Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

A recent talk with Mikey has stuck with me where we were determining root causes of the mess we're in. By "mess" we mean that EM08 is just an expression of some things deeply wrong at base with our society. Lives of quiet desperation are now being heard, but it's not nearly enough in the face of forces with so much of a lead it's like running a mile race giving a 3 lap head start to the competition. How could it have gone so wrong?


Mikey mentioned he thought that much of it had to do with education, and I immediately agreed. We may differ a bit on certain particulars and/or exponents, but at base we think that it assumes responsibility for quite a bit that happens in society. Here are a few things I think are worthy of discussion when it comes to education:


1. One of the cliches we like to repeat here is the advocacy of literacy. This boils down here to reading, which is fine, but is not a rounded definition of "literacy." There are in the main 3 facets: reading, writing and speaking. Generally, until people have assimilated these basic tools, they will be unequipped to deal with the world in its varied forms in any way other than a reactionary one. In gambling terms, without these tools, they are in effect bred to be fish, the suckers who sit at the table and think they can play.


2. Relevance. Young people in particular are all about themselves, and in some ways, rightly so. They are the fawns on spindly legs, walking, but it's kinda awkward. That would tend to focus one's awareness upon one's self. Recently, I read an article stressing the need for us to get our young people inculcated into math and science because those are the skills that are going to be necessary to give one the odds for success in the future.


Oh really?


As they are handed down in Uncle Scam's system, math and science have been gutted of all forms of life and reduced to rote memory. This is why the liberal and fine arts in school have been destroyed in this country; because they get young people to creatively think, proactively think. And if they're lucky to have a teacher who's alive inside, all the better.


With the dominance of memorization in our schools, it's no wonder that young people are dropping out in record numbers. Educational curricula and methodology leave them bored - and rightly so.


3. What is it to be alive? A very wise man once said, "Point in any direction, and there's the infinite. But the shoddiness of our lives, the drudgery, dulls us to that astounding fact. Instead, most of us march to our graves, never gaining an inch on the most essential question of all; "Why was I born?"


This speaks to wonder, the essential mystery of life, which is completely removed from education, save for religious schooling which is a whole other can of worms. But I grew up in an overwhelmingly Catholic environment; my next door neighbor, Steve, went to parochial school, and I knew several others as well, and if it was one thing we public school plebes had in common with them it was our verdict that our schools were as interesting as watching paint dry.


If a lie is also the hiding of the truth, then the removal of this essential mystery from education is wrong from the very start. More accurately, it's dishonest. At first, young kids aren't stupid, but they can be pounded into submission and intellectual oblivion.


4. Why isn't education interesting, fun and dynamic? This is more a rhetorical question. But it does seem weird that the vast majority of school is boring, lifeless and dull, then when students enter the workforce their jobs are the same. Coincidence?


One of the most interesting things I ever learned was that seeing was not just physiological but psychological. Here's an example; take a pinball machine. As you play, you hear the bells and other associated noises, and you see the ball rolling around, hitting the bumpers and associated flippers. But what you "do not see" are the reflections on the top glass as you're involved in playing. I learned that from the great Noel Burch, a film theorist.


Another wise person once gave me the most sensible reason for why we're alive; "To grow perception, awareness."


Ask yourself if your education did that consistently for you. If not, why do you think that was?


I'm a big fan of John Taylor Gatto. Here's something basic from him:

That Used Car Salesman Smell

Bob emailed me Krugman's spiel on Bloomberg's take today on Barack's being alright with the $17 mil & $9 mil mega bonuses for Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein, respectively.
Here's a teaser:
Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama said he doesn’t “begrudge” the $17 million bonus awarded to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon or the $9 million issued to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO Lloyd Blankfein, noting that some athletes take home more pay. ...

“I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen,” Obama said in the interview yesterday in the Oval Office with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free- market system.”

Obama sought to combat perceptions that his administration is anti-business and trumpeted the influence corporate leaders have had on his economic policies. He plans to reiterate that message when he speaks to the Business Roundtable, which represents the heads of many of the biggest U.S. companies, on Feb. 24 in Washington.

ANTI-business??? What, are they smokin' crack? One of the largest transfers of wealth has taken place in about two years to the benefit of the econ elites, and he's worried about being perceived as ANTI-business???

Well, he's not worried about being perceived as anti-main street.

THAT's for sure.

For someone of his intellect and pedigree, it comes off as disingenuous when Barack says he's shocked by athlete pay. There's simply no comparison between an athlete earning what he does from the market and welfare socialist bank shitheads stealing from us. It's not even apples and oranges, it's apples and Jupiter.

Then he digs his hole deeper by saying that Dimon and Blankfein are the beneficiaries of the free market system.

NO - THEY - ARE - NOT.

Dimon, Blankfein, et al, are, WELFARE SOCIALISTS. In fact, they are the biggest and WORST type of welfare socialist;

1. They have direct ties to government.
2. They have the means/tools to hedge policy toward their advantage.
3. They have access to pr/media outlets.
4. Need I mention they have huge corporate and personal war chests?
5. They have armies of lawyers, accountants and lobbyists at their beck and call.
6. Their corporate layers are kryptonite to congress and the IRS.

I thought Barack was smart. I'm joking, of course; he is. The guy's a lawyer for god's sakes (dunno if he passed the bar, but I say "lawyer" as such), even editing the Harvard Law Review. This is a guy steeped in rhetoric and the DNA of ultra-fine granularity debate.

Given that Goldman Sachs was Barack's largest contributor and JPM/C wasn't far behind, I can only conclude that he's a bought puppet. What else explains why a man of his intellect and accomplishment says these disingenuous statements?

Here's what I said about Barack - Wednesday, November 05, 2008

While I'm much happier that Barack's our president than the retardican alternative, I have problems with him, chief among them his recent advocacy of and voting for the bailout. Then there's his take on the healthcare crisis, one which will do nothing to break the oligarchy of HMOs, drug and insurance companies that dominate it with their lobbyists and lawyers.

NOTHING has changed my view.

I'm listening to Juan Williams right now on Brian Lehrer's show and he echoes my thoughts; the democraps have majorities EVERYWHERE and get NOTHING done. I can't imagine the retardicans having this much power because even though I like the fascist aesthetic in architecture it sucks as governance and right now we'd be going "ZEIG HEIL!"

I'm so pissed off... I don't condone what Travis Bickle did, but I understand....

With Barack's latest take, I'm more fearful than ever for the future. Here's how I concluded my post of November 5, 2008, in the light of Barack's win:

I see a small ray of light for our country. Barack's slogan: "Yes we can." And as cynical a curmudgeon as I am, in this desperate time, I want to believe.

Go do your thing, brothaman.

And how did I vote? Well, I voted Black. Cynthia McKinney.

Again: You've been Gangbanked

It's bonus time, or rather, past bonus time, and so what does one of the king jerkoffs of the world do? Why, he announces what his bonus is, as if saying "I'm not hiding anything, so see what a good person I am?"

Nah.

The element of this kind of pr that really chaps my ass is how insulting it is, obviously in blind hubris, but for the very fact that he puts it out at all. Because the assumption is that you'll buy it and go, "ok." And even if you don't buy it, wtf are you going to do? You're powerless; you aren't on tap at CNBC or Charlie Rose to give your 2 cents, much less write a NYT column. What are you going to do, blog about it fer gawd's sakes?

