side note, I also listened to teen idol music like Leif Erikson and Sean Cassidy because I had an older sister. She made me listen to that stuff and eat toothpaste cupcakes and put on dance routines.)

For my eighth birthday I remember getting the "Sir Duke" 45 single by Stevie Wonder and either the year before or the same year I remember getting a double album of the Beach Boys Greatest Hits or Spirit of America or something like that.

We always wanted records when we were little, in fact I recall getting "Centerfold" by J. Giles Band for Christmas. We were listening on my parents bed with the record player turned up loud (remember how cool albums were? you had to take it out of the package, carefully place it on the player, stay in the room to listen, with someone if you wanted to share, and if you danced/jumped too hard the record would skip, so jumping on the bed was perfectly logical, as were tennis rackets for guitars, and brushes for microphones). My dad burst into the room and was so upset because of the lyrics (or maybe because we were jumping on the bed?). Shortly thereafter in the sixth grade I bought my first full album (not just a single) with my own money, Back in Black by AC/DC. I figured my parents would be OK with it because I didn't go with the Iron Maiden album my buddy had and he was "a bad influence".

Anyway, back to my dad's collection: my favorites were Handel, Stones (the early bluesy stuff), Kris Kristofferson, Led Zepplin IV, Waylon Jennings Outlaw, Johnny Cash, Simon and Garfunkel, Leonard Cohen, that I listened to starting as early as I can remember...before I was 6 years old anyway. I can't believe they left us alone to listen to their records and use the record player. What if we scratched them? But we were well trained in the art I guess.

So why the stroll down memory lane? I heard today that Leonard Cohen rocked the Kremlin Palace Theater, and that he will soon be playing in my hometown as one of few stops on his world tour. I quickly flashed back to my youth and the hours spent staring at the picture of the lady in shackles, surrounded by fire.

(I tried to find the album art online, but only found this picture of the CD cover and this switchplate cover you can buy from Etsy.com.)

So there I was alone with Leonard Cohen. Confused, angry and so young and listening to the "Stranger". He was telling me things that I would learn later and didn't understand literally, but viscerally I knew what he was talking about. I always thought I'd find out later what exactly he meant. But he is a poet, so there is no exactly. It isn't like "Centerfold" or AC/DC. There isn't a hidden meaning because of your lack of carnal knowledge, there is a hidden meaning that is related to relationships, but not just simple innuendo. And at that time, I just related to the disappointment or heart ache of the song. It is the kind of song you "listen" to.

Beach House

2010-10-06T17:10:00.000-07:00

Hey,
I just learned about this cute trio from a co-worker who has good taste in music (except he likes the Black Keys).

What do you think?

What is the guitar player doing with those pedals? They don't look like pedals for the guitar...

Have you done this yet?

2010-09-26T17:29:00.001-07:00

It takes a few minutes of your time. But it is fun!

http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/index.html

Summer Came and I Lost My Shoes...

2010-09-13T19:00:00.000-07:00

What a tragic time of year, when summer ends. All in all, I have had an excellent summer though. I'll try to keep the memories alive to survive the dark and dreary winterland. (There is always skiing!)

I have been running a lot in order to train for my first marathon, so climbing fell by the way side. There is only so much free time a father, husband, and casual businessman can find. Also, Ms. Casual Photographerwoman has been busy and aligning schedules isn't the easiest thing to do with 3 busy girls. But the activities in general were high quality.

Here are the highlights of my summertime achievements: (if you are a school teacher, back off because this is only an outline and not a full report of "What I Did This Summer"

Banks Lake (twice!)
Mt Ashland Hill climb (thank you Stephen and family!) The Mt Ashland Hill climb is 13.5 miles long and 1 mile high. Serious, not casual in the slightest.
Marathon training (lots of high mileage runs)
Hood to Coast relay race (our team did well enough to be in the top quartile!)
Week long London trip
Weekend in Austin, TX with the fetching Ms. Casual "have a cute day" Photographer
Boise 4th of July
Weekend trip to the ocean
Concerts included (Portugal, Built to Spill, Local Natives "summer came and I lost my shoes")

Did I forget anything? What did you do that was a highlight of your summer? Was I there?

Count your many blessings and not your blemishes, because you can't there all gone...

Runners in the Mist

2010-09-12T14:13:00.000-07:00

I ran my third Hood to Coast relay this year. What a great time. I liken it to a slumber party because you stay up all night, eat junk food, listen to music, and tell stories. People tend to get crazy and get in costumes and be in character and stuff while running. Oh yeah, and you run an average of 6 miles three different times in an 18-24 hour period of time and share a van with 5 other sweaty runners.

Thanks to Team Nelson/Nichols for putting together such a great team and support for such a fun time.

Facts:
12 runners
2 vans
186 miles
downhill the whole way, on average :)

Van #2 of Runners in the Mist

Team Top Gun! (blasting danger zone and tossing volleyball)

now that is a team van!

London Calling

2010-09-12T13:06:00.000-07:00

I went on a casual business trip to London with another casual businessman. We met with hedge fund managers, global bond managers, went on a many-mile major sight seeing walking tour of London, and went shopping. Yes, I'll admit I like to shop. My style/taste parameters are narrow and it is hard to find something that meets all the criteria so I find it valuable to frequently look. I regret not shopping more while there. We were in SoHo and Mayfair and everyone seemed so stylish. I came home and felt like I should have brought more of London back with me. Next time!

Now that is a warning label!

No, I don't shop at these stores, I shop at the Bon (aka Macy's)!

Cool pubs like this are everywhere!

Our hotel was right by the store, "Liberty of London" and you are looking at the Tudor building that has been around since the 1700s!

Hi-top-siders!

Casual business meeting where billions of dollars change hands! (The more the money the bigger and more the computer screens needed)

Lots of cool houses in London proper.

Lots of old buildings and traditions to admire.

Casual breakfast at the street cafe.

Been a long time...

2010-08-13T18:33:00.000-07:00

...since I rock n rolled. I owe the blogger gods a few pounds of flesh. But why when I can just order pizza, drink soda, and watch my ladies jump on the tramp?

P.S. I had a brush with fame and forgot to take a picture. Parlor Hawk and Pete at the People's Republic, but no pic for proof - poor perception on my part.

Today the beach...

2010-07-25T13:37:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow London! I'll miss my ladies!

Do Powerful Politicians Cause Corporate Downsizing?"

2010-07-21T21:26:00.000-07:00

Implications for stimulus spending? Of course it is from an obscure source: HBS!

Recent research at Harvard Business School began with the premise that as a state's congressional delegation grew in stature and power in Washington, D.C., local businesses would benefit from the increased federal spending sure to come their way.

It turned out quite the opposite. In fact, professors Lauren Cohen, Joshua Coval, and Christopher Malloy discovered to their surprise that companies experienced lower sales and retrenched by cutting payroll, R&D, and other expenses. Indeed, in the years that followed a congressman's ascendancy to the chairmanship of a powerful committee, the average firm in his state cut back capital expenditures by roughly 15 percent, according to their working paper, "Do Powerful Politicians Cause Corporate Downsizing?"

"It was an enormous surprise, at least to us, to learn that the average firm in the chairman's state did not benefit at all from the unanticipated increase in spending," Coval reports.

Over a 40-year period, the study looked at increases in local earmarks and other federal spending that flowed to states after the senator or representative rose to the chairmanship of a powerful congressional committee.

We asked Coval about the relationship between the government and the private sector, and how policymakers should critically evaluate federal stimulus plans to help local companies.

Sean Silverthorne: First, a little bit about your empirical approach to the research. Why did you decide to study changes in congressional committee chairmanships?

Joshua Coval: Our original goal was to investigate how politically connected firms benefit from increases in the power of their representatives. A benefit in focusing on changes in committee chairmanships is that their timing is largely exogenous from the perspective of the ascending chairman and his constituents. That is, a change in chairmanship can only occur if the incumbent retires or is voted out--both of which are entirely independent of what is currently happening in the ascending chairman's state.

Q: One of your findings was that the chairs of powerful congressional committees truly bring home the bacon to their states in the forms of earmark spending. Can you give a sense of how large this effect is?

A: Sure. The average state experiences a 40 to 50 percent increase in earmark spending if its senator becomes chair of one of the top-three committees. In the House, the average is around 20 percent. For broader measures of spending, such as discretionary state-level federal transfers, the increase from being represented by a powerful senator is around 10 percent.

Q: Perhaps the most intriguing finding, at least for me, was the degree and consistency to which federal spending at the state level seemed to be connected with a decrease in corporate spending and employment. Did you suspect this was the case when you started the study?

A: We began by examining how the average firm in a chairman's state was impacted by his ascension. The idea was that this would provide a lower bound on the benefits from being politically connected. It was an enormous surprise, at least to us, to learn that the average firm in the chairman's state did not benefit at all from the increase in spending. Indeed, the firms significantly cut physical and R&D spending, reduce employment, and experience lower sales.

The results show up throughout the past 40 years, in large and small states, in large and small firms, and are most pronounced in geographically concentrated firms and within the industries that are the target of the spending.

Q: Although you didn't intend to answer this question with the research, what does your team suspect are some of the causes that could explain why companies retrench when federal dollars come into their neighborhoods?

A: Some of the dollars directly supplant private-sector activity—they literally undertake projects the private sector was planning to do on its own. The Tennessee Valley Authority of 1933 is perhaps the most famous example of this.

Other dollars appear to indirectly crowd out private firms by hiring away employees and the like. For instance, our effects are strongest when unemployment is low and capacity utilization is high. But we suspect that a third and potentially quite strong effect is the uncertainty that is created by government involvement.

Q: These findings present something of a dilemma for public policymakers who believe that federal spending can stimulate private economic development. How would you suggest they approach the problem that federal dollars may actually cause private-sector retrenchment?

A: Our findings suggest that they should revisit their belief that federal spending can stimulate private economic development. It is important to note that our research ignores all costs associated with paying for the spending such as higher taxes or increased borrowing. From the perspective of the target state, the funds are essentially free, but clearly at the national level someone has to pay for stimulus spending. And in the absence of a positive private-sector response, it seems even more difficult to justify federal spending than otherwise.

