Blindsided on an idle Thursday

One of my all time favorite songs includes the following admonition: "Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday."

I was never very good at following this counsel, as I am, by my very nature, a worrier. Today has been one of those days where I find myself agonizing over the big fat question mark that has managed to insert itself into the effortless routine of my current existence. At this very moment, Scott is in the throes of grad school applications, which means that this year, he's actually serious about getting that MBA. That's right, folks: it has been a drama three years in the making, but he took the GMAT last Saturday, narrowed his list of grad school selections, and is now banging at the door of higher education, anxiously waiting to see who answers. This is the year where it all happens. School in September is an all but foregone conclusion. He has applied to schools in the area and a handful of programs in various parts of the country, as is customary when you want to make sure you have options when you make a decision of this magnitude. With those options, comes the possibility of having to find a new place to call home. I can't help but reflect on how different the process was when I was in his shoes. I had no job, no commitments and no significant other to speak of, which meant I had nothing tying me down to a particular locale. I was invested nowhere which made me literally willing to go anywhere, and that was perfectly alright. I was able to fit all my earthly possessions into the back of my trusty Honda and go wherever fate took me, which incidentally, was the fabulous Pacific Northwest. It all worked out so perfectly, even though I do recall being an complete basket case when I was embarking on this particular adventure. Fast forward four years. Now, relocating means excitement but tempered by a healthy dose of anxiety. Will Scott be able to transfer with his job? Will I be able to find a job? Where will we live? How will this affect our other plans and goals? Can we afford to move? And of course the most daunting of all, the prospect of having to take the bar exam in another jurisdiction. Double shudder followed by a dry heave. The stumbling blind part, before you know that everything is going to work out, is the most stressful part of all. And as my lunch break winds down, I can only hope that work will occupy enough of my brain to keep the unnecessary fretting to a minimum.

The motivationator

When I was in my last year of law school, I had a countdown calendar to graduation, affectionately nicknamed "The Motivationator." I desperately needed something, anything, to keep me motivated to trudge on in those waning days of bitterness and malaise. Counting down the days motivated me. As a post-higher education adult, I must ask myself, what motivates me now? I have decided that planning awesome vacations motivates me. Maybe I should have been a travel agent. Planning our post-bar European vacation definitely carried me through those dark, dark months of bar preparation. And now, our next destination is Hawaii. And why not? We live on the West Coast, making travel to and from the islands (comparatively) cheap and (relatively) easy. As I try to keep my cool with never ending paperwork and ever present needy clients, I find that all I need to do is take a mental break and envision myself lazing on the beach or scuba diving at the reef, and presto. Will to live: restored. I think the planning is almost as fun as the vacationing itself. As part of our preparations for this trip, I have to get my open water diving certification, which is another fun thing to counterbalance the less fun aspects of being a grown up. I can't wait!! I have to say, tapping the savings account for a purpose other than paying down student loans is a most inviting prospect. 9 months to go. Let the counting down begin.

Now do you understand?

A friend posted this on his Facebook page, and it was too good not to share.


An Easily Understandable Explanation of Derivative Markets
By hydle Published: June 8, 2009

Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Detroit . She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronize her bar. To solve this problem, she comes up with new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay later.
She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans).
Word gets around about Heidi’s “drink now, pay later” marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi’s bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in Detroit .
By providing her customers’ freedom from immediate payment demands, Heidi gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages. Consequently, Heidi’s gross sales volume increases massively.
A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognizes that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases Heidi’s borrowing limit. He sees no reason for any undue concern, since he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral.
At the bank’s corporate headquarters, expert traders transform these customer loans into DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These securities are then bundled and traded on international security markets. Naive investors don’t really understand that the securities being sold to them as AAA secured bonds are really the debts of unemployed alcoholics.
Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb, and the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation’s leading brokerage houses.
One day, even though the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi’s bar. He so informs Heidi.
Heidi then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons, but being unemployed alcoholics they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Since, Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations she is forced into bankruptcy. The bar closes and the eleven employees lose their jobs.
Overnight, DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS drop in price by 90%. The collapsed bond asset value destroys the banks liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community.
The suppliers of Heidi’s bar had granted her generous payment extensions and had invested their firms’ pension funds in the various BOND securities. They find they are now faced with having to write off her bad debt and with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds. Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off 150 workers.
Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multi-billion dollar no-strings attached cash infusion from the Government. The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, non-drinkers.
Now, do you understand?


