Job Searching

{Herself is posting today.}

Yesterday the Ol’ Curmudgeon was separated from his job after 14 years of loyal service to his corporation. He is searching for a job, and there won’t be any posts from him for a while.

Don’t despair, however, he is irritable and crabby about the political and economic situation as well as a number of other things.

As I am doing most of the cooking, I will post the occasional recipe to keep this blog going – if you, the loyal readers, don’t mind!

Liars and Blame Gamers –

This current financial mess is generating more lies and finger pointing than I can believe. The Democrats are trying desperately to wiggle out from under and responsibility. They are lying through their teeth.

The first point that the Dems try is the lie that de-regulation is responsible for this. The second is pointing fingers at the Bush administration. The fact is that the sub-prime mess is as a result of the libs noticing that black borrowers got approved 70% of the time and whites got approved 80% of the time. No one ever commented that Asian borrowers generally got approved 90% of the time. The immediate liberal reaction was that this just had to be racially motivated and that only nasty racial bias could be blamed. Nonsense. The only color sense that money people have is green. The fact that the black community is more concerned about identifying with baggy-drawered rap punks with poor attitudes than with learning good life skills doesn’t seem to compute. Money people don’t care about the color of someone’s skin. They care about their track record of repaying loans in a timely manner. It costs money to go after bad payers or slow payers. It costs money to deal with the whole repossession bit. Repossessed property generally can not be sold at any kind of profit.

Lenders also did charge higher interest rates to people in neighborhoods that had track records of poor repayment practices. They were vilified for “predatory” lending practices. The fact is that it costs more to do business in bad neighborhoods than in good ones. Since libs do not seem to think that people should pay the penalties for their own actions and decisions they didn’t think that the people receiving these loans should pay the price of doing business in their neighborhoods.

Be that as it may. The Congress passed legislation to force lenders to offer “fair” loans to sub-prime borrowers. This was done by the Democrats. Now when Congress passes laws a couple of things happen. First, the business community has to figure out a way to implement the new law. Second, they have to figure a way to make a profit doing so. Poorly thought out and poorly written laws which address huge amounts of money generally attract all kinds of opportunistic people. It is of interest to note that the majority of the bribes – sorry contributions – that came from Fanny Mae, Freddie Mac, and others which have benefited from these laws have gone to Democrats who are on the committees that oversee these programs. Dodd and Obama have been the majority recipients of these bribes.

Early in the first Bush administration there were reports and warnings that we were headed for a mess. The Democrats on these oversight committees pooh-poohed and denied these reports.

Now, there are those who think that the government can solve a depression – which we do not have yet. In fact, we have not had a recession yet. But anyway, government can do nothing to make a depression better other than get out of the way. Those who worship FDR have not studied history very well. Even those who lived through it don’t seem to understand economics. FDR and the New Dealers did not make the depression better, they made it worse and prolonged it. The stock market crash of the late 1980’s was worse than that of 1929. The standard response of the left was to become hysterical and cry out for “the gummint to DO SOMETHING”. Ronald Reagan – the only president who actually studied and understood economics – refused to let Congress do anything rash and stupid. The economy recovered quickly and we had lower unemployment and greater prosperity than at any other period in our history.

Now we are faced with a 700 billion dollar bailout. Just how much will wind up in the pockets of Congressmen as bribes so that the fleas and ticks that feed off government programs can gorge at will.

Only thing I can say for sure is it won’t benefit thee and me. And we will ultimately wind up paying for it.

Last point. Financial decisions made to appease some politically correct bunch are suicide.

Corporations and Morality –

We humans have created the very interesting entity known as the corporation. Among the marks of the business corporation are:

1. Transferable shares (think stock market)
2. Perpetual succession (just because the president dies, the corporation does not)
3. Limited liability

The corporation has several characteristics that legal types like to talk about, among them are the ability:

1. To sue and be sued
2. To hold assets in its own name
3. To hire agents
4. To sign contracts
5. Make its own internal laws to govern itself

The corporation provides “limited liability” for the owners of the stock. Basically this is supposed to mean that a stockholder cannot be held liable for more than the value of the stock owned.

Now another characteristic or two that seem to be overlooked in discussion are the fact that no matter what the intentions of the founder(s), the only purpose for existence of the modern business corporation is to make money. This not necessarily a bad thing. Without the modern corporation we would not be able to have the production and economy that we do. Corporations provide a living and retirement for millions. This is a good thing.