Q: What do you think your research has brought to the literature?

A: The literature has had difficulty empirically identifying the effect of government spending on the private sector. Because spending both influences and is influenced by developments in the private sector, disentangling the two has proven challenging. We think our approach offers a rare opportunity to identify the private-sector response to government spending increases that are essentially random.

Q: What are you working on next?

A: Our next project will be to ask a similar question of the private sector: Does private-sector economic activity create or crowd out additional private-sector opportunities? Put differently, did Bill Gates's decision to relocate Microsoft to the Seattle area in 1979 increase the likelihood that Amazon.com, Starbucks, and Costco would emerge from there a decade or so later? If so, this has strong implications for policymakers interested in, say, improving Detroit's economic prospects.

They're back!

2010-07-21T13:31:00.001-07:00

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128568845

July 19, 2010

Menomena is an inventive Portland, Ore., trio with a solid 10-year history and now four full-length albums. The new one, Mines, has been a long time in the making. When you're in a band with three perfectionists, that's likely to happen, but Menomena's process also makes for a record full of sonic treats.

The band makes its music with a looping software program, created by guitarist and keyboardist Brent Knopf while in college, called Deeler, short for Digital Loop Recorder. Menomena sets a tempo in Deeler and then someone records a track, at which point that recording is passed to the next player, who lays down another track, and so on.

Menomena recorded hundreds of these loops to create the songs on Mines, assembling the loops like puzzle pieces to form the structure for a given song. All of this is just the beginning of the songwriting process for Menomena: The songs are performed, torn apart and rebuilt until they become something the whole band can be proud of — probably another reason it takes three and half years between Menomena records.

Incidentally, the cover to Mines is a stereogram, so if you hold the cardboard cover art so you can see both the back and front at the same time, the statue on the front and back cover will appear to be 3D. Yet another fun treat from a band that won't settle for anything average.

Mines will stream here in its entirety until its release on July 27. Please leave your thoughts on the album in the comments section below.

M.Jem Rides to Live

2010-07-20T19:44:00.000-07:00

Lives to ride! This is her first 'no helping' ride!

Good times with Wade-Kun!

2010-07-19T23:35:00.000-07:00

We found a shopping cart after the fireworks in Boise. What a fun uncle!

Just a Few Pics

2010-07-19T22:48:00.000-07:00

He wasn't in my life for as long as others but he was on this earth for a long time and was tired. We'll miss him, but we rejoice in his accomplishments and where he is now is so much better. He was a stud, no doubt about it.

Deadeye,

If you haven't already met him by the time I get there, I am going to introduce to Coley. You guys will have a lot to talk about.

Till we meet again,

Pete

Doug E. Fresh

2010-07-18T21:59:00.000-07:00

Me and the fetching Ms. Casual Businessman put in Built to Spill show #15 this last weekend. I don't even really know at this point but that is pretty close if we have seen 15 shows but it is more than 1 show on average per year since we've been married 12 years ago.

There was a few shows where I think Doug was tired. But he has come back to life, although a little balder and a little grayer. Like PTM, BTS plays their songs without much concern for how you might remember they sounded. They also play random covers. Covers have included Ozzy's Mr. Crowley, MIA's Paper Planes, Maisy Gray's one hit, and yes, Freebird.

You know the tired joke where some dude at a concert yells out "freebird" as a request to the band? Well that tired joke started with Built to Spill fans. I can't verify that as a fact, but let me just tell you it is so.(WSJ article).

You see, BTS let's their fans make requests. So people would yell out their favorite BTS song, and they would often work it in to the set list. Then people started yelling "freebird". This was back in the 90s. Then, magically one tour in 2001 or so, BTS was playing at the Key Arena during Bumbper Shoot. They had put on a killer show and the place was sold out during a Saturday afternoon. (Just FYI we saw Low and Cat Power the same day). Someone yelled out Freebird at this show and the next thing you know those notes came blaring out of the amps. The Washington crowd flipped out their lighters and shouted for joy.

Other interesting BTS trivia?
- Demographics of a BTS concert are roughly 1% under 12yrs, 15% 12yrs to 21yrs, 64% 21yrs to 33 years, and 20% over 33 years old (these numbers reflect the recent aging of the fans).
- Jam sessions with other band members are fairly common (as well as covers as mentioned earlier)
- Jam sessions that last over 15minutes are not uncommon
- Two guys named Brett in the same band. I have met Doug, Brett, and the even balder guitarist from Delusions...so far
- The Drummer has another band called the Spinnanes, the bassist has another band called Butterfly Train, one gutairist was in the Delusions, the other was in Caustic Resin
- Doug writes all the songs

Here is an older song played at the most recent show, and yes the quality is low because I carry a lowly cell phone (music starts at 0:15). It is worth the patience for the sweet version that this is, and the sound quality isn't all that bad.

And by popular demand here is freebird! It is a long one, so if you don't have the time for the full meal deal, skip to 2:50 and 5:50 for a taste of the tendon bending jams:

As you wallow, in a sea of sorrow...

2010-07-18T15:50:00.000-07:00

We've all had a bad hair day...and if you are gen X maybe a bad hair decade! What about the 90s?! All that hair and the dreads...so killer!

Well that was most of the 80's and half of the nineties for me. One particular memory for me was going to my first soiree after having just returned from a particularly long tour in Alaska, April to September. There is a whole book to be written about that summer, but this is about a song linked to a feeling, linked to a memory.

After being gone for so long, being isolated, alone with your thoughts, working hard, communing with nature, you develop some dreams and expectations. When I got home I thought that everything would be better. That I would have a chance to start anew. I was naive and didn't understand how any of those things actually come to pass, that you have to work for them.

Long story short, I woke up outside in my friend's backyard under a tree the next morning after the soiree. I went inside the house and found a VHS tape of an Alice in Chains concert at the Moore Theater in Seattle. I was mesmerized. I was already a fan, but this put them into the Valhalla of Heros. A couple of my bros were still around and we just sat there watching this thing on somebody's big screen ( with even bigger speakers), we were silent and motionless for the first hour of the morning.

There was a lot of time spent with Alice in Chains after that...until I learned that you have to work to make your dreams come true, you have to work to make happiness. It isn't something you find. The melancholy music I enjoy is often childish in its self-centered, woe is me, victim-willing attitude. But it got me through the bad hair decades.

The concert video -- Alice in Chains Facelift, Live at the Moore Theater is out of print. Clips are available on You Tube:

Etymology

2010-07-15T21:53:00.001-07:00

Ever wonder the etymology of the word “handsome?”

handsome

c.1400, handsom "easy to handle, ready at hand," from hand (n.) + -some. Sense extended to "fair size, considerable" (1577), then "having fine form, good-looking" (1590). Meaning "generous" (in handsome reward, etc.) first recorded 1690.

A cool resource…Just FYI

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php

It's the Climb

2010-07-13T19:47:00.000-07:00

There's always gonna be another mountain...always gonna wanna make it move...

Miley Cyrus

me and m.jem climbing to her sweet jams, she's in a dressno less!

Just the Facts Ma'am

2010-07-13T13:04:00.001-07:00

http://blogs.bnet.com/ceo/?p=5044&tag=nl.e713

Based on my experience, CEOs, executives, even entrepreneurs are particularly susceptible to making bad business decisions based on highly suspect generalizations or inductive reasoning. High-risk mergers and acquisitions are particularly high on my list, but I can provide plenty of examples of marketing programs with no metrics, pet projects, and promoting yes-men who are known to sugarcoat the truth, among other examples.

Why do they do it? It really comes down to behaving like egotistical children who believe that the facts and logic either do not apply or should not apply to them. You can also call it narcissistic, egotistical, grandiose, or even a sense of entitlement, but it’s all the same phenomenon. We’re all susceptible, but successful people seem to be particularly so, although that’s clearly inductive reasoning on my part, which I guess further demonstrates my point.

Well, even though the business world is rife with subjective decision-making, at least the scientific community uses the scientific method - a form of deductive reasoning - or we’d all still be living like the Flintstones, right? But wait a second, how about global warming? Uh oh, I think we’ve got a problem.

Keynes vs. Hayek: The Great Debate Continues

2010-07-12T14:10:00.001-07:00

Is there is no end to this debate? Is it all politics in the end?

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11960

Excerpt:

“Was Keynes correct that savings become idle money and depress economic activity? Or was the Hayek view, first articulated by Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations in 1776, correct? (Smith: "What is annually saved is as regularly consumed as what is annually spent, and nearly in the same time too.")

Is all spending equally productive, or should government policies aim to stimulate private investment? If the latter, then Mr. Obama is following in FDR's footsteps and impeding recovery. He does so by demonizing business and creating regime uncertainty through new regulations and costly programs. In this he follows neither Hayek nor Keynes, since creating a lack of confidence is considered destructive by both.

Finally, is creating new public debt in a weakened economy the path to recovery? Or is "economy" (austerity in today's debate) and thrift the path to prosperity now, as it has usually been considered before?”

I heart road trips!

2010-07-06T17:59:00.000-07:00

Nothing beats the wild open spaces and truck stops of rural America!

God Bless America!

2010-07-04T21:53:00.000-07:00

Land of the free and home of the brave!

p.s.
We'll miss you grandpa! Today was just for you!

I was born in 1969!

2010-06-30T21:52:00.001-07:00

All we could do...

It was patience that we had

Miles we had left...

You're so different...you're just like everybody else

2010-06-29T21:43:00.000-07:00

You know how the bohemian or indie types are so caught up in being “different”? This blog post from from Overcoming Bias by Robin Hanson is funny because I realized when I was at a Dead show once, that everyone there who was so “different” was really just a homogenous group of “patchouli stink”. (I still like the smell of patchouli by the way). And now I can’t help but notice how all the “cool” people who are so “non-conformist” are really just conforming to another peer group.