http://www.hydle.com/blog/archives/338/comment-page-1

Restless

The lunch hour is winding down and I have a ridiculously huge stack of files on my desk. I've been daydreaming about 5:00pm since I walked into my office. I am about 6 months into the "new and improved everything" life I so eagerly anticipated last summer, and already I find myself grappling with the inclination to move on. There has to be a name for my condition. I think I'll call it Existential ADD. On Sunday I spent an hour teaching a class of 14 year old girls how to get their lives in order, with the overarching theme of "don't be dumb." I'm pretty sure I said that at least 5 times. The world is yours, with its infinite possibilities. Don't be dumb, and life will be easier for you. I live my life by that mantra, and I like to think I haven't made an excessive amount of dumb choices. However, with each choice I make, a roadblock appears in front of the option I did not choose. And the infinite possibilities life offers become more and more finite for me each day with every road not taken. It's hard not to idealize that road not taken. I sometimes find myself looking around at others and taking stock of my own life, which inevitably leads me to believe that I'm somehow behind, or not where I thought I would be at this stage in my life. Of course this is ridiculous; I'm exactly where I knew I would be based on the choices I've made, but I still can't help but feel restless. I always thought of myself as a creature of habit with an affinity for routine. After all, there is comfort in familiarity. But as day to day life becomes more and more predictable, my current routine is starting to feel an awful lot like a rut. And while I'd very much like to escape that rut, I have a sneaking suspicion that whatever the next big thing is, it won't be big enough to hold my attention indefinitely. I wonder if they make a pill for this?

Thinking about higher education?

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this on more than one occasion, but I'm the type of nerd that loves to see my life organized into graphs, spreadsheets and lists. It makes life so much easier to have lists telling me what I need to accomplish and graphs illustrating for me how I'm managing my finances. But this particular graph just makes my soul whimper.

That's what my cash flow looks like, each and every month. That massive blue chunk comprising half the graph? Those are my monthly student loan payments. With the 20/20 clarity of hindsight, and in a nod to my aforementioned affinity for list making, here are the top 10 things I'd rather be doing with the funds in blue:

10: Replace my aged and battle-worn computer with a MacBook Pro.

9: Mid-winter mini vacation in Hawaii.

8: Sock it away in an IRA.

7: Replace the balding tires and cracked (in 4 places) windshield on my car.

6: Swap out my wedding ring set for new bling from a jeweler that isn't in danger of bankruptcy (I'm looking at you, Zales).

5: Weekend trip to DC to see the cherry blossoms.

4: Rebuild the savings account.

3: Buy ski gear and take advantage of the awesome skiing in Oregon.

2: Snag tickets to random Olympic events and take a road trip to Vancouver.

1: Monthly mortgage payment on a house.

