This Little Piggy...

Piggy Bank

1) For many of us, the little piggy shown here was our first bank. We all learned the fundamentals of saving by putting our spare coins into the slot. Later, when certain adults made a point of trying to impress us by giving us a dollar, or, in the rarest of rare cases five dollars, we learned to pull little piggy apart, or remove the cork from underneath and insert the paper bill.

This latter move, of course, also taught us about something called borrowing; once we had the knack for breaking into piggy, we had a little taste of credit.

Sadly, we outgrew our piggy banks and graduated to small savings accounts in big bank buildings, many made of brick or granite, supported by huge columns. The bulk was to make us all feel secure about putting our money inside a place too big for a thief to carry around. These banks had names like First National City Bank, Chase Manhattan, or even Chemical Corn Exchange and each one had its own armed guard inside.

Who would have thought that, after all these years, little piggy would once again prove to be a very sound alternative to those same big bulky stone banks...

Bank Piggy/DSK

2) The French banker, Christine Lagarde, is the head of the IMF, a kind of bank of banks. She recently replaced another French banker who is so famous he is known only by his initials, DSK, who resigned after having an unseemly, at best, liaison with a maid in his New York hotel (naturally, he blames the maid, puritanical Americans, and a conspiracy for his troubles).

Ms. Lagarde has been chiding her Euro partners to get going on baling out Greece and other countries, which cannot pay their debts and are in danger of default. Collectively, these countries are rather conveniently known as PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain). Not making it up.

In case you have not been paying attention, Greece sold many $billions of bonds to banks in France, Germany and other countries, so that Greeks could continue to provide a swell vacation spot for other euros without having to pay taxes. Then the banks bought insurance in case these bonds went bust, which they assuredly will if the same banks don't lend Greece more money.

If this sounds familiar to an American audience, especially if you are unemployed, have had your home foreclosed upon, or can no longer afford health insurance, it should. Greece is playing the role of home buyers who got mortgages they could not possibly repay from banks like Countrywide, who then sold a piece of the mortgage to other suckers, who then insured the worthless stuff with the same insurer, AIG. You know the rest.

Questions: why are there so many French bankers? Why don't they teach bankers that it is not a good idea to buy bonds from Greece, instead of sound investments like ouzo or feta cheese? Why don't we let children run the banks and the IMF: even they know not to buy from Greeks bearing bonds!

3) For some years we have had an account at a certain Swiss bank. In 2008, while said bank was losing about $38Billion, we actually made more money than they did. Considering that we were unemployed at the time, this was quite a feat and made us wonder why the bank did not hire us to manage them.

This week, the banking world was shocked...truly shocked ...again to find out that a lone trader at the same bank had run up losses of $2.3Billion (so far) without the loss being detected. These kinds of traders are always called "rogues," which is a way of banks saying that all is okey-dokey because there was only one. They think this makes clients feel a lot safer.

The bank has said,"The true magnitude of the risk exposure was distorted because the positions had been offset in our system with fictitious ...positions..." In other words, we can't be blamed or fired for not knowing since the guy made up stories to cover the bad stuff and our system can only find the bad stuff, not made up stuff.

Well, okay, we feel much better about our account now; and, this also explains why there is no minus sign on the Swiss flag; always accentuate the positive.


4) At least that "rogue" trader will go to prison; we can be assured of that. But, what about all of these other jamokes, who pompously, arrogantly, deceitfully, dishonestly, stupidly and, yes, piggishly baled out their pals at our expense?  The Taliban would be too good for them.

It turns out that the little piggy bank was a very good idea after all. Oink.

Bon Courage

51 Stars

The current 50-Star US flag was designed by a seventeen year old high school student Robert Heft as part of a class project in 1958. He got a B-, until the design was accepted by the nation to be its new flag; then, his teacher gave him an A. Talk about tough markers!

Heft was a young man who thought ahead, a kind of Steve Jobs of flags, and so he also designed a 51-Star flag, shown above, at the same time, and didn't stop until he hit a 60-Star model.

In October 2001, I tried to contact Mr. Heft to ask his permission to use the 51-Star flag for a project. At the time, I thought of the extra star as a potential healing and unifying symbol, a point of reference for a wounded city and nation.

For a number of reasons that project never took flight, and I did not have the opportunity to connect with Mr. Heft, who died in 2009.

