Better to be Small

President Barack Obama’s proposal to tax bonuses given by banks who received government bailout money may have an unintended bonus. The proposal would have huge popular support in the midst of all the anger being targeted toward Wall Street (www.nytimes.com/2010/01/15/us/15tax.html) The proposed tax would apply to bank, thrift and insurance companies with more than $50 billion in assets. It would not apply to certain holdings, like customers’ insured savings, but to assets in risk-taking operations. The silver lining in all this may be found as the banks attempt to circumvent the tax, which of course, they certainly will. One solution to avoiding this tax would be to keep assets under the threshold of $50 billion. Companies could splinter off “subsidiaries” in a reversal of the way they consolidated during the late stages of the 20^th century. The result would be fewer companies “too big to fail”.

By Sam DelPresto

Bah Humbug

I recently heard about the Spanish Christmas lottery, El Gordo, or “The Fat One, that takes place later this week. It is the oldest lottery in the world, dating back to 1812, and also the largest. http://gospain.about.com/od/christmasinspain/f/play_el_gordo.htm Last year’s prize was nearly two billion euros. Tickets are expensive, 200 euros each, but you can buy “pieces” of a ticket for twenty euros. People often give tickets as Christmas gifts.

As for me, I’ll never buy a lottery ticket as a gift for someone. If they won, I’d be sick about it. I might even have to consider suicide. Imagine buying a winning lottery ticket for once in your life and handing it over to someone who you don’t care enough about to buy them a real gift. No thanks. I don’t need that kind of aggravation in my life. If I’m looking for a little gift in the one dollar range, I’ll stick to a McDonald’s gift card. Bah humbug! In the words of Ogden Nash, “Merry Christmas to almost everyone.”

By Sam DelPresto

Ratings

Sports television ratings are through the roof. All sports. All networks. The NBA on TNT is up 25% to the highest levels in 26 years. NFL ratings are hitting 20 year highs. The MLB Game 1 of the World Series hit five a year high.

www.blogmaverick.com/2009/10/29/sports-ratings-records- I can safely predict, with little trepidation that Tiger Wood’s next TV tournament will set new records for golf viewership, if not for sports ratings in general. We are either in the midst of or coming out of, depending on who you read, the second worst financial recession of the past 100 years. You don’t need a PHD in anthropology to see the connection. Escape, baby, escape. In a decade where the evening news has become an assault weapon, sports remain one of the great, inexpensive escapes. Unlike the war in Afghanistan or medical insurance reform, the intricacies of NFL playoffs can be mastered in a few short hours. Whether or not this is healthy for our society or not, I could not say. Or certainly I couldn’t say with the NFL about to kick off.

By Sam DelPresto

Tiger Woods

Oscar Wilde once said “Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.” Never was that more true than this past week. As both a golfer and an admirer of Tiger Woods, I have this to say about Tiger’s admitted “transgressions,” It’s none of my business. Steve Stricker, his friend and fellow golf professional put it best: “I don't think it's really any of our business to get inside his private life. But it all drives us to want to learn more, I guess, and I don't know if that's right or wrong. But I respect what he's doing. You know, he's trying to make it as private as he can, and it's just hard because everybody is trying to get a piece of information on really what happened. But we may never know, and I really don't care. I don't really want to know. It's too bad that it happened and that it happened at this time.”

By Sam DelPresto

What is Going On Here

According to the book “Connected” by Christakis and Fowler , every month over eleven million people around the world play a game on the internet called “World of Warcraft.” www.barnesandnoble.com/Connected/Nicholas-A-Christakis “If the people who play this game every month were their own country, they would be bigger than Greece, Belgium, Sweden and nearly 150 other nations.” according to the book’s authors. Millions of people are playing this game as you read this. (This is not by any means the thrust of “Connected”, it was merely used as an illustration of a different point.)

Eleven million playing an internet game is shocking on at least two fronts. First, how could I never have heard of something that eleven million people do every month, and second, what does that say about them or us as a society? Although it is almost impossible to find out how many books are being sold, individually or collectively, it has long been accepted that there are surprisingly few when compared to any other medium. A best seller might have a readership in the hundreds of thousands, rarely into the millions. Or put another way, more people watch infomercials on TV than read most books. And yet, eleven million people are playing something you probably never heard of. I hate a story that indicates that I am more out of touch than my own daughters, but eleven million people are hard to ignore.

By Sam DelPresto

President’s Cup

There is no other sporting event like golf’s President’s Cup. I know everyone always says that about whatever their favorite event is, but in this case I mean because there is not other event that makes me wish I was playing along in it. I can appreciate LeBron James driving to the hoop, or Eli Manning throwing a perfect 54 yard pass, but it doesn’t make me want to be in the game.

The President’s Cup does. www.pgatour.com/tournaments/presidentscup

The recent biennial event was held in San Francisco and was won by team USA who beat a team of the best international players. I particularly liked catching a glimpse of the “off the field” intrigues of the event. In a sport that is exceedingly individualized, it is wonderful to see the world’s best golfers genuinely pulling for one another. It is refreshing to see them openly applaud another’s great shot. They say that the problem with golf on TV is that the only people who watch it are golfers. If a non-golfer tuned into the President’s Cup, I think that would make him an exception to the rule. Or at least, the comradely that is so obvious would make him or her want to grab some friends and go out and try the game.

By Sam DelPresto

Sports

I’m a big sports fan. This time of year, with baseball playoffs and the NFL under way is maybe the best time of the year. Throw in college football, and there’s a temptation to kill half the weekend in front of the tube. I understand the popularity of sports in America. I get it that almost sixteen million people watched Monday Night Football. (www.tvbythenumbers.com)

But what I’m dying to know is how many people in the New York metropolitan area, where I live, watched either Northern Iowa vs Missouri State or Idaho vs Northern Illinois. Both games were available here. I figure that fewer than the sixteen million who watched MNF could even find any of the four represented states on a map. I guesstimate that about nineteen people from this area went to Northern Illinois, so they were glued to the TV. Throw in a few parents and cousins of students in Missouri and about sixteen degenerate gamblers who figured Idaho couldn’t miss with the point spread and I think the total viewership must have been about three hundred, and I’m being generous. What mostly intrigued me is the finances of the broadcast. Logic would dictate that airing these type of shows week after week makes more money than , say, a test pattern. But I don’t think by much.

By Sam DelPresto