The Economy

We grasp at straws to mine some good economic news these days. Today we learn that “The number of banks on the government’s list of institutions most at risk for failure fell in the second quarter, the first drop since before the financial crisis began.” www.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/business/first You can’t walk ten feet without hearing someone complaining about the economy, with blame spread around fairly equally between the President, Congress, Bernanke, Geitner, big banks and just about anyone else within our sights. People speak about “fixing the economy” as if it was a ship that needs to be steered through treacherous waters. The economy is not a ship, it is the ocean itself, with thousands of currents constantly changing and constantly pushing and pulling. We just keep grasping at snippets of good news like they were life savers trying to keep afloat until the waters calm.

By Sam DelPresto

We Need a Break!

Major news stories this year have gone by with the speed of semis on a pre-dawn thruway. The debt ceiling debates, the dust storms in the west, tornadoes in the south and mid-west, the near default of Greece, the end of NASA’s shuttle program, the killing of Bin Laden and famines and droughts both here and in Africa are all stories less than a month old. The tsunami, earthquake and nuclear disaster in Japan seems like ancient history, though barely three months gone. www.abcnews.go.com/ It gets a bit overwhelming sometimes. Thank God there is sports to occasionally take our minds off the relentless talk of financial and natural disasters….or thank God there may be sports to take our minds off the news for a few minutes if both sides of two of the three major US sports can settle their differences.

By Sam DelPresto

Big Banks

The outrage over the behavior of the big banks leading up to and following the “Great Recession” is amusing, at least to those with at least a modest background in the history of finance. Beginning with the Rothschild’s stranglehold on European history in the 19^th century to JP Morgan financing the Second World War, history is much more clearly understood when looked at from the point of view of what the big bankers were doing. Nathan Rothschild’s famous “Give me control of a country’s financing and I could care less who governs” captures the spirit and the reality of the whole thing. It puts the scurrying around of senators and kings in a new perspective and makes almost laughable the attempts by governments for the past two hundred years (at least) to control them. As people call for new regulation, one is reminded of the famous New Yorker cartoon www.newyorker.com/ which shows two bankers sitting at a desk with the caption “These new regulations are going to fundamentally change the way we get around them.”

By Sam DelPresto

Oil Subsidies

Oil companies are presenting their case to congress that they need to maintain the current tax subsidies. "Given profits of $35 billion in just the first quarter alone, it's hard to find evidence that repealing these subsidies would cut domestic production or cause layoffs," Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the committee, argued against the oil companies claims. www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-oil-executives-tax-hearing- Congress is looking at cutting $2 billion a year, which would go towards paying down the deficit. That number represents less than two percent of the expected annual profits of the oil companies. I’m surprised the oilmen actually show up to plead their dubious case, and not only because it seems unlikely that Congress will agree on anything. Oil companies spent $145 million dollars and used 798 lobbyists last year to make certain their point of view was heard. There are 435 members of the House and 100 Senators. Do the math – that’s nearly two lobbyists and over a quarter of a million dollars for each and every person in the Legislative branch of government. What? Oilmen have to take time out of their busy schedules to parade in front of Congress? Haven’t they done enough already?

By Sam DelPresto

Oh No! Not the Parks

It is always fascinating to me which portion of a news story is reported in the network coverage. With the threat of a government shutdown imminent, NBC is reporting that “The looming shutdown of the federal government includes the National Parks Service, which could mean events commemorating the start of the Civil War with a Confederate attack on Fort Sumter may have to happen without the fort itself.” www.nbc-2.com/story/14400275/federal-shutdown. Is that really in the top one hundred eventualities that Americans should be concerned about if the government shuts down? The top five hundred? Oh, by the way, NBC (might as well) report, in the Route 95 seven car accident, with multiple fatalities, one of the victims lost their wallet. The 20^th Century English writer, Rebecca West was apparently correct when she asserted, “Journalism is the ability to meet the challenge of filling space.”

By Sam DelPresto

Weather

Oscar Wilde said “Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative”. Normally, I am inclined to agree. A “sure is hot/cold out there” (take your pick) makes the speaker seem, at worst, simple minded and, at best, like one prone to state the obvious. But as the 21^st century roars forward, I might have to re-think my position. Floods, earthquakes, tsunamis et al are forcing themselves into the forefront of many of our lives. For people living in stricken areas, there’s no topic more important to talk about. The recent massive earthquake in Japan that unleashed the latest tsunami appears to have moved the main island of Japan by eight feet and shifted the earth on its axis. www.articles.cnn.com/2011-03-12/world/japan.earthquake.tsunami.earth I’m beginning to look forward to a time when a simple “sure is hot out there” is the only mention of the weather.

By Sam DelPresto

Revolution

The resignation of Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak was truly revolutionary. Not the part where a dictator is overthrown; that happens from time to time. The world-shattering part is that the revolution was achieved with an almost total absence of gunfire. The weapon of choice was the internet. (www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.media/02/11/egyptian.president.) The revolution began, at least in part, on Facebook. If the unlikely election of Barack Obama in 2001 did not signal the end of business as usual (his war chest was almost completely funded by small contributors through the internet) then certainly this change of government does. The Egyptian people’s overthrow of Mubarak is a gigantic boulder thrown into a pond with ripples of influence that are so far unimagined, both positive and negative. This form of public oversight sounds radically like a government “of the people, by the people.”

