May 11, 2009 -- Many years ago as a junior partner in an ad agency I occasionally fed an item to a columnist at the old Houston Post. Sorry to say I can no longer remember his name, but I do remember the gist of one of his columns. It was a story set in the earliest days of the twentieth century about a prestigious brothel and the dignified, somewhat prim and beloved madam who ran the place, Miss Lilla. The business occupied a large, well-kept Victorian mansion; Miss Lilla, dressed in dignified high-neck, floor-length lavender gowns made certain her clients were treated with the respect they deserved. Their operating system was very simple but efficient: each girl was issued a towel as she accepted a customer; at the end of the business evening the towels were counted and settlements made
One night the mansion caught fire and as roaring flames began to consume her life’s work, Miss Lilla stood in the front yard, surrounded by comforting neighbors wailing and loudly bemoaning her fate. Suddenly, from a second story window a porter appeared and tossed a huge stack of towels out to land on the lawn, at which point Miss Lilla loudly proclaimed “thank God he saved the books.”
The “books” of notorious similar businesses were in the news this week when the results of the long anticipated “stress test” by the federal government of 19 of the country’s biggest financial institutions were announced. As anticipated, the results showed that some of them do indeed need more “towels.” Regulators told the 19 largest U.S. banks that they have to raise $75 billion in extra capital.
Bank of America is judged to need a $33.9 billion cushion, for one. To arrive at these conclusions, the Federal Reserve “marshaled hundreds of supervisors to spend 45 days rigorously reviewing the banks’ detailed loan data,” according to Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner. That sounds worse than an I.R.S. audit. We can only hope they got it right.
Two institutions, Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanly, immediately jumped into action on Friday and raised $7.5 billion to add to their kitty. That’s at least twp bankers who won’t be standing on a street corner holding a cardboard sign reading “will grovel for money.” Although according to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Il) "the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.” Any chance they will foreclose on Capital Hill?”
Reaction has been mainly positive, although grumpy Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winning economist and New York Times columnist, who favors stronger action, wrote that the Administration has decided to “muddle through the financial crisis, hoping that the banks can earn their way back to health.” Wall Street did its usual thing, reacted positively then found something else to worry about: technology. Wall Street acts like the films you see of underwater schools of thousands of little fish swishing through the water helter-skelter, first one way then another.
Actually, the Durbin comment related to $42 million lobbyists earned in the first quarter working to defeat mortgage write-down in bankruptcy (called cramdown) along with other anti-consumer legislation like capping credit card interest rates. Credit card companies need the higher rates in order to pay for the lobbying.
Everything seems to be about numbers. Rush Limbaugh threw a few around when he flew to Washington in his $54 million Gulfstream G550 to make a speech to a group of wealthy, right-wing donors. What recession, he asked? “I’ve never had financially a down year. There’s supposed to be a recession.” He bragged about his $400 million contract with Clear Channel. In the old retailing days when women wore hats there was a running gag about the thousand dollar hat in the millinery department, the one unsellable hat on which the department manager would hide his markdowns. Limbaugh is Clear Channel’s hat, paying him $400 million while they lay off about 3,000 employees. Recession? What recession?
“One” is the only number needed for a replacement for retiring Justice Souter on the Supreme Court, but the number of possible candidates seems endless when you consider how many possible prospects are already being trashed by the character assassins troops of Obama-bashers, so many they seem to be making up people. The President is and will be getting a lot of advice on this one from all sides, from all interest groups. Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post asks “should the person be a woman? gay? empathetic?” Kurtz quotes National Review’s Jonah Goldberg wryly noting the search for a “public servants with the self-restraint of Roman castrati.” Two of Mr. Obama's potential Supreme Court nominees are openly gay, which gives conservatives something to sink their teeth in. The President used the word "empathetic” which gave them another bone to chew on, as did RNC Chairman Michael Steele in his famous oratorical fashion, suggesting to the President he should “empathize right on your behind.”
As it happens, I am imminently qualified to comment on the Supreme Court choice. My grandmother’s grandfather’s father married the niece of John Marshall, the longest serving Supreme Court Chief Justice in history and the man given credit for defining the court’s role. Since he's one of the 126 (or more) people alive at that time from whom I am descended, I believe my qualification are clear. I claim to be easily as qualified as Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, Kristol, Rove, and the rest of the snarling radical commentators on the far right. I will keep you posted. What would Marshall say? Perhaps I can channel my long-gone ancestor, if I can pick him out of the crowd.
