I am not a good friend. I am not good at staying in touch. In some ways the people of my past stay fixed in that past. They exist for me as only memories of that era. I rarely bring those people forward with me. This is one of the reasons the whole idea of Facebook, of going public, makes me a little nervous.
In some ways I think I'm afraid of worlds colliding. The man I am today doesn't necessarily jive with who I have been in the past. Maybe I'm embarrassed now of who I once was, or maybe I'm embarrassed of who I am now from the perspective of who I once was.
I am 'the man' now. I work a 9-to-5, I'm married, and I have kids. Heck, I even live in the suburbs. I'm not the rebel I once was, sure, but I'm not nearly as miserable as I used to be. In fact, I am quite happy.
There are risks in reconnecting, but it is not like I've been in hiding. I've been writing a blog for something like four years. A Google search will find me pretty quickly. Actually reaching out to people, as Facebook creatively requires, risks bringing up all of those things from the past, all of those traumas and dramas. There is a lot in my past that I'd rather not revisit, no matter how I feel about the people involved.
Who I am today, though, is a result of all that happened before. I may now be an MBA candidate, but I also have an MFA in Creative Writing. I may have a good job in corporate finance, but I also finished writing a novel (still unpublished and not even yet submitted) last summer. I may spend what little free time I have playing with my children, but I also spent years drinking too much and playing in bands. I may be happily married now, but I spent years either pining or having my heart broken by women.
I am venturing forward into a strange virtual world of social networking and at the same time I am venturing into my own past, opening up boxes that had been closed and tucked away. Maybe now, today, I can be a good friend--at least, virtually.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Damon-Garr/1590769401
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Why I Don't Care about AIG: Outrage and Indifference
We live in hyperbolic times. Extreme reactions are the mode of the day. Everything is the "worst." Everyone has something to be angry about. Me? I couldn't care less.
This whole AIG mess is a disappointment, but it has been since Day One. In some ways it's like watching a friend with a drinking problem get himself into trouble again. Maybe you could be upset about it the first time something similar happened, but when you find out that he's used the money you lent him to buy more booze, you should not be surprised. Or outraged.
Who should I be angry with? AIG and the poor sap the government (we) put in charge? The government officials who "didn't realize" that they had bonuses to pay out? The derivative traders who took the irrational risks in the first place and got us into this whole mess? The new administration who wasn't even in place when we wrote the company the first check? Or Chris Dodd or Barney Frank?
None of them. I can't bring myself to be mad at any of them. Maybe it's because I have other things to worry about. Maybe because I think there are more fundamental problems with our economy than AIG paying out retention bonuses with our money. I now think we should never have got involved. Though there are problems in that.
The question in my mind is How big is too big to fail? Letting Lehman Bros go under spooked the market and we haven't yet recovered (I blame Hank Paulson for this--he, ex-Goldman Sachs, seemed happy to help out his friends, but when someone he didn't like was in trouble, he said "screw 'em"). So maybe letting AIG, who is responsible for insuring a lot of the debt out there, go under would be a bad idea. And I'll definitely agree that there's moral hazard in all of this. It leads to irrational risk taking. If I keep bailing my drunk friend out of jail, when does he ever learn to shape up?
Couldn't we have said that AIG was too big? Couldn't we have forced them to sell off or just dissolve the division that had put them in this position? Why just say, here you go, here's a big check, and in exchange we'll take a stake in this mess of a company?
But we haven't learned the 'too big to fail' lesson yet. When Merrill got into trouble, we pushed Bank of America into taking them, making them bigger in the process. I understood the theory for all of the bail outs at the time, but I'm ready for a little creative destruction. We have a banking and investment system that is all screwed up. They're all tangled up and twisted around, with no one paying for the risks they've taken.
And sure I could be mad at CNBC and all the cheerleaders telling us to buy and buy, all the people saying the market was going up so things must be great, the economy is strong while out in the real world things were turning sour. The media issue is separate. There should be no mistaking that CNBC or the Wall Street Journal is on the side of business. That's your mistake if you thought otherwise.