By Sam DelPresto

He Saw This Coming

The Tucson, Arizona shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and other defenseless victims has stimulated a lot of debate about the civility or lack thereof in media and in politics in general. The very suggestion that a connection exists between the two has generated much rancorous dialogue. I find it fascinating that this type of connection was predicted by the 2oth century communications guru, Marshall McCluhan years before the invention of the internet. Forty years before it was even possible, McCluhan warned in The Gutenberg Galaxy that a medium defined by “participation and a multiplicity of inputs” might have dire consequences.( www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/books/review/Carr-t.html?scp) “When people get closer together, they get more and more savage, impatient with one another”, McCluhan wrote before his death in 1980.

What? You don’t believe me? What are you some kind of a liberal, neo-conservative #%/$*?

By Sam DelPresto

Good News

As the year ends, new jobless claims are down, housing sales are up, retail spending exceeded expectations and the stock market remains strong. “There's no denying that the economy is improving," said Wayne Kaufman, chief market analyst at John Thomas in New York. It has been at least two and a half years since any of these things could have been said. (www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40850565/ns/business-eye_on_the_economy/) Optimism anybody? Oscar Wilde once said that “the basis for optimism is sheer terror”. There’s no denying that the past few years have brought their share of terrifying developments. After the past two or three years of doom and gloom, however, the newest reports, if not a signal that the worst is behind us, are in the very least, a welcomed respite.

By Sam DelPresto

Who?

If you Google Joseph A. Smith Jr., you will find scant mention of the North Carolina Commissioner on Banks, which is ironic because he has been appointed by the Obama Administration to help decide what to do about the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac crises beginning in January.

www.communityinvestmentnetwork.org/nc/single-news-item-states/

While the media ponders such noble questions like whether the Republican Majority leader cries publicly too much or not, Mr. Smith will be tackling a problem of such magnitude that it is foolish to think his decisions will not affect our children and grandchildren. The government mortgage guarantee system has been in place one way or another since Franklin Roosevelt. Both Presidents Eisenhower and Johnson made changes to the system that still ripple down to us fifty years later. The overhaul of this system, one could argue, has more far reaching consequences in the everyday lives of Americans than the war now going on, but try to prove that based on media coverage!

By Sam DelPresto

The Internets

This is why the internet was invented, isn’t it? According to The Belfast Telegraph, an Irishman has found a clip in Charlie Chaplin’s 1928 black and white movie, “The Circus”, that pretty clearly shows a woman passing in the background of a scene talking on a cell phone. www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/entertainment/film-tv/news/ The obvious and immediate conclusion drawn from this piece of film is that she is, in fact, some sort of time traveler. While that was not my first reaction to the film, I admit that to the modern viewer, the woman could be doing little else. The fact that within a few hours, the “hypothesis” had been refuted, will have little to do with the “legs” of the story. In our modern age, it is the story that matters, not whether the story is true or not. Trying to find out what is happening in the world using the internet, however, is like trying to find out what time it is by watching the second hand on a clock.

By Sam DelPresto

Nobel Peace Prize

It seems to me that the best thing the Nobel Peace Prize can do is to promote peace. That sounds simplistic, I’m sure, but the recent award to Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese dissident, fills that criteria. By shining a light on the imprisonment of this fifty-four year old dissident who has made it his life’s work to promote personal freedoms in China, the Nobel committee has drawn much needed attention to his plight. In a statement that reeks of walking-on-eggs diplomacy, President Obama called for more personal freedom in China where reforms have not kept pace with its economic growth. www.nytimes.com/2010/10/09/world/09nobel.html China, for its part, has implored the world to look at them as the leaders who have lifted millions from poverty – the absence of personal freedoms a trifling by-product. Time will tell if the prize helps or hurts Xiaobo’s personal plight. It is unlikely that he even knows he won the prize, and his wife has been made “unavailable for comment”. But, I think the Nobel committee was right on with this one.

Aiming for the Center

I applaud New York’s Mayor Bloomberg for the announcement of his intention to help bolster the political center. www.digitaljournal.com/article/297779 With the angry and divisive tea party and Sarah Palin garnering so much media attention, it is refreshing to see someone of Bloomberg’s stature trying to be a voice of sanity and moderation. The mayor’s announcement coincides with former President Bill Clinton’s statement that “the Republican party is far enough right to make George W Bush appear liberal.” It is a time of perilously antagonistic politics. I like that Bloomberg is openly supporting both Republicans and Democrats. That type of position can only get the focus back on the issues and not just the ideology. I would really like to think that Bloomberg’s motivation is purely altruistic, and not, as his detractors say, merely a ploy to position himself for a run at the presidency in the next election. But for the time being, at least, he has my support.