18,857 is the number of corporations whose official address is a five-story office building on South Church Street in the Caymans. President Obama proposed outlawing techniques used by U.S. companies to avoid paying taxes which would raise approximately $190 billion over the next decade. At least 10 of the 30 companies listed in the Dow Jones Industrial Average have had units using Cayman addresses. They are upset. Can’t be competitive they say. Wonder if we could ship all of those maniacal no-tax conservatives to the Cayman Islands? Permanently? Sounds good to me.
Zero. The number of Republican Jewish Senators. Time magazine asked Arlen Specter if that bothered him. His reply: "There's still time for the Minnesota courts to do justice and declare Norm Coleman the winner." Over Al Franken ? Franken a Goy? (Actually, Specter later owned up to and apologized for his gaffe. “In the swirl of moving from one caucus to another, I have to get used to my new teammates,” Specter said. “I’m ordinarily pretty correct in what I say. I’ve made a career of being precise. I conclusively misspoke.”)
Three is the number of paternity suits looming for Fernando Lugo Méndez, the President of Paraguay. What makes this interesting is that he is a former Catholic Bishop, and was so when these children were conceived. DNA tests are in order. He ran on a platform of anticorruption, ethics and morality. At least he didn’t sin and use contraceptives.
But sex is in the news a lot this week. South Africa has its first polygamous president, with three wives at the moment. Jacob Zuma, a Zulu, will probably rotate them as first lady. Or, they could make quite a reception line. May I introduce the First Lady, the First Lady, the First Lady.
John Edwards now has his mistress, his wife, and the U.S. government on his back. Wife Elizabeth with a tell-all book and appearances on Oprah and other television shows; According to the National Enquirer, Rielle Hunter might demand a DNA test; the government investigating payments from campaign funds to his mistress. Eliot Spitzer didn’t have this much trouble and could give him a little advice.
In what Howard Kurtz couldn’t resist calling hitting below the belt he reported that Kenya's Federation of Women Lawyers has urged the wives of both leaders to “withhold sex from their husbands until the national feud is resolved." Beats marching and carrying signs.
2,265 is the number of people infected with the H1N1 (swine) flu virus now in 44 states and Washington DC. A Harvard study says one in ten Americans have stopped hugging and kissing. That’s as bad as Kenya.
One down, at least three to go. Obama's first White House Correspondent's Association Dinner demonstrated that his writers are superior to writers on any late night TV show, not to mention his perfect delivery. If you didn't see it, here it is:
And here’s a link to Wanda Sykes bit:
Three feet tall people, weighing in at 65 pounds, living on an island. No, not Jonathan Swift Lilliputians but a race scientists who made their discovery say lived on Flores Island in the Pacific some 8,000 years ago. They weren’t dwarfs, which have normal size heads but small bodies. These “Hobbits,” as scientists are loosely calling them, were proportioned like their contemporary peers, just miniaturized, kind of the Ken and Barbies of their era. They made tools just like other humans did 8,000 years ago and appear to be as human as we are today without the Prada handbags and Rolex watches of course. Speculation on how they got that way centers around living in confined quarters on an Island. They didn’t evolve so much as dissolve.
There may be a lesson here. The year my father was born the population of the U.S. was about 65 million; it was about 114 million the year I was born; it’s now over 300 million on the way to 600 million in the lifetime of my granddaughters. Where are all of these people going to go? The land mass is not going to get bigger; in fact, global warming may decrease it by lifting the level of the seas. A race of Hobbits might be the answer. It could be done. We just gave the O.K. for stem cell research. Now let’s get after the cloning thing. There is talk about recreating the Wooly Mammoth, and if you can make a mammoth you can make a Hobbit and solve the world’s population problem.
Randy Newman’s “Short People” song will have to be rewritten:
“Well, I don't want no tall people
Don't want no tall people
Don't want no tall people
`Round here.
They got clumsy big hands
Bulging eyes
They walk around
Tellin' great big lies
They got bulbous noses
And fang-like teeth
They wear stinky leather shoes
On their big binioned feet
Don’t want no tall people ‘round here.
I am doing my part just by the natural aging process. I am an inch shorter now than I was a few years ago. And I’m not as tall either.
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