It looks obvious

I have an habit of watching TV series in a very long delay. I don’t like the waiting period between episode and I don’t have patient to see if the TV show worth my time. I started watching the Sopranos when it was already in its fourth season - I picked the DVD’s from netflix and enjoy an uninterrupted watching. I did the same thing with Battlestar Galactica, Buffy the Vampire slayer, and recently with the best TV I ever saw - The Wire.

I assume that most people know already what the show is about, so I’ll not get into the details. I’ll just say that the series using the police investigation story as a tool to portray the decay of American urban structure and social fabric. The story is being told with rare qualities which provide real intellectual stimulation and emotional reactions. One of the main themes of the story is the inherent inefficiency of organizations to solve real problems - set with the wrong incentives, driven with agenda that has very little positive effect on real problems institutions are busy with self preservation, satisfying foreign interests and focusing on meaningless measurable goals. And although the series isn’t advocating for Libertarianism, it has - as the New Yorker Magazine identified, a Libertarian obvious streak:

Simon makes it clear that the show’s ambitions were grand. “ ‘The Wire’ is dissent,” he says. “It is perhaps the only storytelling on television that overtly suggests that our political and economic and social constructs are no longer viable, that our leadership has failed us relentlessly, and that no, we are not going to be all right.” He also likes to say that “The Wire” is a story about the “decline of the American empire.” Simon’s belief in the show is a formidable thing, and it leads him into some ostentatious comparisons that he sometimes laughs at himself for and sometimes does not. Recently, he spoke at Loyola College, in Baltimore; he described the show in lofty terms that left many of the students in the audience puzzled—at least, those who had come hoping to hear how they might get a job in Hollywood. In creating “The Wire,” Simon said, he and his colleagues had “ripped off the Greeks: Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides. Not funny boy—not Aristophanes. We’ve basically taken the idea of Greek tragedy and applied it to the modern city-state.” He went on, “What we were trying to do was take the notion of Greek tragedy, of fated and doomed people, and instead of these Olympian gods, indifferent, venal, selfish, hurling lightning bolts and hitting people in the ass for no reason—instead of those guys whipping it on Oedipus or Achilles, it’s the postmodern institutions . . . those are the indifferent gods.”

[...]

Over the next several days, the writers poked holes in each other’s ideas and, like Greek gods, mapped out the fates of the characters. Most of the trajectories were grim, but one troubled character, they decided, would pull himself together and enjoy what George Pelecanos calls one of the show’s “inglorious redemptions—not Rocky knocking the Russian out in the ninth round but somebody getting through to the other side.” Simon often says that “The Wire” refuses to indulge in the “life-affirming” messages that are woven into the fabric of network TV. Still, he seemed glad to incorporate this small victory into an otherwise rigorously unsentimental picture. “We don’t have a lot of victories,” Simon told his colleagues. “As cynically as the rest of this stuff is ending, it will validate the one place we put any of our sincerity, which is individual action.” It’s hard to classify Simon politically, but anytime you start thinking of him as some sort of bleeding-heart socialist you’re brought up short by his unremitting skepticism about institutions.

If, for some reason, you didn’t watch The Wire yet - I highly recommend doing so it is really worth the time.

Enjoying the warm weather and the great autumn we traveled yesterday along the hudson river and stop in several places. One of our stop was in the first American winery - Brotherhood - hopping to catch the last tour at 4 PM and maybe to enjoy tasting of few of the wines. The place itself is very nice and worth a visit, we also enjoyed the brotherhood riesling before and liked it so we had somewhat high expectations from the visit.

Arriving at about 3:00 PM we assumed that we have plenty of time, but we were wrong. We discovered that the lines for wine purchasing, and people obviously bought many bottles of wine, and for the winery tour are same lines. Additionally some computer problems caused the payment process to slow down even more than normally. So after standing in line for about 45 minutes we start to express our displeasure from the service and from the fact that we are going to miss the tour due to unreasonably bad service.

Quickly we were pulled out of the line and registered to tour and while waiting to the tour - and to the tour guide to pull everybody that still waiting in line - One of the owners came to apologize. He expressed his frustration with the new process that was initiated by consultants that the winery hired to improved its processes. One of the things he repeatedly said was that the visiting process was working well for years and that he doesn’t understand why they had to change it.

The fault of the messy inefficient process is, obviously, the owner’s and not the consultant’s. He hired them to recommend changes - and he is the one that should make the decision if he is going to institute them completely, partially, or as sane company owner should do - ignore them. The fact is that hiring consultants to improve the processes in your own company is a bad decision - nobody should know better than you where are your weak points, nor do they have the knowledge about your priorities, vision and the way your company should do better. Most of the time the visiting consultant experience is limited to consulting and they tries to force general solutions on specific problems.

I don’t remember where did I heard the expression “outsourcing the brain” before but the person that coined it was painfully accurate. I do remember, however, this wonderful post that concluded:

The whole fraud is only possible because performance metrics in knowledge organizations are completely trivial to game. The best part is that most management consultants, the stunningly good-looking, bright, earnest chipmunks with 4.0s in Russian Lit from Harvard who work for these companies, have absolutely no way of knowing this, so they can go through this whole exercise without even knowing that they’re doing it! They get all the way through the 2-year associate program on their way to MBA school without even realizing that they haven’t done a goddamn thing about productivity, all they’ve done is caused a fairly pointless transfer of wealth from ExxonMobilConoco to BainMcKinseyGartner’s senior partners. And it’s a lot of fun! First class flights to Houston and Oslo! Helping the world be more productive! Rock on, young stunningly-good-looking Management Consultant.

