Dynamite Yardage

On the margin and above the rim

2011-12-24T18:49:00.006-05:00

Statistician Bill James introduced quantification concepts known as 'sabermetrics. to the sport of baseball. Before these new models, aggregation of results such as batting average, home runs, wins for pitchers, and errors were baselines to determine market value of baseball players. Since 1977, when James' Baseball Abstract first outlined these principles, the new ways of evaluating players, based on calculations relying on weighted averages and ratios rather than simple sums, have changed much of both the business aspect and actual game play. Simply, there were new, reliable ways to determine who was really clutch, and which situations called for certain tactics. By definition, no game can ever be played in the vacuum of a spreadsheet. However, bringing economics optimization theory has turned conventional wisdom on its head in all sports.

Yesterday, this piece regarding Kobe Bryant's infidelity illustrates the sort of Jamesian analysis. Well done, Timothy Burke, et alia. Anytime science triumphs over ignorance, everyone benefits.

Happy Christmas to all. Remember the neediest.

Safety cracking

2011-12-22T18:28:00.005-05:00

Appearing in the current Vanity Fair issue is a thoughtful, incisive piece which delves into the theme of perception and reality as applied to the United States airport security apparatus.

Citing evidence from security expert Bruce Schneier, author Charles Mann concludes that US$1.1 trillion spent in the 10 year life span of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has had negligible effect in curtailing potential threats. Though far from comprehensively assessing all TSA practices, the analysis does address the inefficacy of using expensive processes and time-consuming checkpoints to target a few obscure methods with an unlikely chance of duplication. By making airports and airplanes harder targets, the focus of potential terrorists will shift elsewhere. The displacement argument is a winning objection to the 'pressure-ouch' strategy. Moreover, for those still keen on attacking air travel, their likely entry will be through special access gates rather than standard, passenger security checkpoints. As the article states, 'I asked Schneier if he thought terrorists would in fact try this approach. Not really, he said. Quite likely, they wouldn’t go through the checkpoint at all. The security bottlenecks are regularly bypassed by large numbers of people—airport workers, concession-stand employees, airline personnel, and T.S.A. agents themselves (though in 2008 the T.S.A. launched an employee-screening pilot study at seven airports). “Almost all of those jobs are crappy, low-paid jobs,” Schneier says. “They have high turnover. If you’re a serious plotter, don’t you think you could get one of those jobs?”' For those who are both lazy and inclined to mayhem, Schneier's comments provide a pretty good primer in abbreviated, crib-sheet form.

Distinguishing between real security and 'security theater', the piece seems to echo the Franklinian maxim that one who trades off liberty for security deserves neither, and, in this case, one has gotten neither. However, does that not lead the fundamental point: how to behave coolly when things get really fucked up? Yes, preparing to avert future attacks is paramount for the thousands of cryptographers, field intelligence agents, computer programmers, and police as well as the practitioners of statecraft. Yes, vigilance, rather than the mood of blithe blindness to real foreign threats that seemed to permeate and reek through Federal officialdom for nearly a decade under Clinton and Bush, must not deviate. But what do you do at the instant of outrage?

If one accepts the fairly flimsy premise that the United States was in a state of war from the point the first plane hit, then how did the television polemics by politicians rate when applied to the military touchstone? The theater in the aftermath permuted, over time, to 'security theater.' Classify both unequivocally as theater of the absurd. Yet, it is equally absurd to believe that cool reason will always win the day.

So, perhaps the biggest challenge in the post-9/11 world - a loathsome expression on many levels - is to write the response rulebook. Chairman Mao Ze-Dong wrote a brilliant read, On Guerilla Warfare, which diagrammed the steps to successful insurgency. The United States military has several field manuals for different theater operations. So do police and fire departments as does the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The RAND Corporation, a think tank, took the time to publish a manual for individual response. So, why not have a cognate for the leadership? The principle applies beyond terrorist attacks, for its ramifications extend to any outrage. Granted, no two crises are the same - 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, collapse of financial institutions. Yet, though officials respond under uncertainty, it is under much less uncertainty than for everyone else. Because of that position of privilege, their actions broadly influence behavior. Hence, the need for a set of principles.

The nation is past due for guidelines of conduct for public officials when people are genuinely scared. No blueprint can say with certainty when the time is right either to draw the brakes or to put the foot on the accelerator. Solely acting within the moment can be as damaging as ignoring the nature of the moment altogether and sticking stolidly to the play book. Such is an example of absolutism which fails to apprehend the context and consequence of reaction. So, in the continued absence of any basic guidelines, all anyone will be prepared for the next time something awfully frightening happens in America will be rash words and ill-conceived laws.

Honest fixer

2010-04-02T12:16:00.009-04:00

As Jewish settlement construction has proliferated during the tenure of Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, he and his coalition government have come under criticism from Israel's staunchest allies: The United States of America. Since the Six Days War of 1967, The United States has provided material and monetary aid to Israel. Additionally, United States policy has backed Israeli policy in seeming lock step during this period. Few American politicians have criticized publicly Israel's expansionist ambitions, law enforcement technique, and military incursions into Lebabon. Condemnation for the aforemtnioned has been the province of European nations such as France and Britain as well as the United Nations Council on Human Rights. However, the State Department and Vice-President Joseph Biden have had harsh words regarding settlement construction in contentious bits of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The two principle questions are: why now? And should America scale back its relations with Israel?

First, why is now an opportune moment to criticize Netanyahu for not placing a moratorium on existing and new construction? The best answer is that the United States is holding the prime minister accountable as he is reneging on an earlier pledge. However, the complex intercalations of US-Israeli diplomacy provide fertile ground for what strategic signals this sends. The main signal that the United States has projected are that it cannot seemingly revert on the fine words of Cairo. For Palestinians and Arabs in the region, Obama oratory and Biden's barbs still amount to mere words. Little visible evidence exists that the current administration is any different than the previous one regarding its relations with Israel. Iraq is stabilizing within a fledgling, plural democracy. Syria has been more amenable to talks. Yet, this is not enough. Public perception holds that American foreign policy is influenced by the powerful and well-funded 'Israel lobby' of the American-Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC). These inherently conspiratorial claims are somewhat specious since American presidents such as Carter, Clinton and Bush the elder have been able to persuade previous prime ministers that abandoning certain expansion programs were in Israel's national security interest. What makes the claim less specious especially for those in the region is the scale of American aid to Israel in proportional comparison to that given to the Palestinians. This is the principle mitgating factor which casts doubt on American status as an honest broker for peace in the region.

However, American diplomats for too long have confused an end to settlement construction as a sufficient condition for peace. The situation is too fraught with other independent variables such as refugee right of return, the status of Jerusalem - a non-starter for even the most dovish of Israeli policymakers, and the fractious, incoherent Palestinian leadership. There is no proof that if the hammers stopped, a solution on borders would ensue. Furthermore, American diplomats have confused that material, financial and moral support for Israel would give the US greater sway over its ally. Years and billions show that Israeli ambition will not be cowed by the whims of US presidents seeking to burnish their places in history.

It is apparent why the US has reacted how it has when it has. Though this administration has shown more openness to nuance than the previous one, it does not mean it entirely understands it. Neither does the American public. Hence, the calls for the United States to 'scale back' relations with Israel. Doing this would be an exercise of folly. If the United States were to follow through on a program of ending or slowing the scale of assistance to Israel, then the strategic signal it would send to other US long-time allies such as France, Britain, and Japan is that you better do what we say. This brand of diplomacy has graver implications than the with us or against us proviso of the Bush doctrine. Even during the Bush years, when international treaties were given short shrift, and suits between the US and the EU piled up in the WTO, the Trans-Atlantic alliances held because there was always more to gain from sustained co-operation than through antagonism. However, much is won and lost in the battle of perception. Whereas other allies are big economies, Israel is at best a newcomer on the world stage. Its economy sprightly and innovative, its military and intelligence superb, Israel is still seen as a quasi-client state of the US. Because of this distinction, the United States ought to begin to treat Israel on a more equal footing. This does not entail witholding material assistance which is what the 'scale back' camp attempts to say implicitly. Moreover, what signal does it send to Israeli leadership? Essentially, it signals that the US has had enough. However, the US is the only country with any influence over Israeli policy. Will Britain and France check Israeli ambition if the US were to decide its relationship has become too cozy, and it must retrench? Loosening ties would make life more wretched for the oppressed Palestinians and could trigger a wider regional arms race and conflict if US involvement receded.

In economics, the counterinutitive solution can be the most appropriate. Similarly, strenghtening relations with Israel at this juncture is the correct course of action. However, aid to Palestinians must increase. Moreover, it must not be tied to anodyne conditions. Basic improvements in infrastructure and funding NGOs and private firms to provide basic services to improve the lives of the impoverished are key. If schools and hospitals go up in Gaza, built with US funds, designed by an Israeli architect, then that would show that the US indeed is interested Palestinian concerns. If more profound diplomacy creates special economic zones on the border, then a future, more permanent solution would not destroy drivers of wealth creation and opportunity for both sides. The rules and the order have changed since 1967. So have the terms of trade. 'Scaling back' relations with Israel might be a seductive option. Yet, though the rest of the world might not perceive the US to be an honest broker in the region, it is the only one with enough clout to ellicit concessions from Israel. That might suffice to make it an honest fixer.

We got it right, right?

2010-04-01T12:21:00.009-04:00

At the least, the United States is a bit more humane than it was a week ago after President Barack Obama signed the reconciled health reform act. Despite opposition from vested interests ranging from labor unions to pharmaceutical firms to insurers as well as ideological clash within the House of Representatives, more Americans will have access to health care. Credit Madame Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for wrangling the necessary votes in the House of Representatives. Aptly, she convinced holdouts that the reform act was not a referendum on abortion. She succeeded where more influential Speakers such as Thomas O'Neill (D-MA) failed. Language in the bill calls for digitizing medical records, and utilizing new technology so doctors and patients can communicate will decrease monetary and opportunity costs for patients. However, the plaudits end there, for the means fail to justify the ends philosophically and pragmatically.

First, the terms under which this bill came to be enacted are dubious within the context of democratic process and procedure. The bill passed on a pure party line vote. What are the significances? According to Senator John McCain (R-AZ), all other major legislation to pass through Congress has had the imprimatur of bipartisan support. Seemingly left out, Republicans may embark upon a future strategy during this legislative session to obstruct other bits of the Democratic agenda. Laudable ideas such as Senator Maria Cantwell's (D-WA) proposal of 'cap and dividend' regarding carbon emissions standards, the formation of a consumer protection agency or more intelligent financial regulation may stall. By accentuating the polarities within the polity, the terms of future debate will have narrowed. This does not mean that American democracy has reached a crisis point. However, it is difficult to take as axiomatic that the longer term benefits of expanded medical coverage are a worthwhile trade off for short term harm to the democratic process.

On the second, pragmatic level, the health reform act will decrease the number of uninsured, but it will do so without addressing the major structural flaws to the factors highly responsible for cost inflation. Though more media attention focused on the Cornhusker Kickback, Louisiana Purchase, and the Stupak amendment due to their close link to the hot-button abortion issue, more relevant factors received short shrift. These included reformation of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), statutory caps on payouts in medical malpractice cases and appropriate levels of malpractice cover for physicians, the level of co-payments for those already enrolled, and the effect of mandates.

In an Economics focus column, written in the summer of 2007, in The Economist, a study was cited that the process through which the FDA vets and approves drugs adds an extra $173 billion to the cost of health care in the United States. Essentially, the piece argued, this constituted a stealth tax. FDA drugs approval methods greatly influence the business model of the industry. Due to the high costs and regulatory hurdles of the drugs testing regime, firms invest heavily in developing blockbuster drugs which will yield revenue greater than $1 billion. Because the costs of development are so high, pharmaceutical firms allocate more resources to patent protection. These input costs translate into higher prices for the end-users be they patients or even large entities such as Medicare. Such higher costs create barriers to entry for smaller biotechnology start ups responsible for many of the recent drug patent filings. The status quo detracts from the fundamental competences of science and improving the quality of life. All drugs firm, big or small, will maximize profit. However, the current approval process diminishes their ability to do good and make money. Changes to the approval process that reflect advents and progress in biotechnology will create incentives for larger firms to more targeted research and development as well as to be more acquisitive. Better resource allocation in this area will go a long way to controlling costs.

Next, the dual problem of necessary amounts of malpractice cover and court-ordered tort liability payouts create huge distortions in the practice and delivery of medicine. As courts have raised the value of payouts in medical malpractice cases, doctors have seen their own malpractice cover premiums increase. Since the threat of a malpractice suit can be a career killer, to say nothing if a case goes to trial and results in a guilty verdict, doctors practice what some call 'defensive' medicine. This is a bit of a misnomer. Prevention is by nature defensive, and that is no bad thing in health care. A more appropriate term would be 'disingenuous' medicine where though the patient is by no means neglected, yet the doctor may have an equal concern not to get sued. Hence, physicians order many expensive tests because they are afraid of letters from attorneys. Not all doctors are good. Even competent physicians will err. However, the function of medicine is not to perfect imperfections and to do so perfectly. The dynamic between the threat of a suit, the concomitant potential problems, and the extortionate protection price doctors themselves must pay to insurers has influenced the behavior of an entire profession adversely. In addition, many intelligent and able students will avoid medicine, despite its rewards, if they feel they are beholden to lawyers and insurers as they cannot practice freely. All of society loses out, and the shortage of doctors indicates that despite the reward and prestige of the profession, students will not pursue it if they feel their professional behavior will be governed by outsiders with poor understanding of science rather than by the ethics of their craft.

Third, economists agree that Americans 'over consume' health care. When a co-payment for a doctor visit costs less than a movie ticket, then the price might be too low. Because the price for a doctor visit is low, individual attitude towards health care pay little attention to prevention as well as taking greater interest in one's own health. Insurance premiums are expensive, and many will argue what is the point of paying thousands a year if they never actually go to the doctor. However, higher costs to see a doctor will encourage greater discretion among consumers. Overconsumption stems from a bit of labor practice arcana. During the Second World War, when the government froze wages, employers attracted staff through the payment of benefits, notably health insurance. This hiring practice relic has remained part of the system. These benefits are treated as tax-free. Amending the tax treatment of health benefits would go a long way to changing consumer behavior as firms would get out of the business of health care. Simplifying the way health care is bought and sold would reduce costs. Yet, as the next paragraph will argue, the reform act has expanded the role of firms in the health care marketplace and entrenched these lingering inefficiencies. The expanded roles of the Internet and other information technology will help reduce costs as email will allow doctors and patients to communicate more easily, and routine consultation may not require a trip to the office. This point does not claim that the medical system is backlogged with frivolous visits. However, it does argue that if people go visit a doctor, and each visit requires a test or billable procedure to insurance companies, then premiums will rise due to more claims made on the system. The tax on 'gold-plated, Cadillac' plans is a start, but it does not go into effect until 2014. Advocating greater individual interest and responsibility in one's own health is tough to legislate, but artificially low costs to visit a clinic lead to higher costs of health care as a whole. Such behavior ought to be discouraged.

Lastly comes the issue of mandates. The act has two types of mandates. The first apply to firms. Even the smallest firms must provide health cover. Regarding citizens, they must purchase health cover. Those who cannot would receive subsidies. The first set of mandates are a bit easier to explain. Congress has constitutional authority as written in the 'commerce clause' to regulate interstate commerce. This particular exercise of authority, though technically legal, would raise operating costs for small firms which drive job creation and innovation in the economy. Though the mandate aims to promote equity, it will likely do the opposite as firms may have to shed staff to afford compliance. This must be fixed as this provision creates an ill-timed, ill-conceived burden. The second type of mandate falls upon individual citizens. When on March 11, the Virginia state legislature voted that no individual shall be required to obtain or maintain individual insurance coverage. Mandates were a central issue of the federal Health Care Reform Act. State Attorneys General for Virginia and South Carolina believe the new law creates a Constitutional question on Ninth and Tenth Amendment grounds. Moreover, applying the commerce clause in this context poses a problem because states regulate insurance markets and a compulsory mandate does not fit within the scope of economic activity. Randy Barnett's piece in the Washington Post elucidates these arguments quite clearly. In principle, mandates do impinge on liberty. Also, this type of default into the system has caused some to believe that a public option might be possible. However, compulsory automobile insurance in some states is an example of an explicit-cost default that might seem an affront to liberty but has where the state has a compelling, countervailing, state-interest. Such a mandate sets a dangerous precedent regarding where government can intercede and compel participation. Such a mandate raises fears over what else the government can require on technical grounds without truly representative support of the legislature.

Perhaps these oversights and imperfections are the strengths of the Federal Health Care Reform Act. Perhaps voters and politicians will set aside ideological opinions and the rancorous exchanges the next time Congress or the President propose a fundamentally good reform. The scale of lobbying, the dollops of district aid to garner the necessary votes, and acrimony of the debate might have been too much for the electorate to countenance. However, if debate and resolution of the big issues are left to be decided solely on technicalities, the public will question whether it was a good idea in the first place. The Health Care Reform Act contains some good. That is why Congress must follow through to amend it to make it better. Otherwise, as in the case of employer-provided health care, its lasting effect will eclipse the good intentions at the onset.

21st century fireside chats

2009-03-20T12:55:00.004-04:00

Federal Open Markets Committee Chairman Ben Bernanke is an expert on the Great Depression. President Barack Obama has studied the first Franklin Delano Roosevelt term extensively. The Fed and the executive have acted quickly in the face of systemic calamity in the banking sector. For these students of history, the price of inaction is seemingly greater than the consequences of ill-conceived, hastily constructed measures. Many have conflated the early days of the Obama presidency with the aftermath of the October 27, 1929 stock market crash through the 1932 presidential election. One of the lesser appreciated, common aspects of the two eras is the relative explosion in mass media, and how FDR and Obama have coopted it.

Internet and television now are as prevalent as radio and telephone then. New Deal, Keynesian policies facilitated this as the government created demand where the private sector could not. The alphabet soup of newly created federal agencies brought electric power, and with it radio, telephone, and telepgraph, for the first time to rural areas in the Deep South, Appalachia and the West. Around the same time, FDR began periodic radio transmissions known as the Fireside Chats which acted as a pallative to an uneasy, uncertain population.

President Obama's current media blitz harkens back to the sonorous, patrician tones crackling over the airwaves. Nearly everyone who so desires has access to television, and high speed internet is widely available. Appearances on the 'Tonight Show,' publicly revealing his picks in the NCAA men's basketball bracket, as well as a speaking tour of swing states all will serve to make the president seem like a guy the common man would want to have a beer with, and this follows in the vein of FDR. One of the signals the original FDR Fireside Chats sent was that he could descend from the ivory tower of old New York City wealth, the Columbia Brain Trust, and the White House to communicate the intentions and the design of his policies in layman's terms to population which was still only two-thirds literate.

Yet, through the first 100 days, this is where the similarities end. Despite an ambitious media campaign, Obama has clarified little because he has little to clarify. Though the hash left to the current administration by its predecessor is complex, the lack of a coherent plan is glaring. The first priority is shoring up the banking system through outright or partial nationalization. The corollary problem is what to do with the bad assets that continue to pollute the financial system. The Congress and president have taken very little meaningful, decisive action on these measures. What is most alarming is the absence of clear rules where the government has intervened. Few will argue against the Hayekian notion that statist intervention in the forms of central control of resources, planning of economies, and direction of output. However, if the public is to accept that banking and finance underpins the whole economy, then, in times of distress, that sector must take on the characteristics of a 'public' good and be subject to certain atypical restrictions due to market failure and the pressing need for intervention. Recent spats over the payment of bonuses at AIG have erupted into a debate over the tyranny of the majority (pop quiz. define bill of attainder in 20 words or less).

Sensible policy areas such as renewable energy, health care, and entitlement reform keep cropping up, but sadly distract from a clear, definitive resolution on such a crucial, ongoing issue. In the meantime, stories of lesser financial rescues of the automobile and autoparts industries as well as loose guidelines over who is eligible for TARP relief also deflect attention from the biggest problem of all. Perhaps the worst part of this recession is that there is no exogenous factor or glimmer of hope on the horizon to stimulate growth such as the peace dividend that came at the end of the Cold War. Some economists dispute its effect, but making military technological infrastructure available for commercial use along with the commoditization of personal computing spawned the internet age. No new real business cycle seems likely in the near future. It is a tragedy devoid of a dea ex machina.

