OnTheWayHere.com

Movin’ to the dew

Martyrdog — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 19:16:23 +0000

Along the way here, I have decided to blog for LikeTheDew.com. This will be my last post, at least, for a while. Hope to see you there… or, at least, on the way there.

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Where Do They Belong in Hell?

Martyrdog — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:43:35 +0000

The Bible tells us that all evil doers will just die a second death by being thrown into a lake of fire (Revelation 20:13-15). That’s a shame because I don’t feel all sinners are equal. It just doesn’t seem fair that Hitler, who started World II killing 72 million people including exterminating at least six million Jews should be treated the same way as someone like Mohandas Gandhi who resisted tyranny through peaceful civil disobedience and whose sin was being Hindu (more technically, for not being baptized).

I much prefer Dante’s Hell. (Damn. Just for writing that, I’m going to end up with Hitler and Ghandi.) Where things are divided into circles or levels spiral down with increasing pain and nastiness. With punishments so much more inspiring than the just being thrown into a a lake of fire. So let’s start at the top and consider where some of the famous and more notorious among us might end up in Dante’s vision. Read the rest of this story

Almost Great Depression To Be Over This Week.

Martyrdog — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:20:38 +0000

Exactly when this economic crisis began is arguable. Republicans often suggest that it was left from the Clinton years and point to evidence including excess growth, albeit benign, in 1994 and evidence of excess fluidity being addressed in December 2002. While there was occasional discussion by pundits on talk radio and the Sunday shows, the impending crisis didn’t begin to make the headlines until the Spring of 2008. Noticeably limping before the Masters and coinciding with the Bear Stearns collapse. By mid June 2008, it became obvious that things were not going to turn around any time soon and Tiger Woods announced after his heroic limping playoff victory at the US Open, that he would undergo more reconstructive surgery and would be out for ten months. Reaction on was immediate and has continued. Indymac Bank was nationalized. $300 billion subprime mortgage guarantee was put into law. The Fed nationalized Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac. Bank of America took over Merrill Lynch. Lehman Brothers collapsed. The Fed lent $85 billion to AIG. Paulson announced a financial rescue. WaMu was nationalized. Citigroup took over Wachovia. Congress passed the $700 billion TARP bailout bill. The crisis spread around the world. Obama was elected to stand in for our multi-racial and multi-cultural role model superstar icon. The markets continued to tank. Millions lost their jobs. Millions lost their health insurance. Wars continued. And so on. It’s finally officially over. Tiger Woods is back on the PGA Tour this week at the Accenture Match Play Championship in Arizona (Sen. McCain, R). While experts believe it may be many more months before the recovery is complete, all the world awaits the markets’ reaction.

Help Darwin.

Martyrdog — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:35:13 +0000

Contrary to cable news opinion, the automakers don’t want a bailout. The want to make and sell cars. The problem, of course, is that their capacity to make cars grotesquely exceeds their ability to sell them. The economy is bad, so consumers have stopped buying (they will be back when their cars wear out). Their businesses got too big not to fail.

Whether it is their fault or not seems an almost silly debate. Was it the dinosaurs fault they became extinct? Sure, the were too big when the meteor hit that brought on the ice age and they couldn’t find enough food. Same thing is going on now. Big change, though, when Dino died, there weren’t people around to try to say they are cute, appreciate their diversity and save him. But based on the movies I’ve seen, I think we are pretty lucky that they didn’t all make it. But I digress.

The working plan in Detroit and in DC is for the industry to get very lean and mean. We, the government, make their current cash flow, while the industry cuts overhead, workers, benefits, suppliers, dealers, investors and lenders, such that their capacity is realigned with demand and they can sell the cars they produce at a profit. The problem, okay, the problems include the incredible cost to the taxpayer to provide this soft landing; the punishing pain to their stakeholders that only delays the inevitable demise; the lack of funding for re-tooling; and that once scale is reduced, the auto industry won’t make enough cars to make enough money to be globally competitive.

So just how do we help Detroit survive, re-tool to make innovative new vehicles that people actually want, have adequate capital to manufacture, inventory, sell and generate a profit? Send out an RFP. I propose that we send out a request for proposal for purchase of a new fleet of vehicles for use by federal, state and municipal government... Read the rest of this story

My Favorite Republican.