The tour, by the way, was very nice and so were some of the wines we tasted.

Well I shouldn’t be surprise that someone that call paying more taxes patriotism invents new history, but yet I am. I have the feeling Biden knew that FDR was not the President in 1929, and that when he was a candidate he campaigned with pretty conservative agenda - and still he thought that it will be a good idea to say something like this:

“When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened,’” Barack Obama’s running mate recently told the “CBS Evening News.”

And although he got the history completely wrong, and the conclusions are as wrong as the facts - I don’t think it will damage his campaign even a little bit. And that is the real shame!

“Where once more-marginal applicants would simply have been denied credit, lenders are now able to quite efficiently judge the risk posed by individual applicants and to price that risk appropriately. These improvements have led to rapid growth in subprime mortgage lending.”

The former chairman of the organization that many people hope will assume more responsibilities of oversight over the financial markets.

Short, and right on the money:

That’s how much Paulson’s plan might cost. That’s a lot of zeros. But, hey, no one said socialism was cheap, did they?

It is sad to see how the promise of individual liberty and freedom being destroyed, not because it failed but because it was poorly represented.

Recently the voices that calling for tighter control of the government on the market are much louder than usual. The crashing of investment banks and the threat of spreading the credit crisis into a full recession, along with massive tax money given as bailout to failing business, are among the reasons for such calls. But while many rushing to blame the risks of the free market, and the unreasonable greedy private sector, as a main reason to more government oversight - they are forgetting that the government had a major role in creating the credit crisis:

Eager to put more low-income and minority families into their own homes, the agency required that two government-chartered mortgage finance firms purchase far more “affordable” loans made to these borrowers. HUD stuck with an outdated policy that allowed Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to count billions of dollars they invested in subprime loans as a public good that would foster affordable housing.

[...]

The agency neglected to examine whether borrowers could make the payments on the loans that Freddie and Fannie classified as affordable. From 2004 to 2006, the two purchased $434 billion in securities backed by subprime loans, creating a market for more such lending. Subprime loans are targeted toward borrowers with poor credit, and they generally carry higher interest rates than conventional loans.

[...]

In 1995, President Bill Clinton’s HUD agreed to let Fannie and Freddie get affordable-housing credit for buying subprime securities that included loans to low-income borrowers. The idea was that subprime lending benefited many borrowers who did not qualify for conventional loans. HUD expected that Freddie and Fannie would impose their high lending standards on subprime lenders.

So maybe instead of increasing government oversight we should do the opposite and simply reduce it?

With the stock market continue it is diving today it might not be popular, it might be not popular but I’m still praising greed. I have to credit McCain and say that his attacks on selfishness and the so called greed predate the current crisis, but it doesn’t change the fact that he is no better in this respect than his opponent (some might even argue that he is worse). What I found as more offensive, and stupid, is the believe that the regulatory work McCain did, as a member of the commerce committee, had any positive contribution to the creation of the BlackBerry.

It was much more thanks to selfish greed than any regulatory work that contributed to any invention, including the BlackBerry and the day that McCain will start to grasp that will be the first day I might consider him as the lesser of two evils.

When I read this news report back in April I knew I have to keep it:

Campaigning for his wife in North Carolina, former President Bill Clinton said Wednesday that he’d be “very surprised if oil goes below a hundred dollars a barrel again in my lifetime.”

One this for sure - Mr. Clinton should be very happy that his lifespan is not depended on the public’s memory. It is also telling us something about the quality of market predictions and economy assessment done on the campaign trail, but today we will only enjoy the gotcha feeling

I must provide another short note about Oil prices, with at least the same quality of Clinton’s prediction. Oil price reached its peak the day before I left my job - since than it drop about $50 (about 34%) in a pretty short period. The demand didn’t really changed, the supply is basically the same and dollar is still very weak. The only significant change is the fact that I’m unemployed. Therefore, and since it is important for strong global economy I need to be paid to remain unemployed at all cost!  

Watching Sarah Palin’s interview made me wonder doubt how intelligent she is. I disagree with many statements that she made, and I think many of them were the results of extreme ignorance and very simplistic understanding of the world. If I was her opponent I would be glad to use a lot of what she said to discredit her as a serious candidate for the role of Vice President. Although, as a side note, one might argue that intelligence was not a qualifying litmus test for the role of VP before - nor for the President.

But when I read this criticism, arguing that Palin isn’t a women because she didn’t pass some ideological test is not only stupid but also offensive. Even when I was young I always consider those who dared other to prove their masculinity as stupid, I consider those who daring women, or any other groups, to abide by some strict ideological line to prove their physical being flat out stupid. But it is worse - those who appointed themselves to be the gender guardian - in the name of equality and rights - are too often the worse in breaking social barrier that should have never existed:

Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman. The Republican party’s cynical calculation that because she has a womb and makes lots and lots of babies (and drives them to school! wow!) she speaks for the women of America, and will capture their hearts and their votes, has driven thousands of real women to take to their computers in outrage. She does not speak for women; she has no sympathy for the problems of other women, particularly working class women.

Wouldn’t it be simply smarter to say that Palin is wrong on the women right to choose, she is wrong on foreign policy (or maybe wrong would be to generous in her case) and wrong on any other list of issues?

Not only that the LP choose a plain conservative as its nominee for presidential candidate they also attached to him a complete idiot as running mate. I was hopping to support an LP candidate, but thanks to the poor choices this party insist on making I am left with the “no vote” option.