Unless President Obama can convey effectively what and how the government is doing to justify deficits equal to 17% of GDP, trillion dollar bond issues, and continual raising of the federal debt ceiling, his luster will fade. Moreover, even with a united government, a weakened executive will find it harder to push through sensible ideas without a few accomplishments to his credit. Having campaigned as the candidate of change, the only visible change thus far has been from the gung-ho, singular style of his predecessor to a mincing absence of conviction due to overstretch. Such a judgment may be hasty. It will gladly be withdrawn if some substance accompanies the glitzy iconography.

Got me there

2009-03-18T13:46:00.003-04:00

"If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound? If a golfer makes a hole-in-one and no one is around to see it does it count? If you post a blog and no one reads it does it make a point?"

Pretty clever. Good heckle. Though your queries are likely rhetorical and lacking formal syntax, I will respond out of spite: No, not really.

However, technically, would someone had to have either sought out the blog specifically or searched for its particular genre in the first place? After finding it or stumbling upon it, would he then have to have read something in it to have commented? Yeah, probably.

Much obliged for the kind words, you spineless cunt.

Sure know how to pick em...

2009-01-31T21:51:00.006-05:00

Being right is not the most important thing in the world, but having a prediction validated is a very satisfying feeling. Prior to the beginning of last golf season, I named ten players worth watching throughout the 2008 year. Let's see whether my eye for talent is as keen as I think it is:

1. Aron Price - won on Nationwide Tour; earned PGA Tour card

2. Ryuji Imada – won AT&T Championship on PGA Tour

3. John Mallinger – retained PGA Tour card; 3rd @ AT&T Invitational

4. Jin Park – struggled

5. Martin Laird - finished 125th PGA Tour money list

6. Chris Stroud – had to return to q-school, but regained playing privileges

7. John Merrick – retained PGA Tour card; 8th Mayakoba Classic

8. Garret Osborn – 38th on Nationwide Tour money list

9. Thomas Aiken – 131st European Tour Order of Merit

10. Garth Mulroy – 55th Nationwide Tour money list

More positive than negative. However, perhaps a sweeping survey of professional golf should have been a bit more pointed. Perhaps picked one player from any of the major world tours who might make an impact. Yet, a rethink of method comes a bit too late to posit a list for the 2009 season.

So, what is the point of all this retrospection and prospection? It's bar talk, mostly, a topic as banal as the weather to make passing time more fun. Following the syllogism of speculative comparison is intriguing.

When someone sets to prove a point, make an irrefutable argument, he will rely on evidence to make the case as tight as possible. Sometimes, whether human nature, a slip of the tongue, or irrascible contrarian behavior be the cause, a person will have to defend a proposition he might not have made if he thought before speaking. Then things get interesting as the postulator scrambles to cobble as much as he can to affirm his contention. As he tries to convince whomever happens to listen to the makings of his rant, he must also convince himself, and it is amusing watching the gymnastics, the potential Schadenfreude of seeing him paint himself into a corner.

Then the real fun begins. After seemingly locking into a string of thought and defending it so fiercely for no real reason other than pig-headed pride, he will look for something valid in the uninterrupted drivel he has spewed for what has gone on longer than the standard Prime Minister constructive argument. From there, he will try to 'spiral' up and out of that inextricable position, for knowing he has lost the race down, he can still win it coming back up.

Of course, it never ends well for the speaker. There is no way to save face at that point, especially when the losses ought to have been cut three beers sooner. So, is there a solution to the puzzle of discourse?

On the one hand, speaking instinctively, with conviction provides the necessary pathos to make a compelling point. Unfortunately, the logical, sensible aspects suffer. Take even a fraction of a second too long, and the answer sounds equivocal, or makes the speaker seem unready for the thrust and parry of banter. In the end, the hapless twit must concede defeat and fall on his sword. He will down another beer, compose himself, wish he had a team of script and speech writers lodged somewhere in his frontal cortex, and get ready as the conversation shifts to football. No way he can lose now.

There is a good chance that DY will have some sort of list concerning golf for (mini) mass consumption at some point this year. Not too sure what it would be. Unfortunatley, DY has come up with a far less innocuous idea for a blog post as he has concluded this one.

DY will be headed for elsewhwer next week though he reckons the already sporadic drip from his keys will not lapse entirely as it has on previous sojourns to warmer climes. Yardage Out.

Pinning Aronofsky

2009-01-28T16:39:00.004-05:00

Though golf (not too much these days) and economics (way too much these day) provide adequate material for this space, occasionally it will drift towards culture or shameless self promotion of my own meager literary exploits. Last weekend, with the obligatory, standard issue two cans of Budweiser 16 ounce tallboys, I went to see The Wrestler, the latest directorial effort of Darren Aronofsky.

The film makes for old cultural news in bigger media markets where critics and viewers have lauded all of its artistic facets. This space will go against the grain of its own contrarian nature (something it does very rarely), but it will not go against the grain of public opinion and decry it as overrated or poor. Far from it. It was a well-conceived, well-executed bit of cinema. The thrash-trash glam rock songs provided some small solace and comic relief in an otherwise tense tragedy.

The film is less about professional wrestling as sport-cum-entertainment than it is a character study of an anti-hero. Mickey Rourke's character chose and continues to choose to be the persona he constructed, for he is seemingly incapable to cope with either the tensions or banalities of human existence. Conflicted between Freudian extremes of the imperatives of the superego and the desires of the id, Rourke's character wills out to human failing. Within the traditional textbook definition of a tragic figure, the Ram possesses a great flaw: his commitment to what he has contrived.

To play the part, Rourke transformed his body. The only suspension of disbelief within the fictional world of the film is accepting that the man on screen once was the skinny imp in Rumble Fish, Angel Heart, and The Pope of Greenwich Village. Both the commitment of the character on screen as well as the actor off screen are remarkable. This begs the question: does having an incredible amount of commitment to a job or a cause mean that one will ultimately do it well?

Often, commitment is a necessary precursor to doing something well. Virtuosity combines talent and hard work. Yet, there are plenty of washouts in all fields who no matter how much individual effort they apply, they do it all for naught. Since society ascribes virtue to the hard work and sacrifice which comprise commitment, it has an ethical dilemma when honestly assessing the result of the process. Hence is the double bind of the means and ends being able to justify each other.

Did Rourke act his part well or was the external transformation to fit the part the more extraordinary accomplishment? In certain aspects, the performance equalled or surpassed the physical transformation required for the part. Though the hulking presence dominates the eye, the subtleties of the performance and their thematic significance do eventually come to the fore. The Ram straddles the fence over going straight or perpetuating the farcical persona as a way of clinging to a familiar plane of his own space and time. His willingness to degrade and to mortify his own flesh come as easy decisions to him even at the expense of finding something outside himself.

French novelist Margeurite Duras wrote, "What is really frightening is the idea of a man eternally in his own presence." The character created by Rourke, Aronofsky and screenwriter Robert Siegel takes such horror and pain further. What is even more frightening is his pathological aplomb for selfishness. He fails to redeem himself in his personal realm of the unknown: a semblance of fatherhood to a grown, estranged daughter. The Ram is content to remain isolated in the metier of spandex tights because the alternative means anonymity.

The film bespeaks the desolation and short life spans characteristic of American public lives as well as the increasing validity of choosing the life less ordinary and prevalence of the 'dig me' mentality. Yet, the Ram accepts and endures the consequences of his decisions instead of begging and praying for a dea ex machina to deliver him from himself. Despite the selfish tendencies, the character - a seemingly one-dimensional meathead - certainly has the breadth of consistency rather than the depths of complexity. He understands himself, who he is, and what the limitations are at the nexus of understanding and identity. He is aware without overt introspection.

Paradoxically, Rourke has been able to do what the character he portrayed could not. The result reconciled with the process for Rourke, but the Ram merely kept beating his head against a wall where no amount of effort brought success. It seems counterintuitive to find the happy ending of redemption in reality instead of in the narrative.

Settling debts

2009-01-21T12:24:00.004-05:00

The biggest problem for those most closely affected by the economic crisis is pricing assets. Prices give signals to markets and regulators, and without a reliable pricing mechanism, making policy or transactions is virtually impossible. Figuring out what all the bad stuff is worth has been vexing for government authorities and investors. The Federal Reserve and Treasury, having recently reconsidered purchasing the toxic assets which have crippled credit markets instead of straight transfer payments to banking institutions, cannot accurately determine what the value is of the underlying assets which comprise the subprime-backed securities. Investors, also ignorant of what the stuff is worth, cannot restructure existing deals as well as make new ones without knowing how much capital must go towards taking the loss of holding securities no one wants.

An idea, though possibly mooted before, would be to aggregate the values of each sub-prime mortgage when it was underwritten. Next, exclude the value of the loans which have gone bad. Divide the dud loans by the total, and that would give a base line risk premium. In any security containing a tranche of subprime backed debt, the weighted average of the interest rates of the underlying components would give an interest rate for that security. Though this might be imperfect and slightly less sophisticated than what analysts and quants expect out of pricing securities, it presents a least bad option. With a sound, mathematical fundamental logic, priced securities can give some signals to the stalled markets for these products. Moreover, Fed and Treasury will not have to continue this bastard version of 'helicopter monetarism.'

Such a move has its benefits. Existing CDOs and CDSs, which no one wants to touch, might generate some interest if spreads between high rated and junk debt is rationalized a little better. At this juncture, perhaps the price of inaccuracy might be a reasonable trade-off when balanced against the pervasive uncertainty which has ground structured finance to a halt. The reluctance to 'man up' and cope with bad decisions has resulted in widespread nationalization. New monitoring of ratings agencies must doubtless accompany any bailout program.

The big question is what to do with the borrowers responsible for paying back loans they ought not to have received. Does such a program amount to paying the mortgages for anyone who does not deserve that sort of relief? This concept is not a federal buyback of dud house loans. It would provide a valuation basis for things that are quite difficult to price. If proliferation of subprime mortgage underwriting was at the root of the problem, tracing back to the origin will clarify some things. As far as quelling concerns on the demand end, lenders and regulators should use whatever measures exist to keep even a meager flow of partial interest payments coming through a strict custodial system. This plan does come with its own opportunity costs: bank officers cannot allocate time to more productive endeavors if they are to spend time as glorified collection agents. However, necessity wins out in the current scenario, especially since the credit industry cannot focus on more profitable projects in a climate of uncertainty largely a product of its own machinations. Perhaps the shame of losing prestige might be enough to curb moral hazard in the future.

It is perplexing that a simple solution to a complex problem did not receive more consideration. Then again, the haste with which the Fed and Treasury have pushed through a somewhat random number warrants questioning. Though thousands of citizens petitioned their representatives and senators to block the bailout, lawmakers acquiesced to the requests of Bernanke and Paulson (Paulanke). Questions naturally arise: Is the true scale of the financial market calamity too frightening to unleash on an already nervous public? Was the decision seen as a sop to bankers who provide a consistent donation stream into politicians' war chests? Is the price of inaction worth doubling the debt ceiling? Have the last eight years ingrained an anti-intellectual culture which discourages clash and debate?

Largely, this financial crisis represents a spiral in the breaching of taboos. Lenders used to never loan money to anyone who could not provide proof of income or assets. One used to have to earn access to a lot of credit, and that process encouraged an ethos of productive behavior such as saving and investment. Greater inclusion in the market benefits consumers and producers, but bad money does drive out good. Ratings agencies once had unimpeachable, neutral reputations. Instead, they broke through the firewall between raters and the firms they rate much like the close relationships accountants and the firms they audited precipitated in a previous period of corporate failure through criminality. Blind faith in free market orthodoxy resulted in budget cuts for agencies such as the SEC and DOJ Antitrust division, and the unintended consequence of which was an inability to probe market anomalies in real time. Investment banks had leverage exposure many order of magnitude higher than their market capitalization. Este nihil sanctum?

With luck, the borrowing binge on the micro and macro levels will end. However, no politician has posited a plausible way of accelerating debt service. Failing to commit to deep austerity measures sends a damaging cultural signal with far deeper consequences than the inability of the markets to receive a signal at all.

Building a better bubble

2009-01-15T14:45:00.009-05:00

A few nights ago, American PBS aired Ascent of Money, a non-fiction film presentation of Dr. Niall Ferguson's book of the same title. This fast-paced, somewhat erratic 2 hour film provided some history about the evolution of the role of finance in economic development. Perhaps the 6 episode series which aired on British Channel 4 might have been more comprehensive, less jagged, more thematically coherent, but the survey of historic financial collapses substantiated two notions: the prevalence of a herd mentality which drives asset prices and that markets and market makers have a great grasp of mathematics, but a bad sense of history.

Since markets and businesses are not immune to cyclical shocks, there are lessons to be learned from prior downturns. For example, tight monetary policy after the 1927 stock market crash failed to right the economy, in fact it made it worse. Central bankers have not made the same mistake since. More recently, the export-based, Asian 'tiger' economies experienced a financial crisis in 1998. Though a single cause to the crisis is still disputed, high levels of external debt, fixed exchange rates, and a sharp fall in 'hot money' capital inflows all contributed to the collapse of the Thai, Indonesian, and South Korean economies which required IMF intervention. During the last decade of recovery, these three countries as well as China and Vietnam have accumulated massive dollar-denominated foreign exchange reserves which will insulate exporters from demand shocks. Again, another lesson learned.

Despite only scant treatment of how the 1998 Asian crisis relates to the present day, Dr. Ferguson, in the latter portion of the documentary, hints that the byproduct of high savings rates and Asian central bank 'sterilization' policies will further strain the tenuous Sino-American economic relationship, cleverly dubbed 'Chimerica'. Of course, albeit briefly, he drew the parallels between this two-headed entity to the mythological creature of similar name.

What can one extrapolate from the status quo? In the present situation, high Chinese consumer savings rates make it possible for the People's Bank of China to purchase more US Treasury bonds. This policy keeps the yuan from strengthening too quickly as well as maintains the competitiveness of Chinese exports. The idea is pretty incestuous where the seller finances the debt of buyer while simultaneously selling the buyer goods. Though China became a net importer several years ago, its export sector makes up a great deal of national income. If the government did not bolster exports through intervention, then China would not be able to run current account surpluses. So what might happen as China's economy will eventually switch to higher productive industries, as the government pledged billions to economic stimulus through infrastructure improvement, and as domestic demand becomes the driver of economic growth?

The prospect of Asian central banks calling in American debt is unlikely, however, the volume of US treasuries held in foreign countries will likely decrease despite an eventual increase in US interest rates. The worrisome prospect is probably the last and most plausible change to the status quo. Economic growth will precipitate in some institutional changes, though not necessarily all for China, of the 'softer' aspects of society such as definition of civil and property rights; more efficient delivery of public service through government or market mechanisms; and better legal protection of contracts and settlement of disputes. The Chinese government has obligations to preventing social unrest as well as to foreign governments and transnational firms. Presently, it does the bare minimum to forestall social revolution, but as Chinese industry matures by utilizing higher productive technologies, government obligations to foreigners will not be as important since it will have a huge domestic market which may be poor now, but will become a grwoth driving, consumer society in the future. Its policies and strategies will move more inward when Chinese firms can receive a good rate of return domestically.

As China will eventually decouple from foreign firms certain bits of its economic growth agenda, the domestic markets of those foreign firms will suffer, particularly that of the United States. The American economy has shown its resilience against financial meltdown, but the government has had to borrow extensively to do so. When foreign appetites for American debt wane, future borrowing costs will be significantly higher. There may be negative real interest rates presently, but that will not last indefinitely. A future with a weak currency, a high propensity to import, and high interest rates will cripple an American economy so dependent on financial instruments as both means facilitating production and consumption. In such a future, will social unrest become an American rather than a Chinese problem? Could it lead to war?

The fundamental point of the documentary is that money borrowed ought to be paid back. Trying to reinvent this system has resulted in calamity. It is tough to believe that the solution to clearing the bad debt caused by securitization of sub-prime mortgages is more debt, but the Depression taught the world the dangers of freezing credit markets. Yes, dispersing risk amongst variegated holders with different exposures has theoretical benefit, but the transfer mechanism is a circuit, not a ray. When everyone is trying to get paid, but no one can get paid, all the creative financial engineering is meaningless. At some point, the government under the new administration must come forward and admit that the most crucial objective of the next term is not climate change, terrorism, or conducting a war. It is servicing debt, and it will require a combination of higher taxes and less spending. Here's to a future where assuming responsibility such as debt is once again a virtue, and dickless, rich kid politics - failure to bite the bullet, squeamishness to take the pain, and being saved by the bell conveniently to duck the punishment - will never get another chance to fuck up the lives of millions.

A grossly fantastic look at 10 days from now...

2009-01-10T15:27:00.004-05:00

Huddled in a dark corner of the Fox News editiorial offices, the podgy hulk of Roger Ailes listens for a knock, a phone call, an email, that will not come. Amidst empty boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts, he watches furtively throught the pixelated blackness, as muted television monitors behind him broadcast any news unrelated to the impending transfer of power within the American executive branch. Worse yet, his crack team of well-scrubbed, pure -bred, blond haired, blue eyed stringers has not yet turned up a story to scandalize the incoming president. The tension rises propotionatley to his ever expanding girth and soaring blood pressure. He feels an icy, tingling grip course over the left side of his body. Worse yet, what paeans does the Minimus of modern news organization have left to trumpet? After five years of ill-conceived foreign and economic policy - the historical points of pride of the Republican party, he has admitted to himself that he ain't got much. He cries out to his secretary to get him another two dozen, one glazed, one assorted, and to make sure there are at least four raspberry filled. "Ten more days, then I can start my diet," muses the former Nixon apparatchik.

"I'm safe for fifty years. I can start eating butter again. There was me and then there was the rest of them. I outlasted them all. Fleischer, Card, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, pussies. Tony Snow took the coward's way out, but not me. Damn shame I didn't have the chance to topple a country with nice beaches and girls that run around topless and install myself as supreme leader for eternity. Oh yeah, Lynn's still around. But was it all worth it? I could be the first public servant after leaving office to be fragged by his Secret Service detail. Nonsense. I'll never die," The Vice-President makes no effort to disguise his ubiquitous, mocking sneer. Decorated with the stuffed remnants of animal carcasses, honorary university degrees, a shotgun rack, and an oil painting of a muscular gladiator killing a lion, the walls of this secret chamber convey a theme of ritualised death and homo-eroticism. Cheney takes a shotgun down from the wall and polishes it as a tour group viewing the Executive Mansion wonders about the soft, disturbing, orgasmic moans, almost the sounds of arctic birds mating, leak from the crevices in the paint.

She crosses her legs high, almost seriously considers the offer, blushes to herself at her own immodesty. Sure, the letter, written on Playboy company stationery, arrived by special FedEx delivery, stressed the pictorial would be artistic, tasteful, all the usual promises. Even for a minute, she ponders the $20 million. Her fingers twirl the ends of her bobbed, blond highlights. Yet, this shameless, ancient proposition of sex for money leaves her feeling less filthy than having to defend the actions and motivations of a man her intellectual inferior. "I sure know how to pick 'em," she thinks, suppresses an outward smile. Absentmindedly, girlish, she starts playing with her necklace. It rides up the nape of her neck, and she places the unbroken chain into her mouth. She glances out her office window, the upper corners of the oane glass glazed by winter frost. Dana Perino spies her faint, transluscent reflection, "Saying no to this should have been easier." She has no idea what 'this' could be except that it was not left far behind.

We now join our regularly scheduled broadcast of 'Bullitt' already in progress...

2009-01-05T18:36:00.006-05:00

It is about time this space had a piece about competitive golf. More importantly, especially at this point in time and space, the work ought to have neither a retrospective nor prospective angle. So, what is the state of professional, competitive golf?

