15 Minutes of Fame

I finally made CNN. At least one of their "talk-back" boards. Still, it's cool.

The question was whether the market rebounds and the dollar's growing strength made me confident that the worst was over.

What do you think?

Here's my say that got published nationally:

Given that this crisis snow-balled over many months, gaining enough momentum to topple major financial firms, I don’t think it will just go away with an announcement by CNN that the worst is over. We took years getting here, and it’s going to be years getting back to where we were. Financial fiascoes of this magnitude don’t happen without systemic flaws. Those flaws have yet to be addressed, and until they are, it’s anybody’s guess.

Posted By jeff, Austin, Texas : April 25, 2008 11:15 pm

Copy Cat

When I was a kid, Mama's answer to "Everybody else is doing it" was "That still don't make it right. If everybody else is jumpin' off a cliff, you gonna be next?" she said time after time after time. "Everybody else don't determine what's right and wrong. Just 'cause other people's doin' it don't make it right. Never has. Never will."

Me and Mama don't agree about a lot of things. Although she's politically conservative and fundamentalistly Christian, she managed to raise a politically and religiously liberal son, in no small part because she insisted over and over and over again that I had to think for myself when it came to right and wrong.

For her, it was a moral imperative, one that I adopted and that has kept us at odds (to one degree or another) for most of my adult life.

In the end, that tension has led us to agree to disagree about certain things concerning politics and religion. Now that I'm middle-aged, she takes my opinions more seriously. That's not to say that we ever agree about philosophical points. Just that I've earned my right to my own opinions.

But there's one thing she taught me that we still agree on: other people's disregard of what is right is no justification for following their examples.

On that single principle lies the root of my distaste for the current Administration. They know right from wrong, but that knowledge doesn't seem to inform their acts. Instead, they twist and contort the law like a yoga master. They don't recognize boundaries of executive powers. And to a large degree, justify their actions on that same flawed principle: other people are doing it, so we can and must, also.

When one follows an enemy off of Mama's proverbial cliff, one becomes as repugnant as that enemy. In doing so, the enemy wins because you have become what you purport to abhor.

Mama also taught me that it doesn't matter what you say: it's what you do that counts. It's what defines your character.

Torture will always be torture, no matter how you slice it, dice it or perfume it up. We are slicing and dicing ourselves off that damned cliff, and it stinks to high heaven.

There's not enough perfume in the world to make this scenario smell good.

I've said my peace, and that's all I can do besides vote.

And sleep at night.

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The President Are in Charge

Feeling safer already. He are in charge, after all.

Bitter Pill

Mr. Obama caught a lot of flack over the last couple of weeks when he said that ordinary Americans are growing bitter. Bitter that their jobs are disappearing. Bitter that the money they make is worth less than it was a few years ago. Bitter that, even though they work hard, they’re having to choose between buying gas and buying food. Bitter that a higher echelon is prospering while the rest of us are paying for their prosperity.


The whole affair points unwaveringly to media outlets’ inherent shallowness: hype before substance at all cost. So instead of being objective, they found a word that would stir up trouble, and then used it to death.


It’s actually not dead, though. It’s still popping up all over the place when someone doesn’t have a legitimate question to ask.


The hyper-media world we live in does nothing so much as beat dead horses long after they should have been in the grave. It holds everyone to a standard of perfection and blandness that no one should be held to. One honest comment and the hornets descend, ready to sting you to death if it means getting ratings.


The questions no one’s put to average guys like me is “Are you bitter? And does it offend you to be outed by a presidential candidate?”


My job is more stable and secure than most, but I’ve been coming up on bitter for while now. My income doesn’t keep up with the rising cost of living. Everything from rent to food to organic Sumatran coffee (our one splurge) has gotten more expensive.


My dollar doesn’t buy as much as it used to, but I still work as hard (and often harder) than I used to.


I don’t even want to know what’s going to happen to my health insurance premium when it comes up for renewal July 1. My guess is that I’ll lose a little, and maybe a lot, of my gross pay.


I hope not.


I just can’t afford it right now.


Among so many things I can’t afford right now. Like new glasses or dental work.


And I’d like to go home and see Mama. Since Daddy died last July, I feel an unusual obligation to make sure she’s okay. There’s only so much I can tell on the phone, and being there in person helps put my mind at ease.

Besides, she just likes to see me. I think I’m the only kid she has that talks to her honestly and doesn’t ask for anything from her.


But I just can’t afford it. With gas going to $4/gallon over the summer, that 1500 mile round trip, even in our very fuel-efficient car, is not possible. On top of that, I’d have to get a rental for Shannon to use while I was gone.


I work hard. Really hard. I make any number of unilateral decisions about policy. I make budgets for complicated companies. I set up software to optimize performance and reporting capabilities. I establish departmental operating procedure.


But I can’t afford to get new glasses even though I need them, get my teeth fixed before I lose all of them or go home for a few days to see my widowed mother.


Today was “Administrative People’s Day”, or something like that. And I got some nice little token gifts.


Unfortunately, some chocolates and frilly note pads ain’t going to get me any more closer to new glasses, usable teeth or home than I was yesterday.


I see the divide between two Americas that John Edwards talked about so much. I am in one, and the people I work for are in another. I work as hard as they do, and am more talented than most of them. They make 3 to 4 times what I do.

How can one not be at least a little bit bitter? If one’s being honest, that is.

The Kitchen Sink

Shannon and I don’t want for a lot. We don’t have the most, but we have what we need. Neither of us goes hungry (unless we just forget to eat), and we have a roof over our heads. Albeit a more expensive roof than I would like, but it’s the cheapest we could find to get the hell out of what was rapidly turning into crack-land.