Martyrdog — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 19:10:12 +0000

Not for what his career (can’t really forgive him for that), but for what he did last week. Cancer survivor Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania traded his stimulus vote to the Dems for $10 billion in increased funding to the NIH (which had been starved of funding during recent years) most of which will go toward funding 15,000 additional research grants (34% increase). Specter, who has been publicly threatened by Republicans with a primary challenge for doing so, was unapologetic when he said, “I think it’s scandalous that we haven’t done more to cure cancer.” Bravo. Way to go Arlen. This is a big deal. Doing something of tremendous importance toward curing the diseases that are truly non-partisan. As a reward, I promise to try and quit pronouncing your name “Sphincter.”

You Bastard.

Martyrdog — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:43:33 +0000

The Atlanta Journal today reports that Gov. Sonny Perdue is going to provide property tax relief to homeowners. Sounds good, right? Not really. His scheme is use the $460 million in Medicaid stimulus money Georgia’s to get, cut what Georgia would have provided to our most needy citizens, cut $99 million from K-12 education and another $20 million from Georgia’s universities (K-12 and the universities we cut $150 million this year already), and borrow $150 million from Georgia’s reserves to do it. Robbing our children. Robbing our sick. Robbing our potential. Robbing our competitiveness. Make me hope there’s a hell.

Finally, a Path Forward on Foreclosures.

Martyrdog — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:06:00 +0000

According to the Washington Post, the Obama administration’s homeowner plan will be announced today:

President Obama will unveil today a $75 billion foreclosure prevention program, which the administration expects to reach up to 9 million homeowners.

"The plan I'm announcing focuses on rescuing families who have played by the rules and acted responsibly: by refinancing loans for millions of families in traditional mortgages who are underwater or close to it," Obama will say at a speech in Mesa, Ariz., according to an advance text released by the White House.

The Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan includes measures to allow homeowners to refinance into loans with cheaper payments, according to a summary of the plan. For example, if a lender agrees to lower a borrower's payment so that it comprises no more than 38 percent of his income, the government would pay to lower the payments further to 31 percent of income. The aim would be to make the payments affordable. Read the rest of this story

Striving for the Best Lowest Common Denominator.

Martyrdog — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 17:33:15 +0000

The true genius of our so-called founding fathers was more luck than wisdom and more about fear than courage. Rich white male industrialist entrepreneur New Englanders in the same room with rich white male planter slave owner Southerners designed a government to protect the best of themselves from the worst of each other. Land owners knowing they would never vote to tax themselves, set it up so only they could vote. Worried that a president could too easily usurp power to become monarch, they balanced the powers not once, but twice, and added the electoral college just to make sure. Worried that a government sponsored religion could force them to tithe and attend church, they mandated separation of church and state. Worried that a central government would trump their regional fiefdoms, they held on to their state powers. Worried that population could trump state standing and regional culture they created the Senate. Our union has succeeded not for what it has done, but for what it has not. And how could it? Ours is a government where bold, decisive action should not be possible except, and temporarily, in time of war.

For example, the “legal basis” of Lincoln’s executive order abolish slavery, the Emancipation Proclamation, was the implicit powers given to the President as Commander-in-Chief “as a necessary war measure”. (Same basis for interning the Asian-Americans during WWII and the wiretapping, torture and legalized corruption of the Bush Two presidency, etc.)

No, our founding fathers, wanted our government weak, decentralized and anything but bold and decisive. Where change would come slowly and poorly. Where the best laws and actions from our national government would be the lowest common denominator*. Fear-based, paranoia-based government because they only trusted themselves, but not so much as a group.

So what changed? A lot. Read the rest of this story

It’s the Capacity, Stupid.

Martyrdog — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 17:23:19 +0000

Beneath the fold in Paul Krugman’s column today, was this little tidbit, “The Congressional Budget Office, not usually given to hyperbole, predicts that over the next three years there will be a $2.9 trillion gap between what the economy could produce and what it will actually produce. And $800 billion, while it sounds like a lot of money, isn’t nearly enough to bridge that chasm.” Last your our GNP was about $14.3T, so it represents about 20.2%.

Having aced Economics 101, this sounds like the perfect capitalist storm. But before we go there, consider what it means to society and in people terms. Society will lose the benefit $2.9T of good and of wealth that could be produced. A loss to be written off and will not happen. In people terms, it will be a decrease of $2.T in our standard of living that could have been. These things are tragic results and should be mourned.

From a capitalist 101 point of view, its impact can be devastating and difficult to turn around. Unit costs of manufacturing will go up. Low demand will mean prices will be down. Which will mean profits will be down. Which will mean employment will go down. Which will mean consumption will go down. Which will mean capacity will go down. And it repeats. Until we turn turn it around or become third world.