Though other professional sports leagues rely on outside sponsorship to generate revenue, the PGA Tour of America cannot due to its status as a non-profit organization under US tax code. So, how does the PGA Tour manage to maintain itself through its unique business model? First and foremost, it has cultivated a strong, recognizable, global brand. Without it, the Tour could not operate to the scale and scope at which it currently does. The strong brand allows for broad licensing deals for partners with the Tour itself as well as its subsidiary companies and those that bear its mark such as an in-house media production company and a clothing line, Second, the Tour may have been one of the first 'virtual' corporate entities. Rather than a provider of services or a producer of goods, the Tour coordinates all that is necessary to stage golf tournaments starting with finding sponsors to pay for purses, arranging contracts with media companies for broadcast; technology firms for logistical support; vendors for concessions; automobile makers for player courtesy cars; sanitation and ecology; security; various insurance protection for eventualities ranging from weather to theft; finance for players, officials, and caddies; and provide salaried rules officials to settle competition questions. The Tour also involves itself with remitting tournament profit to charity and player services such as pension funds, travel, insurance programs. One would think the labor costs would spiral out of control, but volunteers eager to participate in a major sporting event and to show off community pride comprise most of its weekly workforce. The breadth of its contractual obligations and responsibilities are no different than any other large transnational firm. Its prescient business model as well as the good timing of its administrators to lock up lucrative broadcast rights have made it seemingly impervious to the economic downturn.

The Nationwide and Champions Tours - partially subsidized by the main Tour - have lost tournaments like its parent, but if the those tours did not have the backing of the main Tour, then sponsorship would quickly dry up. The Champions Tour lost three events largely due to bad timing of expiring contracts which were not renewed. The Nationwide Tour lost its Richmond, VA, Chicago, IL, Livermore, CA, Rochester, NY and Eugene, OR stops, and they were replaced by an additional event in New Zealand, a new site and sponsor for Northern California, Kansas City and Southern California. The net loss of one tournament was not bad given the bottom falling out of the US economy. With companies, particularly financial giants such as Bank of America, GM and Wachovia, hurt by exposure to bad securities, sponsorship of a golf tournament would seem to signal misuse of shareholder money. It is impressive that the Tour managed to find ways to keep the Champions and Nationwide from collapsing.

Yet, assessing the present situation, what sort of signal does the Tour and its players send when many are struggling with mounting debt and uncertainty? Davis Love III mentioned how fortunate Tour players would be receiving pay raises during the economic downturn. No one made much of this remark, but it does sound quite hollow coming from a man who flies private. Since golfers actually have to perform to get paid unlike other athletes, the public is less likely to resent their financial gain based on merit rather than the result of a savvy agent negotiating a contract. However, when 104 players earned over a million dollars in 2008, deflecting attention from the financial aspect of the sport would have been the gentlemanly thing to do.

Even at their most obnoxious, golfers tend not alienate fans of their sport quite so egregiously. When David Duval and Hunter Mahan made disparaging remarks about the Ryder Cup - a non-PGA Tour sanctioned event, the Tour performed damage control. Players are typically careful in their media remarks so as not to become locker room bulletin board material, but the Tour has responded swiftly in instances where its administrators felt comments would damage the brand as well as the Tour's relationship with its partners. In a way, that is right, for the emphasis remains on the battle on the course rather than in the press. The flip side, though, is that it is hard to believe that ideological unanimity exists, that no one deviates from a concept mentality.

Playing the game at a high level requires a maximum of mental concentration, and the Tour has made the competitive environment ideal for those sufficiently talented and disciplined to get there and stay there. Why bother with dissent when there is nothing to bitch about? Even when things are not so good with the Tour, the relative degree to which an undesirable situation has come about is far less than it would be in a milieu where the situation changed from good to bad. Also, how bad can group think be when the group has little impact on anyone but its members? In principle, such seductive logic fails many ethical and moral tests. In practice, it seems to work out fine for everybody.

So what happens, and this does not contradict the prospection condition, when something ought to be said that the Tour administrators might find unpopular? What type of occasion would warrant a deviation from the party line? It is hard to even speculate about anything going conceivably wrong on such a tight ship. However difficult it is to imagine a controversy in golf or more plausibly the leaking of such a controversy to the press under the status quo of the Tour, that does not mean it cannot happen. As recent history reveals, no organization, especially one so cliquish and homogeneous, is immune from collapse despite a seemingly apparent improbability of doing so.

Strong Openings

2009-01-03T14:10:00.007-05:00

DY has always had qualms with chronology. Passage of time is inevitable, and marking it has manifold benefits, but associating passage of a given increment of time with ritual seems arcane.

Birthdays used to be a big deal when life expectancy was far shorter than present levels and infant mortality was quite high. To live past maturity meant something important when day to day survival preoccupied people's behavior. To have lived a full year, 2% of a life even at the start of the 20th century, was truly an accomplishment given the levels of hygiene, preventative medicine, prevalence of disease, and food safety. By no means do longer life expectancies have an inflationary effect and 'cheapen' the value of a year of life, but safer societies make survival easier.

Perhaps post-modern man derives most of his angst from such a paradox: not only does the pressure to pick a direction from an abundant variety of choices create confusion, but also the evolutionary disconnection resulting from the environment changing at a rate much faster than his own biology compounds it. In the words of Kurt Vonnegut, man, like his protagonist Billy Pilgrim, "has become unstuck in time." Where he still has the primordial tendencies of competition, the terms that define even small victories against the elements and others of his species have changed. The struggle takes place in an ambiguous, mental space rather than the physical realm of teeth, nail, and fist twisting flesh, spilling blood. Might still makes right, but the measure of power is very different.

Yet, despite the crisis, man has not lost his appetite, imagination or capacity for brutality. Has all the extra leisure time granted to man from not having to track and to hunt, or to sweat all day in fields to feed himself, allowed him to devise new ways to inflict pain, to protect his status against rivals, to improve his standing within the group? Furthermore, how does this relate to the artificial rituals ascribed to the passage of a span of time?

The New Year somehow has a mystic, implied power of resetting man's situation to a certain extent. Though someone has the will and autonomy, despite cultural or political constraints, to 'reset' the course of one' life without waiting for the calendar to flip, the atavistic instinct to mark time compels people to wait, effectively buying time to continue with an undesirable pattern of behavior. But the shift from physical to mental survival has its own paradox: the exegesis towards reconciling the new evolutionary dilemma blinds man to the instances where survival still matters. On the one hand, man clings to the prospect of a return to a 'natural' state, yet when confronted with one, man is only half equipped to deal or to understand it. Having heard that self-improvement - better diet, daily exercise, - holds the key to 'survival', defined as always as living longer, in the modern world, man in the developed, post-modern world has become dislodged in his own role as well as become out of touch with understanding the lot of the billions for whom quotidian survival is still the preoccupation of life.

On a philosophical level, this can explain the discord and misunderstanding of developed and developing nations. Though there are over 6.5 billion in the species, the type of struggle varies among the members of the species.

By the end of this year, when it no longer has the fresh scent, and the strong opening has dissolved into a muddled endspiel, perhaps someone will have squared the circle, but, more likely than not, Gaza will still be inflamed, and DY will find more inane, abstruse topics to keep his narrow readership diverted from their jobs.

Shop talk about the game of golf will return shortly.

In pace requiescat, Senator Claiborne Pell

Reviving the Monroe Doctrine

2008-11-26T16:42:00.004-05:00

On December 2, 1823, the fledgling United States scored its first significant victory in foreign affairs. As the Republic approaches the 185th anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine, its provisions are as important to national security now as they were in the early days of the nation's history.

In his 7th State of the Union Address, President James Monroe articulated that European powers were no longer to colonize or interfere with the affairs of the newly independent states of the Americas. The United States would not interfere with existing colonies or their dependencies in the Western Hemisphere. However, any attempt by a European nation to oppress or control any nation in the western hemisphere would be seen as an act of aggression and the United States would intervene (1). The Roosevelt Corollary of 1902 asserted American right to intervene in Latin America if a particular nation was internally unstable or mismanaged.

Today, as reported on NPR, the Russian and Venezuelan Navies will stage joint exercises. The same report also mentioned that Russia is keen on re-establishing ties with its Soviet-era, remote satellite state, Cuba. The United States has the most sophisticated and powerful navy in the world, and a military challenge from Russia and Venezuela is unlikely and foolhardy. However, Russian diplomatic overtures are taking place during the American inerregnum, and the incoming Obama administration will have to play some catch-up. Current State Department priorities seem to be Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, and North Korea. Genocides in Congo and in Darfur have received ever shorter shrift. Latin American leaders and citizens still have reason to view the United States critically as emphasis shifts ever further from the geographic locus of the Americas. It is a shame, for Latin America holds several keys to continued American prosperity.

Policy towards Latin America has been abjectly benighted, and Latin resentment of the US will continue if little changes. Cooperation with Latin America is vital in areas of immigration, trade, drug, and energy policies:

Could the level of Mexican, Salvadori, Nicaraguan, and Guatemalan illegal immigration be reduced with smarter trade policy? Plausibly, yes. Free trade, in the short term, causes employment displacement, yet over time, the labor market ought to return to equilibrium. NAFTA is unpalatable because the tax concessions and loopholes granted to American firms have prolonged the labor market distortions both at home and across the Rio Grande. Latin nations must devote more resources to education and infrastructure, but it is not in America's interests to export an economic policy which has the unintended consequence of straining the public purse. Whatever immigrants the US absorbs will mean a new generation of voters in a generation, and future American presidents cannot afford to become part of a political culture aloof, disinterested, or even hostile to the home countries of their constituents' parents.

Crime and the drug trade pose significant social obstacles to growth in Bolivia, Columbia, and Mexico. Despite the successes of Plan Columbia, the ultimate answer lies in curbing demand for the commodity. Stiffer penalties for powder cocaine offences - a smaller plank in the Obama platform - in the United States would be a start. At minimum, it would signal to Latin American countries that the violence engendered by rival drug gangs would decrease if demand would drop. Moreover, a Turkish approach would prove a good solution where pharmaceutical firms would buy the commodity. The benefits here would be manifold. International prices for anaesthetics and pain medicine would drop and hence be more available in places where it is still too expensive. Second, there would be no social or economic cost which eradication programs cause. Third, resources already allocated could go to protecting farmers from thugs and rebels, and such a program would win a lot of hearts and minds.

Regarding energy, newly found petroleum reserves by PetroBras, the national oil concern in Brazil, could ease American reliance on foreign fuel. Moreover, when the current farm bill expires, domestically produced ethanol might die with it. Importing ethanol from Brazil was and will be economically prudent. Furthermore, the United States and Brazil have mutually aligned interests in environmental preservation. Brazilians have seen the benefit of eco-tourism, and Americans are keen on green. Calling more cooperation with a macroeconomically stable, large, emerging economy a good thing is a truism. It makes sense to pay attention to the most stable, most pro-American emerging market nation.

Though Latin American nations feel rightly neglected to an extent, the United States still provides military assistance, humanitarian aid in crisis, and donates billions to the IMF and the World Bank which fund projects in the developing world. However, continuing to ignore Latin America, especially as its people view democratic institutions and ideals ever more favorably, would be a grave error at this juncture. Eliminating trade barriers and engaging the governments of Castro and Chavez area a start. The last test of the Monroe Doctrine came during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The next one might not end so felicitously.

(1) Britannica 269 as reprinted on WikiPedia.

Does this signal deflation?

2008-11-22T09:20:00.003-05:00

Boston City Councilman Chuck Turner was arrested for taking a $1000 bribe. State Senator Dianne Wilkerson is under investigation for corruption as well for having accepted up to $23,000. Allegedly, both politicians accepted payoffs to facilitate liquor licenses. Though race - both politicians are black - will eventually become a factor due to propensities to exploit the obvious, the key issue has to do with the price of graft. So why have politicians staked so much for so little?

In Massachusetts, liquor licenses are both scarce and expensive, and as such pose barriers to entry for aspiring entrepreneurs. Since it is difficult to obtain a license from scratch, transfer of licenses is a more likely avenue to getting one. However, towns have their own zoning limits and liquor quotas. Because of the nature of the product sold, the market is not particularly volatile. Thus, the available number of licenses does not keep up with demand.

At this stage, it is unknown whether Turner and Wilkerson were acting in concert. If the incidents are not part of a conspiracy, then they expose a glaring weakness in state law. Hearing about a political graft scandal will not shock even the least jaded. What is more alarming is how little politicians will sell out for.

Investigators have barely begun to discover the extent of the alleged corruption, but what they have revealed to the public ought to provide enough impetus to amend state liquor licensing procedure.

Fundamentally, a quota on licenses for anything is anti-libertarian and anti-market. Compelling state interest ought to exist for government intervention. There are no limits on the number of recreational hunting or fishing licenses, but the state restricts quarry numbers because of ecological concerns such as species population depletion. An age baseline for driver's licenses makes sense because of public safety. However, issuing fewer liquor license accomplishes little except putting an artificial brake on commerce.

Not all state liquor laws are incoherent, though. Some do provide a public benefit. According to Massachusetts statute, MGL CH. 138, SEC 15 regarding the number of licenses issued, "No person, firm, corporation, association, or other combinations of persons, directly or indirectly, or through any agent, employee, stockholder, officer or other person or any subsidiary whatsoever, shall be granted a total of more than one package store license in a town, two licenses in a city, or three licenses in the state." Such provisions limit the influence of organized crime and promote competition among the lucky that have licenses.

So, why have politicians have sold out for such piddling amounts of money in such a high stakes, high margin industry? Helping someone procure a license that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars should come with a higher vig. Entrepreneurs aspiring to get a liquor license will have a sense of what the return on investment will be, and the timetable for actualizing the returns. Annual fee schedules in each municipality vary, but even the most expensive are no more than a few thousand dollars a year, so annual fixed costs are low after the initial investment. Getting the inside track on a brand new license should be worth a lot more. If the average cost of a liquor license in the state is a quarter million dollars (the license itself comes with the establishment, real estate, kitchen equipment, etc.), taking .o4% of the market price as commission hardly makes sense. Unless it was an installment in a residual payoff plan meant to keep police and authorities off the scent, taking so little was a bad play. Even if the amount concerned in the Wilkerson probe was for one liquor license, she still took less than 10%.

Since the amounts in question are tiny compared to what was at stake, whatever information surfaces in the near future will shed light on the terms of trade for political favors in this state. Given what is known in the early stages, the bottom has seemingly fallen out of the political black market. That cannot be a good sign for all business, legitimate or not.

Everyone's champion

2008-11-17T11:22:00.004-05:00

College football is an economic anomaly. Between hiring staff, providing financial assistance through scholarships or academic grants, and coordinating travel, uniforms, and training, subsidizing it takes up much of athletic departments' budgets. Yet, few schools with football programs profit from having the sport. Under Title IX, the statutory provisions regulating proportional financial outlay for men's and women's collegiate athletic programs, it has no counterpart. Consequently, some schools have cut certain sports to conform with this legislation. The University of Miami cut men's and women's golf as well as swimming and diving to accommodate its football program, typically one of the best in the country. Why do colleges, many of them state institutions, fund football when the costs of operation of and of participation in higher education increase every year at a rate much higher than headline inflation?

Many parts of the country regard its status as religious, as iconic. Student pride and campus morale are often cited as reasons why universities have continued their football programs. Such justifications seem to stretch the logical link between the presence of a football team and raising a school's profile, and only deep cultural entrenchment supports the validity of those claims. Would the benefits of eliminating football or 'privatising' it in state schools result in a better allocation of resources?

The structural shortcomings of college football economics further exacerbate atavistic clinging to the status quo in all aspects of the sport, particularly in determining a national champion in formerly Division I-A, now known as the Bowl Subdivision (FBS). The Bowl system itself is an anachronism. When rail travel was the norm, teams that could not play each other because of transportation logistics met during the winter holiday break for one last hurrah.

Presently, technology makes getting across the country fairly cheap, and schools from different geographic regions routinely meet during the regular season. Hence, the old bowl system, which has grown to a level where roughly half of the teams in FBS compete in a postseason game, rewards mediocrity rather than pair two regional superpowers that could not face each other due to academic and technological constraints. When bowls were few, schools and fans could take pride, but few savvy fans and students will boast about participating in the Outback Bowl or any other game with a corporate title sponsor. However, bowl games are the fruit of a high priced gambit: sponsors pay money into a school general fund for getting to a bowl.

The Bowl Championship Series (BCS), a cartel of the heads of the major football conferences and Notre Dame, have co-opted the system further where teams that play in the BCS receive the largest payouts, national television exposure, and establish football supremacy. The BCS was touted as the solution to the arcane method of selecting a national champion through media and coaches' polls. Since its inception in 1998, the BCS has been fraught with controversy over which teams qualify. The BCS also failed to produce a consensus champion in 2003. One of the advantages of the BCS was to eliminate a split title, yet no consensus champion emerged that year. Arguably, since the BCS limits eligible teams to the power conferences and Notre Dame, no true consensus national champion emerges. The BCS only determines the winner of its series which might not necessarily represent national consensus. The computer formula will take input data from national polls and mathematical rating systems, but it has an inherent bias towards the conferences which stand to benefit most. If a school from a lesser conference went undefeated, scheduled perennial powers for its non-conference schedule and took them down in the process, it might not factor into the national championship equation.

The lack of a college football playoff in former Division I-A and the proliferation of the bowl system diminishes the product that is supposed to instill pride in the student body and attract national and international attention. The following is a suggestion to the NCAA over how to solve the playoff problem and simultaneously restore the game to schools rather than to render that unto a money machine:

No preseason polls. First poll will come out after every team has played four games. Preseason rankings are subjective conjecture at best. The absence of a preseason poll will not impact how teams play or prepare. If anything, the first few weeks of the season are a good time for teams to prove themselves and vie for coveted spots.
In the first year of the system, any conference with 10 or more teams will be split into an Upper and Lower Brackets rather than on geographic lines. The five or six best will occupy the Upper Bracket. To be considered title eligible, each UB team has to play all the other UB teams. To complete a seven game conference schedule, each UB team will play two or three of the Lower Bracket opponents. This part of the schedule will be determined by athletic directors. After the end of Year One, the UB will relegate 2 teams. The LB will promote 2 teams. This will eliminate the need for a conference title game. Though a lesser team upsetting a favorite makes for good drama, it makes consensus - the much sought after purpose - impossible under the present system. Since there will be fewer regular season games, bracket games will have the same import as division games in professional football.
Given the prospect of relegation, a team which would like to compete for the national championship will have to schedule worthy non-conference opponents. If Oklahoma had an off year in the Big 12, non-conference games against SEC, Big 10, and ACC powers might salvage a season when its in-conference schedule is soft. The current system disproportionately favors teams lucky enough to avoid the toughest competition in its own conference. Wisconsin once skated through the Big 10 without having to play Michigan or Ohio State. Albeit rare, such phenomena would not occur with the bracket format.
No Cupcake Rule - Scheduling lesser competition for glorified scrimmages encourages bad sportsmanship and needlessly pads the statistics. Glorified scrimmages help no one. Scheduling Florida or Nebraska might look nice on a small school resume. It might get a recruit. However, no student, fan or alumnus can be proud of a 73-0 pasting. Any school scheduling an FCS opponent ought not to be considered for a national title.
Maintain a computer formula, but eliminate the incentive to run up the score. Including margin of victory in the ranking formula also encourages bad sportsmanship. Margin of victory is borderline irrelevant in the NFL, a league with much more parity amongst its clubs than even the top 32 college teams. Tie breakers will come down to bracket record, overall conference record, and head to head record. In a five or six team bracket, it is unlikely that three team will have the same conference record if they would share more common opponents than they do now. Moreover, multiple loss teams seldom merit national championship consideration.
An eight team playoff at the end of the season will determine a national champion. Seven of the marquee bowl venues will host the playoffs. The title game can rotate among the oldest established bowls, but few would quibble if the Rose Bowl hosted the last college game of the year. Moreover, a playoff system would not fragment the season between two academic terms. If the first weekend in December were to be the last in the regular season, then two weeks of playoff games following final examinations would make sense. The national championship could take place New Year's Day. Eight teams suffice for logistical purposes, and regression analysis using the BCS formula will show huge drops between the rating of the eighth and ninth teams each year. Also, elimination games produce great drama; the NCAA basketball tournaments provide good evidence of that.

The one argument against incorporating a playoff system is ironically an economic one. Demand for football is high, so why kill the cash cow? Decreasing the total number of games played would be economically unwise because demand is high and relatively inelastic. Therefore, limiting the total number of games played by each school reduces the value of future television contracts. However, demand and clamor for a playoff system to determine a champion are high as well. When observers and coaches find that the current system distorts competition, then change is appropriate.