But, today, I am thinking again about that 51st-Star, and thinking that now, perhaps more than ever, the country might benefit from having a new reference point, a unifying light, a visible and symbolic source of energy, imagination and courage.

I am also thinking about all those 17-year-old young men and women out there today, and their futures. I would say to them: now is the time to be bold, to seize the moment, rise above our profound sense of grief and loss; rise too above the current national malaise and all the jibber-jabber.

Now might be an even better time to take inspiration from the Star and the imagination and confidence of that 

17-year-old boy back in 1958, to begin to re-design...everything around us that requires re-designing... which is quite a lot; 

and to not look back or listen to those who say you cannot do it. Bon Courage.

This One's For You

Stephen King At The New DMV

1) Did CT's new Governor ask Stephan King to design the new DMV? We spent 3 hrs. yesterday at the DMV in Bridgeport, CT attempting to obtain a CT driver's license in exchange for one from New York State. This was not enough time.

Recent public employee lay-offs, have caused major setbacks at CT-DMV offices. Some of the processes that citizens were able to accomplish at the Norwalk office, for example, like exchanging an out of state license, must now be done in Bridgeport or another office.

At the 3 hr. mark, having not yet even gotten to the first window to present the paperwork, we realized that we better check on the next part of the process, the eye test. The test room was filled with people and the wait was 1.5-2hrs. At that point, we threw in the towel. The nice family sitting behind us had already been there for 5 hrs, and the daughter had just been called to wait again for a test.

We have seen a bit of the cut-back future, and it is not working well. Throughout the entire experience, we can say that the DMV employees were courteous, respectful, knowledgable....and just as baffled as regular citizen- motorists about the whole ordeal.

DMV Drive-Thru

We exchanged messages with Governor Malloy's office this morning (yes, they responded immediately and the trick is to have a positive headline and to offer solutions). We made the following suggestions:

• Post wait times by the Customer Service line up front or outside the front doors. Not all processes have the same wait times, but that's a detail. Right now, the only way to know there is a 3hr wait...is to wait 3hrs. This is only a temporary fix, but why make everyone waste an entire day?
• Consider an emergency extension of licenses and registrations, perhaps 3 mos. This would allow for some planning, and a blanket extension could be honored by insurance companies.
• Create a contest for CT students, challenging them to re-design the current DMV website, which currently creates more problems than it solves and is too complicated. Today's tech-students could probably re-do the entire thing in a few weeks at a relatively low cost. Reward them with generous scholarships.

Greenwich, where we now reside, Bridgeport, and Norwalk are all in Fairfield County. In 2011, Fairfield had the sixth highest per capita income in the US. The latest national median income figures for 2009, ranked CT number one in the US. And yet, the State is currently incapable of properly and simply processing drivers' licenses and vehicle registrations.

The Governor's Office said they would discuss our proposals with the DMV, if they can get to a window.  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/nyregion/connecticut-workers-approve-contract-they-had-rejected.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

Little Tuk That Could

2) We took a ride in our friends new tuk-tuk the other night, a bright red-one with a white vinyl top and sides. This one had a little gas engine, but newly built US models all have electric engines, which provide about 250 miles per charge. You may have become familiar with these three-wheeled vehicles by way of harrowing rides around Delhi, Bangkok, or other Asian cities.

These US cousins are classified by DOT as motorbikes for licensing and insurance purposes and are legal in all fifty states; however, for CT residents, we recommend waiting to get one, as you might be able to drive one of these to CA and back before being able to register one in CT.

http://www.tuktuktransport.com/

Yabba-Dabba-Doo-Doo

Are we having fun yet?

It must have been a lot like this just before our distant ancestors came up with the design for the round wheel. Imagine Fred & Wilma trying to sleep at night, worried tomorrow would bring another day of commuting on square rocks and that the quarry might run out of coin-stones.

Here's some good news: future ages will be studying our era as if it were another Stone Age, and we're not talking Keith & Mick, we're really talking Fred & Barney. Imagine the opportunities!

I have to think that our stoney pals spent a lot of time bopping each other on the head with stone before they figured out that wheel thing. And, sad to say, Boys, but I also have to think that it was probably Wilma or one of her friends, who pointed out the advantages of roundness. So annoying when they insist on stopping to ask for directions!