HO hum; Lotta good that'll do.

There's also a stupid side bar video; "FDIC: Bonus Culture Needs to Change." This is how stupid our Bizarro World is, what we've been reduced to.

Last, there's a link to this story:

BofA spends $4.4B on its Wall Street bankers

In it, the average comes out to $440k for 10,000 employees.

And at the end of that story is this gem:

AIG doling out $100 million more in bonuses

And yet, I really can't blame them. What they're doing is morally reprehensible, but illegal? Not the way Uncle Scam and they composed it. In fact, it's very logical that these shitheads are doing what they are; it's their economic imperative.

Who we absolutely can and should blame are:

1. Ben Bernanke
2. Hank Paulson
3. Tim Geithner
4. Chris Dodd
5. Barney Frank
6. Larry Summers

And then there're juniors, like Neel Kashkari, a former Goldmanite, instrumental in TARP under Paulson, and now landed in a plumb job with bond house PIMCO.

These are the men who acted on behalf of you and I... and sold us and future generations down the river.

Truth is the CRAs and their corrupt, conflict of interest relationship with the banks are a prime reason any of this crap got started. It smacks of fraud; basically, lying about the financial products the banks were flooding the market with as being investment grade AAA rated.

But it doesn't end there - the rest of the "refs" also bear responsibility, in this case the regulating bodies such as the SEC and the CFTC - the CFTC's Brooksley Born being an exception, and the industry analysts with the notable exception of those who I've mentioned who have had the courage to tell it like it is, among others; Nomi Prins, Gretchen Morgenson, Meredith Whitney, Catherine Austin Fitts (who I haven't written on yet, but plan on), Peter Schiff, William Black, Matt Taibbi, Michael Lewis, and David Cay Johnston. (see sidebar "EM08 Analysts to Trust")

It's also a perfect example of how this incarnation of a republic can catastrophically fail, because as you recall, the initial TARP vote failed due to immense public outcry.

Then in just a matter of a week or so, it "somehow" "miraculously" passed.

Who flipped and why? Don't you want to know?

=================

JPMorgan's Dimon scores $16M bonus
By David Ellis, staff writer
February 5, 2010: 11:22 AM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- JPMorgan Chase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon will take home a nearly $16 million bonus in restricted stock and options for leading the bank to a big profit last year.

In a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Friday, the New York City-based bank said Dimon would collect nearly 200,000 shares of restricted stock and more than a half million in options.

According to a source familiar with the matter, Dimon did not receive a cash bonus. Wall Street firms in general have migrated from paying their employees large cash bonuses to stock and options in response to public outcry over bonuses and in an effort to tie employee compensation to company performance.

Based on Thursday's closing price of $38.35 per share, Dimon's restricted stock payment would be worth about $7.5 million.

His significantly larger options payment however, would only translate into profits if JPMorgan Chase's (JPM, Fortune 500) stock price climbs above $43.20 per share.

Both payments are to be deferred over several years and are subject to so-called "clawback" provisions, which can reclaim pay from workers whose actions may damage the firm's long-term financial health.

Including the $1 million base salary Dimon received for the year, his total pay package for 2009 is nearly $17 million.

Dimon received no bonus in 2008 and a $28 million bonus in 2007.

In a year when the banking industry struggled due to massive mortgage and consumer loan losses, JPMorgan Chase fared relatively well compared to many of its peers.

Last month, the bank revealed it earned $11.73 billion in 2009, more than twice what it earned just a year earlier. That translated into a better year for JPMorgan workers, including the 25,000 employees working on Wall Street.

The company said it spent $9.33 billion to pay workers in its investment banking division, an increase of $1.6 billion from a year ago. That figure includes salaries as well as money set aside for bonuses and works out to an average annual compensation per employee of nearly $380,000.

All eyes are now focused on Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500), which has yet to disclose its year-end bonuses for its top executives.

While members of Goldman's management committee declined to take cash bonuses for 2009, there is still speculation that its executives could collect a windfall in stock and options. The Times of London reported earlier this month that company CEO Lloyd Blankfein could receive a bonus payment of close to $100 million.

You'll Never Reach Ixtlan This Way

It's strange writing my first post that's not related to Ma. I feel lame doing it, but at the same time the world continues to spin. So, Ma, I know you understand; you want your boy to keep going. I am.

==========================================

CLICK TO ENLARGE & HOPEFULLY LAUGH
Anyone remember this clusterfuck of shitheads?


THE FALL GUY, OR FIRST OF MANY?

Yesterday former BoA head Ken Lewis was brought up on fraud charges, along with former BoA CFO Joe Price:

According to the lawsuit, former CEO Ken Lewis and former CFO Joe Price hid more than $16 billion worth of losses at Merrill from shareholders in order to ensure their approval of the merger. But after shareholders voted to buy the ailing firm, the bank approached the government to demand an infusion of taxpayer cash. Without bailout funds, they told regulators, BoA would be unable to complete the merger. The government capitulated and funneled $20 billion of TARP money into the bank. excerpt @ HuffPo.

My prediction; more pr, more showboating - by both sides, Cuomo and Lewis - and then a slap on the wrist. Lewis will sail off into the sunset courtesy of his golden parachute, aka, truckloads of Benjamins, courtesy of you and I. He won't be as rich as Mikey Milken, but he won't be eating Taco Bell. Ever.


THE QUESTION
While I think Lewis - and plenty of others - deserves to be strung up and looted, my bet is this is just more of Uncle Scam's grandstanding. After all, it's kind of hard to take anything "he" does now seriously and without wondering about trickery. As the saying goes, once bitten, and we're bitten all over.

The ONE burning question I have about Lewis is; what really went down when BoA and Merrill were in m&a talks? Related, what were Bernanke's, Paulson's and Geithner's (let alone Summers' and Dodd's and Frank's) opinions and roles?


A BIGGER POINT
My point is that if you really want to get at the heart of fraud and corruption, then you must address the CRAs.

In regards to the mortgage debacle, one thing stands out: the credit rating agencies, such as Standard & Poor's and Moody's. In other words, the analysts, or referees, this time in the form of credit raters. Because while there are barely six AAA rated companies in America such as Microsoft, ADP and GE, many of these way over-leveraged mortgages (some of these "products" leveraged over TWENTY times!) that eventually blew up and caused the house of cards to collapse were being rated AAA.

I've been saying this for quite a while now, and a few, like Michael Lewis, get it. The truth of the matter is that there is too much money passed around; the banks, whose relationship with the CRAs is a clear conflict of interest, are simply way flush with our cash and buying Uncle Scam's silence. What else could it be if a putz like me sees through this obvious trickery...?


THE RECOVERY WILL BE TELEVISED
The following is a blog/post that I completely agree with. No more happy talk, as evidenced in October of last year.


A GOOD VOICE
So, from a blog that tells it like it is, The Economic Collapse Blog, with my "call and response" below.

