This is a quick hit, primarily because I'm still working (!) on getting a final report out for work. Yes, it's 9:20 pm on a Tuesday. No, I didn't get to watch the Obama speech tonight. Work seems to be all I do these days. Work, work, work, work. Hello, Boys! How're we doing?
I just couldn't let the occasion slip by after several days of wondering will he? Won't he? Will they? Won't they?
Sadly, the Indianapolis Colts decided to cut Marvin Harrison loose today, thereby breaking up The Most Prolific QB-WR Duo Ever. He played for the Colts for 13 seasons, and teamed with Peyton Manning to set all those QB-WR records. But the Colts save themselves $6M in salary cap space by not bringing him back to camp, and by releasing him now, he has a chance to sign with someone else before the April NFL draft.
That's about all the economics you need to know about the NFL, where (as I said before) nothing but the signing bonus is guaranteed money.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
The Actor You Love to Hate
The last time I was on a business trip, you'll recall I "discovered" the incessant TV ads for The Amazing Snuggie! Since then, I've seen numerous other blog posts re: The Amazing Snuggie!, and I've even seen one of my friends on Facebook post a picture of her wearing one. Well, the version of The Amazing Snuggie she was wearing, she insisted it was called a Slanket, not a Snuggie. Whatever.
This time, the hotel I'm staying in has HBO, and they actually played a movie about which I was just interested enough to watch. The movie was the 2007 remake of The Heartbreak Kid, starring Ben & Jerry Stiller (sounds like they should be making ice cream), the precocious Malin Akerman, and the still very attractive ex-Tom Brady squeeze Michelle Monaghan. She was great opposite Robert Downey, Jr. in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), which I briefly mentioned in my blog post on film noirs.
The Heartbreak Kid remake was a decent enough movie, if you consider that the Farrelly Brothers really were recycling two older Hollywood films, not one. The first, naturally, was the 1972 original "Neil Simon's" Heartbreak Kid*, starring Charles Grodin and Cybill Shepherd. The other film was one of their own, the very entertaining and quite good There's Something About Mary (1998). Mary still is one of my favorite of more recent comedies, and perhaps is the reason why I have a higher Ben Stiller Tolerance Factor** than most of my friends.
* Why don't movie directors, writers, or producers put their names in front of their movies any more these days? Neil Simon and Blake Edwards did it a lot, and who can forget the Albert R. Broccoli 007 films? Seems like a quaint old Hollywood tradition that went by the wayside several decades ago.
** On a somewhat related note, I always talk about reaching the FDA-approved Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) any time I watch a Sam Neill movie. When we went to see Jurassic Park (1993) on an IMAX screen, I must have overdosed several times over on my Sam Neill RDA!
Watching this remake of Heartbreak Kid, I was struck by how similar it was to Mary, and I do wonder whether the Farrelly Brothers are running out of ideas. I was happy to see the movie for free, essentially, in my hotel room*. It was a good movie, but it naturally contains all of those irritating Ben Stillerisms that annoy people so greatly. Like I said, you have to build up your Tolerance Level if you want to enjoy a Ben Stiller movie. It's like alcohol that way, only you really don't want to have to keep ingesting ever higher amounts of Ben Stiller movies in order to achieve the same buzz you once had watching a single episode of "The Ben Stiller Show."**
* Side note: Another movie that is good to catch for "free" -- Fool's Gold (2008) with Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson -- just finished playing on HBO tonight.
** Actually, did anyone ever think that show was funny? No, I didn't think so. I just couldn't think of a better analogy.
I won't get into some of the better parts of The Heartbreak Kid, since that's really not why I'm writing this post. [At this point, I always think of Albert Brooks telling Holly Hunter in Broadcast News (1987), "How do you like that? I buried the lead."]
No, the real reason why I wanted to write a post about watching the remake of what is probably an equally cringe-worthy 1972 Neil Simon movie is because the original starred Charles Grodin, The Actor You Love to Hate. See? I told you I buried the lead!
Grodin actually has some decent chops as a comedic thespian. The Grodin humor touchstones for me are two of his newer films, and I'm not talking about Beethoven (1992) or its sequel. He did a very funny buddy movie of a very different sort with Robert DeNiro in Midnight Run (1988). DeNiro was a bounty hunter charged with bringing Grodin's accountant character in, and as he tried to do so, hijinks ensued. That's about all the plot you really need to know on that one.
The other Grodin movie I love to watch any chance I get is Taking Care of Business (1990), which still ranks as the all-time funniest Jim Belushi movie. Sure, Belushi was in The Man With One Red Shoe (1985), but that was a Tom Hanks vehicle. K-9 (1989) was OK, and Mr. Destiny (1990) was the movie that came closest to matching Taking Care of Business, but for my money, I stop and watch Business any chance I get. Even if that means coming across the movie half-way through it, I'll watch the rest of it. I don't do that for other Belushi movies.
There is just something about Grodin's character in Business (and in Midnight Run, for that matter) that can drive a person crazy. He makes the viewer actively start to root against his character, and in both of those movies, bad things happen to Grodin. I sincerely think that's a large part of why I like those two movies. The longer Grodin snivels and whines his way through the performance, the more you want him to suffer. He's a perfect comedic foil for the good guys of DeNiro and Belushi.
I also love that Belushi plays such a die-hard Cubs fan that he sneaks out of his minimum-security prison to attend a Cubs World Series game (I know, it's a complete Hollywood fantasy), catches a home run (shown on the TV broadcast, but not noticed by the prison warden, played by Hector Elizondo), and then he sneaks back in to prison so he can be paroled the next day. You do have to suspend disbelief, but that's all part of the fun! Oh, and there is the very cute Loryn Locklin in a black bikini; how could I not post a pic of that?!
Of course, I am aware that the two actors that brought me to this post, Stiller and Grodin, share some of the same qualities in their acting methods. They both can be really freakin' annoying! They just might be the actors we all love to hate for a given generation. And yet, Stiller continues to get new acting gigs all the time.
I haven't seen Night at the Museum (2006) yet, but I continue to hear good things about Tropic Thunder (2008). That might have to be another Ben Stiller movie I put on my Netflix list.
It's a very good thing I've built up my Ben Stiller Tolerance Factor throughout the years.
This time, the hotel I'm staying in has HBO, and they actually played a movie about which I was just interested enough to watch. The movie was the 2007 remake of The Heartbreak Kid, starring Ben & Jerry Stiller (sounds like they should be making ice cream), the precocious Malin Akerman, and the still very attractive ex-Tom Brady squeeze Michelle Monaghan. She was great opposite Robert Downey, Jr. in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), which I briefly mentioned in my blog post on film noirs.
The Heartbreak Kid remake was a decent enough movie, if you consider that the Farrelly Brothers really were recycling two older Hollywood films, not one. The first, naturally, was the 1972 original "Neil Simon's" Heartbreak Kid*, starring Charles Grodin and Cybill Shepherd. The other film was one of their own, the very entertaining and quite good There's Something About Mary (1998). Mary still is one of my favorite of more recent comedies, and perhaps is the reason why I have a higher Ben Stiller Tolerance Factor** than most of my friends.
* Why don't movie directors, writers, or producers put their names in front of their movies any more these days? Neil Simon and Blake Edwards did it a lot, and who can forget the Albert R. Broccoli 007 films? Seems like a quaint old Hollywood tradition that went by the wayside several decades ago.
** On a somewhat related note, I always talk about reaching the FDA-approved Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) any time I watch a Sam Neill movie. When we went to see Jurassic Park (1993) on an IMAX screen, I must have overdosed several times over on my Sam Neill RDA!
Watching this remake of Heartbreak Kid, I was struck by how similar it was to Mary, and I do wonder whether the Farrelly Brothers are running out of ideas. I was happy to see the movie for free, essentially, in my hotel room*. It was a good movie, but it naturally contains all of those irritating Ben Stillerisms that annoy people so greatly. Like I said, you have to build up your Tolerance Level if you want to enjoy a Ben Stiller movie. It's like alcohol that way, only you really don't want to have to keep ingesting ever higher amounts of Ben Stiller movies in order to achieve the same buzz you once had watching a single episode of "The Ben Stiller Show."**
* Side note: Another movie that is good to catch for "free" -- Fool's Gold (2008) with Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson -- just finished playing on HBO tonight.
** Actually, did anyone ever think that show was funny? No, I didn't think so. I just couldn't think of a better analogy.
I won't get into some of the better parts of The Heartbreak Kid, since that's really not why I'm writing this post. [At this point, I always think of Albert Brooks telling Holly Hunter in Broadcast News (1987), "How do you like that? I buried the lead."]
No, the real reason why I wanted to write a post about watching the remake of what is probably an equally cringe-worthy 1972 Neil Simon movie is because the original starred Charles Grodin, The Actor You Love to Hate. See? I told you I buried the lead!
Grodin actually has some decent chops as a comedic thespian. The Grodin humor touchstones for me are two of his newer films, and I'm not talking about Beethoven (1992) or its sequel. He did a very funny buddy movie of a very different sort with Robert DeNiro in Midnight Run (1988). DeNiro was a bounty hunter charged with bringing Grodin's accountant character in, and as he tried to do so, hijinks ensued. That's about all the plot you really need to know on that one.
The other Grodin movie I love to watch any chance I get is Taking Care of Business (1990), which still ranks as the all-time funniest Jim Belushi movie. Sure, Belushi was in The Man With One Red Shoe (1985), but that was a Tom Hanks vehicle. K-9 (1989) was OK, and Mr. Destiny (1990) was the movie that came closest to matching Taking Care of Business, but for my money, I stop and watch Business any chance I get. Even if that means coming across the movie half-way through it, I'll watch the rest of it. I don't do that for other Belushi movies.
There is just something about Grodin's character in Business (and in Midnight Run, for that matter) that can drive a person crazy. He makes the viewer actively start to root against his character, and in both of those movies, bad things happen to Grodin. I sincerely think that's a large part of why I like those two movies. The longer Grodin snivels and whines his way through the performance, the more you want him to suffer. He's a perfect comedic foil for the good guys of DeNiro and Belushi.
I also love that Belushi plays such a die-hard Cubs fan that he sneaks out of his minimum-security prison to attend a Cubs World Series game (I know, it's a complete Hollywood fantasy), catches a home run (shown on the TV broadcast, but not noticed by the prison warden, played by Hector Elizondo), and then he sneaks back in to prison so he can be paroled the next day. You do have to suspend disbelief, but that's all part of the fun! Oh, and there is the very cute Loryn Locklin in a black bikini; how could I not post a pic of that?!