People care what others think about them. In fact they usually care a lot, more than they care to admit. Since caring less is considered admirable in our society, people often say and signal that they care less than others care. But I think it is misleading to talk in terms of conformists, who care lots what others think, versus individualists, who care less.

It sees to me that while people do vary in conformity, this variation is less in how much folks care about others’ evaluations, and more about which others they care about. “Conformists” tend to care about a common standard status audience – a usual mix of people weighted by a standard status. “Non-conformists,” in contrast, “march to the beat of a different drummer” by caring about non-standard status audiences.

This seems to be the case with most interesting “non-conformists” I know. They are human, and surely care deeply about the opinions of others. But their special care for the opinions of particular others often leads them to disapproval by ordinary others. Sometimes you can’t please everyone, and must choose whom to please. It seems to me that the main difference between folks is that “non-conformists” try to please less standard audiences. Viva la difference.

Why Be Shy?

2010-06-29T14:39:00.001-07:00

Not that I am shy or anything…in fact I am shy, but I have another problem which is saying a lot of things I shouldn’t…so if I could just fix that…no wonder I can’t bond with anyone. I wear my heart on my sleeve/say too much.

Many people are shy. Shy folks are not only easily embarrassed, they are also embarrassed by the fact that they are easily embarrassed. They tend to assume that shyness is unattractive, and that it mainly indicates lack of courage or strength. They wish they weren’t shy.

If you are shy and this is how you think, I have good news for you: shyness has important positive aspects. In particular: shyness promotes intimacy. Intimacy is a feeling of closeness, based in part on mutual vulnerability. A person who is comfortable around most folks, talking or doing most anything, finds it harder to create mutual vulnerability. How can you tell such a person is comfortable with you, as opposed to conformable with everything?

In contrast, a shy person who is awkward and embarrassed around most folks, or when talking about many topics, can more easily show that they treat you differently. If they are less awkward around you, and are willing to talk to you less awkwardly about usually-awkward topics, you can take that as a good sign that you have achieved some level of intimacy. They treat you with less caution, presumably because they are less afraid you will hurt them. In this way, a shy person can more easily show you that you are special to them.

To better bond, be shy. Reserve some topics as ones you will not talk with just anyone about, and some activities as ones you will not do with just anyone. Then by selectively talking and doing, you can signal your intimacy with some relative to others.

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/06/why-be-shy.html

The Greek Tragedy continued...

2010-06-29T06:51:00.000-07:00

http://victorhanson.com/index.html

June 28, 2010
Saving Obama From Himself
by Victor Davis Hanson

Do you remember candidate Barack Obama offering his hope-and-change platitudes in front of the fake Greek columns during the Democratic convention? Or earlier pontificating at the Victory Monument in Berlin?

Why didn't an old cigar-chomping Democratic pro take him aside and warn him about offending Nemesis? She is the dreaded goddess who brings divine retribution in ironic fashion to overweening arrogance.

Or maybe a friend could have whispered to Senator Obama to tone it down when he was merciless in damning the Bush administration for its supposedly slow response to Hurricane Katrina.

Obama railed that Bush showed "unconscionable ineptitude." Obama further charged that Bush's response was "achingly slow," a result of "passive indifference," and that his team was rife with "corruption and cronyism."

Those adjectives now apply to Obama himself, as he seems lost amid his own disaster — eerily in about the same Gulf environs. Adding insult to injury, a recent poll revealed that Louisiana residents thought Bush had done a better job with Katrina than Obama has with BP.

Couldn't one of Obama's many handlers have warned him to ignore the media's tingling-leg gaga worship, or their nonsense that Obama is "a god"?

Didn't Team Obama ever suspect that such an unhinged press, in the manner of a Greek chorus, could just as easily sour on their prophet once his poll ratings fell as quickly as they had soared?

Couldn't David Axelrod or Rahm Emanuel have admonished their candidate to cut out the creepy stuff about himself and his throng being "the ones we've been waiting for"? Why was there a need for all that megalomaniac hocus-pocus about slowing the "rise of the oceans" and healing the planet? Sure enough, Nemesis ensured that instead of Lord Poseidon lowering the seas, Obama is now a smoky Hephaestus fouling them up.

Did the Nobel Committee members really think they were doing their postnational, postracial heartthrob any good by giving him a peace prize without any record of foreign-policy accomplishment? Didn't his Scandinavian admirers grasp that prophets suffer the wages of hypocrisy far more readily than mere mortals when things go badly, as they inevitably do? Jay Leno is now more likely to use the phrase "Nobel Laureate Obama" than a serious diplomat.

For nearly two years, senator, candidate and freshman President Obama ridiculed his predecessor — as if running the United States were as easy a job as community organizing, serving a couple of years in the Senate or campaigning for president.

But now the once-enthralled electorate is starting to tire of the hope-and-change platitudes, and even of the easy blame-gaming of his predecessor, mostly because almost everything Obama once demagogued in weird fashion is coming back to haunt him.

Obama easily damned everything from Guantanamo Bay to Predator drone attacks in Afghanistan to the war in Iraq, only to adopt those policies and more from Bush.

He sermonized about the morals of a corrupt Republican Congress, only to keep quiet about earmarks, lobbyists and the sins of Democratic cronies such as Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Charles Rangel.

Deficits were once supposed proof of Bush's out-of-control spending. What does far greater red ink say about Obama?

If only swaggering George W. Bush could have been smart enough to reach out to Cuba, Iran and Syria. Then Obama did just that, only to make bad things even worse.

And remember the Obama comment about an arrogant Bush turning off our allies? Why, then, does an aloof Obama seem to alienate them even more?

The reality of Barack Obama is that he was an inexperienced community organizer with an undistinguished record as a Senate newcomer. A perfect storm of popular anger at eight years of George Bush, a lackluster John McCain campaign, Obama's landmark candidacy as an African-American, a disingenuous campaign promising centrist and bipartisan governance, and the financial meltdown in 2008 got the relatively untried and unknown Obama elected.

Most mortals in Obama's position would have treaded lightly. They would have kept promises, steered a moderate course and listened more than lectured until they won over the public with concrete achievement.

But headstrong tragic figures do not do that. They neither welcome in critics nor would listen to them if they did. They impute their unforeseen temporary success to their own brilliance — and expect it to continue forever. So would-be gods set themselves up for a fall far harder than what happens to the rest of us.

That's about where we are now, with our president playing a character right out of Greek tragedy, who, true to form, is railing about the unfairness of it all.

Saturday Night Ride

2010-06-27T23:21:00.000-07:00

Some type of wrestling move I hear...But for us it was an awesome ride with Butchers, Builders, and Portugal the Man. PTM is one of the better bands out there fore their creativity and energy. The lyrics aren't particularly meaningful for me, although catchy and sometimes interesting, it is the music, but not so much what is recorded as when you see them play. I think we've seen them five times now. Each time has been a different experience in terms of the growth of their stage presence to the variety of sound and interpretation of the songs. On top of that they are simply in love with what they are doing. This combination is rare. I am no expert but I have been going to shows regularly for 25 years across all venue types, music styles, and levels of band experience. The only other band that really does this kind of thing are the "jam bands" like the Dead, Phish, Widespread Panic, etc. But the growth of music styles and the originality isn't present with those bands. Just the virtuoso and love of live music. Anyway, at this gig they didn't allow video so my footage is brief, but you get a sense of all the jammin' that was going on... Enjoy!

For a better quality video watch this...keep your eye peeled for best bass player move of 2010 by Bucky's doppleganger!

Waste not, want not

2010-06-27T22:29:00.000-07:00

Do you really want the Government controlling more of your life? Spending more of your money? I wish we could find a set of politicians who would be stern against wastefulness and encouraging of efficiency and the greater good. NO not redistributionist, but seeking to provide (or restore?) a framework and equal opportunity for people to put their shoulder to the wheel and achieve their dreams based on hard work and talent.

From Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis:

The article referred to is The Great Inertia Sector: A whistleblower's account of council work where staff pull six-month sickies

In his emergency Budget this week, Chancellor George Osborne announced he was cutting public sector expenditure by 25 per cent. Unions have declared the cuts irresponsible. But are they? Here, one employee for a large inner London authority lifts the lid on the culture of inertia and incompetence at his workplace.

The Mail knows the true identity of the man - a graduate who has been a planning officer for eight years. But to protect his job, he is writing under an assumed name.

Monday morning, it's 10am and I'm late for work - but there's no point hurrying because even though I should have been at my desk 30 minutes ago, I know I'll be the first to arrive at the office. Sure enough, the planning department is a ghost town. Our department has 60 employees and - until last Tuesday - a budget of £22million.

I've been there for two years and in that period the only time I've ever seen every employee present and correct was at the Christmas party. At least ten people will be off sick on any one day. The departmental record holder is Doreen - she has worked a grand total of eight days in 14 months. Doreen must be the unluckiest woman in the country.

In the past year and a half she claims she has: fallen victim to frostbite; been hit by a car; and accidentally set herself on fire. But she's really pulled out all the stops with her latest excuse: witchcraft. That's right, Doreen believes somebody in Nigeria has cast a spell on her and that it would be unprofessional of her to attempt to do the job she is paid £56k a year for while under the influence of the spell. She has already been off for four months on full pay. I've no idea how long this spell lasts, but my guessing would be six months to the day - the exact amount of time council employees can take off on full pay before their money is reduced.

Of course they have to provide sick-notes from a doctor, but as you can buy fake ones online for £10 it's never proved a problem.

There are procedures in place to address attendance, but nobody ever follows them through - chances are the person whose job it is to monitor sickness is probably signed off himself. I've been told by colleagues that I don't take enough sick leave - when I protest that it is because I'm in good health they look confused. What's that got to do with anything? Jerry is 63 and two years from retirement. He is what is known in the civil service and local government as an 'untouchable' - he's been at the council for more than 40 years, does no work, but would cost an absolute fortune to get rid of. So he's left alone to play online poker, Skype his daughter in Florida and take his two-hour daily snooze at his desk, no doubt dreaming of the day when his gold-plated public sector pension will kick in.