Since the pressing need is to find consensus, perhaps protecting vested economic interests ought to matter less. College football does provide tangible and intangible benefits for even loss making teams. A model which would compel incumbent powerhouses to behave more competitively is in every one's interest. Though first person participation and the number of televised games would decrease at first, consistently good match ups each week would drive up the value of each game, and hence the price. If revenue for a good albeit flawed product is high, would revenue for an improved version though sold in slightly less quantity be higher? In principle, the answer is yes. Until one can prove that the status quo would continue to generate more interest, higher returns, and protect the integrity of the game, then the NCAA, the networks, and the schools themselves must review all possible ways of abandoning an anodyne, inefficient approach to determining a winner.

Stack and tilt economics

2008-11-11T14:13:00.007-05:00

The great new fad in teaching the golf swing has been the method known as Stack and Tilt. The basic premise of this technique focuses on two positions: the back swing and the finish. Simply, from address, reverse pivot to reverse-C. For some players, it has worked well, for others, it has knelled the end of their careers. Stack and Tilt can work for some golfers, and many have made millions on Tour by following its principles. Adherents of more traditional instruction have been skeptical of this as an alternative and equal approach to teaching the golf swing. Stack and Tilt emphasizes a reverse pivot where the weight does not shift to the right side during the back swing; many regard as a flaw in an efficient swing. How, the question goes, can a flaw suddenly become a fundamental?

Economic policy over the past ten years has followed a similar trajectory except for the fact that economic purists were seemingly ignored while fiscal and monetary levers were manipulated in ways which only delayed the inevitable, current mess. If the undergraduate economics professors of the Fed board of governors knew that their students would one day make such policy decisions, they would have certainly flunked their charges on the spot. One can blame group-think or a culture of endemic callowness within the administration where clash was almost impermissible, where no one rocked the apple cart, but the central bank is independent and in position to stand up to claptrap. Granted, no economist wanted the blood of a potentially lost decade as the one Japan experienced after the collapse of its equity bubble, and panic moves never end well. However, embracing ideas such as soaring deficits, tax cuts, and prolonged periods of cheap credit while ignoring the inevitable consequences of excess was dumb and passive.

Fiscal and monetary policy have been both grossly irresponsible. During the first term of the Bush presidency, the executive and legislature inherited a budget surplus which ought to have been used to pay down the monetized national debt. Instead, public money was squandered on many ill-fated, ill-conceived initiatives ranging from missile defense to faith-based initiatives. Moreover, the legislature, with a majority united to the executive. approved tax cuts during a period of unprecedentedly prolonged economic growth. Foolish, arrogant and short sighted, the quick sop to a country still not quite convinced the right man was in the Oval Office was a cynical ploy to get the public on board with the new president. However, without a way of replenishing the public purse, the country was unable to gird itself for the shit storm caused by both endogenous and exogenous forces during the next eight years. Monetarily, the recent record of the central bank is not so glowing either. Lauded as a genius, encircled by a seeming personality cult, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan could do no wrong, but he has since admitted he was wrong in many respects from bailing out LTMC to keeping interest rates artificially low. Years of unnecessarily low interest rates facilitated rolling asset price bubbles as the monetary lever was used to keep the wheels greased and delay a reckoning. Little of this seemed prudent at the time, for it all seems reckless now, as the state had guaranteed against any moral hazard.

Echoing the timbre of the last days of Rome, John McCain's assertion about the fundamental soundness of the economy showed that we had bought the bullshit, and the people selling it were the very ones that had the professional, philosophical obligation to remain above the fray. Here are a few examples of when someone ought to have thought of drawing the brakes:

In winter 2000, it was common knowledge that recession was imminent. Rather than brace for recession, Greenspan opted for a soft landing. In hindsight, when much of the lost wealth was in paper assets due to rampant equity speculation, the segment of the population hardest hit would have been the wealthy. Not a chance of a correction taking place with Republican dominance of executive and legislature.
In winter 2001, when the fallout of the dot-com era exposed malfeasance from faulty business models to disingenuous analytics to plain, old book-cooking (Tyco, Enron, WorldCom), the hastily
cobbled Sarbanes-Oxley Act did little to give regulators the resources and scope to deal with crises in the future. "Self-regulation," came the cry. Good job.

Now, when policy decisions have affected not just the leisure or investor classes, but people whose meager net worth is tied solely to the value of their home and the amount of debt they have against the property value, no one is quite sure which is an advantageous step. Concomitantly, high stock market volatility, huge drops in global commodity demand, unfathomable levels of foreign and sovereign debt for the developed world are all symptoms of the collapse in credit markets. Moreover, a coordinated bailout of American investment and retail banks simultaneously doubled the national debt ceiling. The last decade has created a culture within the financial services industry that it is their birthright to have high yield on anything they touch. How is any of this fundamentally sound?

At the most basic level, economics is a science of allocating limited resources. As a science, it cannot predict the future, but as a study of statics, it can indeed illuminate causal, logical relationships. More philosophically, economic analysis can provide clarity, both logos and ethos, a cool breath of reason to policy debate when hot rhetoric and emotional appeal sometimes make for a muddle in determining the best course of action. Like medical doctors take the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm, economists must implicitly not buy into the bullshit. Why else would central bank autonomy be regarded as generally good?

To restore the confidence in economics, capitalism, and the institutions acting as their instruments, a return to status quo ante would be a rash error, but some old style remedies are certainly in order:

Offer higher deposit rates - Current interbank rates are higher than ever even as risk premium for safe investments. What better way to access a lending capital pool then by paying out more than a paltry 2%? If banks offered short term CDs one percent below interbank lending rates, many depositors would queue up in no time.
Scrap the Paulson plan - No Fed Policing. Plain and simple. An expanded Fed cannot act as uber-enforcer of the rules. It contravenes its original mandate which it has seemingly failed to fulfill as of late. A bureaucratic expansion would do no one any good.
Reconcile the tax base - Short term increases? Distinctly possible, but economic crisis exposes structural defects as well as cyclical. While existing efforts untangle the fiasco at hand, the incoming administration must come up with an alternative to income tax.
Leverage ratios for investment banks - Light touch regulation such as this may seem like a capital control, but when pension fund portfolios are exposed to highly leveraged firms Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, the onus of default adversely selects the wrong shareholder. Also, why should Goldman Sachs enjoy a 2000:1 leverage to asset ratio? No one ought to be able to borrow 2000 times above his worth.
Proportionate funding of existing regulatory agencies - Given the scale by which the federal government has expanded the last eight years, it would be interesting to see the percent change in annual budgets across the myriad agencies. The SEC, FTC, CFTC and DOJ Antitrust division probably did not receive much largess. Adequate funding would allow these regulatory agencies to do their job in real time, learn how to treat complex derivatives, and not be forced to act ad hoc during a crisis. The regulatory and legal framework does a lot to reduce the risk of default. It is a quasi-gold standard, and the country cannot afford to see it diminished.
Tight money - To keep foreign investors keen during retrenchment as well as to combat inflationary pressure, Treasury will buy back its securities. The Fed will raise interest rates. Consequently, the higher yield on our bonds is more attractive. It will have to be, if politicians balk at enacting the change which got them elected this year, though such structural change will be quite painful.

This nadir in economic history will end, though probably not soon. There are three asset price bubbles from which Western and developed economies not quite recovered. Economists and policy makers should stop reinventing the wheel and simply stick to true fundamentals. Then, everyone can benefit, for the culture of double dealing and unaccountability ought to be coming to an end. Ditch the Stack and Tilt, and then things can get to the right side.

World tour at last

2008-11-05T10:56:00.005-05:00

American PGA Tour superstars Camilo Villegas and Anthony Kim decided to join the European Tour officially. For elite players such as the aforementioned, the four Major championships as well as the three World Golf Championships - soon to be four with the impending addition of the HSBC Champions - count as events played on both the US and European PGA Tours. This means that to maintain, assuming neither wins but earns enough to keep status status on both tours, each would have to find eight more events in America and at least four more in Europe to continue playing both Tour. Given the scale of prize money offered, the US and European PGA Tours are the richest in the world, and hence attract the best talent. The Race to Dubai, the European Tour counterpart to the FedEx Cup, provided impetus for Kim, Villegas, and possibly Phil Mickelson to split time on both Tours. This poses a problem for the US PGA Tour as two, maybe three, of its biggest non-Tiger draws broaden their horizons, but the best playing all over the world is truly good for the game.

Globalizing an ostensibly leisure class pastime could not have come at a more opportune time. Despite downturns in the global economy, incomes around the world are still growing. Chinese, Indian, Brazilian, and even Russian golfers are playing in sanctioned Tour events. Granted the talent level of some is not as high as that of players from countries with longer traditions of instruction and growth of the game, continued increases in wealth in emerging market nations will naturally spread the growth of golf. Global saturation of the game is ultimately attainable. As such, the pool of possible sponsors grows, and everyone will benefit from more market opportunities.

Though Greg Norman envisioned formal establishment of a global tour, Tiger Woods became the standard and the icon of the modern, globe trotting touring professional, a role anyone would relish if given the oppotunity. Though Norman has 69 international victories and Woods' contemporaries Ernie Els (44) and Vijay Singh (22) also balanced obligations on US, European, South African and Asian Tours, Woods has been the first truly international figure in the game because of his genealogical links to both America and the world. Anthony Kim is similar in that respect. Camilo Villegas attended and completed university in America, but he maintains strong ties and pride in his native heritage. Personified bridging of multiple cultures and ethnicities has given stars of this generation the broad appeal that the previous, mostly foreign born globetrotters did not. Others such as Vardon, Ray, Palmer and Player managed an international schedule, but private jet aviation has raised the profile of the profession even further.

Two concerns do emerge. First, how will the US Tour and European Tour business models coexist? Second and more glaringly, why is there a dearth of American players with seemingly few international ties willing to play away from home?

The US PGA Tour receives a tax exemption from the US government because it is a non-profit organization - 501(c)3 status, in the parlance of the Internal Revenue Service. The European Tour runs its events on a for profit basis. One discrepancy between the two models is that European Tour events can pay appearance fees where a player may receive money for teeing it up. Sponsors with deep pockets can lure top players with financial inducements. It is unclear whether attracting players that way has an overall economic benefit of holding the tournament or merely strokes the egos of rich tournament organizers eager for prestige. Such practice might become de rigeur in a more global golf tour, for the Asian, Sunshine, and Australasian PGA Tours as well as the Europeans all follow for profit business models for their tournaments. Tee up money may seem grubby and anathema to the spirit of competition to Americans accustomed to golf tournaments enriching only the contestants and then otherwise raising money for charity.

Perhaps revisiting the American business model is in order if Villegas and Kim, who will join young stars such as Trevor Immelman, Sergio Garcia, Justin Rose, Andres Romero, Brandt Snedeker, Adam Scott, and Aaron Baddeley, will play less in the States. Young and talented, in some cases single, men will take advantage of opportunity to travel, and the US PGA Tour will have to accommodate a partial talent drain.

Second, American players seem loath to play overseas even with the newly dangling incentive before them. Some will argue that the presence of international players on the US Tour order of merit has crowded out American talent and eroded opportunities for native players. Some American players - Phil Mickelson with Barclays, Brandt Snedeker with Bridgestone - have international endorsement deals which oblige them to play abroad, though some would willingly play overseas out of a desire to travel and a personal sense of adventure. However, the duties of family take precedence, and most wives are not keen on having their husbands travel thirty weeks of the year to earn a living. Having to go internationally will not assuage such concerns. Aside from personal commitments, what is stopping American players from going overseas? American players are talented enough to compete with their international counterparts. Some complain about bad food, bad weather, language barriers, and other provincial grumbling. International players deal with assimilation in America because they know that such a sacrfice is little compared to securing their own and their families' financial future.

Presently, the money on the US Tour blows away the pay scales in Europe, but that may shift because of talent flight and more tournaments following a for-profit finanical model. When it happens, US players may be playing catch up and find the rules of tour membership further stacked against them. Such a scenario is probable, though not for some time. It took less than twenty years for the economics of a staid game with narrow appeal to expand to what it is now. Within any artificial system, culture and technology accelerate the rate of change itself and hence the time interval it takes for change to occur. American golfers have two choices: either play better or adapt and take a shot at playing a few real road games.

What else is there today?

2008-11-04T10:51:00.005-05:00

"That's the problem with this country. Weather. All. Just hangs on too long."

William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying.

Had enough? What's one more day of discussion in a campaign cycle that seemingly began at the tail end of the 2006 midterm Congressional elections? One day too many. Today, professional and amateur observers, political junkies, concerned citizens will focus on who carries which state in the sprint to 270 electoral votes. However, a small diversion is necessary to keep things into perspective on why the process has left the public with the choices it has.

Recently, Sundance Channel reran the satirical Tanner '88 series. As the narrative plot of fictional presidential candidate Jack Tanner evolved, it suggested that a purely absurd candidacy, one whose purpose was to make fun of presidential politics, began to seem more legitimate, more earnest than the campaigns of even the candidates who eventually wound up being the last men standing for the Democrats and Republicans.

The 2008 campaigns have the tinge of the Tanner mockumentary where the substance feels fictitious though the manner and style of its presentation looks real. Unfortunately, both lack the cinematic fine touch of Robert Altman's genius. Both Obama and McCain campaigns feel simulated, as products of media polish rather than substantive extensions of a coherent platform to address problems. Both men have played their respective parts without either measuring well against the touchstone of authenticity. This concept, abstract as it is, still is a definable commodity. Each line, each sound byte is crafted to be the one that does not lose rather than be the potential game winning shot. Watching the two senators spar is akin to seeing two passive opponents in a game waiting for the official to make the call to decide the outcome. The tactics might be somewhat grubby, but the overall strategies amount to the political equivalent of kissing your sister. They both may want to win, but neither seems to want the ball in crunch time, and that brand of sport - mincing, tactically passive - feels a lot like European soccer. The GWB campaigns attracted so many devotees because he played red-blooded, American hard ball. Though the strategic message was all politics, all the time, Rove, however odious, did want the ball with the game on the line. He merely played dirty aggressive, but he always scored when it counted.

This campaign has not seen the scale of dirty pool the previous two contests have had, and the restraint on both sides is a welcome change to the rancor of 2000 and 2004. However, remove the Obama phenomenon, and this election, though taking place during a period of uncertainty over the future of the collective identity, is astonishingly lackluster. Electoral politics and sports have the same high stakes, and like all games, much of the decisions on how to play stem from how much long the game seems to go. Why should the game be a two year long test match if the consensus among strategists is that the final two weeks are critical to deciding a close contest? The 2008 election will have as much historical significance not only because Obama is the first mainstream candidate of color, but also structurally as campaigns cannot continue to be seemingly interminable.

Since America has a result-oriented, sporting culture, public disaffection with the candidates has as much to do with the lack of substance as it does with the liberties the two main contestants have taken with playing a clock-grinding style which is unfriendly to spectators, even to the purists in the lot. If the electoral process measures preferences, all parties cannot take for granted that free speech and the social significance of the contest supersede that which the public wants. Responsive government depends as much on the terms of trade as it does on the currency of the issues.

The strain of the late Warren Zevon's savage guitar chords fade out the last few notes of "Lawyers, Guns and Money."

Drinking games and the debates

2008-10-02T12:42:00.005-04:00

Last week's presidential debate between Senators McCain and Obama offered nothing new. Rehashed, repetitive yammering masqueraded as rhetoric. Moderator Jim Lehrer asked the same question three times before he received a marginally satisfactory answer. With luck, the vice presidential candidates who square off this evening might provide something which may pass as authentic, issue-oriented clash. That is a bit of a pipe dream, given the absurd tenor of the campaign so far.

That being the case, perhaps television viewers looking for substance can use this bit of political theater as an expedient to drowning the collective sorrows of a nation that ought to be on the verge of revolt. Blank checks to fight foreign wars, mounting debt, a cocked-up bailout plan which holds no one to account for either past failure or for future performance - all cause concern that an elite plutocracy, what William S. Burroughs called, "a closed corporation of desirables," do not have much concern for future generations. Other than a few throw-away lines Saturday Night Live will doubtless carve up for its opening five minutes, this debate will have no watershed moment as Bentsen-Quayle. Without a disruptive third party or independent presence (read Perot), mainstream partisan show business, taking its cues from reality TV rancor, will foul the airwaves.

So, drink up, the way we did in high school, when the taste of cheap vodka or bourbon embedded our faces in masochistic contortions. Each time someone refers to cosmetics, take a shot. Each time Biden fights off a stutter, take a shot. Whenever Palin starts in that catty, nasal rebutting tone of the superior omniscience of folksy, homey types - which is just about always - take a shot. Who knows, perhaps she'll flash some skin to make a point, to raise the stakes, and watch a confused, slightly aroused Joe Biden try to call the bluff. Shoot, anyone who may have been lucky or geeky enough to have debated in college or high school and partaken in a pub round knows the dizzying amusement of either constructing or following a syllogism after having a few drinks.

It is hard to pay attention to something important and relevant which is simultaneously absurd. Disaffection in the electorate is palpable, and few in the legislature and executive realize they are running AmericaCorp into the ground. We should be outraged. Instead, lassitude, malaise, and a defeatist realism have precipitated into a further fragmented society resigned to despair. So, fill up your glasses with whiskey and rye, with brandy and wine and see how one of the most inside insiders and one of the most outside outsiders propose we keep flying round the track with the pedal to the floor and not miss a turn. With a bleary-eyed nation looking on, perhaps Joe or Sarah might tap into the public sentiment, get up in front of the microphone, slam a bottle of booze on the podium, and, with a straight face, say, "I ain;t starting til someone gets me a glass."

9/23/78

2008-09-26T11:30:00.006-04:00

You signal silent,
shining, shining sun-dressed girl,
the day by the lake,
of still water and flowing earth,
the wind swept brown,
command me to say nothing at all, ever again.

I did abide at will,
too early though,
and your wish now was mine then,
though we gave no damn
about commands,
or dared to utter them at all.

So, shining shining, sun-dressed girl,
standing firm in plain plane,
harrying charges,
reflecting dappled light of a long-gone lake,
await the ever after
of endless bedtime fairy stories,
that fathers tell daughters
to hasten them to sleep.

But, I must abide, without choice, obey.
I cannot speak now in right
as I did not speak
when my command was your wish, your dare.

Content, shining, sun-dressed girl
live thy nine lives and never hear the end
of the story better left unbegun.

Ryder Cup Redux and Prospection

2008-09-22T13:09:00.005-04:00

After three days of spectacular play by both sides and a contest closer than the final score indicated, all 24 contestants have much to be proud of. Some surpassed expectations while others did not play so well, and that mixture resulted in triumph for the United States. Several observations about the tournament itself. Both captains proved their skill as strategists. Neither Faldo nor Azinger made any dubious coaching moves, and, consequently, the contestants were put in places to succeed.

Arguably, with the American side having four captain's picks to Europe's two, the US held an advantage. Though meritocratic and fair, the points systems each sides use for qualification are imperfect quantitative methods. The two-tiered European and World Points system for Europe allows its top players to play their way on to the team without compromising their own income or commercial interests. America's method of qualifying players based on money is certainly an improvement over the byzantine top-10 based approach. However, the drawback to each approach is that this method does not account for the dozens of ultra-talented international players on both the European and American PGA Tours who finish well and hence reduce the point pool available to players vying for Ryder Cup spots. Thus, determining points ought to have a deflator or inflator relative to the strength of the field in each event. On a theoretical basis, any evolutionary dynamic - biological, economic, social, or political - which is more fluid and adaptable than a comparable system has a greater probability of success. (Since the publication of this post, European Ryder Cup stalwart Colin Montgomerie averred that Europe ought to have 4 wild cards as well).

Luckily, golf enthusiasts will remember the 37th Matches for what they were rather than for what they were not or what they ought to have been. Even without the most successful player in the world, the tension of anticipation, quality of play, spirited support, and sportsmanship by both sides surpassed even optimistic expectations. With no shortage of skilled, colorful sportsmen, the future of the game in a sooner rather than later post-Tiger era is not in doubt. Moreover, these matches may be the first watershed moment golf has had since Tiger Woods emerged over eleven years ago.