Of course, I am aware that the two actors that brought me to this post, Stiller and Grodin, share some of the same qualities in their acting methods. They both can be really freakin' annoying! They just might be the actors we all love to hate for a given generation. And yet, Stiller continues to get new acting gigs all the time.I haven't seen Night at the Museum (2006) yet, but I continue to hear good things about Tropic Thunder (2008). That might have to be another Ben Stiller movie I put on my Netflix list.
It's a very good thing I've built up my Ben Stiller Tolerance Factor throughout the years.
Monday, February 16, 2009
End of An Era
Unless you've been living under a rock for the past six months, you probably are aware that most TV broadcast stations will turn off their analog signals tomorrow. Yes, 17 Feb 09 tomorrow. Tuesday. As in, some time after I post this just before midnight tonight.
Now, you might know that the Obama White House worked with the mighty members of Congress to push back the switch from analog to digital transmissions from the previous deadline (17 Feb) to 12 June. That was a nice gesture to those middle-class, working families who couldn't get their hands on a digital converter box.
Never mind that the conversion date for analog-to-digital TV was planned originally for 1997. Or 1998. It was a while ago, alright? I remember the TV guys talking about how much they wanted to switch to digital TV, but everyone agreed that the United States of America just wasn't ready yet. Kinda like how we're not ready to switch to the metric system yet.
Never mind that most people (the vast majority) in America get their TV signals from a cable provider. Sure, some people get their TV from a satellite provider, but they are few in number compared to those people who subscribe to cable. Those of us who receive nothing but an over-the-air signal? We're so far in the minority, our vote really doesn't count compared to the majority. Seriously, I think the over-the-air households are in the single digits, percentage-wise. It's tiny!
Never mind that HDTVs with digital tuners built into the TV (no cable decoder or other set-top box needed!) have been sold probably as long as the TV industry has been talking about switching from analog to digital signals.
Never mind that all Congress really did was push the mandatory switch-over date back a few months. Every single local TV affiliate station I've seen using a scroll along the bottom of the screen has announced their plans to go ahead with the shut-off of their analog signals on 17 Feb. Tomorrow. Tuesday. Hey, they already had plans for that date! They had their guys on the schedule to climb up those transmission towers and take down that analog equipment long before Congress passed its legislation. It'd be too expensive to change horses in mid-stream, so to speak.
Never mind that one of the reasons why Congress felt compelled to take this action (more than just pandering for votes) is because voters all over the country chose to apply for the coupons given away by the Federal government. You know the ones, the coupons that were good for $20 or $30 off the digital converter boxes sold by places like Radio Shack and Best Buy. So the digital converter box was only $40, not $60 or $70. Like the manufacturers didn't factor the Federal coupon into the price found on the box! Yeah, riiiiiiight.
And yet, only about half the Federal coupons passed out to voters have actually been redeemed by shoppers. But the Federal government can't just void the coupons already passed out to one voter in order to re-issue it to another voter. They are simply not that nimble, so they effectively are hamstrung by voters who received the coupons but never redeemed them.
Never mind that consumers have been snapping up those digital converter boxes so quickly, the manufacturers have had a hard time keeping up with demand. Of course, this partly could explain why only half of those Federal coupons have been redeemed by voters.
All I know is, I've had nothing but over-the-air TV since 2005. I've also enjoyed both analog TV and digital HDTV since 2005. I made sure to sign up for two of those Federal coupons, and then used both coupons to purchase two digital converter boxes from Radio Shack for the two analog TVs down in my basement. Everything works great! The converted digital signal on the analog sets looks great, better than any analog signal ever looked on those TVs.
My only problem is that the HD antenna I bought in 2005 (and I don't think there's really anything different from a standard Yagi-Uda antenna* and anything called an HD antenna; as long as you have the digital tuner, and as long as your antenna can receive the normal UHF or VHF signals, then you get the digital signals; I'm pretty sure it works that way) only gets signals from as far away as 35-40 miles, even though it's powered . That works fine for most broadcast stations where I live, but the Fox affiliate is located in Springfield, IL. Which is about 43 miles away. I need a new antenna that can get signals from at least 50-60 miles away.
* OK, so that web source is a little hard to understand. Here's the Wikipedia page for anyone who wants a clearer explanation. See? Wikipedia ain't so bad.
Ah, well. As TV broadcast affiliates turn off their analog transmission equipment tomorrow, it will mark the end of an era. It is quite different from the switch between black-and-white and color TV, I think. Isn't it? People didn't have to run out and buy color TVs to enjoy their favorite shows after the broadcasters started using cameras that could capture the action in color. Sure, you didn't want to be the last family on your block still watching Milton Berle in b-n-w, but not getting the new TV didn't mean the old one was suddenly unusable.
It's the end of an era, I tell you.
Now, you might know that the Obama White House worked with the mighty members of Congress to push back the switch from analog to digital transmissions from the previous deadline (17 Feb) to 12 June. That was a nice gesture to those middle-class, working families who couldn't get their hands on a digital converter box.
Never mind that the conversion date for analog-to-digital TV was planned originally for 1997. Or 1998. It was a while ago, alright? I remember the TV guys talking about how much they wanted to switch to digital TV, but everyone agreed that the United States of America just wasn't ready yet. Kinda like how we're not ready to switch to the metric system yet.
Never mind that most people (the vast majority) in America get their TV signals from a cable provider. Sure, some people get their TV from a satellite provider, but they are few in number compared to those people who subscribe to cable. Those of us who receive nothing but an over-the-air signal? We're so far in the minority, our vote really doesn't count compared to the majority. Seriously, I think the over-the-air households are in the single digits, percentage-wise. It's tiny!
Never mind that HDTVs with digital tuners built into the TV (no cable decoder or other set-top box needed!) have been sold probably as long as the TV industry has been talking about switching from analog to digital signals.
Never mind that all Congress really did was push the mandatory switch-over date back a few months. Every single local TV affiliate station I've seen using a scroll along the bottom of the screen has announced their plans to go ahead with the shut-off of their analog signals on 17 Feb. Tomorrow. Tuesday. Hey, they already had plans for that date! They had their guys on the schedule to climb up those transmission towers and take down that analog equipment long before Congress passed its legislation. It'd be too expensive to change horses in mid-stream, so to speak.
Never mind that one of the reasons why Congress felt compelled to take this action (more than just pandering for votes) is because voters all over the country chose to apply for the coupons given away by the Federal government. You know the ones, the coupons that were good for $20 or $30 off the digital converter boxes sold by places like Radio Shack and Best Buy. So the digital converter box was only $40, not $60 or $70. Like the manufacturers didn't factor the Federal coupon into the price found on the box! Yeah, riiiiiiight.
And yet, only about half the Federal coupons passed out to voters have actually been redeemed by shoppers. But the Federal government can't just void the coupons already passed out to one voter in order to re-issue it to another voter. They are simply not that nimble, so they effectively are hamstrung by voters who received the coupons but never redeemed them.
Never mind that consumers have been snapping up those digital converter boxes so quickly, the manufacturers have had a hard time keeping up with demand. Of course, this partly could explain why only half of those Federal coupons have been redeemed by voters.
All I know is, I've had nothing but over-the-air TV since 2005. I've also enjoyed both analog TV and digital HDTV since 2005. I made sure to sign up for two of those Federal coupons, and then used both coupons to purchase two digital converter boxes from Radio Shack for the two analog TVs down in my basement. Everything works great! The converted digital signal on the analog sets looks great, better than any analog signal ever looked on those TVs.
My only problem is that the HD antenna I bought in 2005 (and I don't think there's really anything different from a standard Yagi-Uda antenna* and anything called an HD antenna; as long as you have the digital tuner, and as long as your antenna can receive the normal UHF or VHF signals, then you get the digital signals; I'm pretty sure it works that way) only gets signals from as far away as 35-40 miles, even though it's powered . That works fine for most broadcast stations where I live, but the Fox affiliate is located in Springfield, IL. Which is about 43 miles away. I need a new antenna that can get signals from at least 50-60 miles away.
* OK, so that web source is a little hard to understand. Here's the Wikipedia page for anyone who wants a clearer explanation. See? Wikipedia ain't so bad.
Ah, well. As TV broadcast affiliates turn off their analog transmission equipment tomorrow, it will mark the end of an era. It is quite different from the switch between black-and-white and color TV, I think. Isn't it? People didn't have to run out and buy color TVs to enjoy their favorite shows after the broadcasters started using cameras that could capture the action in color. Sure, you didn't want to be the last family on your block still watching Milton Berle in b-n-w, but not getting the new TV didn't mean the old one was suddenly unusable.
It's the end of an era, I tell you.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Old Movies - Gotta Love 'Em!
Have I mentioned lately how much I adore Netflix? There is more to the story than just the fact that they have a great selection of hard-to-find movies (since they don't have to waste valuable shelf real estate in a commercial property, like a Blockbuster store would), more than the fact there are no late fees, and more than the fact that they now have a "watch it now" online feature that works through my Mac Mini* for truly on-demand viewing.
* I call the Mini the "electronic brain" of our home theater system. It's small, hooked up to the Internet wirelessly via WiFi, and it stores all of our iTunes music, videos, and digital pictures. We use the Sony HDTV as the monitor, and use a wireless keyboard and mouse to control it from the couch/man chair. The Mini's SuperDrive(TM) is our DVD player. Forgive me, but the Mini deserves an emoticon! :-)
No, for the real story behind why I love Netflix so much, I have to go back to 2002, when I was a newbie just starting my MBA program. I mistakenly took an elective course during the summer semester that really was intended for MBA students in their last or second-to-last semesters. The course was on entrepreneurialism, and was taught by an adjunct professor who was the President of Waterside Capital Corporation, a VC firm in Virginia Beach. To get a passing grade in the course, I had to estimate the break-even point in customers/subscribers for the Netflix DVD mailing service, which was in its infancy at the time. I had about two quarters of data to use to try to make any meaningful estimates, and I'm sure my calculations were completely off from reality. Luckily, the prof figured I did enough in the class to pass, and ever since then, I've had a warm fuzzy feeling for Netflix.
Let's go back to the first point I made above, that Netflix has an unparalleled library of old, hard-to-find movies. A little while ago, WSJ ran an obit for Donald Westlake, an author and screenwriter of some regard. Westlake penned detective novels with a certain humorous side to them, often under the pseudonym Richard Stark, and that was why he was lauded by the WSJ.