Economic Black Hole: 20 Reasons Why The U.S. Economy Is Dying And Is Simply Not Going To Recover

Even though the U.S. financial system nearly experienced a total meltdown in late 2008, the truth is that most Americans simply have no idea what is happening to the U.S. economy. Most people seem to think that the nasty little recession that we have just been through is almost over and that we will be experiencing another time of economic growth and prosperity very shortly. But this time around that is not the case. The reality is that we are being sucked into an economic black hole from which the U.S. economy will never fully recover.

The problem is debt. [jp: see point #1, here] Collectively, the U.S. government, the state governments, corporate America and American consumers have accumulated the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world. Our massive debt binge has financed our tremendous growth and prosperity over the last couple of decades, but now the day of reckoning is here.

And it is going to be painful.

The following are 20 reasons why the U.S. economy is dying and is simply not going to recover....

#1) Do you remember that massive wave of subprime mortgages that defaulted in 2007 and 2008 and caused the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression? Well, the "second wave" of mortgage defaults in on the way and there is simply no way that we are going to be able to avoid it. A huge mountain of mortgages is going to reset starting in 2010, and once those mortgage payments go up there are once again going to be millons of people who simply cannot pay their mortgages. The chart below reveals just how bad the second wave of adjustable rate mortgages is likely to be over the next several years....
[jp: See point #12 here.]

#2) The Federal Housing Administration has announced plans to increase the amount of up-front cash paid by new borrowers
and to require higher down payments from those with the poorest credit. The Federal Housing Administration currently backs about 30 percent of all new home loans and about 20 percent of all new home refinancing loans. Tighter standards are going to mean that less people will qualify for loans. Less qualifiers means that there will be less buyers for homes. Less buyers means that home prices are going to drop even more.

[jp: Here we go - instead of punishing those who are responsible for pillaging and inflicting this misery on the world, the innocent and defenseless will be punished. Welcome to Bizarro World.]

#3) It is getting really hard to find a job in the United States. A total of 6,130,000 U.S. workers had been unemployed
for 27 weeks or more in December 2009. That was the most ever since the U.S. government started keeping track of this statistic in 1948. In fact, it is more than double the 2,612,000 U.S. workers who were unemployed for a similar length of time in December 2008. The reality is that once Americans lose their jobs they are increasingly finding it difficult to find new ones. Just check out the chart below....


#4) In December, there were also 929,000 "discouraged" workers who are not counted as part of the labor force because they have "given up" looking for work. That is the most since the U.S. government first started keeping track of discouraged workers in 1949. Many Americans have simply given up and are now chronically unemployed.

[jp: As a kid I worked my way through school. With teen unemployment now above 25%, the highest in history, yet another avenue of social climbing has been made more difficult for working class and poor people. Again, the innocent and poor will be punished...]

#5) Some areas of the U.S. are already virtually in a state of depression. The mayor of Detroit estimates that the real unemployment rate in his city is now somewhere around 50 percent.

[jp: Let's be frank; if it's a recession in general then it's a near or actual depression for poor folks, and disproportionately for poor people of color. Like the Katrina disaster, let's at least be honest about how EM08 is playing out along the demographics of race and gender. Then again, as the recently deceased, late great Howard Zinn showed in his seminal A People's History of the United States, when have we ever been honest in this country?]

#6) For decades, our leaders in Washington pushed us towards "a global economy" and told us it would be so good for us. But there is a flip side. Now workers in the U.S. must compete with workers all over the world, and our greedy corporations are free to pursue the cheapest labor available anywhere on the globe. Millions of jobs have already been shipped out of the United States, and Princeton University economist Alan S. Blinder estimates that 22% to 29% of all current U.S. jobs will be offshorable within two decades. The days when blue collar workers could live the American Dream are gone and they are not going to come back.

[jp: Localism is one of the weapons to fight the neo-colonization of the world. Michael Shuman makes a ton of sense to me, along with his org, BALLE.]

#7) During the 2001 recession, the U.S. economy lost 2% of its jobs and it took four years to get them back. This time around the U.S. economy has lost more than 5% of its jobs and there is no sign that the bleeding of jobs is going to stop any time soon.

#8) All of this unemployment is putting severe stress on state unemployment funds. At this point, 25 state unemployment insurance funds have gone broke and the Department of Labor estimates that 15 more state unemployment funds will likely go broke within two years and will need massive loans from the federal government just to keep going.

#9) 37 million Americans now receive food stamps, and the program is expanding at a pace of about 20,000 people a day. The United States of America is very quickly becoming a socialist welfare state.

#10) The number of Americans who are going broke is staggering. 1.41 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009 - a 32 percent increase over 2008.

[jp: REMEMBER - The Bush 2 administration's call for re-structuring personal bankruptcy - a very important distinction - that went into effect in 2007 or thereabouts? Notice, corporations can still escape into bankruptcy and leave others holding the bag; look at what the auto companies did to thousands of suppliers recently when they filed. But when it comes down to YOU as an individual, forget it, you're jacked. There were real reasons that was done, most of it lobbying money, and in gambler's parlance, it's called hedging your bet, also insurance. EM08 is proof of the instance where this change in the personal bankruptcy laws are going to have repercussions on the working class.]

#11) For decades, the fact that the U.S. dollar was the reserve currency of the world gave the U.S. financial system an unusual degree of stability. But all of that is changing. Foreign countries are increasingly turning away from the dollar to other currencies. For example, Russia’s central bank announced on Wednesday that it had started buying Canadian dollars in a bid to diversify its foreign exchange reserves.

[jp: Uncle Scam's dollar devaluing isn't helping. The bigger questions though are; 1) What happens when no one wants to buy our bad paper, and 2) when we default on said bad paper? I agree with Peter Schiff; THAT is the Sergeant Pepper's of economic shitstorms that'll make this time look like A Hard Day's Night. And yes, I'm crowbarring in Beatles references. Ya gotta have a lil' bit o' fun when talking doom 'n gloom.]

#12) The recent economic downturn has left some localities totally bankrupt. For instance, Jefferson County, Alabama is on the brink of what would be the largest government bankruptcy in the history of the United States - surpassing the 1994 filing by Southern California's Orange County.

[jp: Shit flows downhill. LA's mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is facing massive record deficits that are engorging historic debt. There are over 30 states now on the brink, led by the world's #6 economy, California. No, that's not a typo. This is one of the elephants in the room that NO ONE - least of all the Governator, is talking about. Our press - what's left of responsible investigative journalism - is a sham and complicit in this regard, only adding to the bad probabilities. See points #7 & 8.]

#13) The U.S. is facing a pension crisis of unprecedented magnitude. Virtually all pension funds in the United States, both private and public, are massively underfunded. With millions of Baby Boomers getting ready to retire, there is simply no way on earth that all of these obligations can be met. Robert Novy-Marx of the University of Chicago and Joshua D. Rauh of Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management recently calculated the collective unfunded pension liability for all 50 U.S. states for Forbes magazine. So what was the total? 3.2 trillion dollars.

[jp: The Boomers, of which I am one, are going to have THE major role in EM08. Between retirement pensions and medical care, I believe this will have the largest economic impact, even beyond the trillions given and made available to the banks. The social costs, of course, will be historic.]

#14) Social Security and Medicare expenses are wildly out of control. Once again, with millions of Baby Boomers now at retirement age there is simply going to be no way to pay all of these retirees what they are owed.

