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I Was Wrong…… Pt 2

OK… I take back my assertion that NOTHING can possibly save the Star Wars franchise!

“I WAS WRONG!!!!!” There, I Said It!

Just so my little brother can see that I’m willing to issue a mea culpa when I make a mistake. Here is my comment on a friends Facebook page this morning. He asked:

?”Is Amazon’s Book Censorship Going Too Far By Banning Only Gay Rape Fiction?“

I said:

No. Any merchant should be free to sell, or not sell, anything they wish. That is not censorship. Amazon is geared to be a main-stream market, and even though they sell a very wide variety of stuff, it’s still a mass market site. Lets face it, this book in not ever going to appeal to the mass market.

I mean, come on! They can’t sell everything! After all… Amazon does not sell dildo’s…

And upon further inquiry…

Holy Crap!!! They DO sell dildos!!!!!

So see Throb, I’m man enough to admit when I’m wrong!!!!

Jeez! The lengths I will go to to prove my integrity…

PS. This is my favorite item for sale. It appeals to the craftsman in me.

Go See “True Grit”… It’s Fantastic!

Just that!

DADT Meme Alert – Showering With Icky Gays

I was going to blog about this one, but Althouse pretty much knocked it out of the park!

Those who are harping on the shower issue have lost track of the pervasive reality that we can’t know and can’t police what is in another person’s mind — and that people frequently think sexual thoughts. It’s utterly routine to encounter people who are thinking about having sex with you. Sometimes these are people you would regard as acceptable sexual partners and sometimes they’re not. So what? It’s insane to let that bother you. If they don’t say anything or do anything or act out in any way, it’s nothing to us. If your ability to go about doing what you need to do is undermined by worrying about other people’s sexual thoughts, then you are abnormal. It’s ironic for the people who think homosexuals are abnormal to believe that heterosexuals are abnormal.

I’ll add this point to ponder. When DADT was repealed, it was of course fodder for the talk radio set. Several callers said they have sons, daughters, nephews, what-ever that may not enlist because of gays now simply being allowed to serve openly in the military. It conflicted with their “Moral Convictions”. God it was idiotic and infuriating! So these people have no fear of getting shot at, wounded, or killed by “terrorists”, but fear having to take a shower with someone infected by “The Gay”? The concept of “Moral Convictions” has somehow been morphed into acquiescing to ones fears. I mean, seriousness, can these would be soldiers who have such high “moral convictions” even go to war? Maybe they shouldn’t enlist. Maybe we’ll have a stronger military force without them.

Why TARP Was The Right Thing To Do – Timing / Or Continuous Meme Alert: “TARP is bad, MmmK”.

A news story appeared yesterday that revealed some 98 small community banks (a “ton” as described by the headline) that took TARP funds are on the brink of failure.

98 American banks that received $4.2 billion in bailout money are teetering on the edge of collapse, according to the Wall Street Journal.

In Q2 the number of unsound banks numbered 86; the increase to almost 100 institutions – most of which are smallish banks with about $439 million in assets – comes as a result of decreasing capital and more bad loans.

Also, unlike the big banks, which basically had access to liquidity from the federal government whenever they wanted during the crisis via various emergency lending facilities, these smaller banks received only TARP funds.

Of course this story is being used by the anti-government crowd as an example of the failure of TARP. Note the hypocracy that TARP was too much, yet faults the govt for not providing the same assistance to smaller banks that they did to larger banks.

The article ignores several factors. One is that there are over 8,000 banks in operation in this country, and the 98 troubled banks that are cited are a tiny drop in the bank bucket. A bigger story are the total number of banks that are considered troubled, 919, and even that number is a drop in the bucket when compared to the total number of banks in the US. TARP is funded for $700 billion, and here we are talking about $4.2 billion? It’s not clear from the story if those funds had been paid back, but, even if they hadn’t, $4.2 billion is a drop in the bucket. Remember, as of this point, the cost of TARP has been downgraded from the original estimate of $356 billion to about $25 billion. Assuming the worst case scenario, if every single TARP bank on this list did indeed fail, that would bring the cost of TARP up to a cost of $29 billion, still a far cry from the original estimated cost.