And it’s a good neighborhood. It’s a “posh” zip code: 78757. We are among the poorest in it, but I don’t mind. Old folks driving Mercedes, Caddies and Lincolns don’t normally also buy crack off the street. They’re the neighbors we got when we moved here.

They all drive a little too slow, but at least they aren’t bankrolling drug dealers.

Unless you count the major pharmaceuticals.

But that’s a different topic.

Back on point, I see stories about one food bank after another in trouble. Empty shelves and more people asking for food than I can remember.

We’d like to do more, but we can’t.

It’s not like we live an extravagant life, because we don’t. Our biggest extravagance is living in a neighborhood that is not infested with crack dealers.

They’re like cockroaches, you know. Let them get a beachhead, they’ll take over the world.

I’m not sure that self-defense should be classified as extravagance.

All I know is that I have an obligation to make sure that Shannon has a safe place to live.

Like I said, we’re paying more to live here than I would like, but the options aren’t good. We could move farther out into the suburbs, but then I wouldn’t be able to walk to work. We’d pay more in gas, and Shannon wouldn’t be able to have the car available during normal business hours. I’d be filling up once a week at least instead of the normal once every three weeks, and he’d be stuck in suburban hell with no way to get any where.

And our car would be just be sitting on a parking lot all day instead of being useful.

That’s the long way of getting to something that makes me feel like a kid on Christmas morning: we got a new kitchen sink.

It might not sound like much, but it is. We’ve been living with an old porcelain one that had a chip the size of a silver dollar in it and that was so permanently stained that it only stayed clean for a few hours after bleaching it with everything I had in my arsenal.

Now we have a nice, new stainless steel one, very deep, with a nice, tall spigot.

It’s like Christmas just when it’s starting to get hot.

I thank God for small favors. Like being able to live outside crack-land. Like having a job that allows us to afford it and have a car so that Shannon isn’t stuck home all day. Like a new, shiny sink.

Doesn’t sound like much, but sometimes little things mean a lot.

Mother, May I?

Just when we thought it couldn't get any worse: a cocky Texan who governs like Joan Crawford mothered taking a motherly look at Social Security.

Need I say more?

When the Foxes Come Home to Roost

That the economy is in the toilet should be obvious to anyone who speaks, reads or understands English. And I’m quite sure it’s obvious to many others who do none of the above. And what should be equally obvious is that the entire situation was avoidable.

The mortgage meltdown finds its home in a single event, repeated over and over again by companies that did not see the value of accurately determining the credit-worthiness of the people they were giving money to hand over fist. And all too often with no up-front investment from the buyers.

Milton Friedman said long ago that there is no free lunch. That hasn’t changed, but mortgage companies told people who either didn’t know any better or were trying to work the market by flipping property that there was. “The real estate market is a giant buffet, all you can eat, every day for as long as you want.”

What they didn’t foresee, for whatever reason, was that when the buffet got too expensive, the customers would just go somewhere else. Never mind that they had already committed to eating in the same place for 30 years.

A lot of times, they just went into hiding from the mortgage company doing it's best to track them down and make their lives miserable.

And now we have a mess. A total mess that was preventable.

Requiring lenders that have any connection to the Federal Reserve in any way what-so-ever (and most do in one way or another—if they have a bank account, they have a tie to the Fed) to have enough cash on hand to meet their obligations for continuing operations after they make an allowance for bad debt would be a starting point. But certainly not the end of the story.

Another step would requiring lenders to verify the lies that people tell to get loans. Also requiring that new owners have a substantial stake in the property. And mandating clarity in closing documents so that people understand that in so many months, their payments will quite possibly go up and explain what those indices that determine their new payments are.

From airlines to banks to mortgage companies, the on-going experiment in deregulation has been a nightmare. Now it’s investment banks that are hip deep in quick sand. Their risky investments have come home to roost.

It’s like the fox in the hen house who ate one too many bad eggs.

If those were your chickens, would you rush that fox to the emergency room to make sure he was ok? Pay for his lengthy hospitalization? Sit up nights worrying about him?

Doubtful, but that’s what’s going on right now. We’re all paying (or will soon be paying) for other people’s bad judgment. From bailing out Bear Stearns to trying to subsidize people in over their head on their mortgages, we’re all paying for other people’s bad decisions.

I'm not sure that it's either morally or ethically supportable to subsidize bad judgments. They made their nests. Now let them lay in them.

These days, it ain’t the chickens who’ve come home to roost. It's the foxes.

My Mama, the Groupie

Mama called tonight. She's leaving in the morning on a band trip. A high school band, that is. She doesn't have any kids in the band any more, but she's still going.

She raised enough money for them that they gave her a free pass.

She'll be 65 this year, and that woman gets around more than I do. Even though Josh graduated last Spring and she lost any direct connection with the band, she's still involved. Working football games and competitions, raising money and doing what she can.

When Daddy was alive and able to, they did all that stuff together. And if he were still here, I have no doubt that he'd be on that bus tomorrow morning. She'll go without him, but I doubt it will be the same.

She stays busy. She has her band stuff and her church stuff and her just trying to sort things out stuff.

This week, she's a groupie/den-mother/grandmother to a bunch of high school kids. They all call her "Granny", because that's what Josh always calls her. And they called Daddy "Pa" for the same reason.

They were much more actively involved raising Josh and Morgan than with me and my two sisters. But when we were young, they were both always working, sleeping or taking care of day-to-day issues. There wasn't time for much else.

After they retired, they had the chance to do more, and they did.

Now that Daddy's gone, Mama tries to keep her life busy and full. It's easier not to remember how much you hurt when you're taking care of other things.

At this point, I'm not sure she really looks forward to the life ahead of her. It's a very lonely one right now.

I'm glad she's keeping herself busy and surrounded by people who need her. Having people need you helps dispel the loneliness.

It's the best therapy for heartache that I know.