By Sam DelPresto

Prohibition

Prepare yourself for the second coming of Prohibition. Not the actual feeble government attempt of the 1920’s, but an onslaught of shows and books about it. On top of the list is the recently released “Last Call,The Rise and Fall of Prohibition” by Daniel Okrent, . www.amazon.com/Last-Call-Rise-Fall-Prohibition/dp This book is the basis for much of the forthcoming Ken Burns’s PBS series on Prohibition. The book is a fascinating read about not just the criminal response to Prohibition that has become so much a part of the American historical tapestry, but also of the well intentioned people who managed to get a constitutional amendment passed in the first place to initiate it. For those who love politics for the sake of politics, it is a must read. Just as a teaser, let me tell you Carl Rove did not invent anything new. And if you can’t get enough of the “lore,” HBO will present a new series, “Boardwalk Empire” that will be digging in once again to that fertile narrative source. For whatever reason, Hollywood can’t get enough of this stuff, and apparently, neither can we.

By Sam DelPresto

Strange Bedfellows

Here in New Jersey, the governor has announced his intention of taking over the Atlantic City casino and entertainment district. www.nj.com/star-ledger/2010/07/christie Not since the end of Prohibition has a government eyed more greedily income from sources they once considered unsavory. I’m skeptical that the state government can do a better job than the pros., and it just doesn’t sit well with me. It’s too close on the heels of the revelations that exposed many on Wall Street as little more than gamblers who bet on derivatives using other people’s money. It brings to mind an Ambrose Bierce quote, “The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.”

By Sam DelPresto

LeBron

It’s over. Lebron has signed with the Miami Heat. www.lebronjames.com I tried a self imposed media blackout to see how long it would take before the news reached me. My sources tell me that Lebron was instrumental in capping the gushing BP oil well in the gulf coast. Also, according to a source that must remain nameless, the Palestinian terrorist group, Hamas, has announced that it will resume talks with Israel now that the uncertainty of Lebron’s free agency is over. With his trusty sidekicks, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade, he is on his way to Pakistan to calm the rebel leaders before heading over to Afghanistan to meet with Taliban officials suddenly eager for peace now that the NBA situation is more stable. So, I can understand all the hype.

I can only hope that Bret Farvre can lend a hand.

By Sam DelPresto

Minorities

As a white male of European descent, it is not often that I find myself in the minority anywhere I might wander. But I did this past weekend. Oddly enough, it was not in a place I expected to be a minority. Many of you are picturing a lot of stereotypical situations where I might have strayed. But it was not where you think. I was at a college graduation at a highly regarded university on the east coast of the United States. The disparity between us “whites” and the Asian and Middle Eastern “majority” was more pronounced during the portion of the Commencement where they conferred post graduate degrees. There was about a three to one ratio of “non-whites” to whites in both the Masters degree and Doctorate degree portions of the program. The undergraduate mix was a little more even. This apparently, was not an aberration www.bsos.umd.edu/socy/vanneman/socy441/trends/collrace.html To paraphrase an old quote, “I have seen the future, baby, and the future is now.”

Vultures

It is an inarguable fact that someone, somewhere makes money on every disaster. But the story in a recent New York Times article about the windfall profits being made by bankruptcy attorneys is setting new heights (or depths depending on your point of view) to test this adage. www.dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/03/who-knew-bankruptcy According to that article, “The lawyers, accountants and restructuring experts have already racked up $730 million in fees and expenses, with no end in sight.” for the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy alone. Fees include hotel fees, as much as $864 a night, $364 dry cleaning bills, and $500 a day limo fees for the people called in to “rescue” these assets. There seems to be no limits to fees and expenses that can be charged against the carcass of this or any other major company in bankruptcy. If there was anything left at Lehman, the cure is certain to eat it alive.

By Sam DelPresto

The Joys of Travel

I don’t travel as much as I’d like to, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like to keep up with what is hot in travel. So I was delighted to find a Hilary Travel website (www.hilary.com/travel/hip-60thompson.html) devoted to just that. Apparently Hilary is a woman’s magazine, but finding its web site seems to negate the queasiness I might normally have intruding on travel secrets from “the other side”.

Hilary covers the important issues of our times. Who doesn’t need to know where to go to find a snowmobile valet? (The Fairmount Hotel at the Fairmont Le Manor Richelieu in Quebec). And how many times have you found yourself wondering which vacation spot to bring your dog for the best gourmet pet food. (The Grove Isle Club in Miami.) These are not issues I need to tackle when I’m home! I’m in a better mood already, and I’m not even going anywhere.

By Sam DelPresto

Olympics

The Winter Olympic games began in Vancouver . (www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/11/) It is hard to remember an Olympics with less buzz going in. Perhaps it was the lateness of the Super Bowl this year, perhaps it is just that Americans have never warmed up to many of the winter sports. Other than figure skating and hockey, NBC scrambles to create interest in many of the other cold weather sports.

I heard an interesting theory as to why the Olympics don’t capture the imagination as they once did. It was said that the Olympic broadcasts, unless the viewer is an aficionado of a particular sport, are in effect, reality TV, a collection of unscripted, human interest stories; “up close and personal” in the words of the late Howard Cosell. And the one thing Americans do not need more of is reality TV.

By Sam DelPresto