What Should I Do With These Towels? July 29, 2011March 24, 2017 SUMMER NOTES Do you have any idea how long a grapefruit stays good in the refrigerator? It’s amazing. The solar panels I installed last July have generated 4,066 kilowatt hours – nearly $900 worth. I can tap an app on my iPhone from anywhere in the world to see how much I’m generating right now (2880 watts). There being 8,766 hours in a year, I’ve averaged about 450 watts an hour – way more at noon than at midnight, obviously – which is enough to keep four-and-a-half 100-watt light bulbs burning 24/7 all year. Which I would never do. By way of reference, a ceiling fan might draw 88 watts, my light bulbs draw 23 watts or less, and I never use the dishwasher (about which I have written importantly before). Here’s an idea of the power stuff draws. I got so freaked out watching my electric meter spin when the dryer was on that now, when possible, I dry my towels and sheets on the roof deck. This inexpensive Lasko fan all but makes air conditioning unnecessary. Just put it near the bed and sleep in the quiet breeze. Changed my life. (The little remote control is handy when the wind chill gets too intense.) Someone gave me 10 terrific big, bright American flag beach towels. But . . . can I use them? Is it disrespectful to use the flag in this way? Officially, it may be. For example, “The flag should never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground, the floor, water, or merchandise.” But that’s for actual American flags. These are, unmistakably, towels. Discuss. CALL IT WHAT IT IS John Kasley: “Please remember never to say, ‘recession’ without saying, ‘Bush recession.’ You can remind Donna Brazile as well. She’s frequently on TV and there are many opportunities to simply add the word ‘Bush.’ When people complain about bringing up the Bush name, remind them that brand names live on after their creators retire, e.g. Ford. Eventually, some of the media will use it, if only in quoting people who have said it. It’s like the tax cuts for the wealthy are the Republican tax cuts for the wealthy. I’m sulking because I sent emails saying this a few years ago and they didn’t get picked up in the optimism that BHO would end the recession in six weeks. Had it become part of the normal lexicon, it might have changed the tenor of some conversations today.” Bob Diem: “Have you seen the documentary ‘Boogie Man’ about Lee Atwater? I came of age in the eighties, but I never had any idea how influential this man was, and how he has spawned so much of the bankrupt political culture we have today.” DVAX Guru: “The FDA today wrote to DVAX indicating that DVAX had met the lot consistency standard, as I expected they would. ‘Lot consistency’ was the primary endpoint that DVAX “missed” a week or so ago–except as I indicated, they didn’t truly miss it, though there was a technicality that required them to word the press release as they did. They can now proceed to file for approval on the recently completed trial that showed dramatic superiority to the standard Hep B vaccine by the end of the year. I expect the CDC to recommend universal Hep B vaccination for diabetics in October and I expect a positive study early in 2012 in kidney dialysis patients. Target for the stock over the next 6 to 12 months is 6 or higher.”
Rude! July 28, 2011March 24, 2017 It’s rude to call someone selfish. But how are rich people refusing to pay a cent more when the nation is in peril not selfish? Sure, they have eagerly lapped up the line that they are “job creators” – that it would presumably be better for America if they paid no tax at all, so they could create even more jobs. (What’s magic about a 15% rate on dividends and capital gains? If it’s better than the 28% rate Ronald Reagan had them pay, wouldn’t 7.5% be better still? Wouldn’t a 2% rate just swamp us with jobs and prosperity?) No more wanting to feel selfish than anyone else, rich Republicans have embraced this line. But could many of them actually believe it? We all know selfish people, or a least know of them. Intuitively, how many of them do you think typically vote Democrat? It’s rude to call someone a bully. But how is it not bullying to tell a poor 81-year-old in a wheelchair, who’s voted all her life, that to vote this time she’s going to have to get herself to the bus and down to the Department of Motor Vehicles – with her birth certificate – and stand in line for however long it takes to get a photo ID? How is it not bullying to send Republican staffers to pose as outraged locals and pound on the windows to shut down the Florida recount? How is it not bullying for the Wisconsin Republicans to ram through a bill that strips government workers of their collective-bargaining rights? How is Karl Rove not a bully? We all know bullies, or a least know of them. Intuitively, how many of them do you think typically vote Democrat? This not to say that all Republicans are selfish bullies. Obviously. But quite a few seem convinced that ours is a Christian nation, and that Jesus would never have stood for taxing the rich or aiding the poor, or for forging compromise. No bleeding-heart, other-cheek-turner, He. I rant. I drip with sarcasm. But do you know what? Given the damage that’s been done to our country over the past decade, and that’s being done now, a little ranting and sarcasm may not be entirely out of order. Peter Stolz: “This is a great article that very clearly explains that the Republican spending cuts will be the equivalent of the largest middle-class tax increase in history. I would only add that tax cuts for the rich should hereafter be referred to by every Democrat as ‘The Republican $700 Billion Dollar Stimulus Program for the Rich.’ Because that’s exactly what it is.”