So what is the right stimulus amount and is $800B not enough? Read the rest of this story

Why Gregg Withdrew.

Martyrdog — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 13:33:00 +0000

Standing in the hallway of the White House, while smiling as if he were sharing a private story, Rahm Emanuel, the Cheshire pit bull of the Obama Administration, leaned to the ear of Judd Greg and whispered, “Vote for the stimulus or I’ll break the legs of your children, pull your wife’s eyes out and stick them up your ass.” That, according to imaginary sources close to the situation, is what Greg was referring to when he abruptly withdrew Thursday as the nominee for commerce secretary, saying he had “irresolvable conflicts” over the economic stimulus plan. Rahm Emanuel, who had been a strong proponent of Mr. Gregg’s nomination, sought to play down his decision to withdraw. “It is better that it happened now,” Mr. Emanuel said, “than when you have someone in the government.”

Flash to the Future.

Martyrdog — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:35:14 +0000

What would a successful economic turnaround look like?

Flash forward. Still President Obama lands our helicopter directly in from of the New York Stock Exchange and walks triumphantly onto the floor surrounded by jubilant traders and takes his place on the balcony with a sign behind him reading, “Mission Accomplished.” “The recession is over,” he announces to the cheering throng. Our GDP has grown for two straight quarters (all that is required to claim victory). The markets are bullish. The Dow creeping steadily toward 10,000 again (for those who can afford to be in the market). Loans are being made (to those with good credit). Housing sales are up (for those who have down payments, a good job and unscarred credit). Unemployment down (but many millions are still unemployed). Happy days, again (for the audience of the stock exchange).

Shallow Victory.

When Bush announced victory, all that had happened was we had toppled a government and destroyed or disbanded everything that allowed the Iraqi people to take care of themselves. We replaced self-sufficiency with pallets of cash. Tossed a few seeds of freedom and democracy on the scorched ground and expected the spring would take care of the rest. Shock and awe when the seeds all but died.

This time, the drumbeat of fear are the weapons of mass financial destruction. The smart bombs we are using are being used strategically for maximum effect. Save Wall Street - BOOM. Save the banks - SHABOOM. Prop up the unemployed for a while - TA DA DING DONG. More, but temporary funding for Medicare - LING A LING A LING. OH LIFE COULD BE A DREAM.

Where is our David Petraeus? Read the rest of this story

It’s All About Size.

Martyrdog — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 12:24:48 +0000

One of the many bad things about men running the world is that size does matter. How you use it is for losers and wannabes. Take this particular economic crisis (please). The banks, insurance companies and Wall Street firms were bailed out because they were too big to fail. It was scale of the stimulus, not so much the details, that mattered to Obama. It wasn’t that we needed $700B for TARP, it was, according to Bernanke, just about the right size for the markets to react to it. Bush was against government intervening in the markets until the size of the crisis was known. Our Treasury is only going to stress test and buy toxic mortgages from banks of the right size (>$10B - there are only 13 of them). Sure, maybe it’s just pecuniary envy, but those average among us are having problems, too. Small businesses are flaccid and needing a stimulus. We are teased nightly on the news, but all we get to do is watch. While taking something for our economic dysfunction has side effects (our hearts might stop working; sudden hearing loss, blindness, surges in blood pressure; and the chance of our excitement lasting longer than 4 hours which could do permanent harm), we are willing to take the risk to feel young, vibrant and powerful like those who have been endowed larger. We promise to love our politicians in the morning even if they end up (bleeping) us.

The Emperor’s Accounting Rules.

Martyrdog — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:42:24 +0000

A house was purchased a couple of years ago for $100,000 and got a $100,000 mortgage. If the homeowner sold it today, they could get about $75,000. The $3,000,000,000,000+ question is, how much is the “asset” worth?

Scenario #1: Every mortgage payment has been made on time.

The homeowner knows that their house is worth $75,000, even though, they owe $100,000.
Under current rules, the banks and the mortgage backed securities which own the mortgage, are required to say the house is worth about $75,000. Since banks have strict capital requirements by the Fed (unbelievably complicated), writing down this asset by $25,000, generally, means the bank will have to raise capital to make it up by selling about $1,000 in new stock or attracting subordinated debt (or other methods) which may be really hard to do when your stock is in a spiral.
Meanwhile, investors in the banks and the mortgage backed securities which own the mortgage, buy or sell based on their guess whether they think the companies are telling the truth on a timely basis, and, generally, don’t believe anything leaving the stock and securities prices in the toilet.
The banks, Wall Street firms, the Treasury and the Fed want to value it at $100,000 and have our government guarantee that it is. The mortgage is performing as if it is worth it is worth $100,000 and if held until maturity it would be, therefore, it is. Read the rest of this story

What’s Really Important?

