The Porridge Line

Let Us Drink to Our Health...

2008-10-19T14:51:00.017-04:00

Welcome again gentle readers to The Porridge Line! I waxed philosophical this morning as I was hitchhiking my way into work. In this hotly contested election our present economic woes appear to have glossed over a previous front-runner of issues: health care. Now, normally I tend not to deal in politics (other than occasionally wanting to round up the majority of the Washington lobbyist segment and set it to more gainful pursuits turning a giant wheel), but I'll make an exception here. The presidential candidates have two dramatically different ideas about this particular item. Senator McCain would revise the employer taxation system into one where (theoretically) employees would get paid a bit extra by their employers and would then use the money to go out and purchase their own health care package, with the employers largely washing their hands of employee insurance. This would hopefully result in forcing the normal market forces and economic cycles into the heath care industry whose absence has resulted in skyrocketing costs due to a lack of cost sensitivity on the part of benefit recipients. Senator Obama would alternatively push for a universal health care approach with a better system of safety nets for the uninsured.

Now, I had considered taking a sabbatical from blogging while I tested recipes for my new book "Cooking With Sawdust", but a video I saw on the dire concerns of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) drew me back into the fray. I'll provide the video link here. But, if you don't have eight minutes to spare, here's the synopsis: the government's head keep-everyone-honest accountant realizes the shortsighted policy-making involving unsupportable promises to the public will make the U.S. government insolvent within a generation or so, and when his warnings fall on deaf ears in both parties he takes his message to the public. Now, if there is one individual in the federal government we should heed, it is probably this gentleman. So, let us take him at face value for the sake of discussion...

Health care costs are out of control, and eventually if shouldered by the government will bankrupt the USA. McCain's approach would remedy this over time (on paper), but at the cost of cutting off millions from heath care. From the upper middle class on down many folks will get sick, exhaust their savings and die. But the US will stay solvent (nothing that a few more wars can't take care of, but we'll skirt around that for now). Obama's plan will provide a health care safety net to the masses, but might bankrupt us even faster (again, on paper). So what should we do?

I say that we ought to set goals that we can reach, by jove. Now if some overachiever gets up in front of the nation and says we'll send people to Mars, we'll likely just end up disappointed. But going bankrupt? That's something we can make happen if we set our minds to it (where's JFK when we need him?). I say we strike a compromise and take the best of both senators' plans. We'll implement universal health care...but only for the wealthy. In fact, the disturbing concentration of wealth in America coupled with skyrocketing health care costs will make this plan implement itself in a few years in any case. Just think; a healthy and prosperous leisure class attended to by a "middle class" with average life expectancy of 45. With all of the diseases associated with old age out of the way, there will be plenty of doctors and medical equipment to go around...to the privileged few who can actually afford it. Finally, a nation with a bit of culture! Haw haw! We should count ourselves as honored to be able to usher in such an age...

Alright, enough of that. But in all honesty it does appear that we are caught in between either mass cruelty or certain bankruptcy, and barring us pulling the "Logan's Run" or "Soylent Green" maneuvers we'll be forced to deal with one or the other. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a lovely spam-roast in the oven that I must tend too...

The Ties That Bind...

2008-10-17T00:55:00.006-04:00

Welcome once more gentle readers to my humble blog. The growing readership of The Porridge Line is leading me to suspect a certain surplus of spare time on the part of my audience, an excess that might only be explained by the scourge of unemployment. But rest assured ladies and gents, even in your destitute states the soup kitchens will have ample food to fill your bellies, and The Porridge Line will have plenty of intellectual gruel to fill your minds.

I found myself in particularly high spirits this morning as I was collecting bottles down by the railroad tracks, and as such I felt compelled to reflect upon a matter that has lent me some mirth in these sour times. And while a bitter curmudgeon such as myself is not generally given to such whimsical flights of fancy, not only did I indulge myself in such cheerful thinking, but I will also share my thoughts with you. You see I began pondering the institution of family, an entity of caring constructed out of a myriad of interwoven bonds. When we are by ourselves in life, we are like free agents, able to roam about and needing only to make provision for our own concerns. Once we have a family of our own however, we find ourselves bound by a mutual commitment to one another.

And as I mulled over this, another thought came to me, causing me to entertain a bit more whimsy. I thought about the great social contract, that all important institution that lends legitimacy to the government and binds it to the people. It is awe inspiring to think about the manner in which society subordinates itself to a representative government based on the foundation of its interests being represented, and futhermore, the history changing events that have occurred when such trust has been violated (e.g. Magna Carta, American Revolution, etc.). But now storm clouds crept into my sunny thinking (a tiger doesn't change its stripes you know), and I began to contemplate the intricacies of the corporate entity.