The babysitter's club

The New York Times published an article a few weeks ago, lamenting the demise of law school grad "golden ticket" jobs with big firms. Can I just say that, while the very thought of having a job with a big firm is the motivating force behind many a law student's miserable existence, for me, it sounds utterly unappealing. As in, I'd rather take a nap in the middle of the interstate than take a job with a big firm. But I can't really dispute the fact that even in a recession, first year associates at large firms make (fill in the blank) times as much money as I'm currently making, and sometimes a six figure job does sound like it would be nice. But those six figures come with the requirement that you work 80 hour weeks, sign away your soul, and promise your firstborn to the firm. A first year associate quoted in the aforementioned Times article stated, “If you do the math, you’re making less than a babysitter — not a nanny even, but an actual babysitter in high school.” Suddenly it doesn't sound like the golden ticket holders are really all that lucky. It also got me thinking about how being a lawyer is very much like being a babysitter. Every day, I have to deal with demanding clients who are convinced that their case is the only one I should ever be working on. I recall babysitting small children who were equally convinced that providing for their personal entertainment was my sole purpose for existing on this earth. As a lawyer, I have to clean up the messes people make of their lives. As a babysitter, you have to clean up the messes kids make of...pretty much everything they touch. As a lawyer, I have to put my best face forward, even when that means feigning civility when a client is going off on a rampage about something I did or didn't do. As a babysitter, tying up a tantruming kid and throwing him in a closet is always a temptation, but you know you'd never get away with it, so you fake nice until they stop screaming. For lawyers, the hours are long and the job is often thankless; at least if you're babysitting on a Friday night, you can help yourself to the fridge and the television. And at the end of the day, when you break it down to an hourly wage, for all those hours you toil, for all that fancy education you have, for all your lofty ambitions of helping people navigate the complicated legal system, you're really just playing babysitter, with compensation to match.

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission

A lengthy (and in some parts, extreme), but thought-provoking discourse on the trajectory of politics and law...


By Chris Hedges, TruthDig – 24 Jan 2010 www.truthdig.com/report/item/democracy_in_america_is_a_useful_fiction_20100124/

