NYC looking North from the EMPIRE STATE BUILIDING. Photo by DAVID ILIFF, license HERE (proportions slightly altered from the original photo)

UP @NIGHT

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UP@NIGHT

 

 

UP@NIGHT

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Early to bed, and early to rise,
Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise
- Benjamin Franklin.
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I don’t see it.
- George Washington
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Now both of these are high authorities – very high and respectable authorities – but I am with General Washington first, last, and all the time on this proposition.
Because I don’t see it, either. . . .
Put no trust in the benefits to accrue from early rising, as set forth by the infatuated Franklin – but stake the last cent of your substance on the judgment of old George Washington, the Father of his Country, who said “he couldn’t see it.”
And you hear me endorsing that sentiment. 

Mark Twain, “Early Rising, As Regards Excursions to the Cliff House,” MARK TWAIN IN THE GOLDEN ERA 1863-1866.

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A daytime view from the uptown Offices of UP@NIGHT (Proving that the blogger can survive the light.)

New Poll: Americans Want More Health Care Coverage

 
Cartoon, National Library of Medicine, Public Domain

For months now we have been left with the impression by the news media and the Republicans that Americans are in revolt against Obama’s health care legislation.  What’s the evidence?  Polls have shown more Americans currently disapprove than approve of the legislation.  Now we have a poll that finally asks several of the right questions, including whether the law should have done more!

“A new AP poll finds that Americans who think the law should have done more outnumber those who think the government should stay out of health care by 2-to-1.”

Read the article here:  AP Poll: Repeal? Many wish health law went further Many of us have thought that there was something seriously misleading about polls that simply asked whether you favor the President’s health care legislation.  We now have a good idea why.  The Democrats should not run away from health care.  They need to tell the American people that if the Republicans take over, they could lose any chance for getting the health care that the majority of Americans need and want.

The Unpatriotic Corporation

One doesn’t need a Ph.D. in economics to know certain facts about the current state of America’s economy:

1) Unemployment continues to be a serious problem not only for the unemployed but for the economy as a whole.

2) Consumers are skittish about spending money, so they can’t help drive an economic recovery.

3) In response to fears about unemployment and the economy, consumers are paying off debt.

4) Reducing debt may be a a good thing for individuals and for the economy in the long-term, but when too many people do it all at once it leads to less goods and services being bought, which reinforces and helps sustain a recession or a weak recovery.

5) Many of the largest corporations in America are sitting on huge sums of cash.  Among the reasons for not investing it and hiring new employees:  aversion to risk, preoccupation with the current bottom line, and hefty profits through making current employees more productive, that is, making them work longer and harder.

Enter the Bank of America.  You know, the corporation that American taxpayers shelled out 45 billion dollars to rescue.  Its past and current behavior exemplifies the failings of many giant corporations to do the right thing in national crises.   Make no mistake about it, the way that the Bank of America mistreats its customers is bound to reinforce exactly the types of behavior that will maintain the economy in its present anemic state.

Let’s take the story back a few years.  It seems that for several years the Bank of America has been arbitrarily raising interest rates on its credit card customers.  Here is an excerpt from an article on MSN from BusinessWeek, February 2008.

Credit card issuers have drawn fire for jacking up interest rates on cardholders who aren’t behind on payments but whose credit scores have fallen for other reasons. Now, some consumers complain, Bank of America is increasing rates based on no apparent deterioration in their credit scores at all. The major credit card lender in mid-January sent letters notifying some responsible cardholders that it would more than double their rates to as high as 28%, without giving explanations for the increases, according to copies of five letters obtained by BusinessWeek. Fine print at the end of the letter — headed “Important Amendment to Your Credit Card Agreement” –- advised calling an 800-number for the reason, but consumers who called say they were unable to get a clear answer. “No one could give me an explanation,” says Eric Fresch, a Huron, Ohio, engineer who is on time with his Bank of America card payments and knows of no decline in the status of his overall credit….But Bank of America appears to be taking an even more aggressive stance because, beyond credit scores, it is using internal criteria that aren’t available to consumers. That makes the reasons for the rate increases even more opaque….Analysts also say they are surprised by the magnitude of the rate increases Bank of America is imposing on affected cardholders.