When I first started here at the council, I tried to pass these messages on to the right department, but eventually gave up - nobody answers phones, nobody listens to voicemails, and emails go unread. There's no point showing any initiative. I once wandered down to the 'Streetcare' department to ask why the hell nobody was answering the phone. But only two staff had turned up that day and they were both in the prayer room. Yes, you read that correctly, all large council offices now provide prayer rooms, primarily for their Muslim employees whose faith requires them to perform devotional prayers at midday, in the afternoon and at sunset.

Of course, when I tell my friends in the private sector about my working conditions, they can scarcely believe it. As the recession bites, they consider themselves lucky to be holding on to their jobs, and are willing to work extra hours or take a pay freeze to ensure their firm's survival. In the public sector, though, there is no competitive edge; no incentive to cuts costs or improve efficiency. Few genuinely fear for their job security, protected as they are by threats of union action every time the axe looks likely to fall.

It's the same story across the world: when a nation's public sector is allowed to expand into a bloated behemoth, it is almost impossible to cut it down to size, still less to change the culture of waste and laziness that sets in. I don't know what the solution is. Even those, like myself, who join with the best of intentions are soon worn down and end up subscribing to the 'if you can't beat them, join them' school of thought.

Of course the real scandal is it's your money that's paying for the jollies, the prayer rooms and the never- ending workshops.

In my authority's borough, the average householder pays £1,330 a year in council tax. I'm sure they'd be thrilled to know that they're funding Jerry's internet gambling and Doreen's never-ending sick pay.

There are many more examples in the article so it is worth a closer look. No doubt public unions in the US deny this kind of thing happens here, but it does. Department of Energy employees have said essentially the same thing.

Being Wrong and the Hoodoo Gurus

2010-06-23T23:33:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Mr Falkenblog for pointing out this article. There are a few interesting “proverbs” in here:

"The mouse with one hole is quickly cornered."
I didn't have a proper foundation.
I was not sufficiently private in my activities.
the greatest error of all, which is that I had delusions of grandeur
My base of operations was not diversified enough, and I was vulnerable to forces I couldn't withstand
Many waterfront communities are peopled with hoodoos
The popular player loses without an alibi
rather than thinking about the actual minutiae of the downfall, and rather than creating alibis, think about the principles that led to the mistake

Hoodoos, Hedge Funds, and Alibis: Victor Niederhoffer on Being Wrong

Posted Monday, June 21, 2010 11:09 AM | By Kathryn Schulz

I've enjoyed getting your e-mails. It sounds like you've thought a lot about being wrong.

Well, the reason you contacted me, to call a spade a spade, is that I'm sort of infamous for having made a big, notorious, terrible error not once but twice in my market career.

Let's talk about those errors. The first was your investment in the Thai baht, which pretty much wiped you out when the Thai stock market crashed in 1997.

I made so many errors there it's pathetic. I made one of my favorite errors: "The mouse with one hole is quickly cornered." That is key. There are certain decisions you make in life that are irreversible, that lead you into a path you can't get out of, and unless you have more than one escape clause, the adversary can gang up on you and destroy you. What else? I didn't have a proper foundation. I was not sufficiently private in my activities. I was playing poker with men named Doc. I must've made a hundred errors on that one, but those are five or six that come to mind.

And then there's the greatest error of all, which is that I had delusions of grandeur. Unfortunately I was so successful for so many years in that particular field that I began to believe in my own success. I thought that because my method worked in markets that I knew about and had quantified, I could apply the same methods to something I didn't know about. And I had as an example [George] Soros, who would always say, "I made the most money in things I don't know about."

Did you have a sense that the crisis was coming—a period of dread before the shoe dropped—or did it hit you out of nowhere?

You know sometimes people describe a situation where they see the grim reaper behind them, reaching out with his scythe? I was ice skating the weekend before this horrible crash and all of sudden I started shivering, knowing that if all the forces were aligned against me for one more day, it could lead to an avalanche. I wasn't in that terrible of shape in the previous weeks and days, but I knew I was vulnerable. I knew that if my enemy came in with one terrible final swoop, he could cause me disaster.

Who do you see as your enemy in this situation?

The brokers who had the opposite side of the trades and the people on the floor who had the opposite side of my position in the related markets. They all knew that if I was hurting in one market, I'd have to liquidate in the other markets. Whenever someone's in trouble, it circulates around Wall Street; you'd be amazed how just one small fish is enough to stop the wheels of commerce for long enough to relieve that person of his funds. And then the market goes back to doing exactly what it was going to do beforehand. I still think that the crash of Oct. 27, 1997, was basically due to brokers running my position against me, knowing that I was on the ropes. The market had its greatest drop in the previous 10 years that day. And then the next day, once they were able to force me out, it went up more than it dropped.

I've heard that Soros, among others, cautioned you against the Thai investment. Why didn't you listen to the naysayers?

Well, Soros would be the first to tell you that his predictions are completely random. He never says anything that doesn't jibe with his current position or his hoped-for outcome. And he's chronically bearish. He's chronically thinking that the world needs a central planner to put it to rights and that the market itself is too prone to disaster.

I think a much better view is that the stock market never rises unless there's a wall of fear it has to climb. When the public is most frightened, only the strong are left, and that's when the market is in the best possible hands. I call it taking out the canes. Whenever disaster strikes, the very sagacious wealthy people take their canes, and they hobble down from their stately mansions on Fifth Avenue, and they buy stocks to the extent of their bank balances, and then a week or two later, the market rises, they deposit the overplus in their accounts, invest it in blue-chip real estate, and retire back to their stately mansions. That's probably the best way of making money, to be a specialist in panics. Whenever there's panic hanging in the air, that's a great time to invest.

But I assume that's what you were thinking when you ignored the risk in Thailand, and that didn't work out so well.

There's no magic bullet that will make you money all the time, but what I said can be quantified and has been quantified and certainly works for the U.S. market. My basic methodology, which I developed 30 or 40 years ago and which has been widely copied and stolen and which about the half the industry uses—i.e., that the interrelations between markets are predictive and can be quantified—I happen to believe that this methodology is quite valid and I still use it today. And every now and then I can keep my head above water.

How did it feel to be so wrong in such a high-stakes situation?

It was my first real taste of total disaster. I had pretty much lived a charmed life until that time. I had won some awards as the best-performing fund the previous year, and I had never had a customer lose money with me. I had an unprecedented, too-good-to-be-true kind of record.

When it happened, I went through all the stages of grief: anger, denial, sadness, everything. My sister happens to be a practicing psychiatrist, and she said that of the 11 symptoms of suicide, I had 10 of them. I was destroyed. I had lost money for my customers and that was very terrible. And I had lost my feeling of competence in my chosen field. And I had I lost all my own money, a lot of people were depending on me who would now have to fend for themselves, so it caused a great spillover of grief, too.

That suggests that your mistake affected your social relations, too.

Oh, absolutely. A lot of people were rightfully distressed and displeased, and my social position was definitely much reduced. I lost almost all my friends, and instead of being the head of the family, I became the subject of skepticism. And of course my customers were very upset with me—"How could I have been so stupid?" Fortunately, in most of my disasters, I'm the one who's been the biggest loser. I made what some people would consider the idiotic mistake of believing in my own ideas and putting all my money in the same funds I ran for my customers. So not only did I lose my business, but I lost my personal fortune also. I was once quite a wealthy man and I'm not quite so wealthy anymore, as is appropriate.

On the other hand, I have a number of people who have stood by me through thick and thin. But anyway, the main problem isn't other people. The main problem is when you yourself begin to doubt whether you have what it takes, whether your raison d'être is valid, whether you have a rightful place in the firmament.

Ten years after that first crisis, you were disastrously wrong again, when your Matador Fund folded after losing more than 75 percent of its worth. What happened? Did you make the same mistakes or new ones?

In both cases I was in over my head. I didn't have the capital to be strong enough to provide a backup in the case of unforeseen events. I didn't have a proper foundation. I was playing with adversaries who were stronger than me and who actually made the rules. My base of operations was not diversified enough, and I was vulnerable to forces I couldn't withstand. I was too vainglorious. In my opinion, those are recurring errors behind most disasters.

But also, most people have, in one way or another, a stop loss. If they go to Vegas with $10,000, they say I'm not going to spend more than $5,000. But they never say, "Hey, when I win a certain amount, that's when I'm going to quit." I'd had this incredible string of successes where I made 50, 100 percent, year after year. And in 2006 I'd won the award again as the best-performing fund—you can imagine how reluctant they were to give me the award a second time after my first disaster—but I didn't take account of this. I didn't have a stop-gain, if you will.

Is it reasonable to assume that you're going to make one of these massive mistakes a third time?

Well, fortunately I'm not in Thailand anymore, and I'm not in options anymore. And I'm at an age—especially with my seven kids and my 4-year-old son—where it would be extraordinarily reprehensible to have one more excursion into the River Styx. I'm much more prudent now. I'm more aware of my own liability to err. I've always been a humble person, but I wasn't humble enough. I'm not the great exemplar of unrivaled success that I used to be, and my wife always reminds me of my liability to err in case I'm not beating up on it enough myself.

What do you feel like you've learned?

It's crucial to have good models, to learn from people who are successful and productive and honorable and happy. I was fortunate, I've had some fantastic mentors. My father was my greatest and most continuing example. I always wish I could be as little prone to error as he was. He was the happiest man alive, and he never had to resort to duplicity because everything that came out of him was exactly from his inner self; there was no difference between the input and the output for him. But regrettably, duplicity is very, very important in life. The direct approach always creates tremendous obstruction and friction from the adversary, so often the indirect approach is necessary.

I agree that it's lovely to have good mentors, but can't successful, productive, honorable, happy people get things wrong sometimes as well?

Let's turn it on its head for a second with one of my favorite topics, the hoodoo. There are certain people you meet in life who are like the locomotives that always used to blow up—people who, wherever they go, disaster always ensues. One of my main pieces of advice is: Stay away from hoodoos. Sometimes hoodoos are very affectionate and they like to hug you, and I always burn my shirt right after being touched by a hoodoo.