However, the second characteristic is a result of the first. Employees can distance themselves emotionally from the consequences of other corporate employees. Like this: a company make a potentially useful product that may have unforeseen long-term consequences. Years later the consequences emerge. The people directly responsible are gone, dead or retired or just move on. The current crop of employees had nothing to do with the development of the original product and feel no need to accept responsibility. Now the lawyers get rich, and frequently the injured parties do not have the resources to fight lengthy and complex court battles. This is a bad thing. The corporation gets by with no penalty for the consequences of the past actions. Individual people may be moral. Groups of people are amoral. I might also point out that the corporation, particularly chemical, may have put out a decent product and that people down the line misapplied it. If we humans have an opportunity to screw up, we will.

Now, as I said, corporations are necessary to the modern world, but they sure have drawbacks. Congress tends to try band aids for problems that frequently make things worse. After the scandals of the 90s, and early 2000s, Congress tried a band aid in the form of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Now SOX, as it is known, is one horribly complex set of regulations which boil down to making corporate executives personally responsible for the accuracy of financial statements. Now this sounds like a really good thing. However, there are unseen consequences. First major hitch: never again will a technical person ever head a major corporation, or even be in the upper tier of management. Sounds OK until you realize that no financial type ever created or inspired or approved a major technological innovation. OOPS! We will have increasing profits by job cutting, corner cutting, whatever makes a quarterly short term profit. There will be no investment in long term returns, and strong technical people will have less and less say in the future direction of the corporation. More and more jobs will go overseas. The labor is cheaper even if not as good. And the stockholders will fiddle while Rome burns, as long as there is a dividend. Thanks, SOX!

Obviously, the above is a rather quick and dirty description of a tremendously complex problem. Several things are readily evident:

1. We must have corporations unless the population of the world goes back to pre-industrial agrarian support levels and people work long hours just to eat.
2. We have to figure out how to make corporations responsible for the consequences of their actions.
3. We must protect the investors.

These are some tough questions. They will require tough answers that have been thoroughly thought through. We already have bad legislation that is stifling American industry. We don’t need more. We need some far-sighted long-term legislation for a change. And we definitely need to properly regulate corporations because – the title is misleading. Corporations are amoral.

Are We Crazy Like a Fox . . .

. . . or are we just plain dumb?Here lately the news media has everyone in a snit about the economy. Another example of newsies making the news themselves by getting loose bowels over nothing from all I can see. A recession when we have full employment? Yeah, the stock market does some ups and downs and they report every little correction as though it were the end of the world. Let us remember that the current “down” for the market is still higher than ever before in the history of the thing. Also remember that without a “story” the newsies have nothing to do. If there is nothing to panic about they will make a mountain out of a handful of dirt so that they can report on the new mountain.

Yeah, the banks are hurting a bit because they loaned money to people who were unqualified and/or were buying way more house than they could afford. Let them suffer a bit. There is nothing in the Constitution that says that banks are guaranteed a profit when they make dumb moves.

So, now the government is going to “give” us a tax rebate. First off, how is it giving when all they are doing is rebating the money that we have paid in? I will grant that there is somewhat of a “gift” aspect since they want to use some of my money to give to those who don’t pay taxes, but for most of us it is only a bit of that which was taken from us to start with.

Next, it seems that we are going to be borrowing some money from China. Of course, the Washington crowd says that these are not related. Yeah, and water runs uphill. I don’t really see this as any different than the spendthrifts that charge their plastic to get some ready cash when they are already in hock up to their eyebrows. When you borrow on your plastic the repayment is many times the initial amount. Borrowing your way out of debt does not work.

There are several ways to look at this. Either the President and the Congress have lost their minds and are just spending us into more debt, or there is some clever plan behind all this.

Dumb possibilities – we are just getting more debt and China is just another benign creditor and it will only cost us many times the amount borrowed to repay it. Next dumb possibility – China has always wanted us out of the Pacific, they regard that as their own. They want all Pacific territory up to the California coast and will use this as a weapon to weaken us and call the loan when we are most vulnerable. This also means that they would be totally thrilled to see us destroyed by Islam, which would give them free rein in the Pacific.

Smart possibility – the Chinese have changed their spots and just want us as a valued and healthy trading partner and know that we will spend most of the rebate on stuff that is made in China. This will put them into a position of vested interest in seeing that we remain free, strong, and solvent to be a really strong consumer of their goods. This would also mean that they would have a strong reason to help protect us and the rest of the consuming West from destruction by Islam.

Have the Chinese changed their goals? I don’t really know, but their track record does not lead me to think so.

If the President and the Congress really want to give us a “tax gift” the best thing that they could possibly give us would be the Fair Tax – with no revisions or amendments. Oh yeah, cutting pork-barrel spending would be really nice. If these idiots cut out their fat we could be debt-free in record time.

Fat chance. Odds of the Chinese changing their spots are somewhat better.