As they wrote the obit, the Journal did mention several of the movies that were made from the Richard Stark novels. Among them were Point Blank (1967) with Lee Marvin and The Hot Rock (1972) with Robert Redford. He also did the screenplay for The Grifters (1990), one of my less-favorite John Cusack films (although it was not without merit; if you've seen it, you'll know there's an unforgettable yet very brief scene with Annette Benning), and Payback (1999), the Mel Gibson movie I really wanted to like better than I did. Lucy Liu as dominatrix... Rowr!
I knew that I could find Point Blank and The Hot Rock on the list of available titles through Netflix, and that those titles would be impossible to find at a Blockbuster. Have I mentioned I adore Netflix? What I didn't know, couldn't possibly have known, when I put those two movies on my queue, was how remarkable they both are. Let's look at Point Blank first.
Now, I've seen enough old films to know and understand that Lee Marvin is one of the Top Ten all-time Hollywood tough guys. Scroll down in that list; you'll find him! But watching Marvin perform in Point Blank has to be one of his toughest of tough-guy roles!
At first, I have to admit I was worried that Point Blank would be another weird, creepy, go-nowhere mid- to late-sixties movie. When it started, it had a ton of flashbacks, which normally don't bother me. However, this movie had a similar look and feel for the first 15-20 minutes or so as did the immortally bad Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), the movie that made Roger Ebert be a film critic rather than a writer/director. I was overjoyed that Point Blank got better and better the longer Marvin sought out the man who shot him and took his money.
One thing I noted was that Marvin never carried his gun in a normal manner. He never had a holster for it, never tucked it away in the small of his back, and practically never held it by the grip; rather, he carried it with his hand around the chamber of the gun. Who does that?! You can see what I'm talking about in the movie poster:
The other remarkable thing about Point Blank is just how many famous actors made an appearance. Archie Bunker is in it! John Vernon, who later was immortalized for all-time in the role of Dean Wormer in Animal House (1978), was in it. James Sikking, who is most famous for his work on "Hill Street Blues", played a sharpshooter. Even Kathleen Freeman, who played Sister Mary Stigmata (AKA, the Penguin) in The Blues Brothers (1980), is in it. What a hoot!
So, if you ever want to know just why Lee Marvin was voted as the Number 1 Hollywood Tough Guy of all time, check out Point Blank!
The other Westlake film, The Hot Rock, was also interesting, but for different reasons. I have to say that I like Redford as an actor, but not at the same level of intensity as my regard for Paul Newman. Just the fact that Newman is in a movie is enough to make me like it! That's true even if he makes a small appearance in otherwise clunkers of movies like Message In a Bottle (1999) or Nobody's Fool (1994); Melanie Griffith - UGH! Newman had the special charisma where everything he touched was better simply because he was involved. And those blue eyes!
Ah, but I digress. What I meant to say above is that I haven't seen that many Redford movies that don't have Newman in them. The Hot Rock is one, and we also recently watched The Horse Whisperer (1998). I did mention earlier that Westlake was known for his comedic stylings when it came to crime dramas. The Hot Rock, as it turns out, is meant to be a comedy on par with more famous movies of the era, like The Pink Panther (1963) or, more accurately, The Return of The Pink Panther (1975).
The Hot Rock also has several actors who later went on to star in other vehicles. The movie poster might be hard to make out, but standing on Redford's left is George Segal, who I always associate with the role of Jack Gallo in the TV series "Just Shoot Me!" Ron Liebman, the guy to Redford's right on the poster, has done a ton of work in Hollywood. And the most famous cameo of all was performed by Zero Mostel of The Producers (1968 Mel Brooks original) fame. The actor who caught my eye, though, and who forced me to stop the movie and rewind to make sure it really was him, was Christopher Guest! He played a cop in the precinct house on which our foursome of jewel thieves land a helicopter (What? Did they think the cops wouldn't notice a helicopter landing on the roof?!), and he only had two lines or so, but it marked his first credited performance in a major motion film. How about that?
Something else about The Hot Rock also sent shivers down my spine as we watched it. The film was released in 1972, so they probably filmed it in 1970 or so. As they filmed the helicopter scene (on the way to the precinct house on the west side of Manhattan), they flew right past the World Trade Center (WTC) twin towers in lower Manhattan. The creepy thing is that the towers weren't finished yet! One tower still had construction going on at the top 5-10 stories or so, and the other tower had about a third of the tower yet to go. Just knowing that those two buildings no longer exist, and all the death and destruction that went with them, really freaked me out while watching The Hot Rock.
I did mention that The Hot Rock was meant to be a funny crime caper, and the only thing I'll say about that is our definition of what's funny sure has changed since the late '60s and early '70s. I'm guessing my dad would find it funny, but then again, he always thought "Three's Company" was hysterical (sorry to throw you under the bus like that, Dad). This movie, while funny at times, doesn't have the same zing as Peter Sellers achieved in the old Blake Edwards Pink Panther movies.
If you get the chance, and if you have a subscription with Netflix, definitely check out those two movies. They're worth the time!
* I call the Mini the "electronic brain" of our home theater system. It's small, hooked up to the Internet wirelessly via WiFi, and it stores all of our iTunes music, videos, and digital pictures. We use the Sony HDTV as the monitor, and use a wireless keyboard and mouse to control it from the couch/man chair. The Mini's SuperDrive(TM) is our DVD player. Forgive me, but the Mini deserves an emoticon! :-)
No, for the real story behind why I love Netflix so much, I have to go back to 2002, when I was a newbie just starting my MBA program. I mistakenly took an elective course during the summer semester that really was intended for MBA students in their last or second-to-last semesters. The course was on entrepreneurialism, and was taught by an adjunct professor who was the President of Waterside Capital Corporation, a VC firm in Virginia Beach. To get a passing grade in the course, I had to estimate the break-even point in customers/subscribers for the Netflix DVD mailing service, which was in its infancy at the time. I had about two quarters of data to use to try to make any meaningful estimates, and I'm sure my calculations were completely off from reality. Luckily, the prof figured I did enough in the class to pass, and ever since then, I've had a warm fuzzy feeling for Netflix.
Let's go back to the first point I made above, that Netflix has an unparalleled library of old, hard-to-find movies. A little while ago, WSJ ran an obit for Donald Westlake, an author and screenwriter of some regard. Westlake penned detective novels with a certain humorous side to them, often under the pseudonym Richard Stark, and that was why he was lauded by the WSJ.
As they wrote the obit, the Journal did mention several of the movies that were made from the Richard Stark novels. Among them were Point Blank (1967) with Lee Marvin and The Hot Rock (1972) with Robert Redford. He also did the screenplay for The Grifters (1990), one of my less-favorite John Cusack films (although it was not without merit; if you've seen it, you'll know there's an unforgettable yet very brief scene with Annette Benning), and Payback (1999), the Mel Gibson movie I really wanted to like better than I did. Lucy Liu as dominatrix... Rowr!
I knew that I could find Point Blank and The Hot Rock on the list of available titles through Netflix, and that those titles would be impossible to find at a Blockbuster. Have I mentioned I adore Netflix? What I didn't know, couldn't possibly have known, when I put those two movies on my queue, was how remarkable they both are. Let's look at Point Blank first.
Now, I've seen enough old films to know and understand that Lee Marvin is one of the Top Ten all-time Hollywood tough guys. Scroll down in that list; you'll find him! But watching Marvin perform in Point Blank has to be one of his toughest of tough-guy roles!
At first, I have to admit I was worried that Point Blank would be another weird, creepy, go-nowhere mid- to late-sixties movie. When it started, it had a ton of flashbacks, which normally don't bother me. However, this movie had a similar look and feel for the first 15-20 minutes or so as did the immortally bad Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), the movie that made Roger Ebert be a film critic rather than a writer/director. I was overjoyed that Point Blank got better and better the longer Marvin sought out the man who shot him and took his money.
One thing I noted was that Marvin never carried his gun in a normal manner. He never had a holster for it, never tucked it away in the small of his back, and practically never held it by the grip; rather, he carried it with his hand around the chamber of the gun. Who does that?! You can see what I'm talking about in the movie poster:
The other remarkable thing about Point Blank is just how many famous actors made an appearance. Archie Bunker is in it! John Vernon, who later was immortalized for all-time in the role of Dean Wormer in Animal House (1978), was in it. James Sikking, who is most famous for his work on "Hill Street Blues", played a sharpshooter. Even Kathleen Freeman, who played Sister Mary Stigmata (AKA, the Penguin) in The Blues Brothers (1980), is in it. What a hoot!So, if you ever want to know just why Lee Marvin was voted as the Number 1 Hollywood Tough Guy of all time, check out Point Blank!
The other Westlake film, The Hot Rock, was also interesting, but for different reasons. I have to say that I like Redford as an actor, but not at the same level of intensity as my regard for Paul Newman. Just the fact that Newman is in a movie is enough to make me like it! That's true even if he makes a small appearance in otherwise clunkers of movies like Message In a Bottle (1999) or Nobody's Fool (1994); Melanie Griffith - UGH! Newman had the special charisma where everything he touched was better simply because he was involved. And those blue eyes!
Ah, but I digress. What I meant to say above is that I haven't seen that many Redford movies that don't have Newman in them. The Hot Rock is one, and we also recently watched The Horse Whisperer (1998). I did mention earlier that Westlake was known for his comedic stylings when it came to crime dramas. The Hot Rock, as it turns out, is meant to be a comedy on par with more famous movies of the era, like The Pink Panther (1963) or, more accurately, The Return of The Pink Panther (1975).
The Hot Rock also has several actors who later went on to star in other vehicles. The movie poster might be hard to make out, but standing on Redford's left is George Segal, who I always associate with the role of Jack Gallo in the TV series "Just Shoot Me!" Ron Liebman, the guy to Redford's right on the poster, has done a ton of work in Hollywood. And the most famous cameo of all was performed by Zero Mostel of The Producers (1968 Mel Brooks original) fame. The actor who caught my eye, though, and who forced me to stop the movie and rewind to make sure it really was him, was Christopher Guest! He played a cop in the precinct house on which our foursome of jewel thieves land a helicopter (What? Did they think the cops wouldn't notice a helicopter landing on the roof?!), and he only had two lines or so, but it marked his first credited performance in a major motion film. How about that?Something else about The Hot Rock also sent shivers down my spine as we watched it. The film was released in 1972, so they probably filmed it in 1970 or so. As they filmed the helicopter scene (on the way to the precinct house on the west side of Manhattan), they flew right past the World Trade Center (WTC) twin towers in lower Manhattan. The creepy thing is that the towers weren't finished yet! One tower still had construction going on at the top 5-10 stories or so, and the other tower had about a third of the tower yet to go. Just knowing that those two buildings no longer exist, and all the death and destruction that went with them, really freaked me out while watching The Hot Rock.