Really, I'm disappointed. One would have thought that someone would have realized earlier that using lent money to pay huge bonuses was not a good idea. One would have thought that taking a majority stake or any large stake would have given us a seat at the table. One would have thought that the government officials and legislators would have had the best interest of all of us in mind. One would have thought that there were people around who were smart enough to figure out how to get us out of this mess. One would have thought we'd have known better to believe any of this was true. I'm disappointed--with us.
This whole AIG mess is a disappointment, but it has been since Day One. In some ways it's like watching a friend with a drinking problem get himself into trouble again. Maybe you could be upset about it the first time something similar happened, but when you find out that he's used the money you lent him to buy more booze, you should not be surprised. Or outraged.
Who should I be angry with? AIG and the poor sap the government (we) put in charge? The government officials who "didn't realize" that they had bonuses to pay out? The derivative traders who took the irrational risks in the first place and got us into this whole mess? The new administration who wasn't even in place when we wrote the company the first check? Or Chris Dodd or Barney Frank?
None of them. I can't bring myself to be mad at any of them. Maybe it's because I have other things to worry about. Maybe because I think there are more fundamental problems with our economy than AIG paying out retention bonuses with our money. I now think we should never have got involved. Though there are problems in that.
The question in my mind is How big is too big to fail? Letting Lehman Bros go under spooked the market and we haven't yet recovered (I blame Hank Paulson for this--he, ex-Goldman Sachs, seemed happy to help out his friends, but when someone he didn't like was in trouble, he said "screw 'em"). So maybe letting AIG, who is responsible for insuring a lot of the debt out there, go under would be a bad idea. And I'll definitely agree that there's moral hazard in all of this. It leads to irrational risk taking. If I keep bailing my drunk friend out of jail, when does he ever learn to shape up?
Couldn't we have said that AIG was too big? Couldn't we have forced them to sell off or just dissolve the division that had put them in this position? Why just say, here you go, here's a big check, and in exchange we'll take a stake in this mess of a company?
But we haven't learned the 'too big to fail' lesson yet. When Merrill got into trouble, we pushed Bank of America into taking them, making them bigger in the process. I understood the theory for all of the bail outs at the time, but I'm ready for a little creative destruction. We have a banking and investment system that is all screwed up. They're all tangled up and twisted around, with no one paying for the risks they've taken.
And sure I could be mad at CNBC and all the cheerleaders telling us to buy and buy, all the people saying the market was going up so things must be great, the economy is strong while out in the real world things were turning sour. The media issue is separate. There should be no mistaking that CNBC or the Wall Street Journal is on the side of business. That's your mistake if you thought otherwise.
Really, I'm disappointed. One would have thought that someone would have realized earlier that using lent money to pay huge bonuses was not a good idea. One would have thought that taking a majority stake or any large stake would have given us a seat at the table. One would have thought that the government officials and legislators would have had the best interest of all of us in mind. One would have thought that there were people around who were smart enough to figure out how to get us out of this mess. One would have thought we'd have known better to believe any of this was true. I'm disappointed--with us.
Saturday, March 07, 2009
Mass. Wal-Mart customer finds teeth in wallet
Mass. Wal-Mart customer finds teeth in wallet
FALMOUTH, Mass. – A customer shopping at a Wal-Mart for a wallet claims he found something that definitely didn't fit the bill: human teeth. Police say the man found 10 human teeth Saturday when he unzipped a compartment in the wallet. One tooth had a filling.
The customer turned the wallet and the teeth over to employees at the Falmouth store but left without giving his name.
Police investigating the incident told The Cape Cod Times that the teeth belong to an adult, but since there was no blood or gum tissue on the teeth, they would be unable to perform DNA tests.
A Walmart spokeswoman said the company believes it was an "isolated incident," but will investigate.
Mmmm...okay?