Invest To Win The Future July 27, 2011March 24, 2017 Robert Reich, from Salon, in part: . . . If consumers can’t and won’t buy, and employers won’t hire without customers, the spender of last resort must be government. We’ve understood this since [massive] government spending on World War II catapulted America out of the Great Depression — reversing the most vicious of vicious cycles. We’ve understood it in every economic downturn since then. Until now. The only way out of the vicious economic cycle is for government to adopt an expansionary fiscal policy — spending more in the short term in order to make up for the shortfall in consumer demand. This would create jobs, which will put money in people’s pockets, which they’d then spend, thereby persuading employers to do more hiring. The consequential job growth will also help reduce the long-term ratio of debt to GDP. It’s a win-win. This is not rocket science. And it’s not difficult for government to do this — through a new WPA or Civilian Conservation Corps, an infrastructure bank, tax incentives for employers to hire, a two-year payroll tax holiday on the first $20K of income, and partial unemployment benefits for those who have lost part-time jobs. . . . ☞ If it were me, I would go light on the payroll tax holiday (as grindingly tough as life is for low-income folks, at least they have jobs) and frame this more as a war: a war on our energy dependence and our decaying infrastructure. Mobilize the country to win that war, creating tremendous job opportunities – and a vision of a lean, mean, modern, competitive economy that would inspire investment. And I would pay for that wonderfully constructive war, at least in significant measure, the way wars had always been paid for until Bush and a Republican Congress took control: by taxing those best able to pay. After so many decades of having the pendulum swing in favor of the very richest, it’s not unreasonable that it would now swing back a bit for a while. CRME Suggested here at $4.60 in November, it closed at $5.59 last night. Guru: “Merck has purchased now all the rights (intravenous and oral) to CRME’s lead drug. That’s the reason for the pop. We’ve been expecting this. It could rally to 6 or more. Now awaiting restart of Phase III intravenous and Phase III oral trials later this year.” Who knows how low it could go in a bad market or with some nasty surprise. Not the worst thing to take a 20% gain in less than a year. But Guru thinks it might top 10 one day, so – assuming you bought this with money you can truly afford to lose – it might pay to hold on for a year or two. BOREF I know. I know. And yet . . . Palestine, Texas, 26 July 2011 WheelTug plc and ETA Global, Inc. announce that they have signed an agreement under which ETA Global will perform final assembly and delivery to customers (“kitting”) of the WheelTug aircraft electrical drive system for Boeing 737NG aircraft. ETA Global will also manage inventories and deliveries of spare parts for the WheelTug system within North America. This agreement adds a key supply chain piece for WheelTug systems for the 737NG model aircraft. All supplier companies in the chain are at least AS9100 compliant and have decades of experience in meeting demanding aerospace customer requirements. The patented and proprietary WheelTug(r) electric drive system uses high-performance electric motors, installed in the nose landing gear wheels of an aircraft, to provide full mobility while on the ground without the use of the aircraft’s jet engines or tugs for both pushback and taxi operations. WheelTug enables aircraft to be electrically driven from the terminal gate to the takeoff runway, and upon landing from runway exit to the gate. The resulting improvements in efficiency, flexibility, fuel savings, and reduced noise and engine foreign object damage (FOD) yield projected savings of more than $500,000 per aircraft per year, plus substantial reductions in CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions. The WheelTug system is being developed initially for the Boeing 737NG, one of the world’s most widely-flown aircraft; systems for other