We Don’t Know

smokingpen — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:21:27 +0000

One of the arguments bandied about by politicians over the past several weeks to bail out the financial markets is that the possibility of a deeper recession or an all out depression is possible and if we don’t do anything, that possibility might become a reality. In other words, we don’t know what will happen if the government doesn’t step in and invest a great deal of money in the financial industries and as a result, since we don’t know, we also don’t know if we are going to be fine or in trouble.

This is what is called a fallacy. On the other side of the coin, we also don’t know whether or not the financial industry wouldn’t (ultimately) survive the lack of government investment capital and as a result, not be in need of the investments and buy-outs that the politicians (though, interestingly, not the constituents) insist have to happen. The problem we are facing is less that we don’t know and more that we are following the worst possible scenario. The worst possible scenario is a political career killer, meaning that whoever is in office during the start of a recession is less likely to be in office if it lasts for any significant length of time; and if it becomes a depression, well… everyone (allegedly) loses and the political base in this country begins to swing in a very different direction.

What the politicians are listening to, right now, is less that the finacial markets need to be bailed out, but more that they have a responsibility to make sure that the markets don’t fail so that they can keep their jobs. Yes. That is what this boils down to. People wanting to keep their jobs when they have to go to individual constituents and explain why it is they allowed the gilded successes of the country to suddenly stop and revert.

Instead of following good, sound, economic principles the outcome is less good and a lot more bad legislation, bad for the taxpayers, and bad for businesses.

What is actually happening is that Washington D.C. is playing a game of What If…? The problem with this game is they are only what if-ing the absolute negative and absolute worst case scenarios. More, why didn’t Washington What If…? the consequences to taxpayers and constituents when gas prices kept going up and are currently still higher than they should be? Why didn’t Washington do something to alleviate gas prices when they should’ve instead of waiting for the market to decide what it was doing?

President George W. Bush worked for oil. Granted, according to news stories and reports he wasn’t a very good executive when working for oil, but he still did. So did Vice-President Dick Chenney. On top of that, oil companies donate millions of dollars a year to re-election campaigns to make sure people who are sympathetic to oil’s wants. As a result, it is not in the interests of politicians to legislate bailout or maximum pump prices in a free market where a portion of a politicians re-election war chest is paid by oil profits. While it is also not in that same groups interests to allow the financial industry to fall apart (guess who holds investment capital).

It’s all well and good that Washington wants to do something. However, I am pretty convinced that what is being done, regardless of what we are told, is the wrong thing and will result in the worst case What If…? actually happening. If we have learned anything, especially in the past 20 years, is that Washington has a tendency to head in the worst direction rather than the best direction; and in the past 50 to 70 years, Washington is more ready to borrow and spend than we should be comfortable with.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

What came first???

smokingpen — Fri, 24 Sep 2004 20:28:17 +0000

School last night was a different experience for me. In BritLit we went over the test we will be taking, in two parts, next week and the teachers (a name I still don’t remember) kept asking for answers to the questions that we will most likely see on one of the tests. The experience was interesting and she let us out an hour and a half early. Because school and home are enough of a distance apart I decided to stay at school and read up on Richard III for my Shakespeare class.

After BritLit people kept coming up to me and making odd statement about what they thought the test would be like. My opinion is that the teacher is probably going to be a little tough, but not difficult and that we should worry more about the take-home portion than about the in-class portion of the test. This must not be what people wanted to hear since they would all, invariably, walk off and join a group down the hall where they were discussing the intricacies of the exam and possible scenario’s of testing. Maybe I am stupid for not being afraid of something like this, but being aware of the material, having studied for each class, and having read all of the material, plus being one of the only people that offer comments or criticisms in class, I believe that worrying isn’t necessary. I will do fine.

However, I also realize that people want to get together to assuage their own fears and as such, I guess I wasn’t the most forthcoming person for that. So, the group down the hall is getting together sometime Monday night at Barnes and Noble to meet and chances are, I won’t be there.

In Shakespeare I went from being able to tolerate the bard to hating him again. Richard III is an interesting play, but when you push through ¾ of the play in one night, without breaks, you get to hate the man who wrote it (not that I personally believe he wrote any of his plays).

Regardless of class I was in a different mood. I’d finished Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance earlier in the day and had been thinking about something. In truth, I am still thinking about something and can’t seem to put my finger on it. This put me in a rather weird mood last night and I spent most of the evening actually staring out windows and trying to avoid the interaction with other people. The experience was such that I came home, ate a little something, and went straight to bed. I don’t normally go straight to anything and last night I was home and in bed pretty dang fast.

I’m still wondering what is going on inside of me. My mind is working a million miles a minute to figure something out and in truth I can’t seem to grasp the first thing that is going on. It’s like I turned on a light and then lost the switch. Somehow I turned on the thought process and now I can’t seem to figure out where the source of the process is or how to turn it off. The long and short of it is that I am worried.

At first I thought the thoughts were around the term Quality as used in Zen but I have since eliminated that. The whole experience suggests that when I figure it out the whole experience will just stop. But that is the rub, I don’t know what I need to do to figure the whole thing out. There isn’t any clues that I can find, there isn’t any real cause for any of this. I am working. I am going to school. I have a place to live. A little money in the bank. I have books to read and…. Interesting. That is very interesting. I don’t have the one last thing that has been causing me problems of late. I add nothing more here.

I will go on to say that about two weeks ago I had a series of thoughts strike me, which were coupled with experiences that I’d written down in the past but had never really talked about, that felt like they needed to be written out in a journal entry. For over a week I would wake up in the morning, I would wake up in the middle of the night and this would be all I could think about, and the thoughts would be right there. All of my waking hours were spent, in some form or another, thinking about these events, these experiences, and these new thoughts in conjunction with each other. The entire experience had been such that I doubted many of the things that had happened for me.

On top of that, I felt it time to crack open a series of journals I wrote a couple of years ago that I carry places with me because… uhm, I’m not always smart… and read in them. So, I read in them and then I sat down and penned the journal entry. The outcome was that the moment I was done with a part of the journal entry the thoughts associated with that subject disappeared (became an afterthought really) and I could move forward. Last night I added the last crumb to the pile. And no, I am not going to tell you what the journal entry was or what it dealt with.

However, as I begin mentally working through what is, and isn’t, working in my life I come to the realization that I am missing pieces to the proverbial puzzle. I am missing elements, or an element, that would further make life more whole. The thought is very interesting. I didn’t know I was deep in that kind of a way.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

John Hattaway » logic

We Don’t Know

What came first???