#15) So will the U.S. government come to the rescue? The U.S. has allowed the total federal debt to balloon by 50% since 2006 to $12.3 trillion. The chart below is a bit outdated, but it does show the reckless expansion of U.S. government debt over the past several decades. To get an idea of where we are now, just add at least 3 trillion dollars on to the top of the chart....


#16) So has the U.S. government learned anything from these mistakes? No. In fact, Senate Democrats on Wednesday proposed allowing the federal government to borrow an additional $2 trillion to pay its bills, a record increase that would allow the U.S. national debt to reach approximately $14.3 trillion.

#17) It is going to become even harder for the U.S. government to pay the bills now that tax receipts are falling through the floor. U.S. corporate income tax receipts were down 55% in the year that ended on September 30th, 2009.

[jp: When it gets to the point where the interest on the debt cannot even be serviced, the party's over. Guess where we're at...?]

#18) So where will the U.S. government get the money? From the Federal Reserve of course. The Federal Reserve bought approximately 80 percent of all U.S. Treasury securities issued in 2009. In other words, the U.S. government is now being financed by a massive Ponzi scheme.

[jp: This is a MAJOR point that ALL Americans need to understand. Kudos.]

#19) The reckless expansion of the money supply by the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve is going to end up destroying the U.S. dollar and the value of the remaining collective net worth of all Americans. The more dollars there are, the less each individual dollar is worth. In essence, inflation is like a hidden tax on each dollar that you own. When they flood the economy with money, the value of the money you have in your bank accounts goes down. The chart below shows the growth of the U.S. money supply. Pay particular attention to the very end of the chart which shows what has been happening lately. What do you think this is going to do to the value of the U.S. dollar?....


#20) When a nation practices evil, there is no way that it is going to be blessed in the long run. The truth is that we have become a nation that is dripping with corruption and wickedness from the top to the bottom. Unless this fundamentally changes, not even the most perfect economic policies in the world are going to do us any good. In the end, you always reap what you sow. The day of reckoning for the U.S. economy is here and it is not going to be pleasant.

[jp: Agreed, one hundred percent. But in gambling terms, the probability of those responsible and with the power to turn out all the "wickedness" is a long shot at best. There's simply too much money being thrown around to buy out people. Therefore, one must hedge one's bets in other areas. If you listen to Gerald Celente, about as good a forecaster there is, you better get ready. Or pay the price.]

Once More, with Feeling

I am having such a great time going through memorabilia, so, I'll post things here and there, and ultimately, I'll create a Yoshida blog where a lot of this can be archived, shared and commented upon.


Here's a great pic; don't know the year, but my guess is the early 70's, judging by the muscle car windshields that pass for eyeglasses. The setting's probably LA. And too, I wanted to post a pic of Auntie Rosie, since Naomi emailed and told me why she wasn't in the previous ones of them cracking up. The sunset and cityscape give this pic an added dimension, but it's the sweetness of the sisters that comes through. Don't know what happened to Auntie Frances; I think Uncle Joe sent her to make him a sandwich so he could be mackin' with his wife's sisters!


From left to right: Auntie Rosie, Auntie Kathy, Uncle Joe, Ma, and Auntie May.


CLICK ON PIC TO ENLARGE

Legends of Laughter: The Yoshida Sisters Lose It!

As further proof that historical memory is foggy at best, I think given the fact we're talking '89 and I'm an old fart now gives me at least a .300 batting average, considering the following.

So, I got a lot of mail about my post on Ma, and while it was straight from the heart, it was her sad, melancholy boy writing - which is fine, but there was a real reason I made Ma's love of laughter the major portion of her homage. One thing for sure that I would bet the house on; Ma would NOT want anyone moping around feeling sad because she'd gone on. She'd appreciate that there would be a few tears, but at the end of the day she'd want everyone to remember how fun she was and laugh!

Today, Renee, Deb and I were going through Ma's stuff, and of course it was a walk down memory lane. If not for the frequent stops reminiscing, we might have finished, but oh well, it's all good as the youngins say.

So, we kept sloggin' on. And then, BAM! The motherlode...

Here's the setup; I was right about the pics of the Yoshida sisters cracking up being from the '89 Visalia Imoto/Yoshida Reunion. What I got wrong:

1. The Yoshida BROTHERS - Uncle George and Bert - were in it as well.
2. Auntie Rosie/Ross is conspicuously absent. Maybe she knew how crazy her sisters were, and she, being the kind of lady who knew how to comport herself, bowed out... I'm KIDDING, of course.

So here's the setup in pic one, where everyone seems fairly together...

CLICK ON THE PIC TO ENLARGE


...and then, this is obviously after the fuse had been lit and the bomb exploded...

CLICK ON THE PIC TO ENLARGE


I'll let you savor this a bit. Anyone who knows the Yoshida sisters, I defy you to not smile or just plain crack up at this. Aside from Ma losing it, falling on her knees and Auntie Kathy looking like she's tending to her, it was Auntie Francis who was doubled over, not Auntie May, who looks like she's about to anyway.

What also cracks me up is the way Uncle George, Uncle Bert and Auntie Nellie, the elders, are relatively stoic. I think that's Joey's kid Zack frame left.

Now, curiously, the second pic must have been from a different setup (but within a near time frame) because they're standing in a different sequence. Because of that, I have a strong feeling that there are several other pics from this "sitting" that are missing. Anyone have some more of these...? If so, PLEASE let me know. That aside, this has to go down as my all time favorite and is my nomination to be the first in the Yoshida Hall of Fame.

What a classic - and Ma of course leading the way - I can hear her now!

Elizabeth "Beti" Sadako Yoshida

The hospital said Ma was gone as of 9pm, but I know it was sooner than that; Deb and I were on the 405 headed back from UCLA and a strange sound came into my left ear; I thought of Ma...

I can't say it enough, but Ma, her siblings and the extended Yoshida clan are the last of their kind. There's a great quote by Little Richard that by analogy says it better than I can:

I think that when people want joy and fun and happiness, they want to hear the old-time rock & roll. And I'm just glad that I was a part of that. There's only a few of us left: myself, Bo Diddley, Chuck, Fats, Jerry Lee, the Everly Brothers. It's getting thin. So I think this is the last of it, the last of the good days. Soon there'll be a totally new thing. But it won't be the same. Never.

That's EXACTLY the way I feel; glad to have been brought up by her, the one I point to who gave to me one of the greatest gifts - the gift of knowledge.

There's a great picture - somewhere - of Ma, taken of her lying on a couch reading a book, her chin propped in her hand. It's one of the ways I remember her as a kid, always reading. Our den was a testament to her habit with books everywhere; it was a great resource for me.

Like many of her generation, she grew up very poor, with the twin shadows of the Depression and post WWII sentiment about Japanese. Race was something the Nisei never really addressed openly, at least to us Sansei, but given how crazy America's racial melting pot was and is, this silence shaped us in ways too numerous to list. But you can imagine.

As a kid she lived briefly in Iowa with Uncle George, her eldest brother, but I'll always associate Ma with Lindsay. In many ways, Lindsay is the heart of the Yoshidas; I think I'll scatter her ashes there.

Her stories about being young at that time still paint vivid pictures. They didn't have it hard like the pioneers, but they had it hard. Recently, Auntie Kathy told me she hated that time, which is sad given the way our youth is romanticized in this country. When I asked her why, she said simply that they were so poor....

