Algorithm

Have you noticed how often you hear or read the word, algorithm, lately? If so, you may have wondered what it is exactly, since no journalist or newsreader ever seems to explain it to you. Wonder no more: an algorithm is:

1) another annoying thing about high school.

2) a Vice-Presidential birth control method.

3) the reason your nerdiest friend is really, really wealthy.

4) how google makes oodles of boodle.

5) a secret kept from former SEC inspectors even after being hired by a hedge fund to make coffee.

6) a dance performed by a Nobel Prize winner.

7) a process that transformed The Pet Rock into Twitter.

8) a magic way for people with no money or job to buy a huge house with no money down.

9) a way to calculate how many years we will all be paying for #8.

10) one of many reasons to forego Harvard and hang more with your nerdy friends.

Does that help? Thought so.

Speed, The New Capital

If you are getting your information from mainstream media, especially from TV, it is time to rethink that strategy. If you depend on The New York Times and/or The Wall Street Journal for your view of what's really happening and its future impact, think again.

Here are five things to think about that you won't see, hear or read about in the "Official Version:"

• Speed: The front page angst over the relative merits of capitalism or socialism is beside the point. The math does not work for either one. The point is that private and social capital moves faster than our business, political, educational and religious institutions. And, it is accelerating. Crises form, occur, and begin to ease much faster than our political and media organizations can think or act. Red/Blue, Left/Right, TV/pulp are all too slow to predict or react meaningfully. They are stuck in the past.
• Time: Because communication of information is getting faster and faster, time is compressed like information. Our days are packed, because we never go offline; we are connected. Consequently, we will need more time. There goes the quaint idea of The Weekend. We will need six or even seven days to repay our debts, keep up with emerging- market citizens, hold our jobs/clients, and re-educate ourselves.
• Connection: The woman across the aisle from you on the train can't let go of her BlackBerry; she wants to be connected. The man waiting impatiently in line for a quick sandwich, cannot stop searching in his BB: his boss might need him. Once, we enjoyed our freedom to disconnect, even if for a short period of time. Today, we see being connected as freeing us to do more. It may be an illusion, but it is a fact.
• Engage: We connect because we want to become engaged. We cannot talk back to a piece of paper. Letters to the Editor take forever. We want to have a conversation and be part of the process, not just be a recipient of information, but to participate. Newspapers and magazines were slow to get this. Congress and the New York State Senate do not get this. Obama got it, still gets it, but the old system will try to crush him from both the left and the right. They do not like engagement, because it is so much more immediate and transparent, exposing their constant and massive embezzlement of the US economy.
• Search: Google is in the advertising business and may already be obsolete, but search is here to stay for a while. We are desperately searching in order to be connected, in order to become engaged in a conversation. The speed at which we search compresses even more searches into our days. Speed has become the new capital.

This is not an endorsement, just an observation. Have a nice "weekend."

Take My albany, Please!

Remind me once more why we need to have state governments and capitols?

Take Albany, as Henny Youngman used to say, please. A wealthy, brilliant but egocentric reforming NY State Attorney General becomes Governor, then proceeds to focus on a petty feud with a minor league upstate politico. He tops that by using prostitutes in a way that screams, "Catch me, suckers" all the way to the front page on his resignation day.

And that was before David Paterson, the son a major state politico ascended the "throne." He famously blew a 20-run lead with two outs in the ninth by throwing nothing but home run pitches to the press and the world while trying to fill Hillary's vacant Senate seat. A third grade class in Utica could have done it better. At least they would not have stupidly and purposely dragged a Kennedy through the mud along the way. Even Illinois can fill a Senate seat better than that, can't they?

Not to be outdone by a legally-dumb Governor, this week the NY State Senate just self-destructed in public. These guys make Illinois Rudy look like Churchill. When not legislating, they must have all be running GM or Chrysler auto dealerships into the ground, or maybe a dozen small banks into bankruptcy. The worst outcome of this debacle is that the Governor has sworn not to leave the state, since the interim guv would be one of the Senate clowns. This alone should be cause to end this hilarity fast and buy him a one way ticket. Carson City is nice at this time of year.

What do state capitols do that cannot be done by somebody else, somewhere else. DMV? Please, this can be outsourced in twenty seconds (hopefully, not to a company controlled by a state senator's nephew). Education? Does anyone believe that Albany has done a fabulous job of managing and financing schools and actually teaching our kids? Ask Mr. Bloomberg. Bank and Insurance regulation? That's a good one; Bernie Madoff could do a better job from prison.

It is very hard to think of anything that the states through their capitols and clueless politicians can do well or will ever be able to do well. Sending tax dollars to Albany, Springfield, Sacramento, etc. is like shoveling them into a huge compactor: citizens' dollars go in and come out as nickels.

Once, The Empire State might have seemed like a noble idea, one centered on a thriving "west" and a booming port at the mouth of the Hudson. Once, there must have been a real reason to have an Albany in the middle of it all. No more.

Close it down before it sucks us all dry and makes clowns of us all. You might not even notice that it's gone, but you will be better off for it.

Ordinary Americans

We hear and read a lot lately about the "ordinary American." Politicos wonder if they are Blue or Red. Greens wonder if they will ever stop driving SUV's. The President wonders if they'd mind owning an automobile company or a bank, or maybe a bunch of these. Banks don't seem to wonder or care about them at all. There is a sub-set where I live called "ordinary New Yorkers."

The funny thing about ordinary people is that you can't really find one. I asked five citizens over the weekend if they were ordinary and got five different kinds of denials. They seemed to think it was an insult.

Banking, insurance or hedge fund executives know that they are extraordinary people; that is why they can take a much larger piece of any pie than customers, investors or taxpayers. Congress-Persons are not so much extraordinary as they are uber-ordinary, since they lead the way as debtors, enable poor managements at banks and auto companies and are expert at double talking ordinary people into being Red or Blue in order to be re-elected.

If you have college-age children, you know that professors and college administrators are perhaps the most extraordinary Americans of all. Ordinary Americans borrow billions of dollars to pay a kind of ransom known as tuition. Some pay or borrow enough to buy a half-dozen SUV's to pay the ransom for their children's education. Colleges are managed pretty much like banks, auto companies and Congress, which means not at all.

Why do ordinary Americans pay $50,000 a year to colleges? So their children will not be ordinary Americans, that's why.

A lot of people are in transition in their lives right now, especially Boomers. I sometimes recommend that they take a ride on the Staten Island ferry. This is not because they will find a great solution in SI; it is because on the return trip they will have the same view as millions of immigrants who came to this country. It is a view that inspires you to achieve your dreams despite all obstacles. There is the Statue lighting your way, the magnificent harbor, the rivers forking around the island, the empty space where tall buildings once rose, the tip of the island extending to greet you.

The exercise is about pretending to be an immigrant. You're carrying a bag of clothing and your life's savings, maybe a couple of hundred bucks. You alight from the boat, touching down in America. You think, what will I do now, as millions thought and worried before you. You are no longer just a Boomer stuck in transition; you are still scared, but in an entirely different and compelling way.

Most importantly, you realize that nobody comes to America to be ordinary. The whole point of America is to be extraordinary.