I did mention that The Hot Rock was meant to be a funny crime caper, and the only thing I'll say about that is our definition of what's funny sure has changed since the late '60s and early '70s. I'm guessing my dad would find it funny, but then again, he always thought "Three's Company" was hysterical (sorry to throw you under the bus like that, Dad). This movie, while funny at times, doesn't have the same zing as Peter Sellers achieved in the old Blake Edwards Pink Panther movies.
If you get the chance, and if you have a subscription with Netflix, definitely check out those two movies. They're worth the time!
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
The Economic Case FOR Steroids in Baseball
Everyone who is a sports fan could not escape the news over the weekend that Alex Rodriguez, 3B for the NY Yankees, tested positive for two banned substances (both steroids) in 2003, when he was playing SS for the Texas Rangers. His name was one of 104 that appeared on a list of players who tested positive during that season, and the ramifications of all those positive tests was increased and public enforcement of drug tests in MLB the following year. The fact that A-Rod's name was leaked to the public by four anonymous sources and published by Sports Illustrated was not all that shocking; enough allegations had been made against A-Rod throughout the years that he had to defend himself by denying his steroid use in an interview with Katie Couric.
No, the surprising thing for me was that A-Rod almost immediately went on air in another interview, this time with ESPN's Peter Gammons, and admitted he cheated by taking steroids in 2001, 2002, and 2003. Well, he claimed to be off the juice in 2003, but then there's the case of his failed drug tests that year.
Even more surprising for me was the reason why A-Rod said he cheated:
Why did A-Rod feel all the pressure to perform? When he left Seattle and signed the richest contract in the history of Major League Baseball, it was for 10 years and $252 Million to play SS for the Rangers. That's an awful lot of pressure, an awful lot of zeros to justify on a yearly basis. For the first time, a player came right out and admitted what everyone always understood as the underlying reason for taking performance-enhancing drugs (PED): ECONOMICS.
Keep in mind that A-Rod had all the tools necessary to play and be a star at the MLB level. He was not some no-power, good glove middle infielder in the years leading up to 2001. In 2000, A-Rod was one of the last stars left on a Mariners team that previously dealt LHP Randy Johnson and CF Ken Griffey Jr. to other teams. That season, he hit 41 HR, had a .316 BA, and became the only SS to have 100 runs, RBI, and walks in a single season. This is not some player past his prime or struggling in Double A or Triple A to make it to The Show; in 2000, A-Rod was in the prime of his career.
Much the same can be said of Barry Bonds, as well. Bonds, of course, has already been convicted of using PEDs in the eyes of the baseball public, despite his protestations otherwise. Bonds, even before he sought out the services of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO), was one of the all-time best outfielders in MLB.
Why on earth would these guys risk their reputations, their long-term health, and their shot at immortality (the MLB Hall of Fame) when all those things were in reach? I think economics has a great deal to do with it.
Baseball, when it comes to player contracts and guaranteed money, is somewhat between the extremes of the NBA and NFL. In the NBA, players have truly guaranteed contracts that will pay them for the life of the contract, even if the player is sitting on the bench. In the NFL, no contract is guaranteed past a given Sunday. I'm fairly well convinced that was why Shawne Merriman tried to tough it out and play on two bad knees in September, even after he was told by several doctors that he needed season-ending knee surgery to save his career. In MLB, player contracts are fairly well guaranteed, but either side can request salary arbitration to either increase or decrease the salary based on the past season's performance.
Baseball is not like some sports, when an athlete might have just one really good shot at winning a gold medal and securing lots of money in endorsement deals. How many track and field stars did we see in Beijing who came up just short of achieving their lifelong dreams? I would argue the economic case for cheating in track and field is far, far greater than it is in baseball or football.
Cycling is another case where the athletes have been doping for decades, but for different reasons. Sure, the leader of a cycling team can make several Millions of dollars while on contract with the team. The domestiques, however, make far less, although I think their salaries are still in the six-figure ranges. This article from WSJ sheds some light on cycling salaries, which typically are closely guarded (subscription req'd). No, the real reason why cyclists abused EPO for so many years, and why they still look for ways to cheat the system today, is because it is such a grueling sport. The attitude has been, "everyone else is doing it; if I want to survive in the peloton, I have to do it, too."
Let's get back to baseball. When all the talk about PEDs in sport revolved around Barry Bonds, I wondered whether it made economic sense for him to sacrifice his long-term health for a few more seasons of muscle. When Bonds left the Pittsburgh Pirates to sign as a free agent with San Francisco, his contract was a then-MLB record $43.75 Million over six years. That's a paltry $7.29 Million per year. When Bonds re-signed in 2002 (during or shortly after the time he is suspected of using PEDs), SF gave him a five-year, $90 Million contract. That's an average of $18 Million per year. In 2005, Bonds earned $22 Million, second only to A-Rod. In 2006, he earned $20 Million, and in 2007, he earned $15.8 Million. That's an awful lot of money that can be used to pay for any type of health issues Bonds might face (if any) as a result of using PEDs. The cost-benefit analysis is pretty straightforward here.
A lot of the MLB players who have been outed for using PEDs, either by Jose Canseco's books or by The Mitchell Report, have said they used PEDs only to help come back from an injury faster. Andy Pettitte was one of the players who took that path. Many of the players suspected of using have only denied the allegations, despite any evidence to the contrary. Roger Clemens and Rafael Palmeiro fall into that camp. Before A-Rod, however, no one admitted that one reason they used PEDs was due to financial or economic concerns.
On a macroeconomic level, the supply and demand of hugely talented baseball players is partly to blame for the high salaries for star players. There is little doubt that Tom Hicks, the owner of the Rangers, overpaid to secure the services of A-Rod in 2001. But the price he was willing to pay was driven up by the perception that A-Rod was the centerpiece of the World Series championship-winning club he wanted to build. Put in microeconomic terms, the marginal utility Hicks expected to receive by employing A-Rod must have far outweighed the opportunity cost of hiring other free agents.
There is little doubt, after listening to A-Rod's confession yesterday, that he felt the pressure of all those expectations to perform. He didn't put it in economic terms, per se, but he did say he felt the "weight of the world" on his shoulders.
Another way of looking at the same issue is to view a player's performance in the year leading up to free agency, often called the "contract year." Almost invariably, the player in a contract year performs far above his statistical averages, all in hopes of landing a bigger contract worth more money at the end of the season. In MLB especially, free agents who just landed a new contract with a new team tend to disappoint during the life of that contract. Kevin Brown and Mike Hampton jump to mind.
What's the alternative, then? Can we ever get back to a time when player salaries did not engender such on-field performance swings? I don't think so, and I don't think we necessarily want to see players earning the pauper wages they once did, way back when. About the only thing that can be done, and what MLB is finally doing, is setting up strict drug enforcement regimens to catch and punish the cheats. The MLB drug testing policy could be much stronger, yes. But at least they now realize how far-reaching PEDs were in baseball, and how damaging to the sport they are.
No, the surprising thing for me was that A-Rod almost immediately went on air in another interview, this time with ESPN's Peter Gammons, and admitted he cheated by taking steroids in 2001, 2002, and 2003. Well, he claimed to be off the juice in 2003, but then there's the case of his failed drug tests that year.
Even more surprising for me was the reason why A-Rod said he cheated:
"When I arrived in Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure. I felt
like I had all the weight of the world on top of me and I needed to perform, and
perform at a high level every day."
Why did A-Rod feel all the pressure to perform? When he left Seattle and signed the richest contract in the history of Major League Baseball, it was for 10 years and $252 Million to play SS for the Rangers. That's an awful lot of pressure, an awful lot of zeros to justify on a yearly basis. For the first time, a player came right out and admitted what everyone always understood as the underlying reason for taking performance-enhancing drugs (PED): ECONOMICS.
Keep in mind that A-Rod had all the tools necessary to play and be a star at the MLB level. He was not some no-power, good glove middle infielder in the years leading up to 2001. In 2000, A-Rod was one of the last stars left on a Mariners team that previously dealt LHP Randy Johnson and CF Ken Griffey Jr. to other teams. That season, he hit 41 HR, had a .316 BA, and became the only SS to have 100 runs, RBI, and walks in a single season. This is not some player past his prime or struggling in Double A or Triple A to make it to The Show; in 2000, A-Rod was in the prime of his career.
Much the same can be said of Barry Bonds, as well. Bonds, of course, has already been convicted of using PEDs in the eyes of the baseball public, despite his protestations otherwise. Bonds, even before he sought out the services of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO), was one of the all-time best outfielders in MLB.
Why on earth would these guys risk their reputations, their long-term health, and their shot at immortality (the MLB Hall of Fame) when all those things were in reach? I think economics has a great deal to do with it.
Baseball, when it comes to player contracts and guaranteed money, is somewhat between the extremes of the NBA and NFL. In the NBA, players have truly guaranteed contracts that will pay them for the life of the contract, even if the player is sitting on the bench. In the NFL, no contract is guaranteed past a given Sunday. I'm fairly well convinced that was why Shawne Merriman tried to tough it out and play on two bad knees in September, even after he was told by several doctors that he needed season-ending knee surgery to save his career. In MLB, player contracts are fairly well guaranteed, but either side can request salary arbitration to either increase or decrease the salary based on the past season's performance.
Baseball is not like some sports, when an athlete might have just one really good shot at winning a gold medal and securing lots of money in endorsement deals. How many track and field stars did we see in Beijing who came up just short of achieving their lifelong dreams? I would argue the economic case for cheating in track and field is far, far greater than it is in baseball or football.
Cycling is another case where the athletes have been doping for decades, but for different reasons. Sure, the leader of a cycling team can make several Millions of dollars while on contract with the team. The domestiques, however, make far less, although I think their salaries are still in the six-figure ranges. This article from WSJ sheds some light on cycling salaries, which typically are closely guarded (subscription req'd). No, the real reason why cyclists abused EPO for so many years, and why they still look for ways to cheat the system today, is because it is such a grueling sport. The attitude has been, "everyone else is doing it; if I want to survive in the peloton, I have to do it, too."
Let's get back to baseball. When all the talk about PEDs in sport revolved around Barry Bonds, I wondered whether it made economic sense for him to sacrifice his long-term health for a few more seasons of muscle. When Bonds left the Pittsburgh Pirates to sign as a free agent with San Francisco, his contract was a then-MLB record $43.75 Million over six years. That's a paltry $7.29 Million per year. When Bonds re-signed in 2002 (during or shortly after the time he is suspected of using PEDs), SF gave him a five-year, $90 Million contract. That's an average of $18 Million per year. In 2005, Bonds earned $22 Million, second only to A-Rod. In 2006, he earned $20 Million, and in 2007, he earned $15.8 Million. That's an awful lot of money that can be used to pay for any type of health issues Bonds might face (if any) as a result of using PEDs. The cost-benefit analysis is pretty straightforward here.