You can find stories all over the web about Bank of America’s bad behavior regarding its credit card customers.  Recently it appears that BofA has accelerated the use of one of its strategies: arbitrarily reducing the credit limit of customers who have very good credit histories, pay on time, and pay more than the minimum.   The deal goes like this:  You borrow an amount from BofA at a good interest rate.  After a few months you get a call.  You are told that your credit limit is being reduced to almost exactly what you owe.  When you ask for an explanation, you are given transparently bogus reasons.   And there is no appealing the reduction.  This action is unfair to credit card customers because it can adversely affect credit scores.  Consumers now appear to be maxed out on their cards when 24 hours earlier they had a nice cushion.   A lawyer in California became so incensed about this practice and arbitrary increases in interest rates that he threatened to sue the BofA.  The story can be found in the Huffington Post, January 2010   An excerpt:

“Banks have done really well figuring out ways to screw people without making themselves legally liable,” said Ira Rheingold, director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates. “I think [the limit reduction] is another example of Bank of America’s venality. Whether or not it’s a successful lawsuit, I don’t know. Whether I think it ought to be challenged — absolutely.”

But maybe Bank of America is just trying to do what is best for its shareholders.  That’s often what you hear when companies are challenged about their executives’ pay or other practices.  Yet BofA doesn’t seem too keen on giving its shareholders a say in the pay of its executives.  For example, a Los Angeles Times headline on February 23, 2010 announced:

Bank of America resisting shareholders on executive pay. . . The bank is working to keep investor proposals on executive compensation off the ballot.

The machinations of BofA are sad stuff.  The resulting likely behavior from customers with reduced credit lines: pay off debt more quickly and spend less money in the marketplace.  Of course this will only help to extend the anemic recovery.   The fact is that the actions of leading banks and corporations have often not been good for the economy.  They rant and rave about taxes and the federal government, but it’s a shell game.   (Banks and their supporters will tell you that the reason they are not loaning is because of federal regulations.  BofA is currently sitting on 172 billion in cash.)  The intense preoccupation of corporations with the bottom line (and the well-being of their executives) has left millions of Americans un- or underemployed.   The way that credit has been handled, for example, has increased the fear that we will never come out of this downturn, which will only help to prolong it.

Socialism is no threat.   Corporations only looking to the bottom line, which in times such as these is downright unpatriotic, are a threat.  It’s time for companies that have done so well in America to stand up and sacrifice for America.  We are not asking you to become charities, although you were willing to take our charity when you needed it.  We are asking you to spend some money, damn it, and put people back to work, even if it’s not the absolutely best thing for your corporation’s current bottom line….and stop harassing responsible citizens while you do it.




Oh, and just in case you might be worried about the well-being of the former Chairman of BofAm, Ken Lewis, here is what ABC news reported regarding his retirement pay in 2009.

Outgoing Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis’ nearly $64 million retirement pay puts him ahead of most, though not all, fellow major bank CEOs who have left their institutions during the financial tumult of the last two years.

America, The Shining Light on the Hill?

I usually drive to work along the Hudson River.  It’s a nice drive.  Beautiful old buildings to my left and the Hudson on the right.   But today I took the bus through the city.

In northern Manhattan there was a man, an African American man, dressed in a manner that clearly identified him as a Muslim, trying to cross the street after the bus passed.  I reacted.  “What a brave man to announce his religious affiliation in this manner.”  I was horrified.  My immediate reaction was to fear for his safety because people would know his religion.  I didn’t have time to consider, “Have we really come to this?” before the bus drove by the mural reproduced above.  (Photographed with an iPhone.)  It appears to have been painted around the time of 9/11 or shortly thereafter.  (The bottom third is certainly more recent.)  It speaks of unity.  The unity of New Yorkers.  The unity of Americans.  Of all Americans.

I now hear that there is preacher who wants to burn Korans to make a statement.  To show the world that we aren’t going to let Muslims get away with…with who knows what.  Political figures, such as Newt Gingrich (a man with a Ph.D.), are making frightening and spurious claims about Muslims.  There is no doubt, the sickness that is religious prejudice is infecting America, making a sham of the most cherished values of this nation.  And yes, I am well aware that we have not always lived up to these values.  But to see how far we have sunk in nine short years leaves one breathless.   The 9/11 terrorists would be laughing in their graves, if they had them, for what they have managed to do to us.  We have come to fear fellow Americans for no other reason than that they profess to be Muslims.  And if you think that this is not due to base prejudice and fear, consider how many Americans started to assail white (former?) Christian males after Timothy McVeigh slaughtered 168 adults and children in Oklahoma City.   (Or perhaps a better analogy: suppose an all white anti-government militant group, identifying itself as Christian, blew up the Washington Monument and the White House.  Would white Christians then be treated as suspect?)

America is in bad shape economically.  We have suffered through years of wasteful war.  But we have come through hard times before.   Let’s hope we can do so this time without condemning the innocent.