You see friends, many of us take corporations for granted. We see them as reliable little commercial stars dotting the vast sky of our economy. We come to place our faith in them (often an affliction brought about by clever marketing) and trust them to attend to their affairs on their own accord. But corporations themselves are derived from a yet another binding form of commitment, one analogous to the family or the social contract.

To put this in the terms of the birds and the bees gentle reader, sometimes when young entrepreneurs love their businesses very much, they reach a point where they desire for other people to enjoy their business with them (and share their money in return). And through this blessed union of business and shareholder (presided over by a duly ordained investment bank) a shining new (and freshly capitalized) bundle of joy called a Corporation is born. But now our new Corporation finds itself with new obligations. Among these are not only the commitment to represent the interests of its immediate family, the shareholders, but also those interests of its extended family, the stakeholders. These fellows include the workers, the suppliers, the distributors, and the customers among many others (including most recently, the tax payers) who have something vested in the health of the Corporation. And as long as this bond of commitment and obligations exists they all live happily ever after (or at least until the next round of leveraged buyouts, but we'll save that for another day).

But let's say that Daddy (here played by the executive leadership of our corporate family) decides to go out and blow the family paycheck on liquor and whores. Now we have a problem. You see, when Daddy increases his liquor and whore budget by 20%, but his paycheck only grows by 3%, eventually the party must come crashing down, and the entire family will suffer (on top of the fact that Pop is perpetually drunk and riddled by incurable STD's, but we'll omit that discussion in the name of good taste). If you'd like to dig further, check out some recent executive compensation and general corporate responsibility analysis here.

The big business media machine has made some not-so-subtle attempts to attribute the public outcry over executive compensation to a bad case of class envy. Additionally, the same parties have billed public calls for greater regulatory oversight as a dangerous and potentially damaging overreaction. By their rationale, it seems that many of us might have had a shared misconception that fooled us into wrongfully thinking that we were smart enough to demand standards of conduct from public corporations. But it is more likely that we are sitting here patiently listening to the fumbling explanations of children who got caught with their hands in the cookie jar. While I might be delightfully mad, I am hardly an imbecile. If you'll excuse me, I'm off to go rip the plumbing out of my bathroom, as I'm quite certain that the copper piping will fetch a dandy price down at the scrapyard...

A Toast to Greed!

2008-10-15T22:02:00.007-04:00

Greetings gentle readers and welcome once more to The Porridge Line. I had taken a break from my self-righteous commentary for a few brief days while I pursued a position as an organ grinder. However, after yet another tragic round of foreclosures the dancing monkey is back to living with his folks, and I have resigned myself to more conventional pursuits.

A thought occurred to me today as I was considering placing a kidney on Craigslist (horrifically the black market for organs is one of the few prosperous segments of our global economy these days). It seems that all too often we have a tendency to lose touch with the things that really have worth in life (you know, those invaluable commodities such as friends, family, and the subtle conviction that you are better than everyone else around you). As a case in point, I would to submit to you none other than Donald Trump. Someone needs to remind that fine fellow that nobody gets to take their lucre along with them when they are inevitably loosed from this mortal coil. Nevertheless I am certain that when some forthcoming archaeologist millennia from now excavates the antediluvian remains of the Trump Pyramid, they will undoubtedly find The Donald interred with the mummified remains of his house servants, and laid to rest atop a splendid heap of by then long-defunct greenbacks.

On a similar note there is the matter of the mindset of our present day investors. I believe it was the genuinely admirable investor Warren Buffet who once stated the there were but two emotional states to be found on Wall Street: fear and greed. Sadly, the day-to day extraordinary volatility of our current markets is an unfortunate proof that our concept of "investing" has been reduced to a rapid-fire fluctuation between those two states. Of course no sensible and well versed modern investor would engage in such a dated and outmoded form of investing as purchasing equity for the long term. Too old fashioned and inefficient (not to mention dependent on the virtue of patience, something that the generation of instant-gratification has no time for). The worst of these sort might as well quit investing and start snatching ladies purses...there's a shorter revenue cycle and much better rate of return. Who on earth would buy a stock to hang onto it when there are futures, exotic derivatives, and short positions to be found...and never mind that Buffet chap or the fact that he is the wealthiest man in America.

I can hear the complaints of chronic short-sellers already: "But Mr. Bumble, short selling helps to adjust prices in stocks that have become overpriced by the market!" Mr. Bumble says indeed, but just keep both hands on the table where I can see them and no tripping people as they walk past you while you're holding that short position (and yes, referencing yourself in the third person is the most spectacular form of haughtiness). Well, that's more than enough ranting for now. If you'll excuse me I believe I'm feeling chipper enough to sell some more plasma...

Where Are the Sweatshops When We Need Them?