How do you know a hoodoo when you see one?

First of all, a lot of them frequent areas that are rather ephemeral. Many waterfront communities are peopled with hoodoos. And they generally have a string of failures behind them, they generally are in need of capital, they generally talk a much better game than they play. And they often flatter you and pretend to be your very amiable friend before they really know you. Hoodoos are very good at what they do. A lot of times they command the center of attention and they try to dazzle you with the trappings of success—which when you look into it you find is a will o' the wisp.

Speaking of those who are around when disaster ensues, do you think the people at our major financial institutions are at all chastened by getting it so wrong?

I don't know what the financial institutions feel because they don't talk to me. I'm not in their firmament anymore. They can't get any business out of me, so they don't have any reason to devolve their inner feelings on me. But I know that it's very helpful to have a wealthy fairy godmother who can bail you out when you're in trouble, as certain banks and brokerage houses do. And I imagine that after being bailed out by their former—by their fairy godmother (we won't mention the word "cronies"), they feel that they've been given the breath of life again. And now they have to genuflect before the fairy godmother and be spanked in public and humiliated and their reputations are hopefully ruined, as they should be. But on the other hand, they don't have to face the actual disaster of financial ruination. They don't have to bite the bullet and pay for their own mistakes like me and 99.99 percent of other people who have had great failures.

I'm interested in something you said in one of your e-mails, that it was a mistake to play a flawless squash game.

As a squash player, I was gifted. I had all the right things going for me. I practiced. I was very good with the racket, and I had tremendous anticipation. But I tended to play an errorless game by hitting a slice on my backhand, which took a lot of power off the ball. That wasn't a disaster, but it was definitely a weakness in my game. My opponents always used to say that on a good day they could beat me, because they could hit more spectacular shots than me. But they never did. I went for about 10 years without losing a game, except to [the great Pakistani squash player] Sharif Kahn. He made about six, seven errors a game—but he also made eight or nine winners. I would make about zero errors per game but only one or two winners. He had the edge on me about 10-4, and I regret that I was never willing to accept the risky shots and confrontations, never willing to play a more error-full game.

It sounds like you wish you'd taken more risks as a squash player.

In my market career, I took too many risks. In my squash career, I didn't take enough.

I'm surprised. I would have expected risk to be an-across-the-board characteristic—that an aggressive, risk-taking investor would be an aggressive, risk-taking squash player.

I wish I had applied my squash methods to my speculating. I'd be a very wealthy man if I had.

One last thing from your e-mails: I love this checkers saying, "The popular player loses without an alibi." I think most people are pretty bad at that. It's like, "Well, if it hadn't been for X, I would've won."

I hope you don't feel like I've alibi-ed too much. But a person likes to have a certain amount of self-respect even after disasters. Still, it's terrible to be a bad loser. I like Soros's proverb that you should never marry a woman you wouldn't want to divorce.

Having been down there in the pit of terrible wrongness twice, do you have any advice for people who are struggling with their own catastrophic mistakes?

I think there are causes that led to their disaster and that rather than thinking about the actual minutiae of the downfall, and rather than creating alibis, they should think about the principles that led to their mistakes. And then I think they should let bygones be bygones. Once you've experienced disasters, there's no sense wallowing in misery. You gotta get back in the qualifying tournaments again.

Would you say that anything good came out of those difficult times for you?

Out of these great disasters came my 4-year-old son, who is the joy of my life. What happened was that I got a call one day from the head of Bloomberg, who wanted to give me a job as a writer. I explained that I really don't know how to write and that it's very hard for me, but I was so grateful to him that I said, "You know, you have the worst stock market column in history, it misses the key aspects, and you write it with a formula. I'd like to at least help you in return for your kind efforts to bail me out of trouble." Through that, I met one of their ace reporters, Laurel Kenner, and together we had a son. He's downstairs doing experiments with explosions right now.

If you could hear anyone else being interviewed about being wrong, who would it be?

I'd like to go back and sit at the knee of Charles Darwin or Francis Galton. And I'd sit with Jack Barnaby, who was the greatest squash coach and had something like 200 victories in a row but also a lot of losses.

And I'd sit with my father. Whenever I was in error, my father was like the fairy godmother that I spoke about, but instead of taking trillions from the common man, he would take his $400, which was his entire net worth, and he'd say, "Here, Vicky, this is the last $400 I have, take it and pay off your debts." He'd say "Don't worry, you'll regroup, it's only money. You'll rise again, I know you can do it."

Kathryn Schulz is the author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error. This interview is part of a series of Q and As in which notable people discuss their relationship to being wrong. You can read past interviews with mountaineer Ed Viesturs, This American Life host Ira Glass, celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, Sports Illustrated senior writer Joe Posnanski, education scholar and activist Diane Ravitch, and criminal defense lawyer and pundit Alan Dershowitz.

Perception of time and it's impact on your future

2010-06-21T15:17:00.000-07:00

This is a cool video I saw on Califia Beach Pundit’s blog…short, fun to watch, and profound. I almost guarantee you’ll learn something:

http://www.wimp.com/secretpowers/

Campfire girls (or Redneck Women)

2010-06-16T07:02:00.000-07:00

As Mike Ness said, "You can take the boy out of the trailer park but you can't take the trailer park out of the boy..."

I guess anyone growing up middle class or so in the 80's has a little white-T in them. No seat belts, helmets are for wimps, loud music, left to fend for yourself until dark, pampers only in summer, then shorts only, etc.

But did you all get to shoot guns, build bonfires, eat donuts and drink pop for breakfast? My girls got the best of that lifestyle on our recent annual father and daughter camping trip. I try to take advantage of this time to make sure they know what kind of man to look for in the future. We had hot dogs, Ramen, donuts, eggs and hot dogs again, smores, and lots of pop, huge bonfires, playing by the lake on your own at age 8, making sharp spears, burning everything in sight, and shooting BBs and pellet guns and all sorts of good "clean" fun that you need to wash up after when you get home.

Oh yeah, we told ghost stories too:

Grandpas

2010-06-13T19:26:00.000-07:00

Where you sit inside of a frame:

There has been a lot of talk about Grandpa’s lately. Like everyone I had two grandpa’s, one I never met. I heard he was a good lookin’ smooth talkin’ type of guy. I didn’t get much of that DNA and I never met him and don't know much about him.

Airplanes:
The other grandpa we called “Papa” and he was a big part of my life until he died, around the time I was 10. He was born near Park City, Utah and was an awesome skier (I got a small bit of that DNA). He served an LDS church mission in Florida and then moved back there and was married. At some point he was in WWII as a bomber pilot. He was one of the few who didn’t get shot down, although they were almost shot down at least once that I know of.

Encyclopedia:
He turned out to be, salt of the south as they say. My memories of him include us eating at “Little Black Sambo’s, at the counter, and him explaining to me who or what Sambo was and sitting on the front bench seat in the middle, next to him (right in front of the A/C and freezing to death, but not wanting to move) and listening to and learning about Louis Armstrong and Ray Charles via 8-track tapes. He seemed so smart and experienced, smarter even than my Dad, who had a PhD. How great to be a little kid, a parent, and a grandparent!

The wait will be worth it:
Then I met “Deadeye Dick”, he is my inherited Grandpa from my wife's family. That was a pleasant surprise because he was a traditional guy who would have been about the same age as my “Papa”. He even went to the same university as me, shoots guns, was a G-man, and then a Sheriff among other things. Knowing him gave me a chance to connect at an older age to the thought of having a grandpa. I truly got to thinking of him as one of my own. Now I’ve had the chance to have some understanding and perspective as Deadeye gets closer to leaving his body for the sky. I just blocked it all before.

Anyway, the Local Natives tune couldn’t have found us all at a better time and soon it will be Father’s day (grandfather's day too right?) and we can all chant in chorus at the top of our lungs…
“I love it all, so much I call, I want you back!”

Just in case you don't know what I am talking about:

BP and 'Bama (Updated to include Romney's op-ed)

2010-06-10T20:12:00.000-07:00

(UPDATED at the bottom. Romney's insight includes Obama's version of gathering the experts isn't to learn something, but to know who to blame...)

This article reminds me of some aspects of my current life. I'll just say that if you are a concurrent casual businessman you know what I am talking about. I've read some interesting articles lately regarding the failure of this U.S. President to take charge of the situation in the Gulf and master whatever resources he can to "turn back the tides". But I would argue that he is fine with it because it will assist his agenda for greater government control over the energy sector. That is a very cynical thing to say, but I am a very cynical guy. The only other answer is that he and his comrades don't know how to master a serious problem. The government has a lot of resources, but being adept and innovative to bring solutions isn't one of them.

President Obama railed recently against critics of his administration’s handling of the BP crisis by arguing that the government has done all it could to get control of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But clearly the public doesn’t think so — recent polls show the spread of the oil stain across the Gulf of Mexico is also staining his presidency.

No one thinks Obama can fix the leak, but their appears to be a hunger for him to become the adult in charge and take action. Action is the essence of crisis leadership, and the main reason why I think Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is one the few political leaders whose reputation is gaining in this mounting mess.

When federal red tape threatened to delay his state’s deployment of wetlands-defending sand barriers he ordered them built before receiving permission. He presented his case to constituents, outlined the alternatives, and explained why he was taking these measures now — basically because speed to act was more important than waiting for bureaucrats to respond. And if his decision proved wrong in the long run, he could live with that.

And that’s what crisis leadership sometimes comes down do, gathering as much information as you can and then making the best decision you can. So, is there more that Obama could do? The answer is yes, there is a lot more, as Harvard’s David Gergen, a former adviser to presidents both Republican and Democrat, suggests in a recent blog post. Among Gergen’s ideas:

- Set up a daily command center in Washington where a presidentially appointed leader runs the show, calls the shots, coordinates the overall effort, briefs the president and briefs the country.

- Have two deputies, one to direct the leak-stoppage and the other to direct the clean-up. Ex-CEOs and generals would be excellent candidates.