Martyrdog — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 23:11:11 +0000

With the “stimulus” bill in the semi-final stages of the congressional truth or dare tournament, I was just wondering what is really important to us? We (one of the variations of the greater “we”) are in a crisis. Do we vote our personal self-interest? Do we vote what’s “best” for America? Do we vote “what would (insert your role model de jour here - i.e. Jesus, Ghandi, Dobbs, Limbaugh, Reagan, Lincoln, Phelps, MLK, Palin, Hillary, Oprah, Paris, etc.) do”? Please rank your choices from the star list (anonymous - you don't have to register), hit submit in each section (it will post and the button will disappear), then go to the next section (skip anything you don't think rates a star). Results will be published automatically in this column. Take the survey

The Senate Fiddles While We Burn

Martyrdog — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 21:16:15 +0000

You’ve heard and read the warnings. Not from nuts, but the Nobel Prize winners. Paul Krugman. Today in the New York Times, he wrote, “Somehow, Washington has lost any sense of what’s at stake — of the reality that we may well be falling into an economic abyss, and that if we do, it will be very hard to get out again. It’s hard to exaggerate how much economic trouble we’re in. The crisis began with housing, but the implosion of the Bush-era housing bubble has set economic dominoes falling not just in the United States, but around the world.”

Spinning Out of Control. We’ve had serious warnings from serious experts, and yet, the Senate fiddles. Boehner whines. Costello puppets. Blitzer nods. Reid parses. DeMint spins. McCain, well, who cares? The point is, WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY DOING? THIS IS SERIOUS. Screw the bipartisan hope for change. Screw the pundits telling both sides for ratings and ego. We’re going off a cliff. What is it they don’t understand? There’s no bleeping election this year or votes to be won. Only millions of people suffering and the expectation of that many millions will soon. Dare a liberal question their patriotism? Damn straight. Empty Guantanamo for the Republic House and Senate members. They are much, much more dangerous. They have a bomb strapped to the American people and sabotaging us on nightly news with lies and deception. The Republicans are worse than any terrorist. No one will care for the details. Blame won’t matter. There will be plenty of credit if they act, but nothing but hatred if they don’t act now.

Write your Congresspeople. Call. Fax. Text. Twitter. Scream. Or all of this is going to change. This is real. Get it. Do something. There’s no time to wait.

I (bleeping) apologize.

Martyrdog — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 19:51:41 +0000

I’m reminded of a famous scene in “The Paper”...

SPAULDING GRAY: Well, I hope you're satisfied, (bleep)! You just blew your chance to cover the world!

MICHAEL KEATON: Really. Well, guess (bleeping) what? I don't really (bleeping) care. You want to know (bleeping) why? Because I don't live in the (bleeping) world! I live in (bleeping) New York City, so go (bleep) yourself!

I don’t live in (bleeping) Georgia. I live in (bleeping) Atlanta.

Sunday’s Atlanta Journal reported that (bleeping) firearm permits are up 79% in 2008 and attributed the increase to fear “that it might become harder to get a permit during the Obama administration.” I am sincerely hopeful their fears are (bleeping) justified, but am embarrassed and apologize for (bleeping) Georgia.
They also reported that our (bleeping) Federal government has asked for an $8.2 million refund from three (bleeping) Georgia school districts that included (bleeping) Atlanta who wrongfully received the millions in per-pupil aid for victims of (bleeping) Katrina. Shame on (bleeping) Georgia. Shame on (bleeping) us. I apologize.
The (bleeping) Atlanta Journal reports that our (bleeping) governor, (bleeping) Sonny Perdue, has recommended eliminating all school nurse positions to save money. I can only presume that he feels (bleeping) Georgia is ranked too high on the number of healthy kids. What a (bleeping) jerk. I apologize for Georgia.
The (bleeping) New York Times reports that during 2008 (bleeping) Georgia’s welfare rolls shrank by 11% last year and by 70% since early 1990s. I remember reading something about the (bleeping) economy recently. What was it? Oh, yeah, it was the (bleeping) worst time since the (bleeping) depression. Way to go (bleeping) Georgia. I apologize. Read the rest of this story