A lot of the MLB players who have been outed for using PEDs, either by Jose Canseco's books or by The Mitchell Report, have said they used PEDs only to help come back from an injury faster. Andy Pettitte was one of the players who took that path. Many of the players suspected of using have only denied the allegations, despite any evidence to the contrary. Roger Clemens and Rafael Palmeiro fall into that camp. Before A-Rod, however, no one admitted that one reason they used PEDs was due to financial or economic concerns.
On a macroeconomic level, the supply and demand of hugely talented baseball players is partly to blame for the high salaries for star players. There is little doubt that Tom Hicks, the owner of the Rangers, overpaid to secure the services of A-Rod in 2001. But the price he was willing to pay was driven up by the perception that A-Rod was the centerpiece of the World Series championship-winning club he wanted to build. Put in microeconomic terms, the marginal utility Hicks expected to receive by employing A-Rod must have far outweighed the opportunity cost of hiring other free agents.
There is little doubt, after listening to A-Rod's confession yesterday, that he felt the pressure of all those expectations to perform. He didn't put it in economic terms, per se, but he did say he felt the "weight of the world" on his shoulders.
Another way of looking at the same issue is to view a player's performance in the year leading up to free agency, often called the "contract year." Almost invariably, the player in a contract year performs far above his statistical averages, all in hopes of landing a bigger contract worth more money at the end of the season. In MLB especially, free agents who just landed a new contract with a new team tend to disappoint during the life of that contract. Kevin Brown and Mike Hampton jump to mind.
What's the alternative, then? Can we ever get back to a time when player salaries did not engender such on-field performance swings? I don't think so, and I don't think we necessarily want to see players earning the pauper wages they once did, way back when. About the only thing that can be done, and what MLB is finally doing, is setting up strict drug enforcement regimens to catch and punish the cheats. The MLB drug testing policy could be much stronger, yes. But at least they now realize how far-reaching PEDs were in baseball, and how damaging to the sport they are.
Monday, February 9, 2009
The Death of Jazz... ...and Baseball, Too?
Over the weekend (if you consider that the weekend starts on Friday; long gone are those college days when youthful exuberance demanded the weekend start on Thursday!), I finished reading Joe Posnanski's excellent book, The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America. Did I mention it is an excellent read? O'Neil had such a zest for living, I'm now sad I never got to meet the man before he passed away. Posnanski was lucky enough to spend a year traveling with O'Neil, and there are wonderful life lessons* learned every step along the way.
* My favorite life lesson? When O'Neil schooled Posnanski with, "Son, in this life, you don't ever walk by a red dress."
One thing stuck with me after reading the book, however. O'Neil often compared baseball to jazz. He also compared living to jazz, but he insisted that the rhythms of baseball most closely matched those of jazz. I do think he was right about that.
What, then, do we make of the premise that jazz is dying, or perhaps that it died with John Coltrane in the late '60s? My wife was watching the Grammys last night, and she mentioned the same thing, that jazz is dead. Perhaps someone on the show said as much, I don't know.* The only part I watched last night was when Neil Diamond took the stage to sing "Sweet Caroline." How he could pull that off without any hint of irony, I have no idea. The only worthwhile part of the show immediately followed his performance, when they paid tribute to those musicians, producers, and even one music photographer who passed away last year, followed by an excellent rendition of "Who Do You Love?" as a tribute to Bo Diddley.
* I can't stand the incredible proliferation of awards shows -- too much self-congratulatory back slapping can't be good for any industry, and it's not like the folks in Hollywood or the music industry really need any more attention. So I boycott all of the award shows, even the Oscars, on general principle.
I thought I would explore the thought that jazz died with Coltrane a bit more, since people still practice and listen to jazz in great numbers. I have friends who are dedicated to the genre, and who still travel great lengths to attend the annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. Of course, as soon as I opened their website, I saw a picture announcing the scheduled performance of Jon Bovi. Maybe jazz really is dead, after all.
I also found this very recent article from a musical magazine called The Walrus (with an obvious reference to The Beatles, no? Actually, probably not.), in which the author talks about jazz and how it might slip into the same category as classical music: no composer creates anything fresh and new; performers just put their own interpretation on the classic pieces of the genre. Alexander Gelfand actually makes a convincing argument that many musical genres hit similar walls during the '60s, when new musicians revolted against standard elements of music such as meter, harmony, and tonality in attempts to push the boundaries of music. Nothing new there. People in all walks of life were revolting against the Establishment during that time frame.
Personally, I am ambivalent towards modern jazz for all the same reasons why people describe jazz as dead today. As much as I love swing, big band, bebop, and other earlier forms of jazz, I detest the random, meandering improvisational form that took hold on jazz in the '60s. Too many of the sounds are discordant, and the songs don't seem to go anywhere. Everything is too loose, if you will. How can anyone tell if a truly improvisational effort that goes on for 25 minutes is any good or not?
Very good rock-n-roll, on the other hand, is invariably tight musically. There should be no random notes, and a three-and-a-half minute performance does not allow for any wasted effort.* Think about the signature songs of Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, and even The Ramones. All of their songs were tight and to the point. I do remember being introduced to a small college band's sound by a fellow traveler on an airplane ride back in 1993. I remember thinking, "Wow. This sound is tight!" That was The Dave Matthews Band, just getting ready to release their first commercially successful album, "Under the Table and Dreaming."
* Obviously, lots of songs played on classic rock stations ("In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida," "Hotel California," and virtually anything by Chicago, Boston, the Moody Blues, Jethro Tull, etc.) do meander and take up unbearable amounts of time. I don't listen to those, either.
Back to the question: what to make of the death of jazz, if jazz is so closely tied to baseball? I would be remiss if I failed to include in this discussion the contributions of Ken Burns, who did two very extensive documentary series, one on Baseball, and one on Jazz. Clearly, O'Neil was not the only one who saw the connection between these two very American pastimes.
This discussion could get way out of hand at this point. The rise of rap and hip hop culture affected the style of play in the NBA, and there is a great intertwining of hip hop attitude in American culture at large (yes, even in the suburbs) these days. I don't want to get into all of that.
Drawing just one parallel to the jazz-baseball pairing, rock-n-roll could be associated with football. The rise of rock music in the early '50s and beyond coincided with the rise in popularity of the NFL and college football, and the NFL tends to get artists for the Super Bowl halftime show from the ranks of rock-n-roll (the early days of using Up With People notwithstanding), so I do think that case is strong. The rise of football also coincided with the rise of television, and there is a lot to be said about changing media and changing tastes, as well.
Baseball has its own issues that have led to declining interest among the American public. The litany goes on and on:
I would also argue that people's tastes have changed since baseball's heyday in the '30s-'50s. People don't really listen to baseball games on the radio any more; who has the time for that? Forget that listening to baseball on the radio is the perfect medium if you cannot make it to the ballpark in person. Even if you can go to the ballpark, you'll still see fans listening to radio broadcasts while watching the game. It's a powerful connection that exists between radio and baseball.
I grew up listening to Cincinnati Reds games on WLW 700 AM with Joe Nuxhall and Marty Brennaman, primarily because the pizza delivery cars we drove only had AM radios in them. There was nothing better than listening to the games while driving to and from the next delivery location on a hot summer night. A very big reason why I've wanted a satellite radio receiver for the longest time was because I would be able to listen to Reds games on the radio once again, no matter where in the U.S. I lived.
What I'm really trying to say here is that the rise and fall of jazz and baseball fandom does seem to be linked. There are perhaps no more American modes of expression and entertainment than baseball and jazz. But the reasons for the overall decline in popularity for those two pastimes are complex and have to be couched in terms of shifting cultural patterns, as well. It's a fascinating topic, and I thank Posnanski and O'Neil for making me think of it.
* My favorite life lesson? When O'Neil schooled Posnanski with, "Son, in this life, you don't ever walk by a red dress."
One thing stuck with me after reading the book, however. O'Neil often compared baseball to jazz. He also compared living to jazz, but he insisted that the rhythms of baseball most closely matched those of jazz. I do think he was right about that.
What, then, do we make of the premise that jazz is dying, or perhaps that it died with John Coltrane in the late '60s? My wife was watching the Grammys last night, and she mentioned the same thing, that jazz is dead. Perhaps someone on the show said as much, I don't know.* The only part I watched last night was when Neil Diamond took the stage to sing "Sweet Caroline." How he could pull that off without any hint of irony, I have no idea. The only worthwhile part of the show immediately followed his performance, when they paid tribute to those musicians, producers, and even one music photographer who passed away last year, followed by an excellent rendition of "Who Do You Love?" as a tribute to Bo Diddley.
* I can't stand the incredible proliferation of awards shows -- too much self-congratulatory back slapping can't be good for any industry, and it's not like the folks in Hollywood or the music industry really need any more attention. So I boycott all of the award shows, even the Oscars, on general principle.
I thought I would explore the thought that jazz died with Coltrane a bit more, since people still practice and listen to jazz in great numbers. I have friends who are dedicated to the genre, and who still travel great lengths to attend the annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. Of course, as soon as I opened their website, I saw a picture announcing the scheduled performance of Jon Bovi. Maybe jazz really is dead, after all.
I also found this very recent article from a musical magazine called The Walrus (with an obvious reference to The Beatles, no? Actually, probably not.), in which the author talks about jazz and how it might slip into the same category as classical music: no composer creates anything fresh and new; performers just put their own interpretation on the classic pieces of the genre. Alexander Gelfand actually makes a convincing argument that many musical genres hit similar walls during the '60s, when new musicians revolted against standard elements of music such as meter, harmony, and tonality in attempts to push the boundaries of music. Nothing new there. People in all walks of life were revolting against the Establishment during that time frame.
Personally, I am ambivalent towards modern jazz for all the same reasons why people describe jazz as dead today. As much as I love swing, big band, bebop, and other earlier forms of jazz, I detest the random, meandering improvisational form that took hold on jazz in the '60s. Too many of the sounds are discordant, and the songs don't seem to go anywhere. Everything is too loose, if you will. How can anyone tell if a truly improvisational effort that goes on for 25 minutes is any good or not?
Very good rock-n-roll, on the other hand, is invariably tight musically. There should be no random notes, and a three-and-a-half minute performance does not allow for any wasted effort.* Think about the signature songs of Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, and even The Ramones. All of their songs were tight and to the point. I do remember being introduced to a small college band's sound by a fellow traveler on an airplane ride back in 1993. I remember thinking, "Wow. This sound is tight!" That was The Dave Matthews Band, just getting ready to release their first commercially successful album, "Under the Table and Dreaming."
