paul newman.

maureen dowd on paul newman. very good, particularly for those who dont (yet) understand how classy he was.

poor man wanna be rich, rich man wanna be king...

apparently, bloomberg is going to try to overturn the nyc term limits law prohibiting him from running for a third term.

this is highly diced.

dont get me wrong - im not a big fan of term limits, save for the case of the presidency, a job whose unparalleled demands of its officeholder must yield diminishing returns after eight years, and whose intense concentration of power in one person begs for an automatic oversight that can only be achieved through turnover (god am i laconic).

generally, i think term limits only serve to deprive a constituency of a good leader.

but a good leader wouldnt try to strike down term limits right at the end of his own final term.

for one thing, it just doesnt pass the smell test.  actually, it fairly reeks.

but if i must proffer actual reasoning behind this argument, id say this; we have a very deliberative form of goverment (duh). this is good, b.c it means that laws - and institutions - arent changed according to the caprices of individuals. bloomberg doing this while hes mayor, as opposed to championing such legislation from the sidelines over the next four years while someone else is running city hall, totally flouts this fundamental principle.

bloomy's ostensible justification is that we need someone of his business acumen to steer us through this financial crisis. this claim only serves to underline what im talking about, and to undermine the very office he wants to maintain.

we, as new yorkers, should be able to have faith that the city government, irrespective of the individuals who comprise it at any given time, can weather any crisis. bloomberg claiming that he is uniquely qualified to handle this or any epidemic inherently compromises the agency of the next person to become mayor. 

bottom line: officeholders come and go, but the government is eternal. it shouldnt - and doesnt - need one man to prop it up.

not at any time.

btw, the clown prince of darkness himself, giuliani, tried to extend his term by three months after 9.11, using the same line of reasoning.  need i say more?

incidentally.

rip paul newman.

class personified.

id write more about my half-bro, if i werent (wasnt? shouldnt i know the english subjunctive by now?) wrapping up my brilliant a-rod contract powerpoint don for class.

go cubs.

no october baseball in nyc.

i mean, really?

damn.

rhyme 1.

show no mercy in murcielagas
im far from being the bastard that marcy had fathered.

-jay-z, mr. carter

another mouth to feed.

there is an unfortunate analog to the crisis of waking up, breaking out the cereal bowl, pouring in the flakes or o's or whathaveyou, taking the spoon out, then, as seinfeld describes, picking up the milk carton and realizing it's tragically light.

(sometimes you still pour it over the cereal, hoping by some miracle youve misjudged the weight, right? nope, you havent. and your reward is a semi-moist bowl of ruined honey nut cheerios [which is the perfect cereal btw {provided you have sufficient milk}].)

the analog is your cat waking you up, leading you to her empty food bowl, then you picking up the cat food bag and realizing it's tragically light. and youre gonna have to make your first foray into the world this morning in your jammies and unkempt countenance, to buy the beast the generic food the deli sells, b.c the pet store that sells the premo stuff that she wont inevitably regurgitate (shes a weak-stomached food snob - o brady i love you!) doesnt open for another hour and you gotta haul ass.

and of course said premo pet food store will be closed by the time you get home tonite.

man, the sacrifices we make for our children, right?

d'oh.

remember when you were a kid, and you wondered why the government didnt just print up a bunch of money, so everyone could be rich? (i at least wondered that).

well, guess what? they finally do! (though not so everyone can be rich, exactly.)

while having the senate banking committee $700 billion fannie/freddie/lehman/AIG/your uncle ruby/bumblebee man bailout hearings on in the background, i heard senator bob bennet (r-ut) say 'the economy runs on credit. credit is granted on confidence. confidence is based one of two assumptions. the collateral is worth it, or the cash flow will be sufficient. one way or the other, the loan will be repaid. what we're faced with now, is finding a way to restore the confidence in the system so that credit can start to flow again. that's what we're here to try to do.'

one way or the other, the loan will be repaid?!

youre kidding me bob, right?

as many of you know, unlikely as it sounds, my first real job out of college was underwriting commercial real estate mortgages, and my second was developing and getting said mortgages approved by our loan committee. (i should mention, our collateral was the commerical real estate itself, and always a second lien on a residence whose first lien was inevitably held by freddie mac or fannie mae or maybe it was only one of them; i forget.)

anyway, i dont think in the history of the lending company at which i worked, in tens and maybe even hundreds of thousands of loan applications, anyone ever dared tell the loan committe, 'one way or the other, the loan will be repaid.' it's like, why dont you add, 'cross my heart and hope to die.'

i realize bennet (btw, his website has a section called 'bennett in the senate,' which is a pretty catchy line i have to admit) had to speak in such a generality in this case, but that gem still perked up my ears.

and i just read, in the times, that "the chairman of the (senate banking) committee, Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, said in his prepared remarks that Mr. (Treasury Secretary Henry M.) Paulson (Jr.)’s proposal was 'stunning and unprecedented in its scope and lack of detail.'"

i guess that makes sense, you know, b.c HOW DO YOU COLLATERALIZE A FRIGGIN' 700 BILLION DOLLAR LOAN? the loan-to-value ratio (im really trying to sound like i know what im talking about) any bank would require on that literally fantastic loan would have to call for collateral worth upwards of 1 trill, right?

additionally, how can we expect the cash flow (and which particular flow are we talking about, here, btw?) to be sufficient? to recoup 700 billion?

i mean, we're just printing up money.

im sure there are all sorts of ways to show that my saying that indicates that i dont know what the hell im talking about. (for instance, this times op-ed is a good one. actually, you really should read it. it helped me understand the whole situation a lot better, using clear language.)

the pt is, dude, i may not be an economologist, but i stayed in a holiday inn last night, and i am dubious.

lastly, i think this bailout prolly has to be added to the list of lifespan historical watermarks that i talked about in aug 07.