commercial and military aircraft will follow. ETA Global, based in Palestine, Texas, is a leading distributor of aerospace, electronic, and mil-spec component hardware, and also supplies kitting and vendor-managed inventory services. Founded in 1978, ETA Global is certified to the AS9100 aerospace-system quality standard. “ETA Global is proud to be part of the Wheel Tug team,” said Ken Wendell, ETA Global’s, Marketing Manager. “Becoming a member of Wheel Tug’s supply chain allows ETA Global to once again demonstrate why we are the leading logistics solution provider in the industry. The benefits that are represented by Wheel Tug’s new pushback and taxi system make their product an obvious solution for an industry that is constantly looking for ways to save money, lengthen equipment service time, and reduce their environmental footprint. We expect Wheel Tug to be a household name in the aerospace industry for many years to come!” “We are delighted to welcome ETA Global as a key partner in the WheelTug supply chain,” said Isaiah W. Cox, WheelTug’s CEO. “We now have in place agreements with manufacturers and suppliers for almost every element of the WheelTug system. We may in future have additional distribution relationships to announce in Europe and Asia.” A full listing of WheelTug suppliers and risk-sharing development partner companies is on the company’s website at www.wheeltug.gi. ETA Global is largely employee-owned. WheelTug plc is a majority-owned subsidiary of Chorus Motors plc. [which is a majority-owned subsidiary of Borealis]. ☞ Will our patience ever pay off? I have to think the odds continue to improve, even if they’re now only – who knows? 50-50? At 50-50, it’s still an even bet you will lose all your money, which is why this is the kind of lottery ticket to buy only with money you can truly afford to lose. But at $2.50 a share and 5 million shares outstanding, the entire parent company, Borealis, is valued at $12.5 million. Nothing, in the scheme of things.
The Bully Pulpit July 26, 2011March 24, 2017 I got an email from the Christian Family Coalition asking me to take part in a survey. The survey question was: “Should House Republican leaders cave in to President Obama’s demands and raise the debt ceiling again?” The Christian Family Coalition? I’m frankly not sure this is the loving way Jesus would have framed the question. For one thing, everyone is demanding we raise the debt ceiling, not just President Obama, for the simple reason that Congress has already incurred this debt. The alternative is for the United States to default on its commitments, wrecking its credit. By the tone of its question, is the Christian Family Coalition saying that’s what we should do? Apparently so. When the results of the poll were revealed, 85.2% said, no, we should not raise the debt ceiling (and another 3.2% were “unsure”). It seems to me that “bully pulpit” has in recent years come to take on a whole new meaning. It’s bullies, preaching from the pulpit. In this case, preaching on behalf of those who would cut aid to the needy in order to protect millionaires and billionaires from having to pay even one cent more in tax on dividends and capital gains than they are paying today (15%) – let alone the 28% they paid under Ronald Reagan. House Speaker Boehner, meanwhile, in his rebuttal last night, said that if hedge fund managers were in the same tax bracket as their secretaries, or if Exxon’s tax subsidies were eliminated, jobs would be lost. This is SO not true. Nor has he ever explained how, under the “job-killing” Clinton/Gore tax rates, we added 23 million new jobs, while under the magnificent Bush rates we have today, that must be preserved at all costs, we’ve added almost no jobs at all. His position makes no sense in theory (if anything, higher tax rates make it cheaper to hire new workers, as more of the tax-deductible cost is picked up by Uncle Sam) and it definitely makes no sense in practice – we’ve tried it. DVAX We paid $2.77 and $2.58 earlier this month. It closed last night at $2.51. Guru says he agrees with this report from William Blair that puts the fair market value at $8.