* Obviously, lots of songs played on classic rock stations ("In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida," "Hotel California," and virtually anything by Chicago, Boston, the Moody Blues, Jethro Tull, etc.) do meander and take up unbearable amounts of time. I don't listen to those, either.
Back to the question: what to make of the death of jazz, if jazz is so closely tied to baseball? I would be remiss if I failed to include in this discussion the contributions of Ken Burns, who did two very extensive documentary series, one on Baseball, and one on Jazz. Clearly, O'Neil was not the only one who saw the connection between these two very American pastimes.
This discussion could get way out of hand at this point. The rise of rap and hip hop culture affected the style of play in the NBA, and there is a great intertwining of hip hop attitude in American culture at large (yes, even in the suburbs) these days. I don't want to get into all of that.
Drawing just one parallel to the jazz-baseball pairing, rock-n-roll could be associated with football. The rise of rock music in the early '50s and beyond coincided with the rise in popularity of the NFL and college football, and the NFL tends to get artists for the Super Bowl halftime show from the ranks of rock-n-roll (the early days of using Up With People notwithstanding), so I do think that case is strong. The rise of football also coincided with the rise of television, and there is a lot to be said about changing media and changing tastes, as well.
Baseball has its own issues that have led to declining interest among the American public. The litany goes on and on:
- The players strike of '94 that forced the cancellation of the World Series just about killed the game.
- Sadly, it was not until the Steroid Era home run bashers brought people back into the seats in '98 that baseball seemed strong again.
- Now, we all wonder how to deal with the statistics from the Steroid Era.
- Starting times for playoff games are too late for the next generation of fans to stay up and watch their heroes play the most meaningful games.
- Many of the playoff games that used to air on one of the big four networks (NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox) now are being shown only on cable stations like TNT or TBS.
- Kids don't get out and play sandlot games with their friends any more, depriving kids of the pure joy of playing outside the regimented structure of organized baseball leagues.
- A major drawback to organized youth baseball is the constant pressure to win imposed upon the kids by their coaches and parents; it often leads to burnout.
- Ticket, parking, and concession prices for a family of four hover close to $200 at most MLB ballparks, making the possibility of regularly taking a family to see a game nigh impossible.
- Actually going to the ballpark is still the best way of seeing the game and taking in all the rhythms, the sounds, and the music of baseball, as O'Neil described it.
- Watching a game on TV still leaves a lot to be desired, since you cannot see the action on the entire field at the same time in any camera view, unlike football and basketball.
- The MLB "salary cap," in which teams spending well above the cap limit pay a relatively small payroll tax, does not have the same effect as does the NFL cap, which significantly levels the playing field for free agents, thereby ensuring competitive balance.
I would also argue that people's tastes have changed since baseball's heyday in the '30s-'50s. People don't really listen to baseball games on the radio any more; who has the time for that? Forget that listening to baseball on the radio is the perfect medium if you cannot make it to the ballpark in person. Even if you can go to the ballpark, you'll still see fans listening to radio broadcasts while watching the game. It's a powerful connection that exists between radio and baseball.
I grew up listening to Cincinnati Reds games on WLW 700 AM with Joe Nuxhall and Marty Brennaman, primarily because the pizza delivery cars we drove only had AM radios in them. There was nothing better than listening to the games while driving to and from the next delivery location on a hot summer night. A very big reason why I've wanted a satellite radio receiver for the longest time was because I would be able to listen to Reds games on the radio once again, no matter where in the U.S. I lived.
What I'm really trying to say here is that the rise and fall of jazz and baseball fandom does seem to be linked. There are perhaps no more American modes of expression and entertainment than baseball and jazz. But the reasons for the overall decline in popularity for those two pastimes are complex and have to be couched in terms of shifting cultural patterns, as well. It's a fascinating topic, and I thank Posnanski and O'Neil for making me think of it.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me
Actually, I have one more economics-themed post that I wanted to include on the last one about inverted yield curves, but just didn't seem to fit there. This might actually have less to do with economics than it does politics. You decide. But I promise: discussions of which obscure old movies I've been watching from NetFlix are coming soon to this space. Get up for it!
At this point, I wanted to bring up quotes from the op-ed piece President Barack Obama penned for the Washington Post on Thursday. The full article is here (free registration may be required). Obama, naturally, was defending his administration's "Stimulus Package", which people have critiqued as nothing more than a pork-laden spending bill. Obama sounded a clarion call for action, trying to get some amount of bipartisan support from the GOP side of Congress, but here is what he said:
At this point, I would love to link to a YouTube clip showing the scene from an early episode of The Simpsons, when the townsfolk of Springfield were expecting the unveiling of a statue dedicated to Abraham Lincoln. Instead, when the drape was lifted, the statue was of Jimmy Carter (with the tagline "Malaise Forever" -- classic!), which of course created a town riot. Sadly, that clip doesn't exist on YouTube, but I can provide the actual Carter "Crisis of Confidence" speech from 15 July 1979, archived by the University of Virginia. Side note: who knew that when Bill Clinton used the line "I feel your pain," he was practically quoting Carter?
Economic recessions have everything to do with crises of confidence, of course. If consumers have no faith their jobs are secure, their buying patterns change radically. That is one reason why Hyundai's offer to buy back a new car purchased this year if the buyer loses his or her job is so revolutionary. As almost every other car manufacturer saw huge hits on new car sales, Hyundai's sales actually increased 14%. Consumer confidence levels are so critical to the economy, a dedicated organization exists to track them.
Consumer confidence was one factor why the economic crisis described in Tom Clancy's 1994 novel Debt of Honor was so realistic. Clancy understood that for a foreign entity to wreak havoc on the U.S. economy, all they had to do is sow distrust and fear of our economic institutions (like the financial firms on Wall Street) among the American people. The resulting crisis of confidence brought the American economy low, setting up the rest of the novel. Sorry, I don't want to play spoiler for anyone who has not read it yet.
FDR understood how important consumer confidence was during his first Inaugural address, in 1933, when he famously declared, "...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." The U.S. was already in the midst of the Great Depression, and only by dispelling the negative cloud of uncertainty and fear could FDR lead the country towards economic recovery.
Getting back to Obama and Carter, President Obama will get his stimulus package approved eventually. There was word on the news today that Congress either already approved or appears ready to compromise on a reduced spending bill, one that totals a mere $780B price tag to future generations.
I just think that if Obama wants to help the U.S. recover from this recession in a timely manner, he will skip the doom and gloom speechifying. For heaven's sake, don't mention the possibility of 5 million jobs going away! He needs to leave the fearmongering to the MSM. They do a great job of that.
At this point, I wanted to bring up quotes from the op-ed piece President Barack Obama penned for the Washington Post on Thursday. The full article is here (free registration may be required). Obama, naturally, was defending his administration's "Stimulus Package", which people have critiqued as nothing more than a pork-laden spending bill. Obama sounded a clarion call for action, trying to get some amount of bipartisan support from the GOP side of Congress, but here is what he said:
By now, it's clear to everyone that we have inherited an economic crisis as deep and dire as any since the days of the Great Depression. Millions of jobs that Americans relied on just a year ago are gone; millions more of the nest eggs families worked so hard to build have vanished. People everywhere are worried about what tomorrow will bring.Now, I don't want to get too historical on you, but I fear Obama could slide down the slippery slope of sounding too much like Jimmy Carter did in the late '70s.
What Americans expect from Washington is action that matches the urgency they feel in their daily lives -- action that's swift, bold and wise enough for us to climb out of this crisis.
Because each day we wait to begin the work of turning our economy around, more people lose their jobs, their savings and their homes. And if nothing is done, this recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.
At this point, I would love to link to a YouTube clip showing the scene from an early episode of The Simpsons, when the townsfolk of Springfield were expecting the unveiling of a statue dedicated to Abraham Lincoln. Instead, when the drape was lifted, the statue was of Jimmy Carter (with the tagline "Malaise Forever" -- classic!), which of course created a town riot. Sadly, that clip doesn't exist on YouTube, but I can provide the actual Carter "Crisis of Confidence" speech from 15 July 1979, archived by the University of Virginia. Side note: who knew that when Bill Clinton used the line "I feel your pain," he was practically quoting Carter?
Economic recessions have everything to do with crises of confidence, of course. If consumers have no faith their jobs are secure, their buying patterns change radically. That is one reason why Hyundai's offer to buy back a new car purchased this year if the buyer loses his or her job is so revolutionary. As almost every other car manufacturer saw huge hits on new car sales, Hyundai's sales actually increased 14%. Consumer confidence levels are so critical to the economy, a dedicated organization exists to track them.
Consumer confidence was one factor why the economic crisis described in Tom Clancy's 1994 novel Debt of Honor was so realistic. Clancy understood that for a foreign entity to wreak havoc on the U.S. economy, all they had to do is sow distrust and fear of our economic institutions (like the financial firms on Wall Street) among the American people. The resulting crisis of confidence brought the American economy low, setting up the rest of the novel. Sorry, I don't want to play spoiler for anyone who has not read it yet.
FDR understood how important consumer confidence was during his first Inaugural address, in 1933, when he famously declared, "...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." The U.S. was already in the midst of the Great Depression, and only by dispelling the negative cloud of uncertainty and fear could FDR lead the country towards economic recovery.
Getting back to Obama and Carter, President Obama will get his stimulus package approved eventually. There was word on the news today that Congress either already approved or appears ready to compromise on a reduced spending bill, one that totals a mere $780B price tag to future generations.
I just think that if Obama wants to help the U.S. recover from this recession in a timely manner, he will skip the doom and gloom speechifying. For heaven's sake, don't mention the possibility of 5 million jobs going away! He needs to leave the fearmongering to the MSM. They do a great job of that.
Friday, February 6, 2009
On Inverted Yield Curves and Recessions - Yay!
OK, this will be one more economics-related post, and then we can shift back to discussing more important topics, like old movies I've watched lately. Hey, they don't call economics the dismal science for nothing!
I've been thinking lately that all is right in the world of economics, or at the very least, I think that's a true statement. It would be interesting to get a reading from an actual economist on this. See, there is a very accurate predictor for the U.S. economy entering a recession: the inverted yield curve. According to whoever* wrote the entry on Wikipedia, an inverted yield curve accurately predicted worsening economic situations two to six quarters into the future five out of six times since 1970.