The Problem with Mad Men Mania

[Originally Posted July 25, 2010 at 9:42 pm at UP@NIGHT]



…………..Mad Men Casting Contest………………………………..The Wire (Wikipedia)………..
Tonight Mad Men returns.  I liked the show.  I liked it before it became popular.   (It’s not The Wire, but then, hey, what is, except The Wire.)

But now I fear for the youth of the country.  The photo on the left–which I believe I have legally downloaded from the Mad Men web site since it is an advertising gimmick, which is in itself pretty funny–says it all.  You can be in this photo.  And it seems that many people would very much like to be in it, at least judging by the Mad Men mania among the young, many of whom collected in Times Square tonight dressed in period costume.  The photo on the right is of a group of characters from The Wire, a show that struggled to stay on the air.  (Its last season overlapped with the first season of Mad Men.)  It never found a large following in its five seasons, although today it is considered by many critics and viewers to be the finest TV series ever produced.  It is set in present-day Baltimore and one of the things that it is about is how America is broken.  It is highly unlikely that The Wire could have advertised itself by holding a contest that says, you can be in this photo.

Mad Men is great fun.  The acting, the clothing, the furniture, the nicknacks, and that wonderful lighting.   And of course the show is dutifully critical of aspects of the period that it portrays.  As a matter of fact, the narrative arc was apparently meant to swing from the uptight and hypocritical 1950′s to the liberation of the ’60′s.  But something perverse seems to have happened or be happening.  In our dark economic times the atmosphere and staging of the show are becoming the message.  And this message seems to be: it’s kind of okay to forget about how awful and repressive the 1950′s and early 60′s were if its artifacts provide the fantasy or eye candy that we need in order to escape from our own times.  I know, you are going to say that I am going too far.  It’s not the TV show’s fault if it’s seductively adorned.

A short personal sidebar.   I was a child in the 1950′s and a young adolescent in the early 1960′s, yet I can still feel the claustrophobia of the period.  I can tell you that offices were rarely glamorous.  They were enclaves of sexism and repression.  I remember working in one as a mailboy in my teens.  Men were stuffed into cubicles or small offices.  Women worked in outer areas as secretaries–a version of what you see in Mad Men.  The hierarchy was fixed.  I can swear that the men spent half their time either making passes at the secretaries or making juvenile sexual jokes about them, which were not much different from what I heard in the high school locker room.  If I were a girl at the time, I would have said “ick.”  (Of course, I couldn’t actually say, “ick,” or I would have been seen as a sissy.)  What about the clothing, you ask.  Let me tell you, when you actually had to wear this sort of clothing day in and day out or be ostracized for not wearing it, it wasn’t any fun.  (I had to wear skinny ties in a public school until the late 1960′s.)

Perhaps I am getting worked up over nothing.  After all doesn’t the show’s creator, Matthew Weiner, feel much as I do about the period?  But I am not the first to suggest that Weiner may be conflicted regarding his own creation.  (See Natasha Simons.)   The period is romanticized even as it is criticized.  Let’s be clear, the romance is a mistake.  The period was so bad that if I invented a time machine I would make sure that it would self-destruct before it could take anyone back into it.  From this perspective, the Mad Men contest photo does not appear innocuous.  It’s not simply suggesting: wouldn’t it be fun to be on a TV show.  It’s suggesting: wouldn’t it be a blast to be back in that time, when, to paraphrase Ogden Nash, candy was dandy but liquor was quicker.

This season Mad Men will present us with the trials and tribulations of a bunch of middle class folks struggling to build their own business in a day when the economy was still booming.  Escapism surely has its place.  But as we enjoy the accouterments of the characters’ life styles, I wonder how much time we will spend focusing on how far their world actually is from ours.  Which brings me back to The Wire, in which the drug of choice is heroin, not liquor, and upward mobility is not about getting a corner office but avoiding the coroner.  We don’t really want to watch The Wire.  It presents a political and economic system that is ill-equipped to grapple with depth of the corruption that plagues various strata in our society.  It doesn’t provide any eye candy and it certainly doesn’t hold out the hope of a world in which our homes and offices are bathed in sunlight.  If you are going to watch the fourth season of Mad Men, and you haven’t seen The Wire, it might be an interesting experiment to view them together.

Pushing the Corruption Button

[Originally posted at UP@NIGHT, July 31st,  2010]



So, you think of yourself as an honest soul.  You understand that stealing property or money is wrong.  You wouldn’t do it.  You wouldn’t want your kids or friends to do it.  It’s unthinkable.   But I have a proposition for you.

