10.16.2022 – not going to say

not going to say
I will reduce my income
to achieve this goal

Sorry to say it but after 20 some years in the news business I am not used to seeing someone, anyone, be honest in print.

Brutally honest.

In an article that everyone should read but too few people will, the New York Times quotes Eli Ungar, the founder of Mac Properties, which is based in Englewood, N.J., and owns about 9,000 apartments, including 2,000 in Kansas City, who bluntly laid out the economics of rental development.

“The folks who think of themselves as middle class and are feeling increased worry and pressure as rents go up faster than incomes, and the people who are most vulnerable in our society and desperately need housing that no developer can provide without a massive subsidy,” Mr. Ungar said. “As a citizen, I would be entirely comfortable with my taxes being higher to provide well-maintained housing for those who can’t afford it.

The question is how that is achieved, and market-rate developers are not unilaterally going to say, ‘I will reduce my income to achieve this goal.’”

As I do think this article is worth reading and I acknowledge that most folks haven’t figured out the never expiring free three day NYT accounts available at many public libraries, I have created a download version of the article you can access here.

10.15.2022 – can wipe up the sick

can wipe up the sick
scrub it with vanish but the
odour still lingers

Oh those Brits.

Describing the current UK Government moves in response to the response over the current UK moves over the economy, The Guardian had this line.

“It’s like somebody has vomited all over an expensive rug,” reflected one former minister. “You can wipe up the sick, scrub it with Vanish, but the odour still lingers.”

In the Political world were so much depends on the sort memory of the voter, thank heaven that the odour still lingers.

BTW, I debated with myself to change the spelling of Odour to the American version of Oder, but Odour has so much more, that certain yet un-certain je ne sais quoi when talking about politics and vomit.

I am becoming aware that politics, all through history, has been this way.

In the way of political action, there is nothing new under the sun.

What is new is the urgency of World Wide Web and social Media that allows to be there on the scene to see the vomit before it is cleaned up.

In the past, all we had was the odour and the speculation as to what caused it.

Today, the minute someone barfs, we are all over it.

Both to decry the barfing or to deny it depending on one’s point of view.

It isn’t that politics is a mess.

It is just that we are much more aware of it.

Not sure this is progress.

Being all over vomit is not a place I ever wanted to be.

But BOY HOWDY!, that is where we are.

From the article, How ‘knives of the long night’ led to brutally swift Kwarteng sacking,

10.14.2022 – always expected

always expected
the worst, and it’s always worse
than I expected

“I’ve always expected the worst, and it’s always worse than I expected.”, is attributed, by sources on the information highway, to the novelist Henry James.

While a great quote, I do like to find it’s context.

Stephen Fry talks about this need for attribution of quotes in his podcast, Fry’s English Delight, where Mr. Fry goes into the differing opinions on quotes.

Some think you should quote very little and always reference the original author.

Others felt the dubious practice of quoting however much you wanted, with no reference and even changing bits was okay.

It does bother me when I cannot find where a quote that the online world attributes to someone but cannot go any further than the quote itself.

So goes the thoughts on I’ve always expected the worst, and it’s always worse than I expected.

I ran across it yesterday in the New York Time.

Sadly, the writer attributed to Henry Adams.

Henry Adams.

Henry James.

Does it matter when no one reads either one anymore and all the name does is reawaken a slight echo that they might have been someone that at sometime was worth knowing something more about?

For Mr. James, I cannot say I know much about.

Wikipedia says that Henry James (15 April 1843 – 28 February 1916) was an American-born British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James.

The highest thing I can say about Mr. James, with my limited knowledge, is that James Thurber once wrote how he gathered up his courage and wherewithall and called on an ex-wife so that he could re-claim his copies of the collected works of Henry James.

The worst thing I can say is to quote Mark Twain on Henry James and say, “Once you’ve put one of his books down … you simply can’t pick it up again.

I have to admit that quote has kept me, despite my respect for Thurber, from ever picking up The Bostonians and taking a mental whack at it.

Legend has it that Beethoven once said something along the line of, “I like Wagner. I do! I think someday I will set it to music.”