Ma told me: One day I was sooooo hungry, and Frances or May was cooking. But all we had was cabbage. So when the food came, it was just cabbage and some kind of white sauce made from flour or something. And even though I was hungry, I couldn't eat it.

We are descended from farmers, plain and simple, and if you want to get down to it, country livin'. It's not Alabama, but just because Cali has LA and Frisco doesn't mean it isn't country out here.

Ma again: Mama would tell George, "We need something for dinner," and he'd walk out the door and grab his rifle on the way out. He'd come back with maybe a couple of rabbits, and I'd sit there transfixed, watching him string them up, skin and clean them.

Now that's country.

That wave that Tom Brokaw calls "The Greatest Generation," would go on to create the greatest middle class in history, and Ma was right there in the thick of it. Here're some snippets:

-I remember the drama in her voice when she told me about being at UCLA and the fear struck into everyone because of McCarthy. It was like a cloud over everything.

-I found out about one of the greatest, most extensive mass transit systems in America, right here in LA, the red car, from Ma. It was great; my girlfriends and I would catch it downtown and ride all the way to the harbor, eat lunch, have some fun, then ride it all the way back. For a nickel.

-She seemed to know who everyone in old Hollywood was.

But by far, her greatest asset was her sense of humor, and that was most definitely one zillion percent genetic. Plainly, the Yoshida sisters were legendary for busting up at family gatherings. Whenever we had a large family get together, it was just a matter of time before the fuse was lit and the bomb would explode.

That would prompt everyone else to stop what they were doing and look on in bemusement, as if some new show were on TV. As a kid, I remember the uncles playing cards, and a Yoshida sisters bomb went off, prompting Uncle Mack to hoist his jigger and matter of factly remark, Those Yoshida girls, there they go again.

The Yoshida sisters and their penchant for laughing till it hurts. And I thank heaven I'm descended from that stock, because if you can't laugh with others, at life and yourself then the party's over. And don't worry, Renee has the Yoshida laughing gene in full effect.

There's another great series of pics from our reunion that cousin Judy organized in Visalia back in '89 or thereabouts. I had grouped the Yoshida sisters for a photo, and then, yup, someone lit the fuse. As the photos go on, Ma finally ends up on her knees and Auntie May is doubling over while Auntie Frances looks like she's crying. Auntie Ross, prim and proper, would always laugh along heartily but she was too much the lady. Auntie Kathy, nutty like Ma, would crack up too but I remember her looking on at her big sisters with bemusement. And Auntie Nellie, the matriarch, seemed pretty entertained by the den of young hens beneath her.

That was the best of Ma, fun loving and not a mean bone in her body.

When Beti Yoshida laughs the mountains shake.

I'm glad that I had her as a mother, from a special generation and breed - tough as nails. Truly American.

And to paraphrase Little Richard:

There's only a few of the Yoshidas left... It's getting thin. So I think this is the last of it, the last of that special breed. And I'm just glad that I was her son. Soon there'll be a totally new generation and time.

But it won't be the same.

Never.

See you later, Ma. I love you.

TWEAK: Citizen's Brigade

"Tweak" is going to be a series of articles where I archive my ideas. These can be original or augmentations of existing things. This tweak was instigated by the Haitian earthquake; the idea I have is called "The Citizen's Brigade."

Our Day Will Come: The Citizen’s Brigade

A vision for how unemployed Americans can do great things

One of the greatest tragedies of our species is the untapped energy of human potential. Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus cites this when he speaks glowingly about the effects of microfinance, how it unleashes the entrepreneurial spirit, the energy that was ALWAYS there but never before had a vehicle to express itself.

To drive this point home, and in the words of the late, great Stephen Jay Gould:

I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.

Right now, we have millions of Americans out of work while so-called "stimulus packages" are winding their supposed ways through "the system." And so, we tap our collective feet and wait….

But what if there were a way for ordinary citizens to pick up and go, get some training in specific skills, then deploy to Haiti and directly pitch in and help? Everyone I know that is out of work has said upon hearing this idea that they'd go without hesitation.

Look at the enormous costs expended to train, transport and house troops for our current two wars. What if we could take a fraction of that and deploy our unemployed in Haiti for a good cause?

Why is it that we can have a similar structure - the National Guard - when it comes to militaristic/martial operations, but not in the service of helping our fellow brothers and sisters? Why is it this way?

Think of the benefits a Citizens Brigade could bring:

1. Discouraged, unemployed citizens could gain valuable skills, earn a wage, travel, and most importantly, help.

2. Enormous good will would be spread.

3. Ordinary Americans would be exposed to "the bigger picture" firsthand, and their "war stories" for their children will not involve killing but helping.

4. Citizens Brigade members become much more valuable citizens in the event an emergency happens at home.

5. People in other countries will learn about America in an entirely different manner than before.

6. New bridges will be built not based upon politics and economics, but human need and help.

7. Specific but not restricted to Haiti, CLEAN WATER is paramount, even before food! Citizens Brigade members can be trained in how to dig wells, how to purify water and basic plumbing. There must be thousands of out of work carpenters - think about what a valuable skill that is at a time like this for Haiti. General laborers to do set up and then clean up. Food service members to prepare and serve food. First aid workers! In fact, all CB members will have basic first aid training.

8. Jobs are created domestically; plumbers, carpenters, medics... all can find work helping train up CB members. That's stimulus money I'd like to see spent.

9. More contracts are given to transportation, housing/barracks, communications, oversight, evaluation....

These are only some of the benefits that will come as we unleash our human potential, but it requires a vehicle. For all of our talk about “innovation,” let’s just stop that now, because innovation is standing right in front of us.

And besides, Haiti isn’t interested in our talk.

And Now a Word from our Sponsor

This is your country on oligopoly.




Some common misconceptions have people buying into uncle scam's hard sell of democracy = capitalism while others also misconstrue capitalism as democracy when it comes to globalization. The elementary reading would be the former is a domestic perception and the latter foreign. This topic will rest here but is ripe for future picking.

I like comparative history and think it's a useful tool, particularly when in the hands of someone as eloquent as Wolfgang Schivelbusch (trusting Jefferson Chase's translation), in his Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt's America, Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany 1933-39. Schivelbusch shows how in considering fascism - it itself a term up for revision - vs. capitalism vs. socialism, how we are conditioned to look at differences. On another note, it's interesting to consider the possibility that the model itself - or as it's been conditioned - has a tendency toward difference, and that similarities are a very viable mode of comparative analysis.

I'm reminded of an old Polish proverb;

Under capitalism, man exploits man.
Under communism, it's the reverse.

Fighters say that only they can know the special bond they have. This is a timeworn dimension of the sweet science, and recently drawn out very poignantly in the great documentary, Facing Ali, which I plan on writing about soon. In it, Ali's adversaries, now gray and rounder, speak with reverence about The Greatest. Despite their differences, they all recognize the common bond they share.

If nothing else, Schivelbusch's analysis exposes - among other things - one of the great fallacies of our age; the belief in our twin systems of capitalism and democracy rolled into one as being the Gemini of perfection. Americans love to put the pedal to the metal, and they believe, with all of their patriotic god fearin' hearts, that "the American System" stands wholly apart and even diametrically opposed to fascism, communism, socialism. In other words they take a fundamental error and proceed to blow it up to worldwide proportions.