- Summon all the major oil and drilling companies to the White House for emergency efforts to get the hole plugged.

- Get BP out of the picture for clean-up; just send it the bill. If it is still needed for hole-plugging, okay, but ensure that it answers every day to directions from the government. If BP needs new internal leadership, figure out how to get that done.

-Employ the U.S. military for organizational coordination and where needed, for anything else such as clean-up.

- Make more aggressive efforts to tap the best minds in the world for help.

- Provide the country with the kind of daily briefings that the military has mastered for wartime — bring in people who are smart, straight and tough.

- Ensure that economic assistance is provided to families, small businesses and communities that need it with dispatch and generosity.

- Call off the finger pointing until we get out of this mess.

- And finally, very importantly, exercise the powers of leadership every day from the Oval Office.

These actions wouldn’t be doing something just to do something. Each one advances the goal of stopping the leak and repairing the damage. But most important, only the president of the United States has the convening power to make all these things happen.

http://blogs.bnet.com/harvard/?p=7202&tag=nl.e713

UPDATE: ROMNEY'S article in the throwaway paper (USA Today)

Has it come to this again? The president is meeting with his oil spill experts, he crudely tells us, so that he knows "whose ass to kick." We have become accustomed to his management style — target a scapegoat, assign blame and go on the attack. To win health care legislation, he vilified insurance executives; to escape bankruptcy law for General Motors, he demonized senior lenders; to take the focus from the excesses of government, he castigated business meetings in Las Vegas; and to deflect responsibility for the deepening and lengthening downturn, he blames Wall Street and George W. Bush. But what may make good politics does not make good leadership. And when a crisis is upon us, America wants a leader, not a politician.

We saw leadership on Sept. 11, 2001. Then as now, black billows seemed to come from the center of the earth. Lives had been lost. The environmental impact was immeasurable. The looming economic impact from lost tourism was incalculable. Into the crisis walked Rudy Giuliani. While that was an incomparable human tragedy, how the mayor led New York City to recover is a useful model for the president.

Rudy camped out at Ground Zero — he didn't hole up in his office or retreat to his residence. His presence not only reassured the people of New York that someone was in charge, it also enabled the mayor to assess the situation firsthand, to take the measure of the people he had on the ground, and to understand the scope of the crisis.

The president has many critical matters that demand his attention, but brief and tardy tours and being photographed with a smudge of oil on a sandy beach don't work on any level. There is no substitute for being there.

In a crisis, the leader must gather the experts — federal, state, local, public and private — not to discover who is to blame but to secure their active and continuous involvement until the crisis is resolved. There is extraordinary power inherent in an assembly of brilliant people guided by an able leader. In virtually every historic national crisis, our most effective leaders gathered the best minds they could find — consider the Founders in Philadelphia, Lincoln with his "Team of Rivals," Roosevelt with scientists and generals seeking to end World War II, Kennedy with the "Best and Brightest" confronting the Cuban missile crisis.

What happens when men and women of various backgrounds, fields of expertise, and unfettered intellectual freedom come together to tackle a problem often exceeds any reasonable expectation. Ideas from one may cross-fertilize the thinking of another, yielding breakthroughs. The president of MIT told me that the university spent millions of dollars to build a bridge connecting two engineering departments that had been separated by a road — the potential for shared thinking made it more than worth the cost.

But even a gathering of experts won't accomplish much unless a skilled leader uses their perspective to guide the recovery. So far, it has been the CEO of BP who has been managing the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The president surely can't rely on BP — its track record is suspect at best: Its management of this crisis has been characterized by obfuscation and lack of preparation. And BP's responsibilities to its shareholders conflict with the greater responsibility to the nation and to the planet.

The president must personally lead the effort to solve the crisis. He cannot delegate this quintessential responsibility of his presidency in the way he delegated the stimulus bill, the cap-and-trade bill and the health care bill. It may be an instance of learning on the job, but it is a job only he can do.

The first rule of turnarounds is to focus time, energy and resources on what matters most. The president simply cannot treat this crisis like another of his many problems. The oil disaster could hurt millions of families, slam the regional economy, kill untold numbers of non-human lives and irreparably damage the planet. Among other things, he must not hold more rock concerts at the White House — I understand James Carville's venting: His hero fiddled as oil churned.

Finding fault is easier than finding answers. And worse, it paralyzes many of the very people who may be needed to solve a crisis. When Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast states, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco went on the attack; Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour went to work. His state's recovery is textbook; hers is not.

President Obama's instigation of criminal investigations of BP at this juncture is classic diversion politics — and worse, it will engender bunker mentality at a time when collaboration and openness are most critical. BP's actions and inactions are reprehensible; it must be made to pay the billions upon billions of dollars that this spill will ultimately cost. But call out the phalanx of lawyers later — solve the crisis today.

The president can learn a good deal from the crisis leadership of men and women in government and in business. Giuliani is a notable example, but so too are Washington, Adams, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Reagan and Kennedy. In a time of national crisis, we look to our president to acknowledge, as Harry Truman did, that it is at his desk where the buck stops.

And even at Day 52, it's better late than never.

Family Photo circa 1976 (updated pic quality)

2010-06-08T21:48:00.000-07:00

My parents occasionally scan an old photo and email it to me. So I have started to post them here for “posterity”…but also so that you can have some entertainment. I wish this had better quality so you could see my dope tube socks.

Nobody has ever had uncles like me! Motorcycle gangs, motorcycle racing, tugboat captain, political exile, felon, lawyer, surfer, and so much more!

Free Agency and Consequences

2010-06-07T10:59:00.000-07:00

Has America Forgotten the Fruits of Freedom? To view this article, Click Here
Brian S. Wesbury - Chief Economist
Robert Stein, CFA - Senior Economist
Date: 6/7/2010

Putting aside religious beliefs, nothing in life has 100% upside – nothing. But the closest thing to a guaranteed better, safer, and more fulfilling life is freedom. Freedom means responsibility. It also means failure, accidents and mistakes. This, in turn, leads to learning, which is why successes outweigh the failures. However, humans must be free to understand the consequences of their actions. Without consequences, there is little learning.

When freedom prevails, the ingenuity and inventiveness of people creates incredible wealth. This is the source of the natural improvement of the human condition. Capitalism is created by free people. Socialism, on the other hand, is what happens when people trade their freedom for the perception of safety. And when people trade in their freedom, they trade it in for a less dynamic, less safe, life.

These days, more and more people seem willing to trade in their freedom. But who can blame them? Intellectuals and politicians are telling them it’s the right thing to do. Ken Rogoff, professor at Harvard and former Chief Economist at the IMF, has written that, “The accelerating speed of innovation seems to be outstripping government regulators’ capacity to deal with risks, much less anticipate them.” In a recent opinion piece he drew parallels between the BP oil spill and the subprime financial crisis. Like a modern-day Luddite, he asks for government protection from technology.

Many political leaders, who call themselves conservative, and say they believe in freedom, have also made the same argument, albeit in a roundabout way. By supporting TARP, stress tests, bailouts, and stimulus spending, they implicitly suggest that a system of free markets cannot remain stable without government control. These “so-called conservatives” talk the talk of freedom, but do not walk the walk. George W. Bush said that he “abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.” The only thing Americans who listen to that can believe is that free markets aren’t trustworthy.

Don’t get the wrong idea. Oil gushing from a pipe a mile deep is appalling. We wish not a drop had gurgled to the surface, ruining beachfront property and fishing habitats.

But accidents happen. The good news is that we learn from them. Between 1970 and 1979, there were an average of 25 oil spills per year of 700 tons or greater (from shipping). Between 2000 and 2009, there were just 3 per year on average. Oil companies lose money, and soil their image if oil spills. They have a huge incentive to stop spills. These incentives cause them to invest in better safety controls.

The number of plane accidents has fallen significantly. The same is true of train accidents and coal mining accidents. If the government ran all the train, plane, coal, and oil companies there would still be accidents. No one can stop them. Negative events do not mean that free markets and capitalism have failed. Freedom cannot eliminate the risk from life, but neither can government.

In fact, when government does try to eliminate risk, it often creates even more. For example, by holding interest rates at 1% back in 2003 and 2004 in order to stop deflation, the Federal Reserve created the environment necessary for the housing bubble. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and other government inventions, inflated housing even more. It was these things that caused the financial panic, not freedom.

And back in the 1970s, the US government stopped the building of nuclear power plants, partially because of an accident at Three Mile Island. Today, people complain about coal and CO2 emissions – a problem made worse by the lack of nuclear power.

There is no way to take the risk out of life. When government tries, all it really does is transfer that risk elsewhere. And without the growth and advancement that freedom brings, the system breaks down and wealth creation is undermined. You can’t get something from nothing. The fruits of freedom are only available to those who are willing to take the risks of freedom. Let’s not forget that lesson.

I didn't know Dr Seuss Was an Economist

2010-06-03T09:58:00.000-07:00

Consulting

2010-06-01T12:16:00.001-07:00

We all need a good friend who can tell it like it is and warn us from doing something stupid. The problem is we tend to be shallow and hate the truth or thinking through consequences. This isn’t much different in business.

I think management consultants are valuable when they can fill this role. They are a sounding board and a mirror. They can listen to your ideas and give you feedback from an objective perspective; they can tell you what they see that you are missing in your own reflection. The important thing is that they are not (should not be) “yes men” or paid to be head-nodding and just agree with you to keep their job.

From BNET:

All the chief execs I met are leading their businesses through turbulent times, finding in themselves previously unexplored supplies of resilience and optimism. But here’s the problem: as they use up the energy, learning and insight that they’ve gathered from their years in business, where will their new learning come from? How do they replenish those stores of expertise? While they’re ensuring that the people around them grow and develop, how do they make sure that they do likewise?