Devastating Social Security? July 25, 2011March 24, 2017 CORRECTION Until I deleted it Friday around noon, I included a paragraph about Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp paying no taxes. Turns out, Reuters got this wrong. REPUBLICANS PREVENTING MILLIONS FROM VOTING The enormity of this just keeps growing. Women – as noted in here – are particularly disadvantaged. It is outrageous, and – because so many Republican candidates for President don’t “believe in” the global climate crisis or universal health care or regulation (or evolution) – it threatens our well-being. Imagine how different the world would have been with Gore instead of Bush. No war in Iraq, no massive tax cuts for the wealthy – and thus no doubling of the National Debt and shredding of the national balance sheet. Bush wrecked our financial stability. And wasted eight years in dealing with our energy crisis (remember Bush’s tax break for buying Hummers?) and global climate change. How many more such body blows can we take? Think of it this way. Say you and a dozen crew mates were on an orbiting space station with the capacity to maintain a liveable environment indefinitely so long as you stayed within certain parameters. But that if you taxed the system too much, it could get thrown out of kilter and spin out of control. Well, we are on an orbiting space station – a very large one – and there are 7 billion of us dumping more than 60 trillion pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. Faith in God alone may not suffice to keep our systems in balance. When God created the heavens and the Earth, He also created chemistry, cause, and effect. If Michele Bachmann’s team gets its way – even though the nominee will presumably not be she – the “end of days” crowd just might be headed for their rapture after all. And still I know people who, because they always have, vote Republican. And lots of people who would vote Democrat who now, per the link above, won’t be able to. CVV Aristides’ Chris Brown: “CVV reached our previously stated target price of $17.08 Friday morning [up about 45% from its first mention here and 65% from a subsequent mention.], so I suppose we are due for an update. I agree with ThinkEquity that there are several potential very large revenue opportunities which the company may begin to win in the next 12 months. I disagree with ThinkEquity’s modest earnings estimates for FY11 (43 cents) and FY12 (48 cents); the company will be hiring aggressively, but has so much of an order backlog at good margins that they would have to ramp operational spending phenomenally in order to earn that little. Some small tech companies think nothing of burning cash, but CVV’s management has a long history of profitable performance even when revenue was low, so it’s hard for me to envision that margins will suddenly collapse. In short, current backlog and the pace of recent orders justifies the current valuation. The 2Q earnings report (likely August) may be a positive near-term catalyst for the shares, and any large, game-changing sort of order (there are at least a few possibilities out there), could drive the value of the business much, much higher. I can’t think of another company as well-positioned in emerging hypergrowth industries, let alone a pure-play, at a reasonable valuation.” DEVASTATING SOCIAL SECURITY? Here is the article that led me to suggest Friday that we not freak ourselves out if some modest, sensible Social Security tweaks are included in a budget deal. It is entitled, “Gang of Six Plan Cuts Social Security Now, Devastates It Later.” Any plan that would devastate Social Security is a terrible plan. I think all Democrats know that. But I’m reminded of President Clinton’s 4.3-cent-a-gallon hike in the gasoline tax and a woman I saw on the evening news who was truly freaked out, saying it would devastate her family. (It came to about $30 a year.) The article says that in 10 years, because of a change in the inflation calculation, benefits will be 3.7% less high than they otherwise would have been. That’s not good, and not something anyone should be eager to see happen. But it is not 10% or 25% – or even 5% – so I think it’s not “devastating.” When we could afford it – or thought we could afford it – we generally sweetened Social Security benefits to seniors*, which was a great thing to be able to do. But if, in a national crisis (and make no mistake, we are in a national crisis), we need to be 3.7% less generous looking 10 years out . . . well, this is one of the unfortunate things that decades of Republican military spending and tax cuts for the wealthy have brought us to. Maybe only those seniors who voted Republican should have to take the 3.7% hit, but that’s not how our system works. It’s important to note that as soon as the long-term health of our economy is restored, Congress can – and should – simply reverse whatever is agreed to now, if anything is, and return to the politically popular track of sweetening benefits. That’s why the projection that, 30 years out, this change will see benefits 9.2% lower than they otherwise would be – while not something to be agreed to lightly – is kind of meaningless. If we can restore our economic health, we’ll have plenty of room to restore more generous benefits, and a huge voting block of seniors calling on Congress to do just that. What I hope will be the happy paradox of this situation is that if, as part of a grand bargain that would, for example, let the Bush tax cuts expire we make long-term adjustments to the entitlement cost curves, and thereby help to get our national finances back onto a solid footing – and keep our credit rating triple-A and persuade the world to lend us money for badly needed job-creating projects to modernize our infrastructure – then all of this will improve the chances that we’ll prosper in the decades to come and won’t have to use the less generous inflation calculation after all. At the moment of course, only one side is willing to make the grand bargain, while the other side seems bent on protecting the wealthiest of the wealthy and making certain the Obama Presidency fails, thereby to regain the complete control it had from 2001-2006. Which is why the other side is working so hard to make it difficult for the young and the poor and the disadvantaged to vote. *And separate from Social Security, but still very much affecting seniors, we recently added the prescription drug benefit and are now closing “the doughnut hole,” which will be a much bigger gain for most seniors than this less generously calculated cost of living adjustment will be a loss.