There is more rebuttal here.

Though I’m not a big fan of TARP and it’s sloppy administration, I see it’s necessity. Compared to September 2008, the financial system is now arguably much healthier than it was two years ago. How much of the bank recovery is due to TARP can be debated (and should be), but, given the fragile nature of the banking system two years ago, and given the lack of a strong economic recovery so far, it definitely played a role. Consider this – many of the 98 banks will NOT go out of business. There is this component of capitalism called mergers, where healthy companies by up unhealthy companies on the cheap! Many of the troubled banks will inevitably be bought up on the cheap by larger banks, banks which benefited from, and stayed healthy due to the TARP program.

Finally – on the issue of timing. For some strange reason, I’m fascinated by historical periods of financial and economic upheaval… Hey, some people are into wars, salivate over times of conflict: I’m all about the financial crisis! Many people consider the collapse of the stock market on October 29th, 1929, as the cause of the Great Depression. It wasn’t. It was the trigger that started the downward spiral; it was simply a symptom of the larger problem, the unsound financial practices of the entire world financial community. The causes of the Great Depression are many, too many to be listed here, and it’s difficult to compare the current situation to that of the 1920’s and 1930’s as there are now so many safety valves in place that prevent, or at least make it harder to achieve a complete utter collapse of the financial system. The FDIC for one lessens the likelihood of bank runs, though, as we saw in 2009, it doesn’t prevent them. When examining the Great Depression, 1931 and 32 are the key years that separates a normal, typical depression, which occurred every six to ten years, from that of the Great Depression.

In 1925, there were over 27,000 banks spread across the United States, most of them rural banks. As more and more people migrated to the big cities, those rural banks lost business and ended up out of business. This is not necessarily a concern as normal economic pressures were thinning the herd. By 1929, the number of US banks had thinned to about 25,000.

(graph is from this site)

Note the severe drop in the number of banks between 1930 and 1933, almost 10,000 in three years. When a bank went under, anyone who had money in those failed banks…. That money was simply gone! Unlike today, there was absolutely no way to recover any funds – no FDIC or ability to sue stockholders or board members. So, all those people who had money in those 10,000 failed banks lost every dime they had. The destruction of wealth was phenomenal. You may be asking “The Federal Reserve existed at this time; why didn’t they do anything”? There are two answers to that question. One was that there was a fractious environment within the Fed at that time – the New York branch and, say the Chicago branch had differing opinions on how much aid should go where, or even if anything should be done at all. Since the charter of the Fed required that their actions required unanimous consent, they were basically paralyzed by indecision. They did manage to get some funds to a few banks, but it was too little, too late. So many bank failures in so short a time doomed us to live through the worst economic crisis our nation had before or since seen.

This brings me right back to TARP and timing.

TARP, if nothing else, delayed the failure of many troubled banks by maybe two years or more. Currently we are seeing an awful lot of good signals and economic indicators that suggests that the economy is getting healthier. Granted, it’s not a magnificent recovery, but it’s there. Now, knowing a bit of history, and at the same time assuming the worst (the game being played here in the original article) which would you rather see; these banks starting to fail now, during a period where a stabilizing economy can absorb the losses, or, all failing during a severe downturn in economic conditions, where bank failures would only add to, and amplify the economic decline. Seeing that we’ve already seen the later, which we call the Great Depression, I think it would be wiser to choose the former.

But hey… That’s just me.

PS. Then, from the anti-Fed crowd, there’s this gem:

Many Bailed-out Banks May Fail Anyway

Already seven bailed-out banks have failed, at a cost to the taxpayer of $2.7 billion. But the real tale of the Great Bank Bailout has been the shameless financial favoritism lavished on the largest banks, in the United States and abroad, who are fortunate enough to be allowed to conduct business directly with the Federal Reserve. Those institutions are the first recipients of the massive amounts of new money the Fed pours into the money supply via the coyly named process of “qualitative easing.” Their balance sheets have ballooned well in advance of the inflationary rising prices that will hurt the rest of us once the money begins to circulate.

