yay vacation!

Vacation time. See you all in 11 days. Maybe less. Probably more.

what's wrong with a recession?

Why are the people who seem able to influence what happens during this financial morass seem so interested in avoiding a recession? Have they become so arrogant that they believe they can move beyond the economic cycle by simply printing more bail-out money? We need pain and we need it now. The alternative is much more pain in a few years.

But the system could collapse they say. So what? Is a little revolution now and then such a terrible thing? It's only fitting that we're due for a financial revolution and we get a sprinkling of cultural revolution thrown in as well. There will be blood, most of it metaphorical, but some of it could be literal and that might help remind people what it means to be responsible and accountable for the downfall of a system through the systematic flaunting of the rules and regulations that were placed there for a reason. It's a revolution, not a sound and cohesive financial system.

We as Americans also must accept the fact that we need to pursue, on average, a lower standard of living. Simplify. Don't obfuscate.

panic, not at the disco, on Wall St.

I suspect LinkedIn is seeing a spike in activity from some (ex-)Wall Streeters this week. (Yes Jack, I'll updat my profile eventually.) That's right Lehman, your storied history has been trumped by your sub par management. Tragically, your management was only slightly less stellar than that of Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, Merrill Lynch, Countrywide (that's right Mozilo, we didn't forget your role in this disasterpiece), and Washington Mutual. It's a good thing my money with WaMu is federally insured, but only for as long as the US government is solvent. You mean it's not solvent? (feigns surprise)

If anything, Lehman wasn't necessarily the most poorly run of the aforementioned all stars, they simply weren't big enough to win a bail out. My favorite financial blogger, Barry Ritholtz, ran through the the lessons learned from Bear Stears and why some earn their way (read: stumble) into a bailout while others are less vampirish. I think this sentence says it best, "Don't just risk your company, risk the entire world of Finance. Modest incompetence is insufficient -- if you merely destroy your own company, you won't get rescued. You have to threaten to bring down the entire global financial system." And now with what used to be the thirteenth biggest company (as a function of revenue) in America on the cusp of a conservatorship, it looks like we've decided to become socialists. Hurray? Or is it Hooray?

We just need to ask who's going to be next in line for a handout. No, we don't have to wait since it looks like it's going to be the automakers. I would've guessed airlines, but I can only assume that they were too busy figuring out how to continue to lose their latest loans. In all fairness, the airlines are doing what they should have done several years ago: cut routes, cut service, raise rates, charge for incidentals, and fly slower. Airlines going out of business is good for the industry. Sure it's bad for consumers and I don't like it since I fly more than the average person, though much less than any road warrior, but it is necessary. It would have been a good thing to see a major automaker go out of business too. Damn you Cerberus, why did you buy Chrysler? (I bet Nardelli is going to have just as much success running that ship as he did with Home Depot. And who knew Dan Quayle was part of that group. Weirdness.)

Back to the the financial debacle that is rapidly sinking this country. What happened? What should we do? And why are all the proposed solutions going to suck more than normal because it is an election year?

Some people want to circle back to housing and blame this on the collapse in the housing market and how it's pulling down the value of CDOs and other investments and et cetera. Damnit, that's so wrong. It's right in the sense that housing appears to have been the trigger, but it doesn't really address the root cause of the problem.

We're the problem. America has become complacent, allowing itself to be run by people of less than stellar moral fiber and we seem to implicitly accept this as sound management. Why was housing ever as expensive as it was? Why did people think it could only go up? How and why were people able to purchase (I use that term very loosely) houses with no-money down, in fact, paying even less than the interest on the mortgage? Why was so much stacked upon so little? Why do people think that they can get rich quick, have a free lunch, have their cake and eat it too?

My friend Jack is right. We should be angry. Actually, we should be pissed off. Perhaps I've been listening to too much anti-capitalist, angry, Flobots music (but it is really good and seems to fit so well right now). Damn, it's late and I'm getting up early. More anger coming.

sunday's ike update? or not

Who cares. It didn't hit here and I'm not in Houston and neither are any of my employees. Now, as for North American headquarters, they get enough perks as it is so I shan't be shedding any crocodile tears.