It feels a lot like we're still in the bopping on the head stage.

Funny, how history repeats itself. When you look at corporate America, especially those banks (Chariots of Fired!), you really don't see too many women drivers or bright headlights either. Same for that distant planet called Washington DC.

Barney's boss, Mr. Slate

We've asked this before: would you have asked the guys at Verizon and AT&T to design an iphone? Would the brighter-than-bright boys at Encyclopedia Britannica have come up with Google? Would trade publishers been able to skip a few author's lunches to design Amazon? Please. Did the Bridge & Tunnel Authority come up with EZ Pass?

Then, why are we waiting for so many Mr. Dulls to re-invent the tax code, re-finance the deficit, figure out why we even have Greek bonds in the first place? Greek Diners, yes, but buying debt from people who think Taxes is just where the Dallas Cowboys call home? No surprise that France loved those Greek bonds; they think Jerry Lewis is a genius too.

Ah, but  we did promise good news, didn't we?

We will have to re-design everything and we will need to do it ourselves: government, education, healthcare, investing/saving, business organization, etc. No matter whether you are twenty-four or sixty-four, the good news is that everything works like a square wheel right now and Barney's boss, Mr. Slate, seems to be in charge of it all.

Apple's Steves, Jobs & Wozniak

If we can come up with a small tablet (!), with which we can see and know every star in the sky, watch every movie ever made, listen to any song ever sung, teach every course brilliantly, and on which Betty can catch-up on a video chat from Beijing with her old friend Wilma back home for free, we can fix this other stuff.

Let's Yabba-Dabba-Do It.

Fast.

Don't Call Me Ishmael

©TWMcDermott2011               (this post runs concurrently in The Rye (NY) Record)

Don’t call me Ishmael, please.

But, I have been to the great whaling island, where I’m told harpoons and surf rods have been replaced by bespoke scrimshawed golf clubs, wielded by captains of what used to be called industry. I get the news second-hand, since I left that place nearly twenty years ago.  I was somewhat frightened by the experience of bumping into too many friends from home at the Portuguese bakery, and terrified by whale-sized “jeeps” racing along the beach, where we sat, bundled, even on foggy days.

Thereafter, we installed our young ones in summer camps far enough up in Maine that only a very brave few would be tempted to visit even one weekend; and that was mandatory, in case the camp managers needed to place your rebellious child in the car for the return trip on which you might cry wee, wee, wee and much worse all the way home.

Fortunately for us, this never happened, and so we were able to discover the excellent joys of summering at home. This had the added benefit of allowing us to take our island vacation in late winter at a different well-hidden place requiring several modes of transport to reach and either an airplane or what locals euphemistically call a Fast Ferry in order to golf.

And what could one do at home, while other brethren flocked in summer to the same island on the same ferry in their vehicles bigger than many summer cottages? Well, it turns out that one can do much of what you might have done far away, and even more:

• You can find a free parking space in town on the street even on Friday afternoons. Especially on Friday afternoons!

• The only line in town is at the little ice cream store, but it is worth the wait. On a day when things are not going your way, an ice cream cone soothes many ills, and you can always walk or swim it off later. Nobody can lick an ice cream cone and not feel like a kid again, and those problems look much smaller as the cone slowly disappears.

Did someone say swim! Rye Golf Club, Playland, the Y; Apawamis, WCC, AYC, etc. Or, throw a stone from your house and it will land in your neighbor's pool, or maybe your own. The Sound itself is best of all and you can see the ladies in their white bathing caps at Manursing in the evening as they rise and fall in the swells.

You can actually park right in front of the post office to mail a card to your friend on the whaling island, who may already be suffocating from the traffic, de rigeur cocktail parties given by friends from home, and the long lines at the Portuguese bakery.

• You sit  on the open porch under the awning in the evening before dinner, feeling the breeze rise in the west. There is much less traffic on the roads and lanes and it is quiet until August, when the cicadas begin their festival.

• Some Fridays and Saturdays, you just feel like having dinner in the city. So, you get in the car and in about 30 minutes you are at a favorite uptown place, or a little longer, and you can be downtown, where all the locals have vacated and you beat the European tourists, who eat late, as they do at home. Then breeze home again, feeling much better for having the little adventure.