* Whoever or whomever? Whomever probably sounds right to more ears, but since the preposition in question does not indicate a person to whom or on whom an action was performed, I think whoever is correct. We're talking about the person who wrote the page, or the person who performed the action. Whoever.
A normal yield curve, in which the long-term rates are higher (and usually significantly more so) than short-term rates, appears below:
You can see that long-term yields (on the 30-year and 10-year Treasuries, for example) are significantly higher than those for the short-term Treasuries.
An inverted yield curve is exactly what it sounds like. Short-term bond rates spike to higher levels than long-term rates; Wikipedia indicates this is partly due to expectations that inflation will be low during a time of recession in the economy. The graphic below shows what happened mostly in 2006 and 2007 between the 2-year Treasury and 10-year Treasury rates:
You can see that the 2-year notes had significantly higher yields than did the 10-year notes, in some cases approaching 200% of the yield on the longer-term bonds.
Why is an inverted yield curve so bad, you ask? In normal situations, people require a higher expected payout (in the case of bonds, a higher interest rate) for tying up their money for longer periods of time. Keep in mind that with bonds, price and yield always move inversely to each other: when prices on bonds go up, the yield automatically goes down, and vice versa. What drives the price of a bond up? The same as anything else: demand. In the case of an inverted yield curve, no one wants to purchase the short-term bonds, driving the price down and the yield up.
A lot of what happens in the relationship between long-term and short-term yields also has to do with investors' expectations, as mentioned before, and with what types of Treasuries are being offered for sale (usually at Treasury auctions). Between 2001 and 2006, the Treasury Department didn't auction 30-year notes at all. The longest term bond a person could buy from the Federal government was just 10 years, and that was partly what led to the inverted yield curve.
Another factor that led to the inverted yield curve was the Federal Reserve aggressively raising interest rates* in 2004-06 when worries of inflation gripped the new Fed Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke. I have to laugh at this article from February 2006, when Bernanke said "the inverted yield curve would not bring recession this time." Think he would like a mulligan on that one? How quickly did they reverse course and lower rates, trying to avoid the pending recession? (WSJ article, registration may be required) Here's a graphic from that article showing the target overnight rates since 2000:
* I really shouldn't fall into this same trap that all the news media does when discussing the Federal overnight lending rate, or target Fed rate. The Federal Reserve does not directly set what interest rate Federal Reserve banks use to lend to each other. Rather, the Fed does change how much cash a Federal Reserve bank needs to keep on hand at any one time, which then has an influence on what interest rate they use when lending to other banks. That's why it's called a target interest rate, not a definitively set or effective interest rate.
One reason why economists pay attention to the yield curve and any oddities thereof is because recessions typically cannot be forecast with any certainty. The official definition of a recession is a minimum of two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. Because everything is backwards-looking, by definition, the economy has to already be in a recession for at least six months before you know it. An inversion of the yield curve is one of a very few economic indicators that can predict trends in the future, rather than waiting and looking back at the data.
So, back to my original point, where I said that everything was right in the world of economics these days. At first, it appeared that the inverted yield curve of 2006 was not going to forecast a recession in the U.S. economy. 2007 was still a fairly happy year for consumers and investors alike. The crap didn't really hit the fan until 2008, when Wall Street melted down after home values fell off the cliff and banks had to start writing off their bad loans. Was that still within the typical two- to six-quarter window mentioned above? I think the recession probably hit within that window, despite the yield curve returning to normal, so all must be right in the world.
Sad to say.
I've been thinking lately that all is right in the world of economics, or at the very least, I think that's a true statement. It would be interesting to get a reading from an actual economist on this. See, there is a very accurate predictor for the U.S. economy entering a recession: the inverted yield curve. According to whoever* wrote the entry on Wikipedia, an inverted yield curve accurately predicted worsening economic situations two to six quarters into the future five out of six times since 1970.
* Whoever or whomever? Whomever probably sounds right to more ears, but since the preposition in question does not indicate a person to whom or on whom an action was performed, I think whoever is correct. We're talking about the person who wrote the page, or the person who performed the action. Whoever.
A normal yield curve, in which the long-term rates are higher (and usually significantly more so) than short-term rates, appears below:
You can see that long-term yields (on the 30-year and 10-year Treasuries, for example) are significantly higher than those for the short-term Treasuries.
An inverted yield curve is exactly what it sounds like. Short-term bond rates spike to higher levels than long-term rates; Wikipedia indicates this is partly due to expectations that inflation will be low during a time of recession in the economy. The graphic below shows what happened mostly in 2006 and 2007 between the 2-year Treasury and 10-year Treasury rates:
You can see that the 2-year notes had significantly higher yields than did the 10-year notes, in some cases approaching 200% of the yield on the longer-term bonds.
Why is an inverted yield curve so bad, you ask? In normal situations, people require a higher expected payout (in the case of bonds, a higher interest rate) for tying up their money for longer periods of time. Keep in mind that with bonds, price and yield always move inversely to each other: when prices on bonds go up, the yield automatically goes down, and vice versa. What drives the price of a bond up? The same as anything else: demand. In the case of an inverted yield curve, no one wants to purchase the short-term bonds, driving the price down and the yield up.
A lot of what happens in the relationship between long-term and short-term yields also has to do with investors' expectations, as mentioned before, and with what types of Treasuries are being offered for sale (usually at Treasury auctions). Between 2001 and 2006, the Treasury Department didn't auction 30-year notes at all. The longest term bond a person could buy from the Federal government was just 10 years, and that was partly what led to the inverted yield curve.
Another factor that led to the inverted yield curve was the Federal Reserve aggressively raising interest rates* in 2004-06 when worries of inflation gripped the new Fed Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke. I have to laugh at this article from February 2006, when Bernanke said "the inverted yield curve would not bring recession this time." Think he would like a mulligan on that one? How quickly did they reverse course and lower rates, trying to avoid the pending recession? (WSJ article, registration may be required) Here's a graphic from that article showing the target overnight rates since 2000:
* I really shouldn't fall into this same trap that all the news media does when discussing the Federal overnight lending rate, or target Fed rate. The Federal Reserve does not directly set what interest rate Federal Reserve banks use to lend to each other. Rather, the Fed does change how much cash a Federal Reserve bank needs to keep on hand at any one time, which then has an influence on what interest rate they use when lending to other banks. That's why it's called a target interest rate, not a definitively set or effective interest rate.
One reason why economists pay attention to the yield curve and any oddities thereof is because recessions typically cannot be forecast with any certainty. The official definition of a recession is a minimum of two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. Because everything is backwards-looking, by definition, the economy has to already be in a recession for at least six months before you know it. An inversion of the yield curve is one of a very few economic indicators that can predict trends in the future, rather than waiting and looking back at the data.
So, back to my original point, where I said that everything was right in the world of economics these days. At first, it appeared that the inverted yield curve of 2006 was not going to forecast a recession in the U.S. economy. 2007 was still a fairly happy year for consumers and investors alike. The crap didn't really hit the fan until 2008, when Wall Street melted down after home values fell off the cliff and banks had to start writing off their bad loans. Was that still within the typical two- to six-quarter window mentioned above? I think the recession probably hit within that window, despite the yield curve returning to normal, so all must be right in the world.
Sad to say.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Elvis (the Horse) Has Left the Building
Yahoo! today carried an AP news article about President Obama imposing new caps on executive pay for any financial firm yet to receive part of the $700B Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), better known as the first of many federal bailout programs. TARP specifically targeted the financial services sector of the economy, and caused much of the Wall Street vs. Main Street hand-wringing when it was proposed and approved last fall.
Since the approval of using federal funds to bail out huge mistakes on bad bets by investment bankers, hedge funds, and virtually any bank dealing in securitized subprime mortgage loans, many commentators rightly pointed out that C-level executives of those same firms were still clearing huge amounts of money in annual bonuses. The AP article pegged the bonus figure at $18B last year alone.
Those of us living on Main Street had every right to be angry at the payment of these huge bonuses, since we're familiar with the model of rewarding good performance with a bonus. If one of us made the bad bets and mistakes the leaders of these financial institutions made, we'd be fired, not enticed to stay with a handsome year-end bonus. Gregg Easterbrook even railed against the 2008 bonuses in several of his most recent Tuesday Morning Quarterback (TMQ) columns on ESPN's Page 2.
So, this action by Obama, stepping into a leadership void left by the collective members of the U.S. Congress, is a good thing, right? Right?!
I think the key paragraph to note is this one:
While this was a nice gesture by Obama, I don't think it will have a great impact on the TARP program (brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department), on other federally-funded bailouts of the auto industry, on the upcoming "stimulus" package (really just a pork-laden spending bill by Congress; it's now up to $900B in additional spending not offset in any way by cuts elsewhere or higher taxes -- the shame!), or on other federal legislation.
He does get to look like he's providing leadership and make headlines, though. For whatever that's worth.
One thing I had to note, though: the POTUS makes an annual salary of $400,000. Plus such benefits as a $50K expense account, a $100K nontaxable travel account, and $19K just for entertaining or entertainment. Does he pay taxes on all the income other than the travel account?
I also had to laugh at the past salaries of U.S. Presidents table found on Wikipedia, under the Salary section of the page. I can appreciate they want to state what the equivalent "Salary in 2008 Dollars" is for the salaries established so many years ago. But there is an error in the math here. If you're talking about what something costs, adjusted for inflation, then something that cost $400K in 2001 would cost $471K in 2008 terms (using just the numbers on the Wikipedia page).
However, since the salary of the President has remained the same since 2001, the equivalent purchasing power of $400K is actually less than what it was in 2001, not more. The official Bureau of Labor Statistics' (BLS) own inflation calculator seems to provide the same type of analysis as what is found on the Wikipedia page. If the salary of the President were adjusted to account for rises in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) every year, then Obama would be earning $479K in 2009. But he's only making $400K. Put it this way, if you reverse the numbers in the BLS calculator, Obama's $400K salary in 2008 could purchase only the equivalent of $333,482 of 2001 goods.
That's still more than the vast majority of us living on Main Street earn, so I don't feel sorry for his diminished purchasing power. I just wish Obama could bring real change to Washington. It hasn't happened yet.
Since the approval of using federal funds to bail out huge mistakes on bad bets by investment bankers, hedge funds, and virtually any bank dealing in securitized subprime mortgage loans, many commentators rightly pointed out that C-level executives of those same firms were still clearing huge amounts of money in annual bonuses. The AP article pegged the bonus figure at $18B last year alone.