In the same way that new formats in cricket have broadened the appeal of a staid, conservative sport, these matches knocked some of the dust off of the Royal and Ancient Game. They can serve as a catalyst to examine how to capitalize on such popularity. Perhaps American junior golf programs may stress aspects of team play rather than individual achievement. If anything, Ryder Cup golf is the most fan-friendly, for it can optimize technological innovation cost effectively. It would be expensive to have a camera follow every pairing in a 156 man field, but it would be feasible for broadcasters to have a cameraman follow each match. Such coverage could be sold on a pay-per-view basis over digital and satellite networks. Players may balk at more people inside the ropes, but limits on audio transmission and ever-improving video technology could make such recording unobtrusive to the playing of the match. Also, with soft greens, firm fairways and more than enough greenlight pins, the course set-up encourages aggressive play. Major championship golf has lately been a test against par, but the match play format is perfect for a hit it close style of play. Moreover, with no paychecks on the line, players are more liberal in opening up their arsenals of shots. With millions on the line and a one shot lead down the stretch, a high cut to a draw pin might be an unnecessary shot. However, with a chance to close a guy out, hyper-competitive, skilled golfers will more often that not hit "a shot with balls."

The euphoria of reclaiming the Cup will soon wear off, but three days where everything went right was a brief, welcome escape from a world where lots of things are going wrong. Three days of dignity, pride and professionalism did much to cleanse some of the grubbiness and concern from the collective psyche. 3:1 says Captian Azinger gets a book deal soon. Reserve a copy today. If you need some help writing it, Zinger, here's hope you're reading.

3 imperatives for the next administration

2008-09-09T18:53:00.004-04:00

Accoridng to Aristotle, a younger generation will try to correct the mistakes of its forebearers by adopting an opposite position. If X is wrong, and Y is the opposite of X, then Y must be the correct tack. Such radicalism is often misplaced, but after eight years of the George W. Bush administration, it might not be a bad idea. There are three areas where either a return to the status quo ante or outright repudiation of policy mistakes are crucial regardless of which party wins the executive in November:

1. Close the prison at Guantanamo Bay - Without question, this short-sighted, wrong-headed policy in the War on Terror has provoked more anti-American backlash than some of the prize pigs for which the Defense Department, CIA, and US Armed Forces are responsible. As awful as shoddy preparation and armament, extraordinary rendition, and the shame of Abu Ghraib have been, the ongoing detention of terror suspects at Gitmo embodies everything that was wrong with this administration. Gitmo signifies both how little the administration regards human rights and an utter disrespect for the rule of domestic Constitutional law and the spirit of international conventions. In addition to being neither compassionate nor conservative, the military detention center has not produced any significant counter-terrorist intelligence. All it does is piss off allies, disaffected Muslims, and Americans who still give a dman about the laws of the land. The glimmering hope that one of the suspects would provide valuable information to stop a ticking bomb never materialized. Shut Gitmo down. Apologize to the aggrieved. Find a better way.

2. Simplify taxation - Americans are not opposed to taxation if the proceeds to the public purse keeps the roads paved, the levies sturdy, and the country safe from military threat. What makes taxes so galling is the way legislators allocate tax receipts in the budget. A shift away from income and investment taxation towards consumption based taxes eliminates the size and scope of a govenrement bureaucracy (IRS), will reduce the influence of lobbyists who grub for breaks for their corporate clients, and compel firms towards more efficient, externality-limiting means of production. Markets and consumer demand have signalled more preference of sustainable development and green technology. Rather than further complicate the tax code with breaks and subsidies to spur such investment, simplification of the tax code will result in a natural gravitation towards such ends.

3. Respect the office - Every policy blunder and scandal amount to a fundamental lack of respect for the presidency because every policy blunder and scandal - tax cuts, gross farm subsidies, unilateral military intervention in Iraq, torture memos, opaque secrecy, capricious use of executive privilege, the Plame affair, federal attorney sackings, sweetheart nuclear deal for India - seemed to stem from an extreme desire to advance pet, political agendas. They certainly did not tangibly benefit the American people. Few Americans find little in politics redeeming, and engendering such cynicism will erode confidence in an ostensibly successful, admirable institutional framework. Attempts by the executive to act above the laws he is intended to uphold are callow and disingenuous, and even after eight years, W demonstrated he is both incompetent at winning battles on his own and incapable of being accountable for his mistakes. What is worse is that he has left not only the country, but the office of the presidency in far worse shape than he found it. It is hardly surprising he managed to run another business into the ground despite having a highly connected support system. Whoever occupies the Oval Office next year must strive earnestly to restore faith in the presidency by distancing himself from the notion of all politics, all the time.

In short, the next president must take care to act within the framework of laws and favor a best practice approach rather than see what he can get away with. The bar ought to be higher for someone with such great power and responsibility, but Americans, tired of eight disengenuous years of Republican greed (big shock) may just be ready for someone who will not act like he is better than anyone else or the job he is supposed to do. Whoever comes next, please have some respect for the job you are trying so hard to earn, and, pretty please, with fucking sugar on top, carry yourself with the dignity the position deserves.

Family friendly tickets

2008-09-03T10:57:00.002-04:00

In response to John McCain's selection of Alaska governor (and granny to be) Sarah Palin as his running mate, public opinion varied. Some cynically sneered that the Republicans were pandering to the electorate, merely copying the Democratic party's youth movement. Few were even surprised and confused by the selection, but the whole country knows McCain likes younger women, so where's the shock value? Another seeming middle ground majority fancying itself as the voice of reason expressed a more neutral, open-minded view that her background made the Republican ticket more family friendly - more to come on whatever the heck that means.

What stands out is the lack of consensus over the Palin selection, and that seems queer to Yardage. French doctor, author and crackpot Louis-Ferdinand Celine wrote, "Public opinion is always right, especially when it's really idiotic." Selecting a female running mate is a watershed moment in the history of the political party known as a rich, old, white, male preserve. To be fair, the Democrats have their share of that breed, but they are more ashamed to admit that any entrenched political party truly stands for the preservation of the status quo, and its members fear egalitarian upward mobility of lower classes. The public response should have had some more unity such as, "It's about time," or "Finally." Instead, a female figurehead, the governor with gorgeous gams and a killer smile, come off the pine to invigorate a campaign which trails in preliminary polling.

As governor of a geographically vast state, as head of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, Palin has accomplished much at a young age. There is no question regarding her administrative competence or at least her ability to rise quickly from local to state office. So, why is so much import placed on a family friendly ticket? Moreover, what on earth might that be?

For society to function, good government fills in where people, cooperation and markets cannot. Sound infrastructure, public safety, and predictable regulation provide a conducive environment for families to thrive. When commutes are efficient, the laws enforced equally and schools free of violence, families do well. Totalitarian governments in Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany were surprisingly family friendly. Had the domestic economy not imploded due to excessive sentral planning or limited trade, the models might have endured. Perhaps linking the concept to the fundamental duties of government is not the best proof, but carping about populist issues does not solve policy and market failures.

So, in modern America, a family friendly political party ticket must constitute rhetoric about schools, healthcare, tax breaks. Wrap it up with a pretty, prolific lady, and the party has a product. As long as wages stagnate, no long term incentive to save exists, and no commitment to the well-information of the citizenry predominates, the concept of the family faces assault practcially and ideologically. Governor Palin certainly brings with her a telegenic phenotype of the family concept, but what in her gubernatorial record qualifies her as a champion of working families? According to Andrew Romano's Stumper blog, the record is "still pretty thin." Other than her vehement anti-abortion position, little ink has been spilled over her policy notions on government and market involvement in healthcare, national educational curriculum standards, and the expansion of benfeits for the poverty stricken.

For someone who will represent the deciding vote in the Senate, how reassuring is it to middle class Americans that she is a dyed in the wool conservative with no discernable agenda? Such factors are of greater consequence given that Senator McCain may succumb to the vicissitudes of average life expectancy, and Mrs. Palin may wind up in the top job. She cannot remain a political enigma, and her slight record on 'bread and butter' issues only confirm a madman's epigram.

Sabbatical ends. Macky's back in town.

2008-09-02T12:57:00.003-04:00

Dynamite has returned from self-imposed exile. Many of the events and occurences of the past 60 days - Olympic games, PGA Tour playoffs, FOMC meeting, Democratic convention - would have made brilliant topics for this space, yet topicality in extrema is like too much of any good thing. Applying the principle of declining marginal utility to being well informed is not quite so simple.

The principle of declining marginal utility states that a consumer as he consumes more of one good, while keeping consumption of all other goods constant, he will receive less utility from each unit consumed of that good.

If a person prefers being well-informed to uninformed, he will consume information to satisfy that preference. However, the pursuit of being well informed as well as what one must consume to do so is forever dynamic. Moreover, the individual units of "well-information" are highly variegated. When one particular news item ceases to be of interest such as ongoing election coverage, the consumer can tune it out in favor of another area of interest. Once enough time has lapsed where the information he possesses about the presidential election has exhausted its utility outright, the desire to accumulate a greater reserve of election knowledge will renew the cycle. Shifting amongst the subpreferences within the overarching goal of being well-informed does not change the level of one's well-information so long as consumption is constant. However, what happens when even a rational, sensible, well-informed person has had enough?

The presidential election in the United States is a perfect example of how an ongoing, major news story crowds out some lesser, though more significant events such as the transfer of security to Iraqi forces in Anbar province or the high-level discussion held by international military leaders regarding the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

When information can spread quickly and easily, separating wheat from chaff without missing small, important items becomes ever more difficult. Press freedom is invaluable to a democracy, but its overabundance, the shrillness of its tone, its sometimes amateurish democratization do turn off even those who value the benefits of knowing more about the world around them. Given editorial biases, well-information requires consumption of information from sources with opposing ideological perspectives. Often, the editorial articles in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have similar subjects, and it is interesting to see how each side, each point of view might apply the same factual evidence.

As the quadrennial presidential thrill ride hurtles into the fourth turn, as the harvest moon approaches, and the hunter's moon inaugurates the apex of the political season, media outlets will vie ever harder for commercial and professional prominence. Scooping, topping, breaking a story first will fuel what the late HST called the 'feeding frenzy.' Greed from all corners, the burning money machines of campaign drives and the sound of countless Faustian bargains being sealed will make for one bloody fall. Remember to vote and help the needy.

Specious reasoning

2008-07-02T17:53:00.004-04:00

Democrats have failed their constituents often over the past few years in many respects, but their approach towards Iraq policy has been particularly wrong-headed. Yesterday, General Wesley Clark, in his opinion well-versed in strategic command, made some peculiar and contradictory remarks regarding Senator John McCain's capacity to be an effective wartime leader. Couched in the remarks was a noteworthy, hidden bit of rhetoric justifying a staged withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, for it echoed a muddled conclusion drawn by Senator Barack Obama as well as Senate majority leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: withdrawing US troops creates the incentive for an Iraqi government to take over running the security environment.

This is the most recent example of prominent Democrats perpetuating the naive caricature of themselves on matters of national security.

The first strike against the Democrats was their supine response to a Bush administration beating the war drums. Rather than risk being assailed in the press as unpatriotic cowards, Democrats chose their reputations rather than the public good. They had the opportunity to take the moral high ground, wave the flag even prouder than the Republicans, by arguing on Constitutional principle that only the Senate could legally declare war. Even in a climate of fear, apprehension, and the interfering traffic of shoddy intelligence, a standoff pitting liberty versus security would have at worst stalled the Rumsfeld-Cheney clique, at best brought forth this generation's equivalent of union versus states' rights.

Secondly, Having abandoned both the moral high ground and pragmatism, the Democrats' self-relegation to sit silently in the backbenches permitted the administration to proceed unfettered in what have become international scandals in the handling of prisoners and suspects. Closer scrutiny may not have prevented extraordinary renditions, Guantanamo military tribunals or Abu Ghraib, but the office of the Vice President and Defense Department could not have operated without impunity as it seemingly did.

So, having failed to question the initial case for war, Democrats voted for war, thereby trading credibility to save a public image. That the US found itself in an intractable conflict which has cost the lives of soldiers and civilians because politics took primacy over best practice is repugnant. What is truly vexing is that Democrats have espoused a withdrawal strategy. No evidence points that hastening the Iraqi government to responsibility and self-determination, though laudable goals, will work especially since the gains of the Surge are potentially reversible.

Greek philosopher Aristotle, in his Politics, argued that when confronted by the perceived transgressions of parents or the status quo, the tendency of a younger generation (or in this case second actor) is to expiate the sin by going to the extreme. Rather than confronting its own collective cowardice to challenge administration claims or to investigate them more thoroughly, Democrats opted to go with the flow, and when the plan started to go a little crooked, the only way to right their and the administration wrongs would be to pull the troops with no regard for the compound error.

Now, Iraq policy, along with the economy and energy policy, is one of the crucial issues of the November election. One wonders where the logical link is that if the US withdraws its troops, then Iraqi government forces and police will fill the void. Iraqi soldiers are still ill-equipped and ill-prepared to maintain order without assistance from coalition forces. Moreover, leaving the security environment unresolved is as reckless as destabilizing the country in the first place. Without acceptable terms of mineral resource revenue division, human rights law, and a legal and coherent constitution, Iraqi government officials will have neither the trust of their peers or their people. Without adequate infrastructure, efficient delivery of basic services, and greater assurance of public safety, American intervention will be for naught. Coalition presence is necessary until the economy can stand without a prop.

The ultimate goal for Iraq is independence and a greater sense of sovereignty, but it is dangerous to think the prospect of a coalition withdrawal will make the fledgling Iraqi federal government act faster. Moreover, an impatient approach smacks of disingenuous high-handedness where the Iraqis must adapt to being on their own based on an American ultimatum. The strategic signal of staged withdrawal for the purpose of prodding Iraqi politicians into action is incoherent to the mutual aims of Iraqis and coalition forces. Ideally, Iraqi services, law and order will catch up to the vacuum to be left inevitably by troop withdrawal. However, accelerating the rate of change of autonomy is not a simple exercise. Such reasoning is as dangerous as that of administration war hawks who believed that bringing democracy will be a cure all.

Iraq is a complex situation that is the doing of American politicians. Brave servicemen have died obeying a commander in chief who believed the bullshit. The sense of duty and courage of all the fighting personnel is indeed commendable, and their continued efforts in civilian defense and nation building are necessary to ease hostilities. Prolonged military presence in the Persian Gulf is necessary, for any alternative will compound the initial error. To avoid the strategic quicksand, Democrats ought to examine not the potential effect of withdrawal, but muddled logic presupposes the readiness of Iraq to stand on its own against internecine strife and pressure from its eastern neighbor, Iran. The stance taken by Democrats is more posture, more fake toughness. Most worrying is how ill-conceived the idea is given that the fundamental reasoning is so egregiously flawed.

Go C------e Yourself

2008-06-06T22:21:00.003-04:00

While driving to work today, I heard a fun little ditty from my youth, "Bonita Applebaum" by A Tribe Called Quest. I was confused, however, when one of the words was edited. Radio DJs censor 'explicit' lyrics in popular songs, but since when does one have to scratch over 'prophylactic?'

It sounds more clinical than dirty. Why expurgate it especially when STDs and unwanted pregnancies are still endemic social problems, particularly in urban, ethic communities - precisely the demographic which listens to hip-hop stations?

In context, the lyric goes, "And if you're with it, I got crazy prophylactics." How does this promote promiscuity? If anything, the lyric suggests that the woman has a say in matters of sex and is not an object and that the man is responsible for birth control and disease prevention. As far as rap lyrics go, it is very tame and mature.

What is more puzzling is that 'jimmy hat' or any other euphemism for condom is not edited in rap played on the radio. Why permit the street argot and censor the proper term? Though petty and slight, this is indicative of a benevolent, priggish ignorance on the part of radio management or even the FCC. Continued prurience, textual misinterpretation, and inconsistent editing of terms infantalizes the subject of sexuality. Moreover, such censorship insults listener intelligence and sensibilities. Time for craven PC types to realize that such a move has the adverse effect of irresponsibility to the public and to the arts.

Fear of a Black Candidate

2008-06-04T12:28:00.004-04:00

After winning the South Dakota and Montana primaries, Barack Obama secured the requisite number of delegates to become the Democratic nominee for the presidntial election. notwithstanding that Hillary Clinton has yet to concede defeat. Unlike Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, Obama broke through the primary season as the party choice, and, thus, he has a fair shot of winning the top political post in America. As a candidate, he is a charismatic orator. As political operations go, his campaign has raised millions through internet contribution whereas Hillary Clinton ran up huge debts. Such credentials and popularity through triumph will make the presidential race far more interesting than the last contest despite its closeness.

Obama versus McCain is a duel of many obvious contrasts: young against old, innocence versus experience, fire versus ice. In the forthcoming presidential debates, the electorate will see how Obama's passion and flair hold up against the patient voice of reason of the McCain brand. But what does the Obama candidacy mean?

The junior senator from Illinois dubs himself as an agent of change. He holds the moral high ground over the Iraq War, for he voted against the invasion in 2003. In last night's victory speech, he appeared polished and passionate. No recent Democratic cnadidate has displayed both characterisitcs authentically let alone simultaneously. With his wife, adorned in a Chanel dress and pearl necklace, beside him, he cuts a figure of the new JFK.

Yet, while stoking the fervor and hopes of Democratic partisans, who compare his febrile asecndance and its concommitant excitement to the ill-fated RFK, Obama realistically seems more likely to be Alfred Smith rather than JFK. Kennedy may have been the first and only Roman Catholic to hold the presidency, but Smith was the first Catholic candidate from a major party for the office. Smith lost to Hoover in 1928.

'Firsts' are a good thing for all aspects of society, for they reflect attitudes of tolerance, pluralism, and meritocratic mobility. However, it is difficult for a 'first' to be elected, and appointment has been the route typically for ethnic minorities and women from Brandeis to O'Connor to Scalia to Gonzalez. This election will be a good measure of how tolerant and plural American democracy really is, and Obama faces demographic obstacles in key swing states such as Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania which he failed to carry in the primaries.

More interesting will be how former Confederate states vote. No Southern state has ever elected a black man to the US Senate. The only black man to have been elected governor of a Southern state was Doug Wilder of Virginia. Though racial sentiment may be associated with Dixie, in alll cynical likelihood, whites all over America may vote McCain simply because of an atavistic opposition to a black man becoming president.

However flimsy the pretexts may be for keeping Obama out of office, one thing is certain: the amount of buzz he has created will mobilize the electorate to go and vote. Young voters, who see him as an agent of change and promise, as someone who has cast off their disaffection with politics, will get over their apathy and themselves and pull the lever on his behalf. Racists will turn out in droves and be the barrier. The DNC and Obama campaign will take great legal and practical measures to make sure that the black community - itself split over whether Obama is good for his own people - does not suffer the shameful chicanery of 21st century disenfranchisement which dotted the last two contests.

Voter turnout ought to be high this November. Even if Obama goes the way of Smith rather than Kennedy, the reconsolidation of American democracy and popular interest in politics will benefit everyone.

Open to the public, too

2008-05-02T19:00:00.003-04:00

The USGA begins its championship season next week with local qualifying for the 108th U.S. Open. Though this stage is only the first, it is still one of golf's best kept secrets. Here is a link to a list of the sites that will host an eighteen hole qualifier during the weeks between May 5 and May 19.

Competitive golf has few shoot-outs, and this format has both subtle and noticeable differences from multi-round events. There is more of a match-play feel. If you are not beating your playing partners, chances are you will not get through. Such is the case for all tournament golf, but the shoot-out mkaes that fact more overt, more palpable. It is worth checking out if time permits.

With luck, the host clubs will allow spectators who are not members to follow some of the players. Certain sites may have Nationwide, PGA or European Tour players who are not exempt into the sectional stage. Even if a site does not have any notable names attempting to qualify there, anyone who appreciates golf ought to inquire about going to watch anyway.

Stab at Journalism

2008-05-02T18:05:00.004-04:00

The Economist magazine in conjunction with the Marjorie Deane foundation offers an annual internship to aspiring journalists interested in writing on topics of finance and economics. I figured I took a shot despite my paucity of journalistic experience. The blog and an unremarkable stint on my high school newspaper are the extent of my experience. So, this is what I managed to cobble together. The specific news item is old, but the broader subject of an interventionist Federal Reserve is still quite topical. Though it is likely that someone sprightlier, with better style, sources and credentials to boot, will wind up spending summer in London, I am proud of what I wrote. Hence, I am taking another chance and submit for the approval of my very narrow and sporadic readership. Enjoy.

Feed your Fed

Washington D.C.