Saj-Nicole Joni calls these advisers “third opinions.” She argues that most leaders tend to get advice from technical experts (who see everything through the lens of their discipline) and from their management teams (who all have their own agendas). Such input is essential, part of the natural course of business. But no leader will thrive, she argues, without a third opinion — insight from someone outside the business, without an agenda, who has only your company’s interests at heart. A third opinion is a thinking partner: not someone with answers, but a partner with whom you can think more profoundly about the future. No leader, she says — and I agree with her — can succeed without at least one such adviser.

http://blogs.bnet.com/management/?p=1664&tag=nl.e713

Awkward Family Photo or Awesome Hair Contest?

2010-05-30T22:01:00.000-07:00

Have you been to the website for Awkward Family Photos? Do you think this photo is "good" enough to qualify? What would the caption be?

I'll let you guess on who the family is...but at least there were no dread locks involved...and no that isn't a necklace it is a pair of Chums for sunglasses.

Just to get you started:
- Three Sisters (for non-Oregonians those are an acclaimed set of peaks for outdoor enthusiasts)
- This is a Family Photo, Who Invited the Sweat Hog? (Duffy gets credit for that one!)

Sunday with the A-Team

2010-05-29T11:16:00.000-07:00

You'll have to guess who is filming when...my daughter or me...can you even tell the difference? Anyway, 5 1/2 minutes of a Sunday afternoon with the A's immortalized...

Have a Cute Economy!

2010-05-29T11:05:00.000-07:00

The fashion conscious should click through the NYT article...

From CalculatedRisk to Have A Cute Day!

Just for fun ... in 1926, economist George Taylor
suggested the "Hemline Index"; he observed that hemlines moved with stock
prices.

And from the NY Times: A Long, Lean Backlash to the Mini. Here
is the hot new look:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/fashion/27MAXI.html

Does that mean stocks are at a bottom, or that
stocks are about to crash?"

From NPR:

For decades, social scientists have referred to "the hemline index" when the
economy has faltered. (The old theory correlates economic performance with the
length of women's skirts. Bad economy? Long skirts.)

For a recent
article reporter Tamar Lewin, of The New York Times, asked several experts if
the hemline index has a modern-day equivalent.

"Data points litter the
landscape as economists, sociologists, psychologists and marketers examine the
societal changes, big and small, trivial and traumatic, that accompany a bad
economy," Lewin discovered. But "it's one thing to measure changes in society,
however, and another to ascribe causes."

According to Professor Terry F. Pettijohn II, whom Lewin interviewed, "In uncertain times, people tend to prefer songs that are longer, slower, with more meaningful themes." (It's time to break out the Simon & Garfunkel, folks.)

So, what is your hemline index? In other words, what in American popular culture tells you that the economy isn't doing so hot?

Quit Staring at My Mustache

2010-05-28T09:31:00.000-07:00

Even in this poorly shot, low quality video you can see that guy’s ‘stache! That is no joke! The other suggested titles for this post included:

- Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker

- Mario Goes Indie

- Beyond the Ironic Mustache

Local Natives at Mississippi Studios:

It is pleasant to have a band perform better live than their recordings provide. I wouldn’t have it any other way. What makes this scenario even better is when you already enjoy the recordings. It is like eating a fried chicken sandwich (good) with waffles (good) and syrup (good). Add them all up together and you get, excellent. (p.s. don’t try this at home).

“The wait will be worth it…”

Venom

2010-05-27T15:25:00.001-07:00

Brigham Young once said that “he who takes offense when no offense was intended is a fool, and he who takes offense when offense was intended is usually a fool…One may, in anger, fear, or vengefulness, pursue the [rattlesnake] and kill it. Or he may make full haste to get the venom out of his system. If we pursue the latter course we will likely survive, but if we attempt to follow the former, we may not be around long enough to finish it.”

Why am I so inclined to chase the rattlesnake? What do you do instead?

Happy Birthday!

2010-05-26T18:54:00.000-07:00

Did you know that when we first met on that plane to Russia that I was intimidated by your charm?

Did you know that the first time I touched your face, while you were in your bathing suit by the Moscow River, that I got an electric tingle down my spine?

Did you know that I couldn’t have been happier when after staying up all night and walking around the city, you pushed my off the curb and gave me bloody road rash?

Did you know that today I had butterflies when holding your hand?

One last question, how did I get so lucky? Whose birthday is it anyway? The gift has always been of you to me.

M'Lady

2010-05-18T16:37:00.001-07:00

It is great to be famous, beautiful, and talented. How would I know? Because my wife is! This is the second time she has been featured on someone’s blog or website. She also has a fan club (not just me and three little girls I know)! Her fan club took her to lunch one day just so they could meet her and try to capture some of her style. But that will never happen. Kjrsten is an ever changing fountain of beauty and ideas.

Urbanweeds.blogspot.com

P.S. Wish her a happy birthday next week!

Ramona Falls

2010-05-16T19:57:00.000-07:00

We went to Mississippi Studios to see Ramona Falls. It was a kind of video release party for "I Visited Russia" the song. Two clips here. 1) the video which was shot all around Portland. The opening scene takes place in a photo gallery where Mrs. Casual Businessman has shown one of her pictures. You can also see a quick shot of Brent Knopf as the priest in the video...if the male lead in the video looks familiar it is because he is the guitarist. Just FYI...

The 2nd video is a low quality video shot with my phone last night. If you are a Ramona Falls fan you can tolerate the low quality for a taste of the experience.

p.s. Did I mention I forgot my shoes?

What risk?

2010-05-06T20:09:00.000-07:00

So there was a HUGE drop in the market today and all kinds of speculation about why. It was likened to the portfolio insurance and programmatic trading that caused the 87 crash. Remember what Louis Rukeyser said on that fateful day in 87? "Don't just do something, stand there!" Well, I can't condone that advice entirely, but that guy was a sharp dresser.

the short version:

http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

the Fight Club rant version:

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/day-market-almost-died-courtesy-high-frequency-trading

The highlight of the day: You gotta give Cramer a little cred for on-air calling it like he sees it when P&G is down 20 points and says, "just go buy it! that is ridiculous!" and while he is speaking the fast money dives in already...and its back up 20pts in a matter of seconds. (go to 1min mark)

Happy Birthday (photo bomb version)

2010-05-01T15:40:00.000-07:00

The middle child turns 8 and the youngest...we love them all!

Some Guys Have All The Luck

2010-04-30T18:36:00.000-07:00

Talk About a Highly Refined Pirate...

2010-04-30T09:48:00.001-07:00

No not, Minus the Bear’s new album, Bret Van Roden! This guy used to be an analyst at our company. And now he is sailing the seven seas, with his twin brother and a broken compass!

You gotta envy these guys:

http://sailbrokencompass.blogspot.com/

The Deflationist

2010-04-27T22:52:00.001-07:00

One of my clients uses Shilling as an economic advisor. He is so bearish all the time that he is bound to be right at least once a decade. The world would have to get into a pretty grim situation before his outlook turns rosy. So take it with a grain of salt (everything is better with a smidge of salt).

Here is his latest via Advisor Perspectives:

Shilling offered a series of investment recommendations for those who ascribe to his deflationary forecast:

1. Treasury bonds – The 30-year Treasury bond is attractive at its present yield of 4.78%. If it were to decline to 3%, investors would earn 35%. A zero-coupon 30-year bond would return 65%.

2. Dividend-paying stocks – “Dividends will be a larger part of equity returns because of slow price appreciation,” Shilling said.

3. Consumer staples and foods – These sectors naturally benefit from slow growth.

4. Small luxuries – When people don’t have much money, they still want status from inexpensive products like the iPad.

5. The dollar – Shilling expects the dollar to trade 1:1 with the euro and to strengthen against the Yen. ”Those who have tried to short yen for the

last 25 years will finally make money,” he said.

6. Investment advisors and financial planners – Consumers need financial help, and advisors that charge appropriate fees will do well.

7. Factory-built housing and rental apartments – People are separating where to live from what is a great investment.

8. Selected health care providers – This sector will benefit from the passage of the health care bill, but it will be risky due to government policy interventions.

9. Productivity enhancers – Cost-cutting will be key for businesses and even low-tech firms like outsourcers will benefit.

10. North American energy producers – Shilling likes conventional energy providers, because renewable energy demand is too dependent on government subsidies.

He listed a number of investments to avoid:

1. Big-ticket consumer discretionary purchases – These purchases will be postponed because of deflationary expectations.

2. Consumer lending – Higher savings rates will translate to lower demand for credit.

3. Conventional home builders – Due to weakness in the housing market

4. Antiques and art – High-end luxury items will do poorly in an era of frugality.

5. Banks and consumer financial institutions – Increased regulation will decrease profits.

6. Junk bonds – Current prices do not properly reflect the increased risk of default.

7. Low-tech capital equipment – Businesses will postpone capital spending decisions.

8. Commercial real estate – Shilling said this is one of the most fragile sectors of the US economy.

9. Commodities – Low consumer demand will hurt commodity suppliers.

10. Developing-country stocks and bonds – They are too dependent on the US consumer.

P.S. Shilling is also an avid beekeeper. Bees are the symbol of industry and the logo for the state of Utah.

An Economy of Liars

2010-04-27T09:04:00.000-07:00

I know I said I wanted to be more optimistic. But I can also be constructive right?

From the WSJ:

An Economy of Liars

When government and business collude, it's called crony capitalism. Expect more of this from the financial reforms contemplated in Washington.

By GERALD P. O'DRISCOLL JR.

Free markets depend on truth telling. Prices must reflect the valuations of consumers; interest rates must be reliable guides to entrepreneurs allocating capital across time; and a firm's accounts must reflect the true value of the business. Rather than truth telling, we are becoming an economy of liars. The cause is straightforward: crony capitalism.

Thomas Carlyle, the 19th century Victorian essayist, unflatteringly described classical liberalism as "anarchy plus a constable." As a romanticist, Carlyle hated the system—but described it accurately.

Classical liberals, whose modern counterparts are libertarians and small-government conservatives, believed that the state's duties should be limited (1) to provide for the national defense; (2) to protect persons and property against force and fraud; and (3) to provide public goods that markets cannot. That conception of government and its duties was articulated by the Declaration of Independence and embodied in the U.S. Constitution.