Rule By Mickey’s Dog July 22, 2011March 24, 2017 SUBVERTING DEMOCRACY Look how they just disenfranchised 178,000 South Carolina voters. Look (same clip) how in Republican-led state after state they’re saying young people and poor people shouldn’t vote – basically, they don’t know enough to vote. (They can’t see Russia from their porch? They don’t know who the President of Pakistan is?) There’s big money in this stuff, folks. If you’re the Koch brothers, and feel oppressed by those who’d confiscate a quarter of your capital gains to help rebuild the country every time you make another $1 billion (what did the country ever do for them?), you revel in installing a guy (with fewer votes than the other guy) who appoints right-wing Justices – in the mold of the one who goes duck hunting with Dick Cheney or the one whose wife is a highly paid right-wing lobbyist – who then strike down the long-standing restraints on corporate influence over elections even as state laws are changed to keep the poor from voting for people who’d try to force you – the ultimate job creators – to pay taxes on dividends and capital gains at (say) the appallingly confiscatory rate you were paying under Ronald Reagan.* Welcome to the plutocracy. Peter Kaczowka: ‘If Carl was right yesterday and Democrats need to stop talking like intellectuals, then using words like ‘plutocrat’ won’t help. Most Americans think plutocracy is rule by Mickey’s dog.’ ☞ How about, ‘only little people pay taxes.’ Could we get a few Republicans to say that on camera? DMV – VOTING Here’s an energetic young guy – a small-government Republican, I’d guess – describing what a nightmare it can be to get something done at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Imagine if he were 88 and disabled but wanted to vote. Or if he had no car to get to the DMV. Or if he didn’t have his birth certificate handy. (Do you have yours?) Or if he’d lose his job for taking a day off work to go do this. Simpler just to throw up your hands and not vote – which is exactly the point. Ideally, only white men with property would be allowed to vote, as the Founders prescribed. Or watch the 27-second cartoon version. And speaking of cartoons . . . MICHELE BACHMANN Forget her debilitating migraines (she disagrees they’re debilitating, and in any event they’re only brought on by stress, so how could that be a problem if she were President?) – here it appears she believes the end times are at hand. Just the sort of person you want leading you into the future. CFPB The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau opened for business yesterday. Here are three minutes describing the law that produced it, and the ongoing attempts to thwart its success. SEARCH IS BROKEN Kirk Elliott: ‘I did a search here for ‘SYMS’ and got back a response that said, ‘GOOGLE sorry – Your computer or network may be sending out automated queries. To protect our customers we cannot process your query at this time.’ Huh?’ ☞ There was something odd here that my webmaster just fixed. (Thanks, Jason!) If it ever happens again, just use regular Google search (not my version) and include ‘andrewtobias.com’ as one of the search terms . . . so, in this case, you’d search on ANDREWTOBIAS.COM SYMS . . . and you’ll find it works fine. *28% versus today’s 15%. And sorry for the breathless sentence, but there’s a lot to be breathless about here. Watch that Steve Colbert clip. You will laugh, you will cry, and you may want – breathlessly – to forward it to all your friends. Monday (I think): Let’s Not Freak Ourselves Out If Some Modest, Sensible Social Security Tweaks Are Included In a Deal (and I say this as a guy hugely in favor of the social safety net)
The Debate July 21, 2011March 24, 2017 THE DEBATE Carl: “The GOP knows how to use language. For example, they call higher taxes for the rich an ‘attack on job creators.’ Dems need to master language also. In every speech Dems should remind the public that most of the Debt is from the GOP. Dems should constantly remind voters that even Republican economists recommend tax increases. In every speech where Republicans say raising taxes has never helped the economy they should remind voters that the economy grew almost twice as fast under Clinton than Reagan. Instead of letting Republicans call themselves fiscal conservatives we should call them fiscal math dropouts. Dems are almost always trying to play the nice guy or intellectual while being pushed around by bullies. Here is a news flash…. people don’t trust leaders who allow themselves to be pushed around. Republicans say Dems are ‘tax-and-spend liberals.’ We should say they are ‘borrow-and-spend plutocrats.’ We need to learn to communicate to the average Joe. We can do this without stooping to the levels and lies of the GOP but we have to do it in a way Americans understand. We also need to show that we believe what we do with at least the same level of fight and conviction Republicans seem to demonstrate. I know I’m talking to the choir.” ☞ When Al Gore said Bush’s tax cuts would go mainly to the top 1%, we all thought that would resonate wit a lot of voters. Research later showed that 19% of Americans thought they were in the top 1% and a further 20% expected one day to be. Here’s an idea! How about sentencing Rupert Murdoch to 20 years of community service – specifically, getting all his media outlets, among them Fox, to be genuinely fair and balanced. What a difference that would have made these last dozen years. DVAX A somewhat dejected Guru: “Trial succeeded. It showed superiority to standard hepatitis B vaccine. It also showed lot-to-lot consistency at weeks 12 through 28, though not at 8 weeks, where one lot produced slightly higher titers than the other two. The safety of the vaccine was the same as the standard hepatitis B vaccine. I guess for these small cap stocks, no one cares.” I bought more at $2.58. You never know, but the drug is likely to be approved later this year or in the first half of next year and the stock is more likely to be higher than lower. RAW DEAL I don’t agree with all of this analysis by Robert Borosage (for example, I would tweak Social Security, modestly affecting today’s young and young-ish people’s projected benefits, knowing that if we ever can make the benefits more generous, once we’re prosperous again, and they’re actually nearing retirement, Congress can quickly do so). But I agree with a good chunk of it. From my point of view, “shared sacrifice” should mean NO sacrifice for the middle class, which has already done its share of sacrificing for the last ten years, and catch-up sacrifice for the top 1%, who’ve been reaping and reaping and reaping and reaping it. THE FARM Yesterday I ventured into a farm analogy to make my point. Today, I offer this 14-question quiz aimed at educating folks about the farm bill that will be debated and passed – in some form – next year. (Hint: it should not include subsidies for mega-farms or for corn ethanol.) If you care about 925 million chronically hungry people around the world . . . though, let’s be frank, few of us really do (out of sight, out of mind) . . . this quiz may be particularly enlightening.
The Idiotic Balanced Budget Amendement July 20, 2011March 24, 2017 This is what the Republicans straight-facedly propose whenever they don’t have the White House, to remind us how fiscally responsible they are. When they DO have the White House, they quadruple the National Debt (Reagan and Bush 41) and then double it (Bush 43) – with not one peep about the need for a Balanced Budget Amendment. So, for starters, give . . . me . . . a . . . break! And for finishers, it’s a stupid amendment no matter who’s in the White House. I could do the long form of this (how you want the flexibility to run deficits when the economy is weak, and/or to make big compelling investments; how Uncle Sam’s accounting doesn’t distinguish between spending and investing – even when the ‘spending’ is to build, say, the Interstate Highway System, that should be written off over its useful life), but here’s the short form: Let’s say we ran $300 billion deficits for each of the next 100 years, at the same time as, on average, the economy grew by 4% a year (2% real growth plus 2% inflation). SPOT QUIZ: Would that be bad? SPOT ANSWER: No, it would be AWESOME. At the end of those 100 years the National Debt would have risen to $45 trillion but the economy would have grown to $700 trillion . . . making the National Debt barely 6% as large as the GDP. Like a $200,000 home with a $12,000 mortgage. Bliss. Do we have a crisis today? Yes. Reagan inherited a strong balance sheet – our National Debt ‘mortgage’ was only 30% of the value of our GDP ‘home’ – yet, with the help of two Bushes, handed Obama a weak balance sheet with National Debt rushing past 100% of GDP and an economy in such free fall that enormous further deficits were imperative to get back on track. We absolutely have to bend the long-term cost curve down and the long-term revenue curve up, so there’s the prospect that, over a long period, our debt will begin to shrink relative to the size of our economy. But in the short run, the last thing we need to do is slam on the fiscal brakes. Quite the contrary. We need to make up for the collapse in private demand with increases in government spending and investment in infrastructure. Which is good. We have enough yachts, toaster ovens, and baggy shorts for now. I don’t usually use farm analogies, but here’s one. Let’s