2008-10-12T23:04:00.009-04:00

Salutations gentle readers, and welcome again to the Porridge Line! I hope that you have brought your appetites with you, as you will find today's bounty filling, however unsavory it might be. I had some time to reflect today as my son began his apprenticeship at the local coal mine (a position which will certainly make him the envy of his fellow twelve year-olds). As the inexhaustible procession of pundits and talking heads that are the denizens of mainstream media are so eager to remind us, if we are to avoid prolonged financial distress in our fair land not only must we atone for the fiscal sins of our monetary fathers, but we must also devise some method by which to jump start our economy.

Now, in the spirit of charity and good will I will avoid jumping on the argumentative bandwagon brought about by the former point, and examine the latter. Make no mistake, the concept of companies having publicly held losses and simultaneously privately held profits is the most socially transformative notion since the movable-type printing press (it might lead things in a bit of a different direction, however), but the sheer number of bespectacled older gentlemen whom the Treasury has amassed to remind us that they are correct surely must mean that they are leading us in the socially responsible direction. But for now lets just mull over what we the serfdom *ahem* middle-class might do to get things moving in the right direction.

An oft sited component of the gross-domestic-nay saying that bombards us is the substantial trade deficit that exists between ourselves and China. As China long ago mastered the art of the sweatshop, perhaps we need to close the trade gap by playing by their own rules. After all, how bad could it be? Children might be our nation's future, but I'm certain that some business professional couldn't still cook up some dollar value for them. Just think of it: get the little buggers out of the schools and back into the factories where they belong, by dickens! We could have the global wallet market cornered in no time. And think of the savings incurred by the budget cuts to the Department of Education. Nothing past the 5th grade to get in the way of paying for executive retreats!

I suppose that if we could fool grandma into knitting in a textile mill instead of a nursing home that we might trim a bit of fat off of the social security system at the same time. Why, we could shave one, maybe even two whole percent off of that dastardly deficit, and all that it would cost us in return would be a mere pittance of human dignity. Haw! I'm surprised that our responsible business professionals aren't chomping at the bit to corner this market (oh wait, some have...). Well enough for now gentle readers, once again it's time to feed my family, and so I'm off to go poach pheasants on my lord's estate.

Human Sacrifice in the Modern Era...Bah!

2008-10-11T21:04:00.005-04:00

Welcome again gentle reader to your daily ration of gruel. A thought occurred to me today as I placed my meager possessions on eBay and hocked off my children for medical experiments (we all have to pay the rent in these trying times don't we?). In ancient times, societies would make sacrifices (often human) to their gods in the hopes that they would reap better crops, better fortunes, better health, etc. But wouldn't it be something if in this very day and age one could sacrifice your fellow people (or their livelihoods...) to improve your station in life?

Well, it is not only possible my friends, but it's fully acceptable in our society. Consider this business opportunity: you convince people to entrust you with their life savings, and then squander it into nothingness while still taking a nice cut for yourself! Genius! I'm amazed that these fellows haven't constructed some gilded shrine to whatever deity rewards them so richly...Oh wait, they have and they dubbed it Wall Street. If you'll excuse me, I have a block of government cheese to go slice up...

Welcome to The Porridge Line

2008-10-10T20:02:00.004-04:00

Greetings gentle reader and welcome to my humble blog. The recent economic turmoil that has gripped our fair nation has compelled me to do what all responsible citizens do in response to times of great crisis: complain about it, of course. I do believe that I qualify my remarks. Afterall, I am one of the economically disenfranchised 90% or so of Americans who, not meeting the $2,000,000 net worth or $200,000 a year annual income requirements for hedge fund investment prescribed by our benefactors at the SEC, am forced along with the rest of my fellow commoners to ride the wealth destruction express train. But then again, fortune does favor the brave as the saying goes...or maybe that was the wealthy.

But fear not fellow constituents of the late, great middle-class. I'm sure that those generous souls at the Treasury Department will follow up the resounding success of the 700 billion dollar executive retreat fund with a revival of English work houses and debtor prisons for the rest of us. Right now the hedgies are making a fortune off of the collapse of the world markets (but don't dare accuse them of kicking the legs out from under of their short positions...they'd never condone market manipulation). Oddly enough their profits on the way down will give them enough money to buy up half the damn world when the prices finally settle out. And to think that most of us never foresaw the triumphant return of fiefdom and serfdom...hah.

So what shall we do in the meantime? Well, just as legend tells us that the roman emperor Nero played his fiddle as Rome burned, so should we celebrate these times of great change. Maybe we should consider our life savings a small price to pay for the privilege of being able to enrich the likes of Jimmy Cayne and Dick Fuld. Perhaps they will see fit to return the favor by casting a few loaves of bread down to us from the walls of their estates. So grab your bowls my downtrodden friends, take your place in the food lines, and enjoy another mouthful from the Porridge Line.