Modern liberals have greatly expanded the list of government functions, but, aside from totalitarian regimes, I know of no modern political movement that has shortened it. While protecting citizens against force, both at home and abroad, is the government's most basic function, protecting them against fraud is closely allied. By the use of force, a thief takes by arms what is not rightfully his; he who commits fraud takes secretly what is not rightfully his. It is the difference between a robber stealing brazenly on the street and a burglar stealing by stealth at night. The result is the same: the loss of property by its owner and the disordering of civil society. And government has failed miserably to perform this basic function.

Why has this happened? Financial services regulators failed to enforce laws and regulations against fraud. Bernie Madoff is the paradigmatic case and the Securities and Exchange Commission the paradigmatic failed regulator. Fraud is famously difficult to uncover, but as we now know, not Madoff's. The SEC chose to ignore the evidence brought to its attention. Banking regulators allowed a kind of mortgage dubbed "liar loans" to flourish. And so on.

We have now learned of the creative way Lehman Brothers hid its leverage (how much money it was borrowing) by the use of a Repo 105. The Repo 105 meant Lehman temporarily swapped assets (such as bonds) for cash. A Repo, or repurchasing agreement, is a way to borrow money. But an accounting rule allowed Lehman to book the transaction as a sale and reduce its reported borrowings, according to a report by the court-appointed Lehman bankruptcy examiner, a former federal prosecutor, last month.

Are we to believe that regulators were unaware? Last week Goldman Sachs was accused in a civil fraud suit of deceiving many clients for the benefit of another, hedge-fund operator John Paulson.

The idea that multiplying rules and statutes can protect consumers and investors is surely one of the great intellectual failures of the 20th century. Any static rule will be circumvented or manipulated to evade its application. Better than multiplying rules, financial accounting should be governed by the traditional principle that one has an affirmative duty to present the true condition fairly and accurately—not withstanding what any rule might otherwise allow. And financial institutions should have a duty of care to their customers. Lawyers tell me that would get us closer to the common law approach to fraud and bad dealing.

Public choice theory has identified the root causes of regulatory failure as the capture of regulators by the industry being regulated. Regulatory agencies begin to identify with the interests of the regulated rather than the public they are charged to protect. In a paper for the Federal Reserve's Jackson Hole Conference in 2008, economist Willem Buiter described "cognitive capture," by which regulators become incapable of thinking in terms other than that of the industry. On April 5 of this year, The Wall Street Journal chronicled the revolving door between industry and regulator in "Staffer One Day, Opponent the Next."

Congressional committees overseeing industries succumb to the allure of campaign contributions, the solicitations of industry lobbyists, and the siren song of experts whose livelihood is beholden to the industry. The interests of industry and government become intertwined and it is regulation that binds those interests together. Business succeeds by getting along with politicians and regulators. And vice-versa through the revolving door.

We call that system not the free-market, but crony capitalism. It owes more to Benito Mussolini than to Adam Smith.

Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek described the price system as an information-transmission mechanism. The interplay of producers and consumers establishes prices that reflect relative valuations of goods and services. Subsidies distort prices and lead to misallocation of resources (judged by the preferences of consumers and the opportunity costs of producers). Prices no longer convey true values but distorted ones.

Hayek's mentor, Ludwig von Mises, predicted in the 1930s that communism would eventually fail because it did not rely on prices to allocate resources. He predicted that the wrong goods would be produced: too many of some, too few of others. He was proven correct.

In the U.S today, we are moving away from reliance on honest pricing. The federal government controls 90% of housing finance. Policies to encourage home ownership remain on the books, and more have been added. Fed policies of low interest rates result in capital being misallocated across time. Low interest rates particularly impact housing because a home is a pre-eminent long-lived asset whose value is enhanced by low interest rates.

Distorted prices and interest rates no longer serve as accurate indicators of the relative importance of goods. Crony capitalism ensures the special access of protected firms and industries to capital. Businesses that stumble in the process of doing what is politically favored are bailed out. That leads to moral hazard and more bailouts in the future. And those losing money may be enabled to hide it by accounting chicanery.

If we want to restore our economic freedom and recover the wonderfully productive free market, we must restore truth-telling on markets. That means the end to price-distorting subsidies, which include artificially low interest rates. No one admits to preferring crony capitalism, but an expansive regulatory state undergirds it in practice.

Piling on more rules and statutes will not produce something different than it has in the past. Reliance on affirmative principles of truth-telling in accounting statements and a duty of care would be preferable. Deregulation is not some kind of libertarian mantra but an absolute necessity if we are to exit crony capitalism.

Mr. O'Driscoll is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He has been a vice president at Citigroup and a vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Optimism for America?

2010-04-25T17:06:00.000-07:00

Do you believe in America? I have generally believed in American Exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny. This country is special and unlike any other. But the benefits are conditional upon the population continuing to strive for freedom and liberty to pursue their own futures. Lately I have been discouraged by the behavior of the population. The growing immorality and complacency, the quickness to reach for a handout instead of pulling up by your bootstraps, etc.

All great nations have risen and fallen in a cycle similar to what we are seeing play out in America. Maybe it is similar to what happened in the 60s-70s? Maybe it is permanent? What do you think? Is America's greatness behind us?

Can you guess when the following was written?

Men may fail in this country, earthquakes may come, seas may heave beyond their bounds, there may be great drought, disaster, and hardship, but this nation, founded on principles laid down by men whom God raised up, will never fail.

This is the cradle of humanity, where life on this earth began in the Garden of Eden. This is the place of the New Jerusalem. . . . This is the place where the Savior will come to His temple.

We are living in a time of great crisis. The Country is torn with scandal and with criticism, with fault-finding and condemnation. There are those who have downgraded the image of this nation as probably never before in the history of the country.

I plead with you not to preach pessimism. Preach that this is the greatest country in all the world.. . . It is the nation that will stand despite whatever trials or crises it may yet have to pass through.

We must be on the optimistic side. This is a great nation; this is a great country; this is the most favored of all lands. While it is true that there are dangers and difficulties that lie ahead of us, we must not assume that we are going to stand by and watch the country go to ruin. We should not be heard to predict ills and calamities for the nation. On the contrary, we should be providing optimistic support for the nation.

You must remember . . . that this church is one of the most powerful agencies for the progress of the world, and we should . . . all sound with one voice. We must tell the world how we feel about this land and this nation and should bear our testimonies about the great mission and destiny that it has.

If we do this, we will help turn the tide of this great country and lessen the influence of the pessimists. We must be careful that we do not say or do anything that will further weaken the country. It is the negative, pessimistic comments about the nation that do as much harm as anything to the country today. We who carry these sacred responsibilities must preach the gospel of peace, and peace can only come by overcoming the things of the world. Now, we must be the dynamic force that will help turn the tide of fear and pessimism.

(Excerpts from a talk given at Ricks College Devotional Assembly, "Have Faith in America," October 26, 1973)

It is hard for me to be optimistic from my point of view. I am generally a glass half empty guy anyway. I guess I should turn the corner and look to the bright side. It is hard if I look past my own life and family and find optimism. But I will try.

DDS

2010-04-24T14:17:00.001-07:00

Multimedia Message House of Pain! Jump Around! Love those blades! 

Take Your Kid to Work Day!

2010-04-23T14:18:00.000-07:00

Funny how when you are a kid your Dad's work seemed so awesome. Stapler, pens of various colors, different lengths of paper, machines with smelly ink stuff, and all the people saying how smart and cute you are etc, all made it seem like Dad had it made.

Well maybe I do?

Man on the Moon

2010-04-23T13:23:00.000-07:00

I know it is old news, but did you hear Obama cancelled manned flights to the moon? He is instead going to give money (less than what NASA was spending) to boost private space exploration. So why is privatization good for space exploration but not health care, energy, or public schools? I am not sure which side of the NASA decision to come down on (some things should be run by government), but find it curious why Obama and his decision makers like this idea but not other privatization or “free market” approaches.

Maybe it is because they don’t believe space exploration is real or that anything important will happen? It maybe isn’t a large enough power source of control over the people? What do you think?

more government is good?

2010-04-22T14:08:00.000-07:00

An investment manager sent the following synopsis of Goldman Sachs fiasco.

On Friday, the SEC brought a civil action against Goldman Sachs (GS) in relation to a single CDO transaction in 2007³

The SEC alleges that a GS employee misled investors by failing to disclose the role of another market participant in the transaction, namely Paulson & Co., and that the employee thereby orchestrated the creation of the materially defective CDO for which GS bears responsibility
The SEC alleges that Paulson & Co. had a hand in the creation of the portfolio that underlies the CDO. Since Paulson’s intention was to short the CDO, Paulson’s incentive would have been to make the deal as low quality as possible. Paulson’s investment goals were in direct contrast to those that bought the CDO
A third party, ACA Capital Management, had ultimate responsibility for the inclusion of specific assets within the CDO
The buyers of the CDO were large, accredited investors with significant CDO investment experience
Goldman, as an investor in the CDO, claims that they lost $90 million on the deal
In contradiction to the SEC’s claim, Paulson & Co. announced today that ACA had been informed of their intentions to short the CDO

I would also note the following:

· On the same day the suit was filed against Goldman, the inspector general released a scathing report of the SEC

· The report detailed how SEC staffers repeatedly recommended enforcement actions against investment firm Stanford

· Enforcement actions were never taken

· The primary person responsible for enforcing the actions subsequently went to work for Stanford!

· Stanford stole $7Billion dollars

· It is old news, but the SEC was also warned of Madoff at least two times with evidence showing his fraud, but ignored it

I am a “classical liberal”. I believe we need a society of laws that are enforced. Property rights and laws provide the foundation for free markets to work. More and more government isn’t the best solution. Enforcing laws we have is a good start.

Income Research & Management

¹ Bloomberg

² New York Times, 4/21/10, ‘Federal Reserve Made $47.4 Billion in 2009’

³ Bloomberg, 4/16/10, ‘Goldman Sachs Sued by SEC for Fraud Tied to CDOs’