Corporate forces, long before the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, carried out a coup d’état in slow motion. The coup is over. We lost. The ruling is one more judicial effort to streamline mechanisms for corporate control. It exposes the myth of a functioning democracy and the triumph of corporate power. But it does not significantly alter the political landscape. The corporate state is firmly cemented in place.The fiction of democracy remains useful, not only for corporations, but for our bankrupt liberal class. If the fiction is seriously challenged, liberals will be forced to consider actual resistance, which will be neither pleasant nor easy. As long as a democratic facade exists, liberals can engage in an empty moral posturing that requires little sacrifice or commitment. They can be the self-appointed scolds of the Democratic Party, acting as if they are part of the debate and feel vindicated by their cries of protest.Much of the outrage expressed about the court’s ruling is the outrage of those who prefer this choreographed charade. As long as the charade is played, they do not have to consider how to combat what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls our system of “inverted totalitarianism.”Inverted totalitarianism represents “the political coming of age of corporate power and the political demobilization of the citizenry,” Wolin writes in “Democracy Incorporated.” Inverted totalitarianism differs from classical forms of totalitarianism, which revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader, and finds its expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. The corporate forces behind inverted totalitarianism do not, as classical totalitarian movements do, boast of replacing decaying structures with a new, revolutionary structure. They purport to honor electoral politics, freedom and the Constitution. But they so corrupt and manipulate the levers of power as to make democracy impossible.Inverted totalitarianism is not conceptualized as an ideology or objectified in public policy. It is furthered by “power-holders and citizens who often seem unaware of the deeper consequences of their actions or inactions,” Wolin writes. But it is as dangerous as classical forms of totalitarianism. In a system of inverted totalitarianism, as this court ruling illustrates, it is not necessary to rewrite the Constitution, as fascist and communist regimes do. It is enough to exploit legitimate power by means of judicial and legislative interpretation. This exploitation ensures that huge corporate campaign contributions are protected speech under the First Amendment. It ensures that heavily financed and organized lobbying by large corporations is interpreted as an application of the people’s right to petition the government. The court again ratified the concept that corporations are persons, except in those cases where the “persons” agree to a “settlement.” Those within corporations who commit crimes can avoid going to prison by paying large sums of money to the government while, according to this twisted judicial reasoning, not “admitting any wrongdoing.” There is a word for this. It is called corruption.Corporations have 35,000 lobbyists in Washington and thousands more in state capitals that dole out corporate money to shape and write legislation. They use their political action committees to solicit employees and shareholders for donations to fund pliable candidates. The financial sector, for example, spent more than $5 billion on political campaigns, influence peddling and lobbying during the past decade, which resulted in sweeping deregulation, the gouging of consumers, our global financial meltdown and the subsequent looting of the U.S. Treasury. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America spent $26 million last year and drug companies such as Pfizer, Amgen and Eli Lilly kicked in tens of millions more to buy off the two parties. These corporations have made sure our so-called health reform bill will force us to buy their predatory and defective products. The oil and gas industry, the coal industry, defense contractors and telecommunications companies have thwarted the drive for sustainable energy and orchestrated the steady erosion of civil liberties. Politicians do corporate bidding and stage hollow acts of political theater to keep the fiction of the democratic state alive.There is no national institution left that can accurately be described as democratic. Citizens, rather than participate in power, are allowed to have virtual opinions to preordained questions, a kind of participatory fascism as meaningless as voting on “American Idol.” Mass emotions are directed toward the raging culture wars. This allows us to take emotional stands on issues that are inconsequential to the power elite.Our transformation into an empire, as happened in ancient Athens and Rome, has seen the tyranny we practice abroad become the tyranny we practice at home. We, like all empires, have been eviscerated by our own expansionism. We utilize weapons of horrific destructive power, subsidize their development with billions in taxpayer dollars, and are the world’s largest arms dealer. And the Constitution, as Wolin notes, is “conscripted to serve as power’s apprentice rather than its conscience.”“Inverted totalitarianism reverses things,” Wolin writes. “It is politics all of the time but a politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash.”Hollywood, the news industry and television, all corporate controlled, have become instruments of inverted totalitarianism. They censor or ridicule those who critique or challenge corporate structures and assumptions. They saturate the airwaves with manufactured controversy, whether it is Tiger Woods or the dispute between Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien. They manipulate images to make us confuse how we are made to feel with knowledge, which is how Barack Obama became president. And the draconian internal control employed by the Department of Homeland Security, the military and the police over any form of popular dissent, coupled with the corporate media’s censorship, does for inverted totalitarianism what thugs and bonfires of books do in classical totalitarian regimes.“It seems a replay of historical experience that the bias displayed by today’s media should be aimed consistently at the shredded remains of liberalism,” Wolin writes. “Recall that an element common to most 20th century totalitarianism, whether Fascist or Stalinist, was hostility towards the left. In the United States, the left is assumed to consist solely of liberals, occasionally of ‘the left wing of the Democratic Party,’ never of democrats.”Liberals, socialists, trade unionists, independent journalists and intellectuals, many of whom were once important voices in our society, have been silenced or targeted for elimination within corporate-controlled academia, the media and government. Wolin, who taught at Berkeley and later at Princeton, is arguably the country’s foremost political philosopher. And yet his book was virtually ignored. This is also why Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich and Cynthia McKinney, along with intellectuals like Noam Chomsky, are not given a part in our national discourse.The uniformity of opinion is reinforced by the skillfully orchestrated mass emotions of nationalism and patriotism, which paints all dissidents as “soft” or “unpatriotic.” The “patriotic” citizen, plagued by fear of job losses and possible terrorist attacks, unfailingly supports widespread surveillance and the militarized state. This means no questioning of the $1 trillion in defense-related spending. It means that the military and intelligence agencies are held above government, as if somehow they are not part of government. The most powerful instruments of state power and control are effectively removed from public discussion. We, as imperial citizens, are taught to be contemptuous of government bureaucracy, yet we stand like sheep before Homeland Security agents in airports and are mute when Congress permits our private correspondence and conversations to be monitored and archived. We endure more state control than at any time in American history.The civic, patriotic and political language we use to describe ourselves remains unchanged. We pay fealty to the same national symbols and iconography. We find our collective identity in the same national myths. We continue to deify the Founding Fathers. But the America we celebrate is an illusion. It does not exist. Our government and judiciary have no real sovereignty. Our press provides diversion, not information. Our organs of security and power keep us as domesticated and as fearful as most Iraqis. Capitalism, as Karl Marx understood, when it emasculates government, becomes a revolutionary force. And this revolutionary force, best described as inverted totalitarianism, is plunging us into a state of neo-feudalism, perpetual war and severe repression. The Supreme Court decision is part of our transformation by the corporate state from citizens to prisoners.

Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent, writes a column published every Monday on Truthdig. His latest book is “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.”