On March 31, citing needs to revitalize competitiveness and to fix the ills of the American economy, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson unveiled “The Optimal Financial Regulatory Model.” In a speech, he outlined plans to provide the Fed, “…with a different, yet critically important regulatory role with broad powers focusing on the overall financial system.”

The administration is keen on granting the Fed more authority to examine the practices and the accounts of hedge funds and investment banks. Mr. Paulson said, “The Fed would have the authority to go wherever in the system it thinks it needs to go for a deeper look to preserve stability.” Strangely, he has chosen an inauspicious time in the history of the institution to raise its profile, for the Fed did much to precipitate instability.

Loose monetary policy made credit too available, and that is to blame for much of what is wrong. Cheap money has been causing inflation, simultaneously depressing the value of the dollar. The resulting rolling asset bubbles have caused unnecessary employment displacement.

At issue is whether the Fed as super-regulator is indeed the “optimal” choice. By pumping up the value of the Fed, this proposal comes off as a no-confidence vote in existing regulatory bodies. Critics of the administration claim adequately funding agencies such as the Justice Department Antitrust division, Securities and Exchange Commission, and Federal Trade Commission makes more pragmatic sense, but the language in Mr. Paulson’s speech points to a clear favorite.

“The premise of our optimal structure is that clarity of mission and objective will lead to strengthened regulation and improved capital markets efficiency,” added Mr. Paulson. Yet, closer scrutiny reveals the more likely chance that “clarity” will result in muddle and inefficiency for three reasons.

First, bigger does not preclude better, especially if the objective is to streamline. Increased influence over financial market activity conflicts with the first order statutory missions of the Fed to maintain price stability, full employment, and an elastic currency. These areas command priority; adding to the load will only make the Fed unwieldy.

Secondly, ‘Fed policing’ is useless without enforcement. Instead of agents, it would have the authority to go where it deems necessary. However, the blanket warrant will have to pass legal muster, and this is unlikely. In practice, even with greater supervisory powers but without an enforcement mechanism, the Fed would still have to coordinate efforts with other agencies. This means fundamental changes to the intellectual and professional cultures of the Fed where economists will start behaving as bureaucrats. Consequently, the Fed stands to jeopardize its status as a credible, politically independent institution.

Lastly, new powers for the Fed do not deter moral hazard on the part of investors, borrowers and creditors. Supervising hedge funds and investment banks may even exacerbate risky behavior if the Fed extends to them some of the privileges and rights as retail banks. Such new powers in no way provide a deterrent to the behavior of aggressive firms. Moreover, that sort of behavior was a response to the loose credit conditions the Fed created in the first place. Nothing in the new model addresses the root cause of the systemic fracture.

Though Mr. Paulson concluded his speech by saying, “As a nation we have placed great faith in the powers of market discipline,” there were no allusions to a potential, painful, endogenous market correction. Further deferring the consequences of a fifteen year borrowing binge will cause deeper damage that even a beefed-up Fed could not forestall. Little wonder that the most attractive models are the thinnest.

Of water and leverage

2008-04-02T14:09:00.000-04:00

Though there is no way to eliminate completely downturns in markets, the ongoing credit crunch has proven a major truth that ought to have already been known and ought not have been taken for granted: neither borrowers nor lenders can operate without a leverage ratio.

Both consumers and firms use credit to facilitate investment. Basic macroeconomics shows investment provides greater returns than savings. However, there are two competing orthodoxies: savings as collateral provides a good entrepot to a loan, and sometimes borrowing costs alone justify borrowing. In the latter case, if the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates, even if a balance sheet is already heavily geared, there would be a greater economic opportunity cost to inaction. Yet, a steadfast adherence to this aspect of basic economics while ignoring the need for market correction has partly precipitated the current malaise.

For households, debt to income ratios are and have been alarmingly high since the internet bubble days of the late 1990s. To stave off the effects of recession after the market crash in 2001, lowering interest rates kept firms and households afloat, but they had unintended knock-on effects such as flipping the yield curve, perpetuating the cheap money period, which fueled the housing bubble. What are we left with?

A cheap currency, for starters, may be good for boosting exports, but newfound competitiveness of American commodities abroad will never become big enough to dent the trade deficit. Secondly, laxer lending conditions allowed displacement of risk, but a market can absorb only so much wealth or debt. Moreover, even the modelers of fancy financial instruments are not entirely certain about who will be left holding the bag and when. Picture a lake filled with various sized boats. Imagine a fleet of submarines got into the lake and began offensive maneuvers. Pretend all the boats try to tack against the onslaught. Some displacements would naturally be greater than others, and would suck the smaller vessels down into the wake of the largest. If there are enough torpedoes, no ship is too big to sink. That is the extent of the credit crunch.

Perhaps the most alarming thing about the subprime fiasco is that a significant majority of mortgagees pay the banks on time. To put this in perspective, subprime loans, at their height, still amounted to only 2.6% of the aggregate mortgage market. This shows how scary the level of contagion is. What would motivate creditors to loan the money in the first place and then repackage blocks of these loans to hedge the risk of default?

The answer to both questions lies in American bankruptcy laws which favor the borrower over the creditor. However, by trying to displace risk, creditors in essence became borrowers themselves, and this has left some of them scrambling for a spot at the Fed's discount window. For investment and commercial banks, adopting a generally accepted leverage ratio provides institutions with much needed credibility in the wake of misdeeds and bungles of the past fifteen years. Moreover, the ratio provides an objective standard for pricing and assumption of risk.

Innovation of financial instruments is a good thing, on balance. Availability of credit is a good thing, in toto. However, without having if not de jure, at least de facto leverage ratios to provide a necessary constraint, then knee-jerk regulation and government bail-outs are the alternative. Economically, this means death. Without a credible penalty within the market for reckless practices, then moral hazard prevails. To restore economic order, some will lose, few will disproportionately gain. However, the lesson all should learn is that avoiding recession is a quest for the Holy Grail. Rather, the objective all ought to strive for is to become recession proof. That is, to paraphrase Warren Buffett, either not to swim naked in the first place, or at least have the bathing suit we doffed close in hand, because the tide always goes out.

V-grooves for Victory

2008-03-31T12:29:00.001-04:00

Rumor has it that the USGA and the R&A will consider changing permissible groove specifications. Such a modification will have immediate knock-on effects on ball technology primarily. Since limitations on equipment have the most tangible effects on the professional and elite level amateur game, then any new golf ball, like many equipment innovations, would have to pass muster with the best players. Tour players receive big endorsement deals, for name and brand recognition translate into profit typically. Since the mass market provides the revenue and profit bases, manufacturers must build a brand and do so through the snob effect. Even casual players prefer to play at least the name brand of the world's best players. The public does not have to play the same exact ball as tour or club professionals, but brand recognition is vital to financial gain. Even if a manufacturer designs a ball well-suited to the average player, it might not sell if Tour players shun the professional's counterpart. Titleist has a huge share of the ball market though its NXT or DT ball may not be as good as a competitor's product for the average player. So, how could changing the rules on grooves end golf's live ball era, fundamentally an integral aspect to the game's expansion?

Deep, square grooves have more surface area. Hence, at impact, extra friction causes the ball to spin more. If a golf ball is struck properly - compressed, - the grooves shear the outer cover. A hard-edged metal surface traveling at high speed over a short interval will do that to a rubber. On its website, the USGA states, "The USGA continually tests golf equipment at its Research and Test Center in Far Hills, N.J., for conformity to the Rules. Without such rigorous equipment testing and research programs, advances in technology could soon overtake skill as the major factor in success." If it deemed that square grooves violate this principle, and irons would have to have V-grooves, ball manufacturers will scramble to adjust their product line. Since V-grooves will have less surface area and consequently generate less spin, harder-covered golf balls, which travel further and spin less, will fall out of favor.

Either changing groove requirements or changing ball specifications have the ultimate desired effect of limiting ball flight. The difference lies in the sequence of who will have to convert first. If the ball must become softer, club makers will change to V-grooves so good players can control ball flight more consistently without tearing the cover. Conversely, if V-grooves go into effect, then hard covered balls will not allow players to control distance reliably. The decision to restrict grooves rather than directly limiting the ball ought to be a market based one. Whichever way causes less shock to the market and adversely impacts manufacturers and players of all stripes least, then that is the correct remedy.

However, golf as a game, a sport, and an industry are at crossroads, and none of these entities are exclusive of the other two. For the game with deep traditional roots, staunching the march of science is imperative. As a sport with myriad ways of producing good scores, favoring one type of player nullifies the nuances which make it appealing in the first place. As an industry staking much to compete in a crowded marketplace, it has its own precession problem regarding growth. Is it better to attract many new consumers with the show of strength first and then convert them to the virtues of skill? Is it better to place be honest and stress that the point of the game is to get the ball in the hole? Through any limitation of ball flight, interest will wane as the spectacle of the power game recedes. Yet, by not addressing the distance issue, the stewards of the game risk alienating purists and traditionalists. Unfortunately, the solution is not determined entirely on the margin.

It is not as simple as whether it is more profitable to keep appealing to core customers or to market to new ones. The growth of the game depends as much on access as it does on clever marketing gimmicks or a superstar. The USGA has the dual mission of maintaining competitiveness and being 'for the good of the game.' To fulfill the latter obligation, it shirks the former. That would be only for the good of the industry. Eight years after Titleist first released the Pro-V1, enough statistical data and anecdotal evidence about the power game merit a rethink on equipment. Vi et arte, strength and skill in Latin, is the motto of the Royal Dornoch Golf Club as well as other clubs in Britain and Ireland. Significant, for in tandem, they comprise the keys to having a good game.

Kool-Aid, Now in Gold Flavor

2008-03-23T14:05:00.001-04:00

Fears surrounding the plunging dollar have sent some scurrying to history books for a remedy. Some, such as one-time presidential hopeful Ron Paul, have strongly questioned the merits of a fiat currency and insist upon a return to the gold standard. Before proceeding, please permit some definitions first and clarification second. essential to understanding the debate over currency. First, fiat money is backed by an implicit guarantee of the issuer. This contrasts to commodity money which represents a fixed value of a commodity per unit of exchange. Second, the United States eliminated the gold standard in 1933. It did not die in 1973 when the Bretton Woods agreement on fixed exchange rates collapsed.

So why did the US and Britain shift from commodity money to fiat money? Britain needed to fund a war. Faced with malaise, the American federal government opted to stimulate the economy through New Deal spending programs. Neither nation could have funded the ambitious scope and scale of those projects without access to credit and raising debt. Financial markets have matured and become virtually perfectly competitive, and returning to commodity money would diminish the advances markets have made since the dissolution of the Bretton Woods accord. Returning to the gold standard comes with other problems.

Starting with the outside in, what would it mean to American trading partners? Whatever fixed value the government may give the dollar would upset one of its chief trading partners. Universal satisfaction and agreement in the WTO, let alone the EU or China, is as likely as getting a room of random people to agree on pizza toppings. Moreover, valuation would reflect current economic conditions. How would it affect existing debt? What would be the knock-on effects on emerging market nations or the global exchange rate mechanism? Such a move would isolate America when it can least afford to do so.

Next, what about the role the central bank would play in maintaining price stability and applying monetary policy? How free would the FOMC be to set interest rates to respond to price signals? Could a Federal Reserve beholden to the gold standard coordinate security sales and short term lending with the ECB, BOJ, or Bank of England in the event of credit constraints?

Furthermore, the rate of technological advancement of production techniques as well as goods and serviced traded has accelerated more than the ability to fill treasury coffers with shiny stuff. In the absence of sufficient shiny stuff, debt service and necessary discretionary spending on defense, infrastructure, and law enforcement - the essential services of government - would become increasingly burdensome.

How come the status quid pro has so much cachet? Perceived and actual malfeasance by financiers has prompted this reaction. A commodity currency, return to the gold standard in particular, would forestall repeats of recent events such as the subprime fiasco, the concomitant central bank bailouts, and the moral hazard precedent. What advantage does gold have in the 21st century that it lacked in the 20th?

In the good old days of gold, the preferred method of economic stimulus was war. If we lacked a commodity, and a weaker country had it, then we used to expropriate it by politics through other means. Though globalisation signals cut-throat, cost competition to some, the WTO, customs unions, and trade forums show that cooperation produces greater returns for all. Moreover, gold did not provide the stabilizing anchor during the industrial age. In the information age, a currency backed by gold will be held back by gold.

While all fiat currencies have failed throughout American history, commodity currency does not guarantee a strong currency. Price instability and inflation were the lag effects of the Hume gold transfer mechanism. As exports grew, the flows of gold into a country increased, the economy expanded, and strengthened the currency. Hence, its citizens could consume more imports. However, when the currency became so strong that the export market shunned the newly high prices, the economy would slide into recession. How is this an advantage?

Beyond circumstantial evidence and the fact that fiat currency has failed in the past, little substantiates that a gold standard to the dollar would provide a palliative to the imbalances of speculative bubbles, reckless borrowing and spending, and the ills of the current credit market. Moreover, without having sorted the extent of the present credit crisis, a return to the gold standard would be dangerous. Even if the US returned to the gold standard, how long could it manage it while maintaining a negative trade balance and a high propensity to import?

For all the purported stability, gold standard advocates seem to forget the currency runs, economic panics, and the social cleavages between debtors and creditors. The crucial question is what does a weak currency represent? High imports, high consumption, high public and consumer debt. If atavisitic Americans cling to dollar strength and supremacy, then consumers, firms, and government must learn what anyone trying to get fit already knows: lay off the sweets, especially the Kool-Aid.

In Praise of 'Shameless'

2008-03-21T20:34:00.001-04:00

During a trip to Australia in 2006, a friend of mine introduced me to the British television series Shameless. It quickly struck me as one of the best plotted, most entertaining television programs I had ever seen, and I have reviewed it since Sundance Channel began airing it in America. Though critics have lauded the show rightfully, I will use this space to expound on two possible reasons why the show has been successful.

First, the actors cast to play Frank's children do so without saccharine, cheeky predictability. Unburdened by cutesy artifice or trite caricature, the viewer can experience a depiction of what it may be like to grow up hard. Evocative, empathetic, their performances within the collective construct of the family or as the featured, individual vignette in a given episode do not command a response. Rather, the viewer can respond genuinely to impressions rooted in fact rather than ideas. As literature, the show does not make a deliberate point, but the performances allow the viewer to draw his own conclusions about psychology, morality, and society.

On the second score, Shameless takes place in Manchester on a lower class housing estate rife with petty crime, teenage pregnancy, and substance abuse. Recently, television audience preferences have leaned towards shows about the wealthy or the middle class. Despite the success of programs like Good Times, All in the Family, and Married with Children, quotidian working class travails do not have much appeal. As social commentary and as well crafted comedy, those programs did not shy away from story lines about existential struggle, a Marxist determination against a superstructure, or overcoming the circumstances of a tough life. Perhaps bourgeois sensibility does not want its entertainment to shock, but a cultural landscape devoid of artistic rendering of a multi-faceted society is more of the issue. Fictional content shows lose viewership to reality programming as well as non-television alternatives, and, hence are not as profitable to vet each season. Seemingly, animated series such as South Park, The Simpsons, and The Boondocks have picked up where their aforementioned forebears left off, but their thrust comes from using cartoons as effective satire to point out grotesqueness, to depict distortions, and to dispel taboos. NBC's My Name is Earl, though revolving around the exploits of a segment of the lower middle class population, seems to propagate stereotypes of poor, white Americans as buffoonish and ignorant.

Where others have failed, Shameless succeeds in intertwining some gravitas into its stories without taking itself too seriously. Subtle, witty, it neither glorifies living on state aid, nor does it beg its audience to pity the unfortunates. In the tradition of Hardy's Wessex or a Breughel canvas, the Chatsworth Estate is a landscape portrait of complexities, humor, and human pain. Cheers for its creator, producers, cast, and all affiliated with the program for accomplishing the difficult task of putting out a respectful treatment of unique, variegated lives. Cheers for courage in creativity.

Yid Moments

2008-03-11T16:42:00.000-04:00

In Grandpa's Fight an episode of Aaron McGruder's Boondocks, main character Huey Freeman considers the significance of his granfather beating up an even older man. He refers to the shame felt not only for himself but also for his people as a "nigger" moment. Seemingly, any minority, racial, religious, or sexual subgroup could point to an instance when the misbehavior of one of its members makes as big a statement about the group as it does about the individual resppnsiblke for the act. Enter the most gropingest governor this side of the Sierras, Elliot Spitzer, the man responsible for my recent yid moment.

Forget he cut his political figure by casting himself as a figure of probity. Who cares about this in the context of his career? Certainly, I feel bad for the women in his life, but, hey, the guy is the 21st century dirty Jew - cheating on his wife, doing so on the taxpayers' dime, then having the chutzpah althewhile to go after New York state legislators for misuse of state funds. This is not a Greek or Shakespearean tragedy. It is a sad day to be a Jew.

In my people's history, there have been lots of sad days, but we are only two generations removed from protective covenants, university admissions, the taboos of a whitebread, milquetoast America where direct involvement in politics was a sucker bet for minorities. However, though ethnic and racial groups assimilate into the national culture, though they enjoy greater legal protection of culture and expression than before, one slip up rewinds, even for a little while, the gains any one of those groups have made in the public eye. Any transgression by an unwhite or unChristian person has a compound effect. The peril lies in condemnation for the act itself, as well as associating such behavior to the group rather than the transgressor. This benighted thinking seems less prevelant in a politically correct society where the fear of repercussion for insensitivity mitigates the expression of what people really feel. Yet, it is equally insideous. Merely because no one hears back lash of the racist sort does not mean the underlying tension and prejudice does not exist. Even America has had institutional anti-Semitism, though not as violent, as overt, or as state sponsored as 'liberal' European nations. So, should Jews worry about it when one of their own has gone wild?

David Berkowitz killed lots of pretty white girls. No pogroms. Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, the Kristols and Norman Podhoretz were either architects or advocates of the ongoing Iraq War. 4000 American combat troops have died. Many others have suffered mental and physical trauma. No bookburnings, no Night of Broken Glass. Maybe the haters have lost their spine. Hence, worry might seem premature, but the moral of Malamud's The Fixer that Jews cannot afford to be 'unpolitical,' that eternal vigilance is the price of survival as well as liberty, should still merit attention.

However, the best way to work through this recent crisis of cultural faith might be the way Jews have coped for years: laugh. The man screwed up his family life. He ruined his political career. How is that funny? For starters, he paid for a hooker by wire. For a Princeton man, he sure is daft. Did he ever prosecute a hooker while he was an NYC DA? Did he believe he was the inspiration for Michael Moriarty's character in Law & Order? The man's name will forever be a punchline. At least, the joke will only be funny while late night television hosts deem it to be, fifteen minutes if we're lucky.

Put Me In, Coach!

2008-03-07T14:13:00.002-05:00

Though the Masters is still a month a way, few can dispute that the Ryder Cup will be the biggest event this year for competitive golf. Given the recent dominance by the European side, some have lamented that American golf is doomed. Not only does European supremacy indicate a nadir in American golf, but that only 21 of 64 contestants in the recent Match Play signify a dearth of elite American talent. Furthermore, according to the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR), Europe claims ten of the top thirty worldwide to America's eight. Only 33 of the top 100 in the OWGR are American born. Examining other metrics, one can see the Cassandras have overblown the demise of the game in America.

32 different American born players won 36 of 47 titles on the PGA Tour last year; 9 foreigners claimed the other eleven. Of the 125 players who finished 2007 fully exempt for 2008, 45 represent international flags. American winning percentage - 40%, foreigners - 20%. Pretty convincing metric. The US side dominated the President's Cup against an international team that had a pair of repeat winners on the 2007 PGA Tour (Vijay Singh, KJ Choi), Tiger beater Nick O'Hern, Aussie standouts Scott, Appleby, and Ogilvy as well as the South African quartet of Immelman, Sabbatini, Goosen and Els. Include Weir and Cabrera, and the resumes on this roster will pale the 2006 European Ryder Cup team members. The major tote board between those two sides favors the internationals 10 to a then 1; Padraig Harrington's Open victory at Carnoustie raised the Euro total to 2. Why, although its players win with greater efficiency and succeed in President's Cup matches, then, does the US have its back waxed both on home soil and abroad? A plausible answer is format.