Those of us living on Main Street had every right to be angry at the payment of these huge bonuses, since we're familiar with the model of rewarding good performance with a bonus. If one of us made the bad bets and mistakes the leaders of these financial institutions made, we'd be fired, not enticed to stay with a handsome year-end bonus. Gregg Easterbrook even railed against the 2008 bonuses in several of his most recent Tuesday Morning Quarterback (TMQ) columns on ESPN's Page 2.
So, this action by Obama, stepping into a leadership void left by the collective members of the U.S. Congress, is a good thing, right? Right?!
I think the key paragraph to note is this one:
The pay cap would apply to institutions that negotiate agreements with the Treasury Department for "exceptional assistance" in the future. The restriction would not apply to such firms as American International Group Inc., Bank of America Corp., and Citigroup Inc., that already have received such help.Sadly, the analogy that applies here is closing the barn door after the horse is already gone. The article does not mention just how much of the taxpayers' $700B remains unclaimed at this point, but I dare say not many banks will line up to take the bailout funding after today.
While this was a nice gesture by Obama, I don't think it will have a great impact on the TARP program (brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department), on other federally-funded bailouts of the auto industry, on the upcoming "stimulus" package (really just a pork-laden spending bill by Congress; it's now up to $900B in additional spending not offset in any way by cuts elsewhere or higher taxes -- the shame!), or on other federal legislation.
He does get to look like he's providing leadership and make headlines, though. For whatever that's worth.
One thing I had to note, though: the POTUS makes an annual salary of $400,000. Plus such benefits as a $50K expense account, a $100K nontaxable travel account, and $19K just for entertaining or entertainment. Does he pay taxes on all the income other than the travel account?
I also had to laugh at the past salaries of U.S. Presidents table found on Wikipedia, under the Salary section of the page. I can appreciate they want to state what the equivalent "Salary in 2008 Dollars" is for the salaries established so many years ago. But there is an error in the math here. If you're talking about what something costs, adjusted for inflation, then something that cost $400K in 2001 would cost $471K in 2008 terms (using just the numbers on the Wikipedia page).
However, since the salary of the President has remained the same since 2001, the equivalent purchasing power of $400K is actually less than what it was in 2001, not more. The official Bureau of Labor Statistics' (BLS) own inflation calculator seems to provide the same type of analysis as what is found on the Wikipedia page. If the salary of the President were adjusted to account for rises in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) every year, then Obama would be earning $479K in 2009. But he's only making $400K. Put it this way, if you reverse the numbers in the BLS calculator, Obama's $400K salary in 2008 could purchase only the equivalent of $333,482 of 2001 goods.
That's still more than the vast majority of us living on Main Street earn, so I don't feel sorry for his diminished purchasing power. I just wish Obama could bring real change to Washington. It hasn't happened yet.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
The Current Financial Crisis
It was last week that I stumbled across this article and analysis from Michael Lewis, the famous author of books such as Liar's Poker, Moneyball, Coach, and The Blind Side. I have read all (or a significant portion; in the case of Coach, it was about a 20-page excerpt from the NY Times Magazine, their Sunday paper insert) of those books, and Lewis has to be one of my favorite writers these days. Lest one think Lewis solely writes about sports, he also authored Next in 2001, The New New Thing in 2000, and Trail Fever (AKA Losers) in 1997.
Lewis' most recent book, Panic, just hit the shelves in late 2008, which means he didn't waste any time turning around a new manuscript after publishing The Real Price of Everything in January of 2008. It makes me wonder just a little how well each book is researched and written, although if his previous works are any indication, I will probably enjoy delving into his more serious economic tomes.
Getting back to the original article, which was published in the December 2008 issue of the magazine Conde Nast Portfolio, I was impressed with how Lewis tied everything related to the collapse of Wall Street in 2008 back to one event. One event that happened way back in the early 1980s. According to Lewis, Wall Street was destined to collapse ever since John Gutfreund sold the trading partnership of Salomon Brothers to the Phibro Corporation, thereby divorcing the element of risk from the persons making the trades.
Now, I clearly understand that Lewis had insider experience working for Gutfreund at Salomon Brothers in the '80s. It was his experience pushing complex options and derivatives on the trading floor that formed the basis of his first book and cemented his status as a writer. Naturally, his experience formed a prism through which he seeks to explain later events. And there could very well be an awful lot of truth in that one simple premise: once risk was transferred to shareholders, Wall Street was freed to take ever-increasing (and ever-more-idiotic) gambles with vast sums of money.
However, I'd like to think it was just a little more complex than that. Historians are well aware that significant events often transpire through unexpected coincidences, producing unforeseen results. Never rule out dumb luck when it comes to making history.
The thing that always amazes me is just how fluid history really is. Events we were so completely sure of when our high school textbook declared, "This is how it happened!" often merit further review and differing opinions. Even without going nutso on the concept of Political Correctness, there are no shortage of revisionists who challenge and deny the most basic factual understandings. For as many people who saw airplanes crash into the World Trade Center twin towers on 9/11/2001, there are an almost equal number of people who believe the U.S. government or Israel was responsible. Perhaps more than equal. Scary thought.
Regarding the current economic and financial crisis we seem to find ourselves in, I have to think that there were other circumstances, other events that contributed to the crisis. The entire mess can't all be tied back just to taking Salomon Brothers public, can it?
Despite all the talk of how hard it is to find and raise capital, my own perspective is that there was too much capital sloshing around the system ever since the mid-'90s. So much money was flowing through the system, the hedge fund managers, the financiers, and the investment bankers all felt compelled to take ever larger risks with their clients' money to find a "suitable" return on the investment. Even here in east-central Illinois, I knew of at least three or four Venture Capital firms, all looking for the next Mosaic (Netscape) Internet technology firm to spring from UIUC.
Speaking of the hedge fund managers, more and more people NOT worth millions of dollars felt compelled to get into these investment clubs, hoping to find a decent rate of return while hedging their bets. Sadly, the mathematical models based on quantitative statistical analysis favored by hedge fund managers all seemed to follow the same patterns, so very little hedging was actually accomplished. Certainly, no one had a broad, general market melt-down built into the statistical models.
I often wondered what would happen if (or when) the Baby Boomers decided they would pull their retirement savings out of stocks and move it into more conservative investments. If the constant inflows of new money helped to drive stock prices up, thereby driving Price to Earnings (P/E) Ratios higher during the '90s and mid-'00s (a simple result of supply being outpaced by demand), then the reverse would be true if outflows exceeded inflows on all those 401(k) and IRA mutual funds, right?
At any rate, I think this financial crisis is probably larger than any one factor, any one explanation. Exploring the byzantine world of financial derivatives, including Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs), is enough to make any one's head spin, including Lewis and Gutfreund. If those guys couldn't understand how all that money was being invested, what hope do any of the rest of us have? We might as well be giving our money to the Bernie Madoffs of the world.
And yet, perhaps Lewis is right. Perhaps, in this case, the principle of Occam's Razor applies. All of these other issues could be just compounding factors based upon Lewis' rather simple premise. It's certainly food for thought.
Lewis' most recent book, Panic, just hit the shelves in late 2008, which means he didn't waste any time turning around a new manuscript after publishing The Real Price of Everything in January of 2008. It makes me wonder just a little how well each book is researched and written, although if his previous works are any indication, I will probably enjoy delving into his more serious economic tomes.
Getting back to the original article, which was published in the December 2008 issue of the magazine Conde Nast Portfolio, I was impressed with how Lewis tied everything related to the collapse of Wall Street in 2008 back to one event. One event that happened way back in the early 1980s. According to Lewis, Wall Street was destined to collapse ever since John Gutfreund sold the trading partnership of Salomon Brothers to the Phibro Corporation, thereby divorcing the element of risk from the persons making the trades.
Now, I clearly understand that Lewis had insider experience working for Gutfreund at Salomon Brothers in the '80s. It was his experience pushing complex options and derivatives on the trading floor that formed the basis of his first book and cemented his status as a writer. Naturally, his experience formed a prism through which he seeks to explain later events. And there could very well be an awful lot of truth in that one simple premise: once risk was transferred to shareholders, Wall Street was freed to take ever-increasing (and ever-more-idiotic) gambles with vast sums of money.
However, I'd like to think it was just a little more complex than that. Historians are well aware that significant events often transpire through unexpected coincidences, producing unforeseen results. Never rule out dumb luck when it comes to making history.
The thing that always amazes me is just how fluid history really is. Events we were so completely sure of when our high school textbook declared, "This is how it happened!" often merit further review and differing opinions. Even without going nutso on the concept of Political Correctness, there are no shortage of revisionists who challenge and deny the most basic factual understandings. For as many people who saw airplanes crash into the World Trade Center twin towers on 9/11/2001, there are an almost equal number of people who believe the U.S. government or Israel was responsible. Perhaps more than equal. Scary thought.
Regarding the current economic and financial crisis we seem to find ourselves in, I have to think that there were other circumstances, other events that contributed to the crisis. The entire mess can't all be tied back just to taking Salomon Brothers public, can it?
Despite all the talk of how hard it is to find and raise capital, my own perspective is that there was too much capital sloshing around the system ever since the mid-'90s. So much money was flowing through the system, the hedge fund managers, the financiers, and the investment bankers all felt compelled to take ever larger risks with their clients' money to find a "suitable" return on the investment. Even here in east-central Illinois, I knew of at least three or four Venture Capital firms, all looking for the next Mosaic (Netscape) Internet technology firm to spring from UIUC.
Speaking of the hedge fund managers, more and more people NOT worth millions of dollars felt compelled to get into these investment clubs, hoping to find a decent rate of return while hedging their bets. Sadly, the mathematical models based on quantitative statistical analysis favored by hedge fund managers all seemed to follow the same patterns, so very little hedging was actually accomplished. Certainly, no one had a broad, general market melt-down built into the statistical models.
I often wondered what would happen if (or when) the Baby Boomers decided they would pull their retirement savings out of stocks and move it into more conservative investments. If the constant inflows of new money helped to drive stock prices up, thereby driving Price to Earnings (P/E) Ratios higher during the '90s and mid-'00s (a simple result of supply being outpaced by demand), then the reverse would be true if outflows exceeded inflows on all those 401(k) and IRA mutual funds, right?
At any rate, I think this financial crisis is probably larger than any one factor, any one explanation. Exploring the byzantine world of financial derivatives, including Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs), is enough to make any one's head spin, including Lewis and Gutfreund. If those guys couldn't understand how all that money was being invested, what hope do any of the rest of us have? We might as well be giving our money to the Bernie Madoffs of the world.
And yet, perhaps Lewis is right. Perhaps, in this case, the principle of Occam's Razor applies. All of these other issues could be just compounding factors based upon Lewis' rather simple premise. It's certainly food for thought.
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