• Other nights, you rest the Weber, and go over to Port Chester, crossroads of the world, or at least the Americas. Indian, Italian, barbecue, tacos, fish tacos, bar taco! Brazilian? Marvel at the current balance between gentrification and true grit, and wonder if the grit will be all gone with the rising of the luxury lofts a la Soho. 

• Saturday morning at the Farmers' Markets with your basket and finally there is good corn. You buy radishes and other things you seldom buy, just because it makes you feel good to do so. You indulge your secret craving for those damn cider donuts and that special goat cheese that tastes like a mild blue. 

• There's something especially wonderful about Sunday mornings at home in church. Well, so I am told; I am not expert on this, but aren't the odds in your favor with all that extra space between fellow petitioners? 

• An evening picnic by the water on benches beside all manner of charcoal grills: the secret marinades, sauces, dressings: the multiple recipes for potato salad: real tomatoes from the garden and real corn.

• Milton Point, looking south to the city and the bridges and east over to Long Island. You might almost be in Hong Kong, except that it's prettier and the waters are less crowded. If you're lucky, you will see the moon, huge and slightly yellow, as it peeks over the tree line in the east. 

Waiting For Some Dough

                             

So, while we sit and wait like our tramp friends, we too might ask, "What are we waiting for?

I have a friend who rants against entitlements. I have heard him do so while buying a senior citizen's ticket at the local cinema and purchasing a senior discount train ticket on Metro North. This is a fellow of some means.

I have another friend, who hates the way that the country has, not so much gone to the dogs, as it has gone to the lobbyists. She is a member of AARP and AAA and practices real estate sales. She is assisted in these by a small army of lobbyists in Washington and state capitals. Even when she buys her corn flakes at the grocers, she is assisted by the corn, cereal, packaging, advertising, marketing, food manufacturing, farmer, trucking, road building, fertilizer, tractor, cash register, and grocery lobbies. Just to name a few.

Both, of course, hate other people's debt and their own taxes.

This morning, while contemplating the course of my day and making my plan of attack to bring organization and fiscal sanity to the world of municipal parking meter management, my concentration was broken by the mating calls of two very loud leaf-blowers. These things are to rakes what ipods were to stereo systems. Apparently, we must continue to be more productive and efficient in ridding our grounds of leaves, even in summer, at the high cost of our hearing and having even a semblance of quiet in the morning.

I have little doubt that the leaf-blower lobby is a mighty one, although I have a lot of doubt about whether many of those who wield these weapons will form their own associations, which would require the filling out of forms and the presentation of certain documents regarding identity.

Once more our republic stands at a crossroads. Shall we wander down Fiscal Insanity Drive or take a stroll down Entitlement Boulevard? Neither one seems to have much merit and both eventually lead to some very bare spot not unlike the one where Beckett's tramps wait in vain.

Our two political "parties," assisted by an upstart third, largely a media invention, are pretenders. They have allowed themselves to become not much more than extremely large lobbying machines for every citizen and especially for large organizations all the time, and for themselves.

The great zen teacher and, at least by my calculation, humorist, Alan Watts has written:

"...If you discover yourself in a blind alley, or even a cul-de-sac, the fact that you found yourself there will invariably tell you something."


What he meant, I think, was that this moment or any moment has its own possibilities beyond what may seem to be the obvious ones. Instead of torturing ourselves with these versions of what we might do to avoid fiscal calamity, to pull one more rabbit out of a hat whose bottom has finally worn through, we should stick with what we know for sure...


...something has come to an end.


Then, we should probably call Steve Jobs and an even Higher Power for an immediate re-design. 

But, for now let's just concentrate on what has come to an end with the proverbial whimper, because that is recognizable truth. The truth can be annoying and painful, but it is always informative in a way that lends itself to transcending the particular stinky muck in which we find our personal or national feet stuck. 


We have a no-party system; the two party system, as we've known it, is over. At least for now. When this whole charade is over next week, we will be told "the system worked" in a hundred different ways and they will all be lies.


It is better to know the real problem and not know exactly what to do about it yet, then to have manufactured one (debt ceiling) and created fool-proof solutions, which by definition are made by fools.


If we're looking for a savior:  Godot, the Good Witch, Lincoln, Churchill, or Joan of Arc, we will need to look in a mirror this time around.


