Bailout redux: apples to apples, dust to dust...

"Bailout" is currently without a doubt the most abused word in the English language. Merriam-Webster defines bailout as follows:

Pronunciation: \ˈbā-ˌlau̇t\

Function: noun

Date: 1951

: a rescue from financial distress

Note the use of the word "rescue", defined (again by Merriam-Webster):

: to free from confinement, danger, or evil

Following the massive Treasury aid package to the financial markets, Detroit's Big 3 automakers are clamoring for for a "bailout" package of their own. Politicians allude darkly to the undemocratic imbalance of bailing out "Wall Street" while ignoring the plight of blue-collar America in Detroit's factories, and demand that the automakers be saved from bankruptcy.

This discussion has been framed incorrectly, with politicians playing to our innermost fears of elitist rule in Washington, where insiders shunt tax-dollars to their fat cat friends while Larry Lunchpail gets laid off from his job with GM. Wall Street banks were hardly bailed out. Massive efforts were undertaken by government to keep the financial system as a whole from breaking down irretrievably, but there were - and will be - many banking victims of this crisis. Bear Stearns: gone. Lehman: gone. Merrill Lynch: ditto. Wachovia, IndyMAC, Countrywide - gone. Goldman and Morgan Stanley: probably converting to bank holding companies. Citi is cutting its payroll by tens of thousands of employees. And the pain is not limited to the United States in this global economy. Northern Rock was nationalized. UBS is badly battered and is unlikely to be around in its current form at this time next year. So let us be very careful in using the term "Wall Street bailout". The banks were not rescued, the system was (we hope).

So if the same rationale is applied to the auto industry, we ought to be looking for ways to maintain auto manufacturing capacity in this country, not prop up individual manufacturers. There is no reasonable way to shore up a manufacturer which burns over a billion dollars a week in cash. Furthermore, there is no reason to. There is no reason the taxpayer should pay for stupid decisions made by management and union leaders for the past 50 years, without improving the likelihood of the industry's survival. Much as with the aid package for the financial system, any help provided to the auto industry is going to come at the cost of jobs and companies. Why does Chrysler even exist? And GM with its many useless brands: Who drives an Oldsmobile? As to Ford: I recently saw a Jaguar X-type station wagon (an "estate" for the benefit of my UK friends) for Pete's sake. Overcapacity, poor planning, lousy union contracts - the rot goes from top to bottom. Reasonably, the government ought to insist on prepackaged Chapter 11 filings for Ford and GM and split the useful bits of Chrysler (if there are any) up between them. Government aid should be in the form of Debtor-in-Possession financing during the period of Chapter 11 reorganization, with most of the principal dollar amount converting to preferred shares once the companies emerge from bankruptcy protection. Just as there really was no free lunch for banks and bankers, there will be no free ride for automakers.

Note to Google and T-Mobile: How not to recruit new users

I am a classic late-boomer early adapter of new technology. I like having new stuff. I like it when that new stuff is whiz-bang and comes in black. I wait until the first reviews are in, but never until the second release - I'd rather buy the upgrade than be late to the game. The only reason I don't have an i-phone is because I am on T-Mobile. Imagine my excitement when the G1 phone with the Android OS was released! I diligently waited until the first reviews were out, and then I scooted down to the T-Mobile shop to dutifully hand them my hard-earned scratch in return for this techno-bauble. Amber was helpful (as always when the smell of my wallet wafts into the store) and immediately had the demo G1 out on the desk. I checked out the very cool street-level view on Google Maps using the compass function. I used the keyboard. I moved apps from the menu folder to one of the three desktops. Then I went to the central functionality as far as my needs go: the browser. The window opened, and - nothing happened. It didn't connect to the Google homepage. Google is where I live. Email, calendar, chat - all Google. I am their dream user. But the screen remained grey. Amber was a bit embarrassed. The manager called another location to find out whether they were having trouble with their demo device. Nothing happened. The Yahoo! homepage was available. MSN was available. But no Google homepage. Well, eager beaver that I am, I was willing to assume this would not happen with a brand-new out of the box device. I loved that little machine and it would be mine. I turned to Amber, looked into her eyes and, using my most sincere consumer baritone, told her I would take it - 2 year contract extention be damned. More embarrassment. "We don't actually handle those out of the store. You have to go online to upgrade your device". Wait, what? Since my home market is not yet 3G, T-Mobile do not provide in-store 3G product for sale. Maybe they are afraid a black hole will form. I don't know. However, not to be deterred (even though my enthusiasm was waning by now), I had her go online to my T-Mobile account. Login, password, etc. Click on "Upgrade your Device" - again nothing. "We are unable to process your online request". I looked at Amber. Amber looked at Eric. Eric looked vaguely uncomfortable. Amber perked up "You could just do it from home later!" she chirped happily. I smiled, picked up my wallet and left. Before climbing into my car, I cast a last look over my shoulder at the T-Mobile logo. A store which sells what some central office decides it will send them, can't stock what people want, and advises customers to find work-arounds to get the product themselves. The socialist centralized economy did not break down at the end of the Cold War. It moved into the mall down the street from me.