Here is a button.   All you have to do is press it and $100,000 will be transferred from Goldman Sachs, BP–or any other giant corporation whose resources are larger than most countries–into your bank account.   Nobody will ever know.  It’s a magic button.  Well, not really magic.  Some geek has wired it in a fashion so that money can be transferred to your account without anyone being able to trace it–in the tradition of how derivatives were traded.

Just think of how much money Goldman Sachs and its executives made in the last few years as the Market tanked, while you probably lost money in your hard-earned retirement account.   Not only did you recently lose money, but if you had invested $1,000 dollars eleven years ago in the Dow, that’s just about what it would be worth today, $1,000 (less if inflation is factored in).  But you know, and I know, how much money these guys have made trading your money and my money.  But that’s capitalism, you say.  It’s the way the game is played.

But would you push the button?  Would you be tempted to do it?  Or perhaps a better question: how many of your fellow Americans do you think would be tempted?  A lot, right?  (Or an even better question, how many more would push it today than ten or twenty years ago?)
The recent Melt Down on Wall Street, and the ensuing profits made by big trading firms and banks, have been corrosive in ways that we may not fully understand for years.   You’ve got Tea Baggers screaming about Washington, but the revelations about how Wall Street operates have buried themselves deep in our collective subconscious.  Real damage has been done.  Yes, we knew that there was big money out there and that big money corrupts.  (Before the present Melt Down, there was Enron and assorted other travesties.)   Yet “knowing” is one thing.  Seeing it in front of your eyes day after day, year after year, undermines confidence that the system is anything close to fair.  Yes, Obama has attempted to tame Wall Street with new regulations.  They will do some good.  Yet as long as we continue to see different rules of the game for a small strata of society, which is indeed what we have seen, our belief in the benefits of capitalism will be undermined by a gnawing sense that it is corrupting us, our children, our society.  From a sanctified economic system, it will become what we have to put up with, sort of like the Roman emperors in Imperial Rome.  It won’t go away anytime soon but we aren’t going to feel good about it.

There was a time in American business when many people believed that a handshake was as good as a contract, or so I am told.  People kept their word.  It now seems that handshakes still function in this manner for a small elite segment of corporate America that makes deals for unimaginable sums.  The rest of us can’t depend on them when we deal with companies.  (How about a handshake between you and your medical insurance company to guarantee your coverage?  Any takers?)   The middle class will need more and more contracts and lawyers to protect them in an economy in which money has gone wild.  And they will have relatively less money to hire these lawyers.

No doubt there are problems with the way government functions.  But anyone who thinks that this is the major source of the declining confidence in how our society works really needs to look at Wall Street with suitable eyewear.   The business of America is no longer doing business but being given the business.

Labor Day Weekend 2010: Why Some People are Leftists

Joliet Junior College, Oldest Public Community College in the U.S. 

Andrew Sullivan has been running a series of posts about people’s jobs on his blog, The Daily Dish.   Today’s Dish includes the blog, “About My Job: The Community College Professor.” Here’s the first paragraph.  It’s worth reading the whole piece.  (It’s about economics and empathy and the “American Dream.”)

I believe the assumption is that instructors are the product of a liberal-biased education and then we decide to join that liberal bastion and are just going with the established flow. For those of us in the junior college ranks, however, I think there is a more concrete reason for the lean left, rather than the abstract leftism offered in certain courses we took as students.

An Amazing Headline about the Economy

Nostradamus meets the Grim Reaper
…
This is an actual headline from an article posted on Bloomberg (News) at 7:21 this evening, September 1st, 2010: Economy Avoids Recession Relapse as Data Can’t Get Much Worse.

The first lines of the article explain:

The U.S. economy is so bad that the chance of avoiding a double dip back into recession may actually be pretty good. The sectors of the economy that traditionally drive it into recession are already so depressed it’s difficult to see them getting a lot worse, said Ethan Harris, head of developed markets economics research at BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research in New York. Inventories are near record lows in proportion to sales, residential construction is less than half the level of the housing boom and vehicle sales are more than 40 percent below five years ago.

This is not from a skit on Stewart of Colbert.  This is from a leading publication on business on a day that the Stock Market rallied.   (I wonder what they will be writing when it retreats, again.)  So, let’s get this straight.  We are not going to have another recession, the dreaded double-dip, because things are already too bad to have one.   How then do we characterize our current economy?   Oh, I could think of a few words, but so can you, dear reader.

Things can get worse.  Here’s the ticket: The Republicans win the House this fall and things completely stall out as the GOP offers (once again) the panacea of tax breaks for the wealthy as the cure for our economic ills.


(Btw, the name of the person featured on this $10,000 bill is Salmon P. Chase.  If you don’t believe me, click here.  He was a Secretary of the Treasury and a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.  Coincidence.  I think not.)