If you make $200,000 and get taxed at 30%, it's easy to see why'd you'd like someone who made $2Billion to pay more than their current 15%. Actually, I'd rather you both paid the 15% and got no deductions. I't also easy to see why we would all expect GE and Exxon to contribute something in taxes, or at least to have the decency to no longer fly our flag at their respective HQ's. But, this is the easy part.

The rest is harder, but so much better than all of this waaaaaiiiiitttttiiiiinnnnngggggg.

Why We Won't See An ibox

1) Why do people love the company called Apple so much? One reason is that they see hope in the way that Apple innovates so consistently and in how the company always seems to simplify what others have made to look so complicated.

The music industry was an inbred, greedy, self-satisfied, bloated mush ten years ago. They were systemically unable to innovate beyond studio technology and their contract artist's own creativity. So, Apple created itunes and the ipod and drove a stake in their hearts.

The cellular phone industry, dominated by a few major phone "service" companies and a handful of phone manufacturers were also incapable of true innovation, with the exception of BlackBerry. Apple changed the whole scene with the iphone and the app store.

The computer industry, where Apple itself competed as David to the PC Goliaths? Complacent and still dominated by The Big Box, Microsoft. Then Apple introduced ipad. Many laughed. This week, Apple announced that the ipad is now a $6Billion business on its own, twice the size of Dell's consumer PC business, according to he Times. Apple sells every ipad it makes.


I'll bet that not a single person at Apple, certainly not Steve Jobs, ever utters the expression "think outside the box." And I'll bet that those music, phone and computer companies used that expression all the time and still do.

People and institutions that truly think outside some box do not know that they are doing so. It would never occur to a truly innovative person or company to ask others to think outside the box for the simple reason that they do not live inside any box.

2) Apple, Facebook, and Google all have one thing in common. Innovation? Maybe, but the really remarkable thing about these companies is that they show a marked disdain for Wall St. They see Wall St. as a necessary evil, but have no respect for it whatsoever.

Apple continues to give conservative earning's estimates and couldn't care less about analysts' reports. Facebook will finally go public next year, because it must, due to SEC (completely funded by Wall St. fees) rules surrounding private stock ownership. All of these institutions have an inherent mistrust of Wall St. and see bankers and their lawyers as late-coming opportunists, who structure deals to enrich themselves and perhaps a very small set of clients.

Take the recent LinkedIn IPO for example. LinkedIn's valuation has soared to about $10Billion. A day after the IPO, it was valued at $8.9Billion, making millionaires of bankers, lawyers, and employees; while making at least one billionaire.

LinkedIn. Apple, Facebook, and Google are probably shaking their heads asking: But, what does LinkedIn do?

LinkedIn's users are its only real assets. They ( Disclosure: I am one) create networks of contacts. LinkedIn provides the platform, of course, but by itself that is not valuable. Users pay no fees. The captive audience of users with their detailed professional and personal information is potentially valuable.

So, based on that value, how much did each LinkedIn user receive from the IPO? After all, by some measure, they built the company. Answer: zero. Not a dime.

Facebook, in particular, should consider that little information bite. Right, friends?

3) There has been some mention in Washington recently about "thinking outside the box" regarding deficit reduction, taxes, and reigning-in entitlements. Wash DC is the boxiest box of them all.

I cannot help thinking about what Steve Jobs and his crew would do with this stuff, if we gave them a chance. Shall we take a shot at that?

I came, I saw, itax

a) Create a Flat Income Tax with 2-3 flat rates, based on income levels and allow absolutely no deductions. None at all. Income tax becomes like jury duty in New York; just do it. Everyone pays. Period. Personal and Corporate.

b) Create a National Sales Tax. Not a VAT, just a simple sales tax. Yes, on internet sales too. Congress does not manage or spend the proceeds from this tax. Congress, by law, cannot remotely touch the proceeds of this tax and cannot change the rate at whim or exempt themselves from paying it with a special Get Out Of The Tax Card. The tax may be directed by its Trustees towards a specific area, deficit reduction for example, or education. Everyone pays: citizens, non-citizens, visitors, illegals, children, extra-terrestials. Even UN diplomats pay, no exemptions.

Simple, elegant, effectual. itax. A start anyway, even if it is just an idream. Dream of new taxes? Not new, not necessarily higher, just different.