The importance of getting it right verus Vass you dere, Sharlie?

Regardless.

Regardless of who said it first.

I’ve always expected the worst, and it’s always worse than I expected.

And don’t forget.

Blessed are those who expect nothing.

They will never be disappointed.

To quote Ms. Parker, “What fresh hell IS this!”

10.13.2022 – whole problem is that

whole problem is that
fools fanatics so sure, wiser
people full of doubt

In the 1933 essay, “The Triumph of Stupidity“, Betrend Russell wrote, “What has been happening in Germany is a matter of the gravest portent for the whole civilised world.“

It was in this essay that Mr. Russell stated: The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

It is much to easy to make a slight change and say, What has been happening in the United States is a matter of the gravest portent for the whole civilised world. The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

I am not so that anyone would count me among the ‘wiser’ people but I do welcome anything that removes doubt down to doubt about my own very exisitence.

Luckily for me there is the restroom in the 21st century.

When I use the restroom here at work I get overwhelming evidence that I am indeed here.

First is the mirror but mirrors have been around forever and not just in restrooms.

By chance my office is in an old building on Hilton Head Island that at one time was a restaurant.

I leave my office and go down two wide flights of steps to the sub basement where the restroom is.

When I return to my office and I get to the top of the stairs, immediatly in front of me is a floor to ceiling, wide mirror.

As The Rev Al would say, you can use a mirror to reflect yourself or you can use a mirror to correct yourself and after a trip to the restroom it is handy to have a full length image of yourself to make any last minute wardrobe adjustments.

But that is after leaving the restroom so I digress.

In the modern restroom, the facilities make note of my presence and the operate all their own my presence is no longer of note.

The soap dispenser then sense my hand and dispenses soap.

The faucet senses my hands and turns on the water.

The paper towel dispenser senses my hands again and dispenses paper towels.

The mirror reflects, the toilet flushes, the soap foams, the water gushes, the paper towels roll.

It adds up that the evidence points to me being here.

It should remove all doubt.

There are those mornings however when the toilet doesn’t flush, the soap doesn’t spit out, the water doesn’t gush and the towels don’t dispence.

I want to go find someone and ask ‘am I here?’

In one Jim Harrison story, he dreams he is lying dead in the kitchen and he wakes up his wife to go check.

I know just what he means.

Doubt.

The price of being on the wise side of life.

10.11.2022 – You can’t talk about

You can’t talk about
economy without talk
about future stuff

According to Edward Helmore, in the article, US is headed for a recession, says head of JP Morgan Chase bank: ‘This is serious’:

The US and global economy is facing a “very, very serious” mix of headwinds that is likely to cause a recession by the middle of next year, warned Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JP Morgan Chase, the largest US investment bank, on Monday.

Dimon pointed to the effects of runaway inflation, sharp interest rate rises and Russia’s war in Ukraine, as factors that informed his thinking. But he added that the US was “actually still doing well” and consumers were likely to be in better shape compared with the global financial crisis in 2008.

“You can’t talk about the economy without talking about stuff in the future – and this is serious stuff,” Dimon told CNBC at a conference in London.

I have to get excited when I hear that Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JP Morgan Chase, uses those $20 economic terms like ‘stuff.’

According to Wikipedia, Mr. Dimon attended the Browning School, and majored in psychology and economics at Tufts University, where he graduated summa cum laude. At Tufts, Dimon wrote an essay on Shearson’s mergers; his mother sent the paper to Sandy Weill, who hired Dimon to work at Shearson during one summer break, doing budgets.

After graduating, he worked in management consulting at Boston Consulting Group for two years before enrolling at Harvard Business School, along with classmates Jeff Immelt, Steve Burke, Stephen Mandel, and Seth Klarman. During the summer at Harvard, he worked at Goldman Sachs. He graduated in 1982, earning an MBA as a Baker Scholar.

With all that resume I take my hat off to a feller who can boil down the current state of the economy into words I can understand and say: You can’t talk about the economy without talking about stuff in the future – and this is serious stuff.