Uhm… Seven banks.. he’s whining about seven banks? You do realize that, with this crowd, if the Fed had done nothing, and the 98 banks would have failed, they would be complaining that the Fed is evil because it did nothing to help them… Oh, wait, here you go!

Thus it is, and has been since the inception of the Federal Reserve System, that the rich — the largest financial institutions and their direct benficiaries — continue to get richer, while the poor — the rest of us, including thousands of local banks nationwide — get poorer and poorer, both by having our taxpayers dollars siphoned away and by having our currency destroyed in order to keep the wealthiest banks afloat.

He writes “But the real tale of the Great Bank Bailout has been the shameless financial favoritism lavished on the largest banks, in the United States and abroad“. This person probably has no idea that one of the key components of the Great depression is the collapse of the European banking system, which occurred in 1931, was also a major component of the Great Depression. So it’s not like it makes no sense to aid the European interests. Also note that this crowd is all about going back on the gold standard, ignoring the fact the financial system crashed in Europe BECAUSE of the inflexibility of gold backed currency… Thank you France.

Merry Christmas All!!!!

Just that.

Question Of The Day – “Does It?”

Read this article about New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s behind the scenes dealings with Feisal Abdul Rauf and the planners of the “Ground Zero” mosque. It ends like this:

It seems that these emails show more than the usual amount of support coming from the mayor’s office.

What’s missing from this article??? Showing that everything that is documented IS “more than the usual amount of support” for a project. It might be, but there is no baseline established to what is “normal”. Knowing New York politics, I suspect this is actually less than normal.

Still, if the Rush / Hannity / Savage / Beck crowd doesn’t run with this flawed piece of propaganda, I will be shocked!

PS. For those who come here and instinctively want to slander me as a liberal, I’m not (just ask my bleeding heart liberal little brother who labels me as a Conservative wing-nut). I just hate really crappy journalism.

‘Tis The Season To Be Geeky! Is The Windows Phone A Good Purchase?

I haven’t done a “Geek” post in a while, so for those holding on with baited breath… Here you go!… I’m getting my Geek On!!!

Have you been shopping for that perfect gift for someone, and found yourself asking… “Is the Windows phone any good?”. If you have, then you are a Geek! I’ve been asking myself the very same question. Though I’m an open source kind of guy and am not fond of their use of lawsuit threats to stifle competition, I give props to MS as Windows 7 is a fine operating system. Last month I got my Samsung Captivate and am very happy with it (Android Rocks), and everyone I know has upgraded their phones in the last year, so I won’t be making this purchase for myself or anyone else for Christmas. Still, I’ve been curious about the Windows phone… Is it viable in this market? Are cell phones yet another technology that MIcrosoft is, again, too damned late for the party? (see the Zune). Answering the last question will happen in time as people either do or don’t buy the product. The first question? Well, here is one review.

Caption This Wednesday

Considering the Empire’s consequences for parking violations, Charles understandably crapped his pants.

“Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of a bad economy stays the Kalifornia Air Resources Board from the swift completion of their search for carbon emissions violators”

“Dang, AAA has really improved their tow tucks!”

“Uhm… I think we took a wrong turn somewhere… Could you please point the way to the rebel base?”

V The K – Comment Winner: Maybe if the Senate had bothered to read the START Treaty, they would have realized Russia gets to build as many of those things as they want

Christmas Songs For The Children.

I have no money to give for them.. So instead, I sing.

As we speak, I’m making copies of Christmas Carol lyrics for the San Joaquin Valley Children’s Hospital charity gig tonight! A bunch of Fresno’s local musicians perform Christmas Carols for the children, many who are terminally ill and may not make it. Of all the playing and gig’s I’ve done in my 25 years of playing, this little one hour thing is one that I am most proud to be involved with.

Anyone else do some charity work, either with song or other contributions?

PS. Copies are made, now it’s time to go refresh “Silent Night” on mandolin. Will only be the second time I’ve played mandolin in front of a live audience. Will be fun.