The President's Cup has a four day format where players will play only one match three of four days. Also, playing once everyday allows a golfer to maintain the routine one is accustomed to playing full field events. Also, the first two team match days require all to play; only on the third day with morning and afternoon team matches, five in each session, will players sit out. Ryder Cup play is crammed into three days where two a days for the first two days of competition are de rigeur for the best players. With only four matches in morning and afternoon sessions, captains must choose the players wisely. Putting the best pairings together is one of the most scrutinized combinatorics problems. Though European Captain Mark James has been villified for front loading the 1999 Matches with his best players, trying to build an insurmountable lead prior to the singles match day makes a lot of sense. Fatigue did set in eventually, even with young and fit stars like Sergio Garcia and Jesper Parnevik. However, the world's best are elite athletes that ought to suck it up and deal for the pride and honor of representing their homelands. So what other explanation is there for poor results? What might Captain Azinger do differently, especially against a thinker and manager like counterpart Nick Faldo? Math and chemistry.

American captains have not distinguished themselves in optimizing the talent on American teams. Amendments to the selection process ought to help. Cuts made and money earned are the mitigating criteria now. Top ten finishes mean less when the money has become so good that players cherry pick their venues. Playing where one has had past success helps keep up confidence, and that is the key to putting together a streak of high earnings weeks. Making the Ryder Cup team is indeed an honor to all PGA Tour players, and those who can poise themselves to do so will play a schedule to maximize the chance of earning a spot. Also, four captain's selections make playing one's way onto the team more of a meritocracy. Moreover, it allows the captain to pick either players whose games suit the venue or those who would complement one of the eight in the team format matches if no suitable partner exists within the ranks of those eight players. Many other factors determine whom Captain Azinger will eventually select, and the process is not so formulaic. Few things merit consideration. First, the long layout suits bombers. In 2000, the year Titleist introduced the seamed Pro-V1, and manufacturers built thin faced titanium drivers, three of the four longest on tour that year tore up Valhalla. Though short knockers like Bob May and Scott Dunlap had good tournaments there, they were not so short statistically speaking. Both ranked within the top half of driving distance. Both finished with average distances higher than the mean for all players ranked in that category. Second, Tiger Woods will play at a venue where he has won before. Hence it is less urgent to find a suitable partner for the better ball sessions. His score alone ought to be good enough to compete against whomever Europe has pitted against him. However, finding the right complement to play alongside Woods in foursomes remains somewhat vexing. He has won with Furyk, Love and O'Meara. The three share the common denominator of driving accuracy. Allowing Woods' fine iron play to take over is essential in the alternate shot format. Next, choosing the ironmen, those playing in all five match sessions, is critical. In 2006, Cink, Mickelson, Woods, and Furyk all played five matches and earned eight of 20 possible points. Having the four best players play the most makes sense on the surface, but the golf course may not favor them necessarily. Moreover, no matter what the stakes, playing the same course five times in three days might become boring. The captain should have the final decision over who plays, but having some feedback from the squad may be no bad thing. Finding out who likes the golf course ought to help determine the roster for each session. Given Phil Mickelson's parlous performance in foursomes, maybe he ought to sit out those frames. Also, finding compatible games rather than compatible players is the basis for chemistry rather than the popular perception of camaraderie. To reiterate, other competitive factors such as likely opposition, course conditions, and whose game is sharpest hold greater weight come matchtime, but sorting who will play with whom in advance, much like putting together penalty killing, scoring, or checking lines together in hockey, lessens the effect of externalities on the margin.

To conclude, though the points race will evolve over the course of the year, here is a list, in no particular order, of some young players (all are within the top 50 of the 3/10/08 points standings) who, if they do not make the squad by dint of performance, certainly merit consideration as one of the four captain's picks:

Hunter Mahan
Jeff Quinney
Brandt Snedeker
Troy Matteson
John Mallinger
D.J. Trahan
Bubba Watson
Steve Marino
Dustin Johnson
Anthony Kim
Lucas Glover
Sean O'Hair
Nick Watney

By the look of it, that roster (whom to omit will make a good barroom debate) may have enough firepower to take down Europe. So much for the decline of American golf.

3 Wishes

2008-03-05T11:23:00.000-05:00

As an institution, the legislative branch has accomplished little of distinction recently. Consequently, the press rightly dubbed it a "do nothing" entity during the session preceding this one. Despite the effort of House Speaker Pelosi to dispel this notion over the first hundred days of the present session, little has changed. During the first six years of the Bush administration, the Republican party controlled the House, and Vice President Cheney held the tie breaking vote in the Senate. Even after Democrats wrested a majority in the 2006 midterm election, divided government, which provided adequate impetus for clash and compromise during the Reagan and Clinton years, still seems supine even up against an unpopular lame duck. As public attention focuses on presidential primaries, Congress has vetted little noteworthy legislation. So perhaps the explanation for passivity within the legislature may have a structural basis.

Since the catchy political idea of the day seems to be change, especially espoused by Democratic presidential hopefuls - both of which are senators, why have their fellow Democrats not seized upon the opportunity to get a head start? They could even take a cue from presumptive Republican nominee McCain whose name has been on the byline of several significant bills. However, the relative merits and drawbacks of McCain sponsored bills are not the issues. Rather, why have legislators resigned themselves to a seeming wait and see approach? Despite wielding a veto, President Bush lacks the political capital to oppose initiatives which are popular (SCHIP). Despite a shelf life of less than a year, this Congress can exact some vengeance on an administration which ran roughshod over the legislature and claimed more power for the executive branch in the process. It has a chance to win back some of the turf it has lost. In a turn of odd poetic justice, it can force the hand of the same man which has forced its hand for the past seven years. Congress can finally play some offense, yet, oddly, it seems intent on running down the clock.

Pervasive, palpable, indiscreet, this tactic is highly disingenuous to the public. In a grander strategic context, it still does not make sense. Congress has governed itself poorly. Why is the market for political ideas failing? There are three faults within the structure of modern legislature: districting, the absence of 'no-compete' moratoria for lawmakers becoming lobbyists upon their exit from office, and, as noted previously in this space, earmarking. Start with the latter:

- Earmarking is rampant. It has replaced caucus and debate as the vogue, efficient means of accumulating votes to pass a bit of legislation. The economic repercussions are grave as this system has placed price tags on Congressional votes. As an example of market failure, it should be abolished, since even doling out millions in pork is insufficient incentive to write purposeful laws.

- Second, congressmen joining the cadres of K Street immediately after retirement or losing an election gives those exiting the public sphere prolonged, ex officio access to government. Not only is this downright un-American, it is also very French. In legally acceptable employment contracts, major corporations prohibit workers from joining competitors unless a minimum time interval elapses. Competition and intellectual property concerns override any other considerations. There is no reason why Congress ought not to have similar 'non-compete' rules governing its former members. There are myriad opportunities in the private sector for lawmakers who have had enough of a public sector salary and want to earn more. Insider status allows them to influence debate unfairly. Born of the Progressive period, lobbying is a good thing, but it fails when a newly forming, incestuous political class monopolizes access to government.

-Lastly and most importantly, Congress ought not to have authority to determine the geographic boundaries of voting districts. Gerrymandering is a political relic worthy of relegation. On the state level, voters disgusted by the entrenchment of 'safe' seats for a particular party have considered other means to mark voting districts. A popular remedy has involved asking committees of retired judges to set boundaries so that districts look less like Rohrshack ink blots. The Supreme Court ought not to be bothered with this task. Rather, the Census Bureau has the best factual basis of any part of the federal government to determine districts. Moreover, the Census Bureau aggregates statistics essential for forecasting budgets and allocating resources. If the Census Bureau seems too unconstitutional a choice, then the power should lie with the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which is an arm of Congress.

The status quo has too many leakages. After establishing an uncompetitive, 'safe' seat for his home district, an outgoing congressman can join a lobby firm, donate to the campaign of his chosen successor, then, after watching his fair haired boy win, still influence legislation, political discourse, and resource allocation to his district and clients while earning a private sector wage. Bullshit. Total bullshit. Rather than seize back some of the balance lost over the past seven years, Congress has waged a stealth campaign of expanding its powers while avoiding confrontation with the executive, the real bully who still wins political street fights. Co-opting the political, constitutional process is a horrible trend. Doing so at the expense of the public it ought to represent is reprehensible. Between doing nothing and flagrant cheating, the public pays the price of an unquantifiable, though clear cost.

West Coast Eye Candy

2008-03-04T15:49:00.001-05:00

Here are a few snapshots from the 2008 PGA Tour West Coast Swing. The really good ones were taken by John Rathouz. I ought to have a link to more of his pictures soon. Enjoy.

a. Top left: Fred Couples, #16 TPC Scottsdale. Photo by John Rathouz

b. Top right: Johnson Wagner, Torrey Pines. Photo by John Rathouz

c. 2nd row left: #10 Riviera Country Club (black and white). Photo by John Rathouz

d. 2nd row right: Andrew Buckle, #4 Spyglass Hill

e. Bottom left: View of #18 Green Pebble Beach

Omniscience at 17

2008-02-21T18:53:00.000-05:00

During my recent stay in Los Angeles, I had a rather LA-type day when I watched two films, one of which was a preview. Both Juno and Charlie Bartlett, watched in the span of eleven hours, had teenage protagonists who came off too cool and stylized for a former student of literature, one well-heeled in suspending disbelief and plunging face first into fictitious worlds. Juno and Charlie attribute their copious charm to their liminality. Though both are still biologically adolescent, they encounter challenges - unintentional in the case of Juno, deliberate on the part of Charlie - which are the province of adults. They are both on the verge of maturity, the fine line where they are simultaneously optimistic, yet keenly skeptical of all the right things. As fun as each character is, artifice comes to the fore, and the endearing behavioral flaws, acting as both catalysts and centripetal forces propelling the film, seem lost amidst their evolutionary personae. Juno's sexual curiosity and childlike love for ineffectual Paulie Bleeker and Charlie's innate proclivity towards criminality function for a filmic end, and somehow seem static as reference points rather than good bases from which to evolve even within comic context. They are both plainly on the cusp of moving towards adulthood with the decisions they must make, but their choices on profound matters feel disingenuous. They seem guided by a stale, rational morality for Juno and hypergentility for Charlie. Though neither film is the first to suggest that a child shall lead, each thematically proffers the notion that society, institutions, and adults have made a royal hash of addressing the respective issues of reproductive health and mental health of teenagers. Hence, the logic asks, why not give the kids a shot? Though age or inexperience may disqualify Juno or Charlie from making a good choice, sensibility triumphs, but to the point where each of their voices become Messianic. Both subjects are 'big deals,' and available, popular solutions have not and do not work. Each character attempts to square these circles by bringing a brand of wit and perspective that, at their ambitious best, may change perception and attitudes, and, at worst, makes the viewer chuckle from carefully crafted dialogue. However fun and diverting these films were, the coolness overwhelms the substantial appeal of each character's initial dilemma. It is difficult to be true to one's self while simultaneously trying to find that self, and believing that struggle is all the more difficult when seemingly both Juno and Charlie act as they have all the answers.

When told that Juno was funded by pro-life producers, I chose to ignore a few artistic points about the movie I wanted to raise. I have not been able to rid entirely this knowledge in assessing the artistic facets of the film. Knowing that I could only read the movie through this particular lens, I will move onto two lingering questions concerning Charlie Bartlett: First, why was there no character portrayal of Charlie's father, incarcerated for tax evasion, as the film revealed? Second, why is there an implied connection between being very rich and being devoid of pettiness? Regarding the latter, could Charlie have been middle class or even poor? For the structure of the film, probably not. Poor kids do not have access to script-happy shrinks. However, suggesting devil-may-care optimism is beyond the ken of anyone but the wealthy is a bold artistic choice. Society seems to find upper class ne'er do wells harmless. After all, they do not collect from the public dole or commit violent crime. Like Bertie Wooster or the Monty Python twits competing to disrobe a mannequin, Charlie and his mom are the essence of Fitzgerald's dichotomy between the rich and the rest. Their preoccupations are neither of social stasis nor upward mobility. They merely exist, and, despite a rather un-ascetic existence, they seem better poised to keep a zen-like, kind, gentle perspective, a spiritual inability to cause any sort of harm. Though they act in self-interest, that has no knock-on effects to society. For the narrative, it works until the viewer finds out Charlie's father is in prison for tax evasion. This small fact anchors the narrative to societal reality. It hints at Balzac's aphorism where behind every great fortune is a crime. Amassing great wealth is difficult, and even the cleanest money is never truly pure. Yet, despite his father being in jail, Charlie remains positive without an assumed, concomitant naivete. Why is this so, especially in light of the first question? Bartlett senior is nothing more than an oil portrait in the dining room. The other significant paternal figure, played well by Robert Downey, Jr., is a mess as he struggles in his dual role as principal of Charlie's school and father of Charlie's love interest. Furthermore, auxiliary adult males such as psychiatrists, a policeman, a butler, and superintendent are irresponsible, buffoonish or blank. The film prepossesses an overt tension over paternalism: it is either absent or irrelevant. Against the disruption to the order in this fictive world, the paternal issue is never put to rest. Charlie eventually acquiesces to visit his jailbird dad, but the scene is omitted. Downey's character returns to his rightful place as teacher rather than administrator, but where paternal responsibility failed and that it may be resolved is never addressed. Granted the film is a comedy, it still plays the lighter, frivolous aspects off the pain of shame, loss, addiction, and incompetence. In removing Bartlett senior from the action and relegating Downey's character to a melancholy fool, the writer and director disembody the supposed cause responsible for the collective malaise of the young generation, and hence make even a hint of resolution unfeasible. Most of all, by never seeing his father and witnessing his pill-pooping mother, portrayed brilliantly by Hope Davis, Charlie appears less human, for his virtues seem almost accidental. Optimism is not spontaneous, and even if it comes naturally, still needs to be fostered. Looking at the bright side of things is hard, for even Charlie obscures his father's story for as long as he can. Tellingly, he comes clean about it to his girlfriend when he has a shot to get laid. Despite his faultless optimism, generosity towards and concern for his schoolmates, Charlie's character is still bound by his station. Why and how he got there are essential to the choices he makes, and unfortunately, those questions remain unaddressed. Too bad, for the commentary and narrative pay the price.

Aesop's Bat

2008-01-25T22:17:00.000-05:00

Over the summer, I read an Op-Ed piece by David Brooks in the New York Times which stuck with me. I have posted the link to it above. Also, I include a link to Michele Lamont's The Dignity of Working Men, which provides the intellectual basis for the piece. Though the anecdotal portion of the piece alternates between fawning and respect, the analysis distills some interesting ideas about how moral priorities supercede economic and social factors in framing the complexities of class division as well as a hypothetical, but strong link between morality and success of populist politics. So, rather than speculate at what the unifying principle may be until I read Lamont's opus, I ask where does caddying fit into this construct and nomenclature? Caddying certainly has its share of mythology, romance, the possibility of dying with one's boots on while trying to make a big score. What is the underlying ethos of chasing a little white ball across fields, state lines, continents?

Caddying is a paradoxical bind. The quotidien aspects of preparing to win a golf tournament include checking yardages, adding information which is not in the yardage book (the only aid allowed during competition), and observing course and weather conditions. Caddies have total autonomy as to how much or little effort they expend in addition to practice rounds, practice sessions, and competitiive play. A lot depends on what an individual player demands. Some like extra numbers. Others need help on the greens, so spending time levelling greens or rolling balls to determine how putts break to certain hole locations is a more optimal use of one's time. Yet despite the autonomy one has in preparing, one ties his fortunes inextricably to player performance. Yes, cadddies earn a salary, but most revenue comes from performance based bonuses. Some caddies who work very hard during the week may not be proportionately rewarded financially because their players may struggle. So, like commercial fishing or mechanics on the NASCAR circuit or even derivatives traders, they are chasing the maximum amount of yield out of their investments, and rates of return result from luck as much as they do from skill sometimes. It seems reward often comes from not taking anything off the table rather than necessarily bringing something to the table. So is the nature of the job 'honest' the way farming or trucking or factory work are? Carrying the bag is hard physical toil; doing so under the pressure of tournament conditions is increasingly stressful. But much of that stress comes from that bind of tying one's fortune to someone else's results. It is an easy hard job from a physical standpoint. Unlike factory work, firefighting, or commercial fishing, caddying has few fatal occupational hazards.

So, the profession is a bit of a hybrid, where the most gains come by virtue of someone else's effort, yet the basic tasks and duties seem to square with the satisfying aspects of an honest day's labor. Within the construct of Brooks' piece, caddying does not fit into either the blue or white collar world. Thus, its relative respectability or worth as a profession is rather undeterminate. Perhaps its status as an unclassified anomoly is what makes it so attractive to those who have gotten a bit of grass in the shoes.

In Memoriam: Steve Duplantis

2008-01-23T14:18:00.002-05:00

Here is the PGA Tour web site story of Steve's death. I invite anyone to share in remembering a fraught, unordinary, and full life.

In the film Fight Club, the characters played by Brad Pitt and Edward Norton hopped on an NYC bus and observed an underwear advertisement. Brad Pitt's character proclaimed, "Self-improvement is masturbation. Self destruction is the answer." Angsty, post-modern men go out of their way to search for an absent existential struggle. An easy life is unfulfilling, and easy means boring. When conforming to societal norms and expectations, having trouble find you is not an issue. However, life confronts seekers of meaning with a tough paradox to accept: the necessity of destroying the self created complicitly with the world and refashion it through permanent rebellion.

I knew as much about Steve from our acquaintance as I did from stories of his reputation. However, I looked forward to the rare, few occasions I would see him every year. From what I knew and observed of Steve Duplantis, his central conflict was also between pragmatic duties - responsibilities of parenthood, working in high stakes competitive sport - and the thrills of pain through pleasure. He ran simultaneous races, one to the top and one to the bottom. Some burned the candle at both ends, but few have the balls to burn two candles - one from the right end, one from the wrong end - to see which one will the flame will consume first. Unlike the filmic ego-splitting between the real and actualized selves of the two Tyler Durdens, Steve's duality was more prosaic. "Only good when you're in the hunt," was one way I heard him described. "You take a big chance with a whiff, but you have to. What if you're playing good?" is another strange compliment to his abilities. "Stevie, top 5 caddie out here. No question." was probably the best and most accurate. His presence was hugely beneficial. His absence was costly. Professionally, he took chances other caddies would never consider in their wildest dreams.

The circumstances of his death are not shocking to anyone initiated to his lifestyle and tastes, but the suitability of his logical end does not make it any less sad. For all his faults, he possessed courage and spirit. He tempted Fates in ways those around him found confusing and counter intuitive. A contemporary Pechorin, he turned much he touched to gold. Within his niche, in his inimitable way, his actions still had purpose, a point. My condolences to his family, his intimate friends, and, above all, his little girl. May she have inherited his special type of will. In pace requiescat.

And the #1 reason for revoking MLB anti-trust exemption is...

2008-01-15T18:03:00.000-05:00

Congress can use its time better, especially during a war and potential economic downturn. No one disputes some of the relevant issues of the MLB steroid scandal - the role of organized labor in protecting its members, the regulation of the monopoly power of a multi-billion dollar league, and ethical and health repercussions on society. However, Congressional inquiry only partially addresses the cyclical symptom rather than the pathology of a structural deficiency. All the while, this is the latest way in which legislators have ducked responsibility to their constituents. Evasion, tangents, and nuance often characterize tactical approaches to political discourse, but this present version makes any of its predecessors look somewhat amateurish. The term 'do nothing Congress' is on the verge of being overused. I am not the most well informed person in the world, but I cannot recall the last significant legislative accomplishment. Both the depth and breadth of the declining number of bills being mooted is alarming. More may not necessarily be better, and no one advocates talking merely for its own sake, but it is specious to think that politicians have become ultra-efficient at debating issues and reconciling policy with law. Moreover, taking time away from what many consider doing nothing already to pretend to do something requires a lot of nerve. Rather strange that Congress shows some initiative in investigating shady practices of a fraction of 1% of the people in baseball. The whole exercise and the issues addressed have negligible social benefit when measured against anything this committee could otherwise do. The dodges and weaves away from pressing issues during war, during an election year, are embarrassing, and they could not have come at a worse time as President Bush tries to make a compelling case for adopting democracy. Tough sell if this is the best democracy has to offer.