It's this kind of conditioning that interprets 50 varieties of dry cereal on the shelves of their supermarkets into "freedom" - yet another fundamental error - and then proceeds to impose it on to the world. This level, keep in mind, is the foot soldier level. This is the war of the mind, ideology. The oligarchs, well, let's just say I'm cynical that they actually believe all of the "God and Country" BS. Their motives are all about fixing power in their favor. Whether via economic hitmen, jackals or neo-colonization, it's all about controlling resources, and that includes people, perhaps most of all.

Refusing to ever let a catastrophe remain an infant, America takes this to another level and compounds the foregoing error by not educating its citizens in much more than rote memorization, and the ones who do have a functioning analytical brain are devalued in monetary ways so as to dissuade critical behavior. Or, conversely, they are incentivized toward "dry analysis." Indeed, some of the most prized minds on Wall Street in the recent derivatives gold rush bubble were quantitative number crunchers. These are the other breed of economic hitmen charged with running the numbers and either creating the "financial products" - complete with structured finance traunches containing toxic mortgages rated AAA by CRAs - or doing the calculus to check the validity of "models." Those who do well are, of course, promoted, thus, never gaining any insight outside of their world and if anything, having their cosmology vise-tightened.

These are the minds that can run a right side analysis of Credit Default Swaps and weep at the thought of regulating derivatives, without the slightest awareness of dialectical materialism which, if nothing else, tells us in perfect Newtonian symmetry that for every action....

Just yesterday, Mikey and I were citing Chomsky's classic, Manufacturing Consent, in regards to American style capitalism/democracy, and how dissidence actually bolsters the illusion that it works, simply because if it weren't working, then Chomsky wouldn't even be able to function. The problem is that the articulation of Chomsky's non-relevance in the greater society goes unstated, not his ideas, but the way he is allowed to openly function and yet is ghettoized via discrimination. Thus, the solution to the puzzle is, and should be, a structural critique.

Z Mag and John Pilger are vets of this war, and Chomsky has a long history with Z Mag, as do all the old lefties. I came across this particular article by chance (with a wink and a nod to the great "Black Looks"), and, lo and behold, in 2005, Pilger was saying these words that are so apropos, given the devastation in Haiti and Dambisa Moyo's recent book criticizing western aid to developing countries.

Last, a personal note; my brotha Rom, stay up. We'll talk Sunday.

Z Magazine, at:
http://www.zmag.org/zspace/commentaries/2311

June, 11 2005
Sleeping With The Enemy

By John Pilger

The National Union of Journalists and the Blair government are planning a "launch" ceremony, at which they will announce their "partnership". According to John Fray, the NUJ's deputy general secretary, this collaboration will "promote awareness among journalists of the issues that surround the struggle against poverty on a world scale... We want to help the media to tell it like it is."

In a glossy letter to NUJ members, Fray says that joining hands with the government is "enhancing the understanding of the need for a positive approach to international development amongst those who report and comment on the issues...". For this "positive approach", the government is paying the journalists' union 80,000 pounds. What a bargain price for the principle of independence from power.

A "partnership" with the NUJ is a master stroke for a rapacious British government whose "aid" and "debt relief" are intended to mask, as Gordon Brown put it, an "obligation" on the poorest countries to "create the conditions for [business] investment". The chief civil servant at the Department for International Development wrote, "We are extending our support for privatisation in the poorest countries from the power sector in India to the tea industry in Nepal."

Since when did privatisation have anything to do with "the struggle against poverty"? Privatisation is about control of markets and profit. Period. Britain's "new global deal" for the poor is one of those brilliant propaganda illusions that enjoy widespread sycophancy among courtier-journalists who, like rock stars, prefer to think of their government as benign, regardless of its record of exploitation, lying and violence. That's how Blair got away with his WDM lies for as long as he did and how he's getting away with "aid" tied to extremist free market World Bank and IMF policies that have devastated the poorest countries.

For example, Zambia was pressured to sack thousands of teachers if it wanted to qualify for "relief". As Caroline Pearce of the Jubilee Campaign says: "Debt is used as a tool of control."

Now in the pay of the government, will the NUJ tell this truth about aid,"like it is"? Will John Fray publish another glossy newsletter, this time describing how the Department for International Development, his new "partners", have handed out millions of pounds of "aid" money to the far right-wing Adam Smith Institute, and Halcrow and KPMG, to push privatisation, such as water? And what will be the NUJ's new "positive approach" to the Blair government's impoverishing arms sales to 14 of Africa's most conflict-ridden countries?

The NUJ, of which I have been a life-long member, has done excellent work highlighting abuses against fellow trade unionists around the world, as in Colombia. I asked Jeremy Dear, the general secretary, about his new "partners". He, too, cited the NUJ's work in Colombia, "the most dangerous country for journalists in the world, where the British government fund the murderous Uribe regime." He then disclosed that the union was taking money from the Foreign Office in order to establish in Colombia "the first independent trade union for journalists so they can expose what is going on in their country."

This is the same Foreign Office that is "fund[ing] the murderous Uribe regime". Such is the familiar game of having it both ways: a game at which governments are well practised.

He also revealed that, in the Ukraine, "dozens of NUJ activists" had taken British government money to set up "an independent union for journalists". How independent is it? The Ukraine is, of course, a Washington/Whitehall "showcase project". He also said the union was taking British government money for its work promoting press freedom and journalists' safety in Iraq and Palestine. "There is not one single example of the NUJ compromising its independence as a result of securing outside funding," he said, "... and no government or individual can buy it."

Accepting tainted money - money from the same source that "funds a murderous regime" - is itself a compromise, and a dangerous one. Why should a government, which has a clear, ideological world view and a proven record of warmongering, give money to a trade union whose members should be exposing not collaborating with its manipulations? I urge my fellow NUJ members to take up that question urgently, remembering that the current US government also funds journalists who also protest their innocence.

What this "partnership" promises is harm to the union's credibility abroad, because it will be seen as yet another example of "embedding". It also lowers a threshold, demonstrating just how insidious "embedding" has become, as if it now has a certain legitimacy. In Iraq, the BBC, embedded up to its ears, has all but lost its credibility, because it broadcasts the occupiers' news - rarely spelling out that 80 per cent of the deaths are caused by the Americans and their clients. Read the instructive exchanges between the editors of MediaLens (www.medialens.org) and Helen Boaden, the head of BBC News, about why the BBC has remained silent on American atrocities in Fallujah and the use of Napalm, and why it suppresses independent eye-witness reporting.

Another form of embedding was clear in most of the reporting of the "shock" rejection of the European constitution. The French were caricatured as haters of change, ratting on the "European dream". On 29 May, the Observer, once a celebrated liberal newspaper, published a cartoon headed "The Completely Bonkers Frog". The image of a huge farting frog might have been lifted from an especially grotesque Sun front page.