say the previous farmer left his equipment out in the rain and snow for decades so it froze, cracked, and rusted . . . even as he borrowed like mad to finance an unnecessary range war* and lavish gifts to his richest friends, all the while neglecting the need for crop rotation. Over the years, he ran up big losses and an enormous debt. Okay? Now you’ve just been handed the deed to the farm. The underlying assets are outstanding – fertile soil and a talented local labor force. So what do you do? To right things, do you (a) fire the one mechanic who can actually keep one of the tractors running; stop buying feed for the chickens (you raise chickens); and eschew the additional debt you’d have to take on to buy seeds and plant the summer crop? Or do you (b) stop giving your richest friends lavish gifts, make peace with the cowmen, and borrow enough to plant the crop and get the farm running efficiently? Short-term you have to do what you have to do. (As in World War II we simply had to win – and ran debt up to 121% of GDP doing it.) But long-term, you set yourself on a path to efficient production and, eventually, to a lower debt ratio. Even if you don’t buy my farming methods, can we agree that the Republican campaign for a Balanced Budget Amendment is a crude form of fertilizer? * Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends / Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends. / One man likes to push a plough / The other likes to chase a cow / But that’s no reason why they cain’t be friends. – Oklahoma NABI Revised yesterday‘s item upward a bit to account for the value of their tax credits, potentially valuable in a merger.
Printing a Wrench July 19, 2011March 24, 2017 There is so much substantive work that needs doing to renew our infrastructure; there are so many talented unemployed people eager to do it. After decades of tilting too far toward personal consumption (of mostly disposable items manufactured abroad), it’s time to tilt more toward public investment, contracting with private companies to put people to work renewing our infrastructure and leapfrogging the competition. Public investment means higher taxes, especially on those at the top who have been reaping it since Bush slashed their taxes. But why wouldn’t we want to build a modern, competitive country? Speaking of which . . . BRAVE NEW WORLD We’ve talked before about 3D printing. Check this out. Printing a tool-with-moving-parts Amazing video. NABI Suggested here at $5.50 in hope of good data, Guru reports: “Didn’t work. I’m quite surprised, but does show there is always uncertainty in this game. They have at least 2.50/share in cash and 0.70/share in the discounted value of their royalties, with a minimal burn rate and nothing else in the pipeline. I expect they’ll find a way to realize at least $2.50 in value from that – and there’s still the now-remote chance something will come of their smoking cessation product. Plus, they have substantial tax-loss carry forwards, valuable in a merger.” So we lick our wounds on this one – but I probably won’t sell for less than $2.90.
Satan and I July 18, 2011March 24, 2017 THE PRESIDENT’S NEWS CONFERENCE Here. This guy is so good, his judgments so sound. Sadly, 98% of the citizenry won’t have watched more than a few snippets on the news, and the opposition more or else counts on that, as they pursue their stated top priority: seeing his presidency fail. The unfortunate corollary, of course, is that for that to happen our country has to fail. (But for only four years, which they apparently think is worth the trade-off.) If you disagree, as I know some of you do, please watch and let me know what you think. SARAH PALIN’S OPENING NIGHT Less than three years ago, the Republicans were pulling out all the stops to elect John McCain and Sarah Palin, who would be a heartbeat away from bearing the most responsibility of anyone on the planet. Her movie just opened – according to this report, not too wide. YOU LOOK LIKE A GREEK – GOD! Barbara: “You wrote, ‘Yesterday, I mentioned Oprah’s link to Satan.’ And how often do you usually talk to Satan?” ☞ Ah. I see your point. Fred Little, my seventh grade English teacher and head of the drama department, gave us a simple line to read on our first day of class. YOU LOOK LIKE A GREEK GOD. Just six words, but SO many ways to deliver them: YOU look like a Greek god (he doesn’t). You LOOK like a Greek god (but are you one, really?). You look LIKE a Greek god (but aren’t one). You look like a GREEK – god! (will you please look like the nice Italian girl we brought you up to be?). You look like a Greek – GOD! (And here it all depends on the inflection. Awe? Disgust? Surprise?) So, no. I haven’t actually talked to Satan in months.