Wonderful Matters

I just had to blog to direct your attention to this piece I read last week. It is so dead-on describing the behavior of those caught up in the whirling swirling world of World covetousness. It is at the same time hilarious in its exposition of folly, and sobering in its revelation of how criminal are the actions of everyone involved. In fact one of the more hilarious/criminal parts -- depending on your disposition -- is the concluding presumption that if Caesar had directed his bailing-out efforts at those poor dumb middle to lower class saps instead of the banks it've been much better. Never mind that the boldly elucidating metaphor for idiocy still applies quite aptly to everyone who lives wholly and deeply in the World, by the World, for the World, of the World. My recent elaboration of the insane reality of this habitual conduct is here .

I was thinking a bit about my last blog post, the one about the machinations of competitive duplicity required to keep professional sports economically viable. I ruminated over my little illustration about the Cowboys' new stadium and took it through a bit more logical progression. It's a great tool for identifying the truth about things. Thus: What if the Cowboys did have a million capacity stadium, one in which they charged $10,000 a seat for each game, one where such exemplery service was offered that some kind of maximum comfort vehicle personally delivered each and every spectator to their exquisitely equipped luxury box? And what if they did indeed fill every seat for every game, and as a result had millions of dollars at their disposal, millions of dollars that would certainly be used to--yes, you got it-- Buy the very best players on the market . Furthermore let's say that to make sure the media darling teams do have that advantage most would like them to have anyw...

I am in insufferable sports team fan. In-sufferable. I am someone nobody wants to be around regarding any my-sports-team thing to such an extent that I realized I had to do something about it. Ever since November 17, 1998, I've scaled back my big-time sports intake to virtually nothing. I confess there are some things I do rarely pay attention to simply because my pathological obsession with my teams knows no bounds. I do watch the Chiefs games but only the games, and to assuage the excruciating pain of even that amount of torment, I blog about it . I also enjoy Angels games with my son because he loves baseball so much that this indulgence can't help but enhance the father-son bonding thing. But again, I really only do this when I'm with him. The other night my son had the Angels game up on his Wii, which allows us to see website pages of things. We had the ESPN gamecast there, not the live game, just the webcast with the pitch-by-pitch graphics. The Angels were holding on...

Tomorrow is Nine-Fifteen, the infamous date generally cited to commemorate the implosion of the mighty twin towers Lehman Bros. and Merrill Lynch. It is indeed the one-year anniversary of the financial equivalent of Nine-Eleven. Thing is, very few people pay much attention to it, relatively. I say relatively because there are a number of financial watchers who know about it, know about its impact. Tonight on the Nightly Business Report it was discussed at length, and one of those offering his thoughts was Alan Blinder, former vice-chair of the Federal Reserve as well as former a lot of other schnazzy high-level economic/finance positions. After being asked about the main lesson learned Blinder said (something to the effect--from the best of my recollection), "I can answer that with one word. Risk. Risk was woefully underappreciated." He then reeled off all the people who should've known better. "Risk was underappreciated by x , risk was underappreciated by y ......

The price of gold has reached a record $1,000 an ounce, and I wonder what precisely is it that made a shiny yellow rock increase in value by that much? Did we suddenly discover it has some cancer-fighting agent within its compound? Are people somehow more compelled to ask you to the dance floor if you're wearing it? Has its heretofore unmarketed capacity to do the laundry and mop the floor while you lounge by the pool been finally realized? Well, not really. The only reason is because the value of the dollar is slipping and hordes of people (ah, no word is more apt here than "hoard") believe they can somehow protect the meaning of their value by getting and holding shiny yellow rocks. Yeah. Wow. That'll do it. I seem to vaguely recall a story about a king--name of Mitchell or Michael, not that but a bit more odd--for some reason I'm thinking of a muffler repair shop, but, what do I know... But hey! What about the Constitution?! Ah yes, that treasured sacred docume...

My latest reading has been Unruly Americans by Woody Holton, a fine narrative about what was really happening among Americans that led them to assemble the U.S. Constitution. It doesn't come near Rulers of Evil for elucidating the core reasons America was formed, but it's pretty good at filling in much of the peripheral stuff. What strikes me as I read is how deeply tormented were the very souls of sensitive individuals subject to rank value disassessment -- the way the World assigns value using institutionally sanctioned deceit. Taxpayers loathing bondholders, bondholders loathing currency holders, currency holders loathing tax collectors. Lots and lots of loathing among people who claimed to be followers of Christ. It can shake you up if you don't grasp the perfectly rational reasons the bearers of Cain's legacy do what they do. It's been going on for eons and eons and eons. This past Saturday The Los Angeles Times' Tom Petruno wrote "A Good Time to Rea...