That a spectacular majority in two European nations voted against the market fundamentalism that has torn the very fabric of British life was not the news. Neither was the fact that 80 per cent of working class people and 60 per cent of those under 25 voted against the greed of the European rich and the autocracy of the central banks: against poverty, unemployment, war and the betrayal of post-war social democracy once proclaimed as a mainstay of Europe's post-fascist ideal of "never again". (How desperate the true right are; with the contortion of intellect and morality that distinguishes New Labour, Denis MacShane, a former Blair minister, smeared the voters with the absurdity they were beckoning fascism and anti-Semitism).

It was also a vote against media-ism. Almost the entire French media had demanded a "yes" vote, and the "shock" was theirs. There is a lesson in all this for journalists who care about their craft. Millions of people across the world no longer credit the "global" (western) media as independent or truthful. This is especially so of young people. In Korea, during the last general election, a majority turned to the internet for their political news, dismissing the likes of CNN and their own establishment media, just as people in Stalinist countries used to.

For most human beings, the evidence of their lives is that consumerism is not democracy and "globalisation" is a vicious war against the poorest, a form of terrorism, and millions of them are taking action. The National Union of Journalists should not collaborate with their enemy.

Cuts for Cooky: Betty Mabry-Davis - They Say I'm Different

Of all the unsung badazzez from my day, I'd have to say Elaine Brown, Ericka Huggins and David Hilliard are at the top of my list. But this list is incomplete without Betty Davis.

A complete unknown to those under 50, I suspect with time she'll be co-opted. It's just a matter of time before Quentin or some other hipster "soundtracks her" in yet another self-conscious, self aware, self-referencing scene.

YAAAAAAAWN.

As for Ms. Davis, those who dug funk know she laid it down head to head with Funkadelic, Sly, Zapp and the best of them. Why she's unknown is one of those mysteries of the cosmos, because she is thoroughly bad. I think she also arranged and produced in addition to her writing and singing, making her a legit quad threat.

Married to Miles for a year - and supposedly influential in Miles' legendary turn toward rock/fusion, with Tribute to Jack Johnson and the better known Bitches Brew (both with a young John McLaughlin) - and thus the "Davis" surname, she's only in her early 60's, but lord knows where she is now, much less if she even has an interest in music.

Make no mistake; this is hard funk and this album kicks out the jams. The arrangements, the mix, the farfisa (?), the wah wah, the funky bass playing, shit, the funkiness.... This, the title joint, displays her knowledge of history, goin' all the way to the root down by the crossroads. That in itself is remarkable for a then young 20 something.

So hipsters and posers please, leave us old boomers something unsullied by your oh so smart britches, and we'll just slink off into the sunset, leaving you to your post-post-post... modern earful!

Damn, she was the nuts!

High and Low

A word of advice; if the owners of this country and their soldier minions don't want you to have something, you should probably want it. Socialized health care is a great example. Consider, if it's such a terrible thing for our supposed free market capitalist system, then why is it that everyone in congress, the judicial and executive branch has socialized healthcare - for life - but they refuse to give it to you?

In fact, the so-called public option had to be eliminated, because it was perceived to be the crack in the dam that could have led to - gasp - competition! UNFAIR competition, the insurance companies - and I'm sure the HMOs and pharmas behind them - cry, based upon the rationale that if a public option has goverment funding then it has an unfair advantage.

The biggest welfare mothers on Wall Street aside, let's talk about advantage then. Who has the advantage when it comes to millions spent in lobbying and campaign contributions which translates into their politics becoming policy as well as taking calls and office time? In other words, why is "advantage" only brought up in relation to when it potentially impacts their bottom line?

IF there were true free markets and real capitalism, we'd have any number of healthcare scenarios available in front of us. For instance, if the privatized healthcare industry is so confident about what they deliver, then let's stop all the talking and pontificating about pros and cons, of which there seems to be an endless supply of mouths on either side. Instead of wasting energy and resources endlessly chasing our tails on this debate, let's follow scientific method and do some testing, some trials.

Take California, the biggest state in both economy and population. Let's try a test run of a hybrid system - private vs. socialized. Like any good marketing professional, such as Frank Luntz, put out the call for focus groups. In Cali, there must be several hundred thousand uninsured to pool from. This recruiting, screening and administering process alone would create jobs that could be drawn down from the stimulus - you hear me Arnold?

Between LA and Frisco alone, you would have tremendous marketing data from a large subject pool and could draw across many demos. Even if a public option does not come out as a positive option, this marketing data on a very particular segment - the uninsured or near the brink - will be very valuable toward re-thinking other strategies. Why? For the simple fact that the onslaught of baby-boomers are soon going to be impacting the system like at no time in history, and many of them have fallen through the privatized healthcare cracks, or are teetering on the brink of disaster. Instead of going all in on a system that's past broken and a money pit - except for those who have a capital interest in it - we should be hedging our bets based upon RESEARCH, TESTING and DATA GATHERING, not endless chasing our tails through politicized debate and filibustering which only serves the status quo. In fact this latter point is one of the prime reasons why we have politicized debate and filibustering in the first place. Whether Democrat or Republican, if we look at the root word of "conservative" then we see what all of this intellectual clutter is for, or at least results in.

One important outcome; marketers are interested in what the market says, regardless of the "experts' opinions." Do you really think producers of any number of boy bands or teen girls who have been sexualized for music tv consumption really care about their anti-critics, so long as deals are made and profits roll in? The point is, once a focus group has finished testing, exit surveys, interviews and polling are culled, providing a basis for deciding whether or not a public option should be instituted at least on a hybrid basis.

One last go at the privatized healthcare industry constituents - again, insurers, HMOs and pharma - cry about unfair competition. If government is SOOOOOO incompetent as conservatives love to wail, then what are they afraid of? (and, more to the point, why do they continue to grow government???)

The post office is a perfect example of a government sponsored, socialized service. But the private sector in the form of UPS seems to have figured it out, DHL came online (and has left) and of course, FedEx took delivery and tweaked it to new heights - and profits. The po needless to say got hit hard. Libraries are another socialized service, but that hasn't stopped Borders and Barnes and Noble, let alone Amazon from competing. The issue is innovation and customer satisfaction. If the privatized industry is confident in their abilities insofar as those criteria, well then, let's run some trials. Let's give the public a voice outside of their bought off republic shills.

There's much more to be said, of course, than in this blog piece, but I think the germ is there for a platform to be thought out, a real plan that could at the very least yield us some very valuable data. For all of our mouthing off about free market capitalism in this country, we should at least allow a hybrid private/socialized system in a testing and research phase.

Last, think about the possibilities for hybrid systems in finance! Public banking....

The bottom line is: Let's get some data, then let's talk.

Bad Bet, or Bad Beat? Higher Education by the Numbers

As long as I'm touting "the gambler's way," which is basically applying gambling/probability in order to make decisions about the world, I should apply it to education. Being of the worker bee class, I can remember when my friends and I would balk at our fees and all of the other associated costs of higher education in America.

Then there was grad school stories. I distinctly remember when Devon called me one summer from Harvard Law; my jaw dropped when he told me what the numbers were. Luckily, Dev's a smart cookie, and doing quite well. But talk about dodging bullets.

And that was then.

Like everything else, college costs have exploded, and the amount of debt a person incurs now before even becoming gainfully employed is a "mini-bubble" that I've always felt unsustainable. As with all bubbles, the chickens eventually come home to pop them, to mix aphoristic metaphors.