In other fantabulous news, I am taking a moderately well-deserved vacation in two weeks. I'll be overseas haggling over the appropriate color of lederhosen to wear while studying finely crafted timepieces. As to when I'll be back in sunny California? Probably when it isn't so sunny, let's say the week of New Year's if all goes well.

the boy who cried wolf

My great concern with how Hurricane Ike has turned out for Victoria, specifically our employees is that it was a lot of hype and no payoff. I certainly didn't want mayhem and destruction to descend upon the city, peoples' homes, and the yard, but we essentially saw nothing from the hurricane and I can already tell that some people will not take the next threat as seriously. Despite generally well-intentioned efforts, the forecasting of weather is a task that has a high margin of error.

As natural disasters go, hurricanes are agonizingly slow. We've been staring at Ike for over two weeks, even before it had a name over at the National Hurricane Center. Once a storm actually gets a name, there are a bevy of other sites available to spew forth colorful graphics and models, but almost all the raw data comes from the NHC. I favor like Stormpulse and Weather Underground for fancy colored things. The NHC site does have satellite imagery that you can watch in a loop, though I wish it went back more than five hours. It still is a very interesting look at how a hurricane moves.

All this forecasting is great but there's just so much of it. And the disasterpiece that was Katrina has made people in this part of the country both acutely aware of the consequences of being ill-prepared and somehow over-confident in their own preparations. Some of that is due in part to the fact that many people in the Gulf Coast region who are not from New Orleans generally look down on people who are from New Orleans. It would be fair to say that a not insignificant portion of that disdain is racial in origin. You may live above sea level, but a storm surge will still flood your home if you live in low-lying areas, especially places near water.

As far as disasters go, earthquakes have a certain suddenness that defies prediction and even some preparation. As much a logistical nightmare it is to evacuate people for a monstrous hurricane, it's simply not possible to even hazard a guess as to when an earthquake will strike. Hurricanes however can change direction and in this instance, by the time they realized the severity of damage Houston would experience, officials knew it was more dangerous to evacuate several million people from the city than to have them ride our the storm. The only mandated evacuations came from the coastal counties that were certain to flood.

saturday's ike update

Well, that was spectacularly boring. I might not be saying that if I as one of the 2.6 million people without power in Houston, but we did not see a lot of storm action in Victoria. In fact, it didn't rain at all last night and winds were probably never over 40 mph. As the past week progressed, the storm track forecast went from a landfall south of Corpus Christi all the way to it's actual landfall right by Galveston. And as big as Ike was (nearly the size of Texas by some measures), we were simply lapped by its gentle edges.

Houston is a mess. I am told that except for the hospital district, most of the city does not have power. The storm surge has flooded a large portion of the land between Galveston all the way to Houston Hobby airport.

Our yard is already very nearly up and running. Now if only I could get everyone to return to town instead of treating this like a vacation.

friday's ike update

I have made my decision and will be riding out the storm here in Victoria. Due to the change in the storm's forecast track closer to Galveston, the city has moved some of their emergency personnel to other counties that expect to be more severely impacted. No mandatory evacuation order has been issued and, at this point, none is expected. I will be up until about 01:00 to see the expected update before going to bed tonight.

There was a distinct quietness about the city today. Most businesses were closed today, though some were open in the first half of the day. I went for a short walk this afternoon from my place to Target. Some wind, but cloud cover wasn't complete and not a drop of rain yet. From what I have seen, less than half the homes have boarded their windows, but it seems to vary a lot by neighborhood. I would venture to guess that most of the boarded homes belong to people who have also left town since most of that occurred two days ago when Victoria seemed to be in greater danger.

I saw some interesting sunset colors and bands of clouds after dinner. Now, the wind is still blowing, but it's not what I would call strong. With landfall near Galveston, we should see a relatively boring hurricane for Victoria. I have been told by a friend in Houston that some parts have already been flooded by the storm surge, which is Houston's great threat. The city is a drainage nightmare and it's probably going to be very bad.

For work, I plan on being back at the yard by noon. I expect the weather to be raining and gusty but we should be striving to be operational as soon as possible provided that we do not lose power.