FALMOUTH, Mass. – A customer shopping at a Wal-Mart for a wallet claims he found something that definitely didn't fit the bill: human teeth. Police say the man found 10 human teeth Saturday when he unzipped a compartment in the wallet. One tooth had a filling.
The customer turned the wallet and the teeth over to employees at the Falmouth store but left without giving his name.
Police investigating the incident told The Cape Cod Times that the teeth belong to an adult, but since there was no blood or gum tissue on the teeth, they would be unable to perform DNA tests.
A Walmart spokeswoman said the company believes it was an "isolated incident," but will investigate.
Mmmm...okay?
Cheever in the WSJ
As you can tell, I read just about nothing besides the Wall Street Journal these days. Blame it on working too hard and studying too much. Trying to stay up to day takes up what little I have left. Nevertheless, I read a good article today made me want to read. I'm really read... fiction.
David Propson, editor of The Week, uses the publication of The Library of America John Cheever complete novels and collected stories and a new biography as an occasion to revisit Cheever. My own reading of Cheever has been limited, though the big Pulitzer-prize-winning short story collection sits on my shelf and on my reading list. From my suburban perch, the article makes Cheever's study of suburbia sound like something I ought to be reading.
His subjects were the hung-over train commuter, the pill-popping analysand, the indefatigable bed-hopper. Their habitat was the pretty suburban house, the swimming pool, the cocktail party and the bomb shelter -- a habitat only recently erected atop the bucolic land that Cheever adored. They purchased groceries to the strains of Muzak Mozart and ate fast food from "Smorgorama and Giganticburger stands."
...
Cheever's suburbanites aren't stuffed-shirt fogies but shallow hedonists who refuse to grow up. Marriage, far from being a repressive institution, is a sprawling and unpredictable terrain. The extramarital affairs of his male protagonists end in catastrophe, or simply end. Conformity sometimes seems to be the threat, but quite as often it's just one of two evils. People's own unruly natures endanger their happiness, just as weeds creep up the lawn. His characters sense the precariousness of the civilization they've cobbled together and cling to it all the more.
Like I said before about Lee Siegel's idea of suburbia, Cheever's is also one that is hardly recognizable today. Gone are the swimming pools and cocktails, replaced instead by beer and kiddie pools. This is middle class suburbia, sprawl, and malls, and Starbuck-ed neuroses. Today's suburbia deserves the same sort of study. And Cheever deserves another read.
David Propson, editor of The Week, uses the publication of The Library of America John Cheever complete novels and collected stories and a new biography as an occasion to revisit Cheever. My own reading of Cheever has been limited, though the big Pulitzer-prize-winning short story collection sits on my shelf and on my reading list. From my suburban perch, the article makes Cheever's study of suburbia sound like something I ought to be reading.
His subjects were the hung-over train commuter, the pill-popping analysand, the indefatigable bed-hopper. Their habitat was the pretty suburban house, the swimming pool, the cocktail party and the bomb shelter -- a habitat only recently erected atop the bucolic land that Cheever adored. They purchased groceries to the strains of Muzak Mozart and ate fast food from "Smorgorama and Giganticburger stands."
...
Cheever's suburbanites aren't stuffed-shirt fogies but shallow hedonists who refuse to grow up. Marriage, far from being a repressive institution, is a sprawling and unpredictable terrain. The extramarital affairs of his male protagonists end in catastrophe, or simply end. Conformity sometimes seems to be the threat, but quite as often it's just one of two evils. People's own unruly natures endanger their happiness, just as weeds creep up the lawn. His characters sense the precariousness of the civilization they've cobbled together and cling to it all the more.
Like I said before about Lee Siegel's idea of suburbia, Cheever's is also one that is hardly recognizable today. Gone are the swimming pools and cocktails, replaced instead by beer and kiddie pools. This is middle class suburbia, sprawl, and malls, and Starbuck-ed neuroses. Today's suburbia deserves the same sort of study. And Cheever deserves another read.
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