Financial Crisis Augers Ill for Future

Friedman, New York Times, Dec 17, 2008, hits the nail on the head here, in many ways.

Unfortunately, he neglects mentioning the anti-Robin Hood nature of the original Ponzi scheme of the mortgage industry, which was, to steal from the poor and give that money to the already rich. The mortgages that today are called "toxic" had terrible interest rates (ultimately) which would have floated money up the financial tree from "the poor" to "the affluent".

The world is insane, and the future is bleak.

Management 101

I've just returned from bureaucratic defeat, and have come to realize that the first thing that must be taught in management school is to support your underlings until you're ready to ax them. Up to that point, back them up, no matter what bad things they do, no matter who is harmed, back them up, back them up, back them up. Then, later, get rid of them when you're convinced that they've done something inconsistent with the institution's goals. Don't rectify their errors, their immoral acts, nothing, until you've been harmed. The devil take those trampled during the process.

Treasury Follies

"Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."

This extraordinary statement (and what does "committed to agency discretion" mean?) in Secretary Paulson's request for bailout funds, and the subsequent results of his actions vis-a-vis the actual economy makes one wonder about the egos of these people, these giants of industry, who deem themselves fit to run our affairs.

One sees this clearly when the CEO's of "the big three" auto makers fly into Washington on private jets to beg for help cleaning up the messes they've made. Not only are they full of themselves, but they're tone deaf. Their pleas for their workers jobs are also pleas for maintaining their own exalted status.

Oh woe is us!

Teaching morphs into training

We're well into the Fall semester, and I'm teaching two freshmen courses (Ouch. The punishment continues unabated). The normal one seems OK, except that it's clear that no one in the room wants to learn the material. They're just there for the credentials, the stamp of "learning" required so they can continue on with their training. Engineers mostly, they are not interested in anything.

My other class, for nurses, is a strange group. They need high grades to be admitted to nursing school, but they're math averse, and technically incompetent (that doesn't mean that they can't use technology; they can use it but they just don't care how or why it works). They are taught, by me, typical problems, and then asked to solve similar problems on exams. At the end, they forget the problems, forget the concepts, forget everything, and plod on. This is a silly exercise. I pretend to teach and they pretend to learn.

What we've done is convert education into a very poor form of training, and the pre-training consists of forcing people to jump through hoops to "prove" that they can "do it", i.e., have the internal fortitude to struggle through in spite of the stupidity of it all. Perhaps the exercise is needed to "prove adulthood"? Stupidity incarnate!

Teaching versus Education?

My wife and I have been discussing this vis-a-vis a friend's daughter who recently returned from her mandated charity work overseas (a very private school kind of thing) and spent almost as much on her junior prom as she did on her South American required "good work" for the poor of this world. The argument about doing one's hair professionally, having makeup applied professionally, and doing everything else that her spoiled classmates required told us about a world spinning out of control, in which the wealthy have lost sight of all values, and the not-so-wealthy are caught up in the maelstrom of their angst, and swept along knowing better (for their children).

According to a news report, a certain private school in Washington was recently
faced with a unique problem. A number of 12-year-old girls had begun to use lipstick and would put it on in the bathroom. That was fine, but after they put on their lipstick they would press their lips to the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints. Every night the maintenance man would remove them and the next day the girls would put them back.

Finally the principal decided that something had to be done. She called all the girls to the bathroom and met them there with the maintenance man.

She explained that all the lip prints were causing a major problem for the maintenance man who had to clean the mirrors every night (you can just imagine the yawns from the little princesses). To demonstrate how difficult it was to clean the mirrors, she asked the maintenance man to show the girls how much effort was required.

He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet, and cleaned the
mirror with it. Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror.

There are teachers.... and then there are educators.

Odd how this misses the boat. What was taught? That kissing themselves and leaving telltale marks thereof was unhygenic? Neither teaching nor educating!

Savings & Loan versus SubPrime Mortgages

One starts to wonder about a governmental system which consistently favors the cheating rich over the simple proletariat. It seems reasonable that meltdowns should be avoided, since the unintended consequences are far reaching and possibly devastating. But the pain should not be ameliorated for the perpetrators. Or am I just plain wrong, and our duty is to support our betters?

died in vain

One of the arguments put forward to justify continuation of a war policy is that "our soldiers should not have died in vain". I remember seeing in Stuttgart a collection stand for "Opfer des Zweiten Weltkriegs" and I wondered, did they die in vain in Germany? in Italy? in Japan?

Politically incorrect

"Over the course of my public life, I have insisted, I believe correctly, that people, regardless of their position or power, take responsibility for their conduct. I can and will ask no less of myself." Eliot Spitzer, March 2008.

Isn't it off-putting that getting caught creates the opportunity to pontificate? Where was this kind of statement before the revelations? And would it have been made had the revelations never been made? Without being holier than thou, one wonders whether or not one should assume a priori that everyone is NDG.