Postscript: Soon after this posting, my T-Mobile device crashed. I was so fed up that I went across the street to Verizon. I now have a BlackBerry 8830 World Edition running on a 3G network.

(Un-)Natural Disasters

My teenage daughter - let us call her "Epicenter Esther", or "EE" for short - is not a walking disaster area. In fact, she is generally careful about her appearance, although her parents do not always approve of her choice of wardrobe. This recent increase in attention to her clothing and makeup may be due to maturity or the influence of her boyfriend, a nice boy obviously destined for sainthood (or martyrdom, depending how you look at it). But, I digress. EE is not herself a disaster area; however, she appears to be the root cause of major disruptions in the force wherever she appears. Let us use her room as an example. The average appearance of her room would make hardened earthquake rescue teams cry as they searched for survivors amidst pulled out drawers, piles of bras, sweatshirts, last year's schoolbooks and unfinished games of monopoly. Our dogs whine and turn back instinctively from her door. Our house cleaner makes the sign of the cross, mutters under her breath and moves to another room. You get the picture? Assume now, that she has straightened her room and tidied her belongings - this does happen occasionally, precipitated by threats of various severity on my part. Let us further assume that she has left the house with her room in this pristine state. Fast forward to her return. The moment she walks in the door, before she even goes upstairs to her room, papers start to drift to the ground from her desk. You can hear her closet doors opening as she takes off her shoes, and as she starts to walk up the stairs, her underwear jumps out of her dresser in joyous greeting. By the time she actually makes it into her room, most of her belongings are making every effort to validate the theory of entropy. Lightbulbs have burned out and candy wrappers are inching across the floor looking for a dog to swallow them, so they can be puked up again in the living room. She never even has to touch a thing. I know this to be true, because no living being can wreak such havoc in 30 seconds (the time that elapses between EE entering her room and my following her in to ask silly questions about homework, exams and soccer practice).

The above situation has given me some ideas. If one teenage girl can be the cause of such calamity, imagine what could be done with a dozen of them. Airdropped into a foreign (obviosly hostile) country, this teen-girl cluster bomb could bring the entire economy of a mid-sized nation to a standstill within hours. The first department stores would be empty, burned out shells within minutes. Hair salons would be reduced to rubble. Public transportation systems would collapse because train conductors and bus drivers would be unable to find their shoes. The government would fall in a day or two. And nobody would ever find their socks again. Ever.

"...your call is important to us..."

No, it is not, you lying sack of offal. If it were, you would hire additional two-headed, cross-eyed Appalachian imbeciles to take the call when it comes in. Just saying.

(Mis)Represented

With the election over, my political ego (small and retiring to begin with) has withdrawn into a corner to lick his wounds. Suffice it to say, my candidates did not do very well. I only picked one winner, a challenger for a Congressional seat. It's a good thing we don't bet on everything in this country the way they do in the U.K., or the kids would be going without their gruel this month. But in the course of getting clobbered in the election, I started to wonder about representation. All my adult life, I had taken it as a given that once an election is decided in a constitutional democracy, those elected do their best (as pathetic as that best may sometimes be) to represent all their constituents. And that means people of all political stripes. (This model, by the way, does not work very well in Singapore, where election districts which oppose the President can't seem to get roads fixed or storm drains cleared). But the last eight years have been marked in the United States by extreme partisanship; you could be the idiot child of married first cousins, but if you swore fealty to the ideology of the ruling party, you could accede to positions legally held to be above politics (e.g. U.S. Attorneys, most memorably). For eight years, there was no "loyal opposition", only those who wanted the best for the country (and infallibly knew what "best" was), and those who treacherously sought to do harm by slowing the ideological forward progress of the Bushies. An oversimplification? Perhaps. But it was the outgoing President's biggest flaw that he did not attempt to open his mind to the arguments of those who did not agree with him. The defensive walls were drawn so close to the President's inner circle that even his erstwhile Secretary of State, Colin Powell, was outside the "circle of trust". Having a sense of manifest destiny and an unshakable faith in your own convictions are admirable traits in some; for a President, who is bound to accept the "advise and consent" structure of our democracy, it is a terrible failing. The job is too big, the problems too complex for one, or two, or even a dozen people to be correct 100% of the time. President Bush came to that realization far too late to save the legacy of his presidency. Presidential scholars will surely find much legislative good that was done during the past eight years at Mr. Bush's urging. The general public, however, is left with the hangover aftertaste of wasted opportunity. If President-elect Obama does nothing more than restore some level of public faith in government, he will have done well. We need to know that the government is of all the people, and for all the people.