To "do the math," as gamblers would say, we're lucky to have James Altucher, who's a pretty accomplished hedge fund wiz. After his recent article - which I was tipped off to by Howard Stern - there's an earlier blog post from February '08 by Altucher which, though not as analytical from the numbers perspective, is much more aggressive as a rhetorical argument.

I'd like to hear his take on entrepreneurship, which he advocates instead. The first article treats that a bit blithely, and you can trip and fall big time in that arena as the vast majority of businesses fail in year one, and the vast majority that get to year two also fail then. So, I agree with his prescription, I'd just like to see what he thinks should be a support system for entrepreneurs. But that's a minor thing in relation to the theme; both are good articles, and I couldn't agree more.

The NY Post, at:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/school_of_hard_cash_ep3MueBoMIiUqVe8uDAwmK


SCHOOL OF HARD CASH
Biz degree is bad investment

By JAMES ALTUCHER
Last Updated: 3:58 AM, November 1, 2009
Posted: 12:59 AM, November 1, 2009

Somehow I went wrong as a father -- the other day my two daughters informed me they eventually want to go to college.

I said, "No way!" and they attempted to argue with me. I have no problem with them talking back to me but somehow they've been brainwashed by society into thinking that college is a good thing for intelligent, ambitious young people to do.

Let's look at the basic facts about higher education.

The average tuition cost is approximately $26,000 per year -- including $10,000 in living costs, books, etc. -- or roughly $104,000 for a four-year program.

Some people choose to go to more expensive private colleges and some people choose to go to cheaper public schools, but this is an average. Also, a huge assumption is that it's just for four years.

According to the Department of Education, only 54 percent of undergraduates get their diploma within six years. So for the 46 percent that don't graduate -- or take 10 years to graduate -- this is a horrible investment. But let's assume your children are in the brilliant first half who finish within six years -- and hopefully within four.

Is it worth it?

First, let's look at it from a purely monetary perspective. Over the course of an individual's lifetime, according to the College Board, a college graduate can be expected to earn $800,000 more than his counterpart that didn't go to college -- $800,000 is a big spread, and could potentially separate the haves from the have-nots.

But who has and who doesn't?

If I took that $104,000 and invested it in a savings account that had an annual interest income of 5 percent I'd end up with an extra $1.4 million over a 50-year period -- $600,000 more then a sheepskin-toting peer. [emphasis mine]

That $600,000 is a lot of extra money an 18-year-old could look forward to in her retirement. I also think the $800,000 quoted above is too high. Right now most motivated kids who have the interest and resources to go to college think it's the only way to go if they want a good job. If those same kids decided to not go to college my guess is they would quickly close the gap on that $800,000 spread.

There are other factors as well. I won't be spending $104,000 per child when my children, ages 10 and 7, decide to go to college. College costs have historically gone up much faster than inflation. [emphasis mine] Since 1978, the cost of living has gone up three-fold. Medical costs, much to the horror of everyone in Congress, have gone up six-fold. And college education has gone up a whopping tenfold. This is beyond the housing bubble, the stock market bubble, any bubble you can think of. [emphasis mine]

So how can people afford college? Well, how has the US consumer afforded anything? They borrow, of course. The average student now graduates with a $23,000 debt burden, up from $13,000 12 years ago. Last year, student borrowing totaled $75 billion, up 25 percent from the year before. [emphasis mine]

If students go on to graduate degrees such as law degrees they can see their debt burden soar to $200,000 or more. And the easy borrowing convinces colleges that they can raise prices even more. So what should people do instead?

One idea: start a business. You don't need to be an entrepreneur to get valuable experience selling a service, or buying some set of goods cheap and selling them expensive. A year or two of that will be a substantial education in salesmanship, finance, and how to deal with the ups and downs of any business.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Financial Times, at:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5554c882-d90d-11dc-8b22-0000779fd2ac.html

College a waste of time and money for kids

By James Altucher
Published: February 12 2008 02:00 | Last updated: February 12 2008 02:00

Last week I made an off-the-cuff comment in my column that stirred up several e-mails asking if I was serious. What I said was that I had no intention of sending my kids to college. I was dead serious. I find the thought of college abhorrent, particularly for 18- to 20-year-olds. Kids have a lot of energy at that point, and to deaden it with a forced, unsupervised diversity of random topics taught by mostly mediocre professors is a waste of that energy.

I can't remember anything good coming from my freshman year - other than starting a business with a few of my classmates, which inspired me for subsequent businesses.

We set up a company called "CollegeCard", which offered debit cards to college students. This was 1987, before credit cards were common for college kids. Parents would send us money, which we'd deposit in the student's account with us, and the students could then use their cards up to that amount. My role was to convince every business in town not only to accept our card but also to offer discounts to its users. At night I ran the delivery business, which delivered from every restaurant that accepted our card. I was notoriously incapable of generating any tips, though one of my partners, Wende Biggs (daughter of Barton) always got great tips. (I had an unrequited crush on her.) Thankfully, she'll never read this because she now lives on a farm in France.

Here is what's wrong with college.

First, and foremost, it's too expensive. To send a kid to college you need from $200,000 to $400,000. That's insane. There's no way the incremental advantage they get from having a diploma will ever pay back that amount. Perhaps for the first time the opportunity cost (a phrase I remember from Economics 101) of college does not equal the extra profits generated by the degree.

Second, I don't believe in a balanced education. Most colleges require students to take a smattering of art, maths, sciences and so forth. Taking 10 courses a year on wildly different topics, with enormous homework responsibilities, not to mention droning, boring professors for at least eight of the 10, is the surest formula for creating complete non-interest and inability to remember anything in any of the topics covered. What a waste of $400,000.

And third, there are far better uses of time. One reader asked what her kid should be doing instead of college. Here are some of my responses:

1. Working - not just a labour or service job, but there are internet-content jobs out there. I have high school and college kids working for me who are making over $50,000 a year from writing gigs on the internet. Scour Craigslist for opportunities, your favourite blogs, or websites related to your favourite interests. Companies are dying for good content. Create your own blog, get yourself noticed, build relationships with other content companies and communities.

2. Take half the fee for one semester, give it to your kid, and tell him or her to start a business. Not every youngster has entrepreneurial sensibilities, but it's always worth trying once. The cost for starting a business is next to zero, so it's a viable alternative. What business should they start? For one thing, now that Facebook and MySpace have open development platforms, try out a few applications for these platforms; for a few hundred dollars you can outsource development of these applications to India, and get your friends to start trying them. Make sure they are viral (that is, a message should appear "click here to get all your friends to try XYZ") and see which ones are a success. I mention Facebook and MySpace because every kid is familiar with these sites and comfortable with the subtleties, and it's this comfort that can create the best businesses.

3. Spend a year trying to become good at one thing. Whatever your child's greatest interest is, whether cooking, chess, writing, maths, there are so many resources on the internet available for learning that college is almost the last place a kid should go to pursue a passion. Intense immersion in a favourite topic is the surest way to become an expert in that field.

And what about travel? Well, I'm not a big believer in that unless it's completely supervised. There's plenty of time to travel later in life. But right at home there's a plethora of opportunities that can far exceed the value of a college education at a 10th of the cost, and lead to greater experience and opportunities in career, wisdom, and life development.

james@formulacapital.com