21st century laissez-faire

2008-01-13T14:56:00.001-05:00

The efficacy of economic regulation relates to why it was written. In the aftermath of scandal, policy and law are intrinsically reactive and extreme. Though rare, such regulation poses downside risk in an open economy. In America, by no means can business exercise total free will, but markets are allowed to mature of their own accord. Government and courts ought to facilitate efficient markets rather than intervene unless there are compelling competitive grounds, and not all regulation is bad. Setting recognized, predictable standards for regulation and legal protection attracts capital. Perhaps an advantage to the Bretton Woods agreement was that the country backing the reserve currency owed it to the world to maintain impeccable credentials for probity. If dodgy practices occurred, then the knock-on effects on the world economy would have been large. Any sharp rise in U.S. interest rates or capital flight might have triggered economic collapses in countries who borrowed from the World Bank. I am not advocating a formal return to this system, but it left a legacy: the dollar remains in the eyes of many the global standard even if its status is de facto and not de jure. Yet, recent regulation has provided rather short term benefit. Sarbanes-Oxley did much to restore faith in public markets after scandals. However, its corollary effect sparked a boom in private equity investment as companies sought private finance rather than complying with onerous filing protocols. Private equity deals relied greatly on leverage facilitated by cheap credit. By cutting interest rates, the fed eased the pain of recession brought on from the puncture of the dot-com bubble. In addition to the cyclical shifts in corporate organization, equity research changed also as investment banks began shifting away from in-house analysts after the Quattrone fiasco at CSFB. Luckily, the presidential election has distracted lawmakers somewhat from proffering a knee-jerk, slapdash bill in the aftermath of the end of the recent housing bubble, which ironically sprung from the monetary easing used to stave off any deep effects from the previous bubble. This time, legislation would affect ratings agencies breaching ethical rules of advising firms whose equity and debt they rated on what firms could do to receive a desirable rating, and thus receive favorable terms form their creditors. Despite great uncertainty over the extent of the credit crunch, bank exposure to sub-prime mortgage-backed securities, and what role did ratings agencies play, three truths emerge. One, ratings agencies cannot compromise objectivity in the same ways auditors cannot. Independent risk assessment is as important as accurate account statement – the two are inexorably linked to efficient results. If accounts are dodgy, than the price signals to the market will be based on a falsehood. Hence, the market would be inefficient. Second, because the severity of mortgage market is yet unknown, the distraction of a federal election is a good thing. Instead of hasty, incompletely thought out bills, and pressure on an ill-prepared Congress to act, the SEC,, Treasury department, Justice Department anti-trust division, and bank regulators can do their parts in sorting through the scale of the mess first, and only then prosecuting any crimes which may have been committed. Third, though financial markets have become more competitive since the repeal of arcane laws such as Glass-Steagall, it is false to conclude that efficiency is feasible absent regulation. Rather, correcting for this market failure lies in stricter rules separating ratings agencies and their clients, an explicit, accepted method of pricing securities based on mathematical models, and, most importantly, funding regulatory agencies to enforce the rules and monitor market activity for irregularities. “The mission of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation,” according to the SEC website. Knowing how and what type of securities are being issued certainly falls under these auspices. Fifty years ago, stout regulatory mechanisms attracted investors to American stocks and bonds because of high levels of market predictability. Recent volatility strengthens the case for addressing these structural failings which limit the competitive advantage of sound institutions.

Coolest name ever

2008-01-09T12:11:00.000-05:00

Tokyo Sexwale. Tokyo is a nickname. The surname is probably not pronounced phonetically. Truthfully, the comic potential is limited and sophomoric. The man is a rising political star who suffered dual cruelties of lock up and exile. By choosing him party leader, the African National Congress can both maintain its link to Nelson Mandela as well as put forth a moderate, less controversial figure in the top spot. But, on the other hand, saying the name aloud according to anglophone pronunication would doubtless elicit a few titters, and not just in news rooms. Some words and concepts have a way of cutting through the white noise of conversation for certain people. The image of several absurd possibilities - a Japanese dildo, a plus-sized hooker residing in Shinagawa, a horny sumo - spark curiosity. But wait, he realistically can become the next president of the most prosperous and influential sub-Saharan African nation. If I were a head of state, I would do anything to be the first to invite him on a visit. Like Balzac, his name has a dual entendre, but it commingles geography, sex, and large, sea dwelling mammals. But enough deconstruction. Say it loud, say it proud, say it with a straight face.

Doing what's been done, but better...

2008-01-05T19:32:00.000-05:00

The first days of a new year serve as a fashionable occasion to offer predictions or start year long pools. My friends ask my input about whom to pick, and I help them when I can. I don't have all the answers, and barring the top 50 players in the world, past performance is never the most accurate indicator of future results. Injury, personal crises, boredom, and complacency are a few hurdles that are part of the chase, and, if overcoming them were easy, then the chase would not be nearly as thrilling or lucrative. Conversely, personal joy, learning a new shot, improved technique, increasing stamina or clubhead speed all can elevate the status of someone who has struggled in his career thus far. Ask me for a prediction, and it will doubtless be biased by my whom I have seen live and under the gun. Some have tremendous wow factor, others impressed me with their grit or course management. The proliferation of media and reportage does not leave too many secrets too well kept, but I will give it a shot. Here is a quick list in no particular order of not so obvious names of whom to watch, where they play, and why:

1. Aron Price (Nationwide) - When I saw him at first stage in 2005, He and fellow Aussie Matt Jones (earned PGA Tour card via Nationwide Money List) had the two best golf swings of any player there by all objective measures. Strong iron player with good fire.
2. Ryuji Imada (PGA) – One of the best short games on Tour. He will win this year.
3. John Mallinger (PGA) – Gestalt golf game – well rounded without deficiency. Simple golf swing worth emulating.
4. Jin Park (PGA) – Plain and simple, he plays with balls. On Tour, that goes a long way.
5. Martin Laird (PGA) - Some guys hit it long, he hits it hard. Really hard.
6. Chris Stroud (PGA) – Played Tour last year with a good finish in New Orleans. Best practice habits of any young American player I ever saw.
7. John Merrick (PGA) – Long, accurate driver. Brilliant iron player. Beautiful putting stroke. Looks the part.
8. Garret Osborn (Nationwide) – Attempted to qualify for Open Championship last year as an amateur. Attempted in Europe. Wants the big stage.
9. Thomas Aiken (Europe) – Turned pro at 18. Absolutely kills it.
10. Garth Mulroy (Nationwide) – Big hitter. Birdie machine. Ought to get a Tour card this year.

2008-01-02T14:04:00.000-05:00

Tennis and golf are frequently associated with a leisurely bourgeoisie. Yet, the two sports inexorably linked to a country club class differ within fictional and filmic representations. Forgetting trite, convenient sport-as-life metaphors, tennis seems to have an advantage (pardon the pun) in which works have presented the game. Infinite Jest, a novel by David Foster Wallace, Matchpoint, a film by Woody Allen and The Squid and the Whale, a film written and directed by Noah Baumbach are recent examples where authors portray tennis prominently in a work which can be considered good art. I will exclude Henry V because it is a history. The gift of tennis balls by the Dauphin really did precipitate the Battle of Agincourt. Moreover, unlike other students of English Literature, I begrudgingly accept Shakespeare rather than accept him unquestionably. There is no ‘great work’ which prominently features the game of physical golf. There may not even be a mention of golf in ‘good literature’ barring perhaps Vladimir Nabokov’s, Pale Fire, in which characters play ‘word golf,’ where one word is transformed into another by iterations of individual letter substitution. Like in actual golf, the lowest score, measured in steps (strokes), wins, and, tangentially, the CAT-DOG transformation, cited in Wikipedia as one of the longest, could be solved in three steps: CAT-COT-COG-DOG. P.G. Wodehouse, an avid golfer and a prolific, witty, and cogent writer, wrote much about the gentleman’s game. Writing in a humorous tone, he set a precedent for depicting golf and the type of people who played it as things not to be taken too seriously by either reader or participant. In that, having kept golf out of a serious context has been a good thing. No surprise that some of the most popular and possibly best movies about the game are comedies: Caddieshack and Dead Solid Perfect. Popular books include light hearted treatments of the game. Biographical renderings by John Daly and Rick Reilly are enjoyed en masse. However, as appealing as fictionalized humor pieces are, serious, documentary, non-fiction works – Men on the Bag by John Feinstein or Q-School Confidential by David Gould – have as much cachet for the reading public. Of course, instructional literature sought by die-hard enthusiasts focused on improving also sell. The Greatest Game Ever Played was a biopic of sorts. The Legend of Bagger Vance was rubbish. So these facts beg the questions: is it even possible to write a fictional novel or film script in which golf features prominently without falling back into cliché as well as have it end up as objectively good literature and not be primarily comic? There is certainly scope, but should it even be attempted?

Ears and assholes

2007-12-21T13:42:00.000-05:00

The Office of Management and Budget website, www.earmarks.omb.gov, defines earmarks as, “funds provided by the Congress for projects or programs where the congressional direction (in bill or report language) circumvents the merit-based or competitive allocation process, or specifies the location or recipient, or otherwise curtails the ability of the Executive Branch to properly manage funds.” In defense of earmarking, a legislative tactic Democrat and Republican parties employed, they were part of broader best response strategies. Yet, relying on them as a preferred method of enacting legislature damages the health of the democratic process. If used uniquely, why should legislators even bother to compromise or even write a unifying and unified bill if granting earmarks effectively buys votes? Let’s have a look at how earmarking spiraled from the start of the Bush presidency. When Republicans controlled the legislature even prior to 9/11 and the increased emphasis on defense spending it brought, cheerleading, touting, and unquestioning rubber stamping of executive spending initiatives was commonplace as evident in No Child Left Behind, faith-based agencies, and missile defenses. President Bush returned the favor for towing the administration line by signing big sending bills full of pork into law. Though bent on a DeLayan vision of perpetual and untrammeled control, the Republicans lacked a super majority to quash a filibuster on contentious issues or confirmations. Moreover, the Republicans lost the moral high ground on matters of fiscal probity and austerity in this watered down corrupt bargain; Republican legislators had to tacitly accept the same play used by their counterparts. After the 2006 mid-term elections, Democrats, slighted and skeptical of the ability of the Executive to properly managed funds, continued to use this tactic. The result has been short of scandal only because earmarking is technically legal under legislative procedure. That it is a remedy of seeming first resort, a proactive rather than an all else fails alternative, is very alarming. Rampant and profligate abuse of a legal, yet dubious method of obtaining funding has precipitated in a race to the bottom. In another defense of earmarking, it has made the legislative process more transparent and efficient, albeit perversely. Using earmarks as a first option has exposed the motives of Congressmen with respect to which lobbyists have their ears. The voter can see where the money goes and why much more quickly than if the proposed spending were subjected to the rigor of traditional testing – caucusing and compromise. However, that is little consolation and benefit when compared to the elimination of any incentive for legislators to do any work - small wonder at the ‘do-nothing’ appellation. What made earmarking such an attractive first option rather than traditional deal-making and simultaneously eliminated the impetus for clash? The most plausible cyclical explanation has to with the re-branding of the Executive branch of government and the true legacy of the Bush presidency. Gambling on Democratic quiescence (likely), the administration ran roughshod over an opposition still smarting from the 2000 election. Bush could have dismissed any partisan opposition to his agenda as non-cooperative, spiteful, and sore for at least a little while. 9/11 extended this grace period. However, the administration reaped the whirlwind of polarization strategies. Having to cope with an assertive and incompetent administration hamstrung the Democrats, keen on avoiding a fight for fear of having motives questioned and the corollary fight that such impugning would bring. By using earmarks for their ‘neglected’ projects, they seemed content to wave a pistol every time someone dared them to put up their dukes. The real shame of the earmarking scandal is not in losing a fight but rather the opposition took a lazy coward’s way out. However, when a Democrat will occupy the Oval Office eventually, he can use the same advantages the present administration has conferred onto the office. Perhaps the prospect that one of them could be that figure adequately deters legislators from curtailing some privileges and powers the executive co-opted. In the end, what makes earmarking so indefensible is the damage they inflict on the long term health of a democracy. To think politicians of an earlier time were above reproach is foolishly incorrect nostalgia, but continued dependence on earmarks as the favored way of political horse-trading brings the Republic ever closer to outright sale of votes. Further reasoning of structural flaws shows the following: without less vague language regarding use of earmarks, the indolent culture of the status quo will persist at least until legislators fulfill their constitutional duty of raising their own pay.

You do what? For how much?

2007-12-20T14:57:00.002-05:00

While on the subject of anomalous structures of professional sports leagues, let us look at the PGA Tour. As a non-profit organization, the Tour has endowed millions of dollars to many worthy causes - rather laudable accomplishments. As posted on its website, “PGA TOUR Commissioner Tim Finchem today announced a new TOUR-record, annual-charitable-giving contribution of approximately $123 million, surpassing last year's previous record of $114 million.” Further, the site states, “The PGA TOUR is a tax-exempt membership organization of professional golfers.” Also, the Tour states on its website, “The mission of the PGA TOUR is to expand domestically and internationally to substantially increase player financial benefits while maintaining its commitment to the integrity of the game. In addition to providing competitive opportunities for its membership, PGA TOUR events also generate revenue for charitable causes in their communities.” Finchem’s latest pay packet is worth $4.5 million annually, so is he worth it? Prior to considering the direction of the Tour and the consequences such a future would have on its mission, players, charities and role cultivating the game of golf, one must consider the context of Finchem through the lens of the Tiger Woods effect. Using back of the envelope calculation, it is difficult to measure the Tiger Woods effect relative to growth rates and scale of purse sizes, charitable contribution and sponsorship opportunities. Comparative static and marginal analyses of television ratings of events in which Woods played versus the Tiger-less tournaments show a great disparity. It would be interesting to apply regression studies of trend growth in golf had Tiger Woods never existed to see how much impact he has had. One clear and true conclusion: Tiger’s presence has visibly and palpably made the Tour more marketable. However, because the Tiger era coincides with Finchem’s auspices of operations, and hence the two are not mutually exclusive, the causal relationship of Finchem’s stewardship to the level of giving warrants consideration. Failure during a period of prosperity is rare. Finchem is no dummy, either, for his academic and professional credentials are rather estimable. Excluding the 4 Major championships, 4 WGC events, there were 38 events the PGA Tour uniquely sanctioned in 2007. Since Tiger plays the aforementioned eight and eight other times, Finchem and his staff must somehow convince thirty groups of sponsors to fund a multi-million dollar purse. Though other bankable commodities play the Tour, only Woods is undeniably special commercially. Given such constraints, Finchem has performed admirably in increasing the opportunity set of total tournaments thereby enabling players to play more as well as creating more channels for financial flows eventually going to charity. However, using the following formula, $4.5M seems like a lot of money for staying out of the way while the bandwagon effect of sponsors queued for the possibility to land Tiger.Finchem’s salary is 3.7% of total funds disbursed to charity. Moreover, the mean per tournament, when dividing total funds raised by 38 tournaments, is $3,236,842. This strips out eight of the marquee events where Tiger would definitely pitch. Including them in the mix would lower the mean per tournament. Finchem could give away that much of his salary and still be paid 7 figures. Furthermore, Finchem earns, using 38 as the divisor, $118,421 per tournament. Given the scale and purpose of resource allocation, the compensation does not measure well against basic estimates of ethical or economic fairness. Though Finchem does indeed merit a high salary due to the prestige, power, and publicity of the post, he risks the long term health of the Tour in the post-Tiger era. Partly due to its 501(c6) tax-exempt status, Finchem is free to propose his own pay scale pending approval of the PGA Tour Policy Board comprised of executive officers and player committee members. The office of commissioner has adequate incentive to maintain the status quo. Other non-profit organizations do spend much donated money on administrative costs, so Finchem does not behave differently when measured against other similarly structured groups. But as a firm strives to maximize profit, a non-profit outfit ought to seek to optimize the benefit, often measured in money, to society. Without showing the value added in terms of social benefit, Finchem is unjustified in paying himself so much money. Would so many sponsorship and enrichment opportunities been fully exploited had it not been for Finchem? An account is necessary to determine definitively. Insofar as Finchem is accountable to the Policy Board that approves his salary, what incentive does the board have of ratifying his salary? Or, what motives do the players have of not revolting and turning the Tour structure on its ear? Mo’ money. A generous pension fund could not be administered and yield such returns, let alone be funded to its extant levels, through a taxable entity or corporation. As the vested interests have become more entrenched, opacity and minimal compliance are the norm and will continue as such until the market dries up. As long as the Tour acts in ways which conform to public standards of taste and acceptability, Finchem will escape criticism. Since too many grosser injustices demand more attention from regulators and consumers, Finchem will continue to capitalize - regulatory arbitrage of a sort – in a culture accustomed to mismanagement where not failing during prosperity is a sufficient criterion for commanding top pay.

Godammit, George!

2007-12-14T12:04:00.000-05:00

George Mitchell ought to be ashamed. Having had accepted the mantle of auditor of drug abuse in baseball, the venerable elder statesman brought the gravitas and credibility of a conciliatory agent. Accomplishments on his resume include chairmanships of Walt Disney and DLA Piper, a global law firm. Politically, as a popular senator from Maine, he served as chairman of peace talks in Northern Ireland which led to the Good Friday Accords of 1998. He also authored a 2001 report about possible conditions necessary for cessation of Palestinian-Israeli violent conflict. Publicly perceived as a voice of reason, his assistance to Al Gore during the Florida recount of 2000 gave Gore’s claims an intellectual underpinning. Arguably, he could be one of the most qualified people to be elected president of the United States, though he seems to be smart enough that campaigning for the highest office in the land will certainly ruin his life. So how does a figure of discretion and prudence, someone a part of the system but above the petty fray, get involved with the steroid scandal in baseball? Moreover, as a principal of the Boston Red Sox, an MLB club, does his authorship of the report pose a conflict of interest? Perhaps Sen. Mitchell’s record of having worked within a system without advancing a personal agenda dispels any impartiality concern . For this, he does not deserve to be maligned. Yet, his cooperation with MLB owners has been a sop to their tendencies towards entitlement of having their cosseted market power protected further. Co-opting the image of Sen. Mitchell, on the part of MLB, is indeed shameless. Sen. Mitchell should have been smart enough to know the significance of agreeing to this project. Given that the MLB owners, though well within their legal authority to elect whomever to the office of commissioner, already have one of their own installed in that office, conflict of interest is no matter to them clearly. George Selig formerly owned the Milwaukee Brewers franchise. That he relinquished control of the team to his daughter upon election to the office is easily construed as a publicity stunt. Because of the antitrust protection, fans – the consumers of the MLB product - had no way of opposing the legal though dubious selection of Selig. Furthermore, unless deemed necessary by his fellow owners, the commissioner cannot be ousted for a lack of accountability. Barring some gross criminal act, seemingly no one bar the owners can hold the commissioner to account. By once again choosing from within to solve its own problems, it highlights the effect of the favorable Supreme Court ruling, (Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore, Inc. v. National Baseball Clubs 1922) it received: by having such fiat regulatory protection, not only can MLB act outside the parameters by which even regulated mutual organizations must abide, but it also seems to have no interest in any solution except self-regulation. Having such anomalous legal status owes less to a commitment to market oriented solutions than it does to being able to use such an argument only after the regulatory environment had been settled in its favor. A judiciary sympathetic to business saw greater good in reducing the volatility of early baseball leagues. However, the Court does not always get decision right the first time, and sometimes legal precedent ought to be overturned as the competitive sports league market matured. The decision allowed the entrenchment of a flawed organizational structure which rather than limit the a periodic crisis brought on by exogenous forces, sometimes facilitated such crisis. The steroid scandal is a cyclical problem much like the 1919 Black Sox gambling affair. However, the structural failings such as the antitrust exemption and the conflict of interest within the top job are responsible for the cyclical downturn. As monopolists seeking to maintain incumbency and price as high as they can according to demand levels, each collective move by MLB ownership can be framed within the context of monopolistic behavior. Despite being a monopoly, MLB faces falling share within the broader market share due to alternatives and shifting preferences. The power game – a topic to be addressed in this space soon - is applicable to all modern sport, and in baseball it has filled seats reliably since Babe Ruth. Though Whitey Ball may win games, the big stick brings attention. Attention brings revenue streams. In the words of Kurt Vonnegut, “and so it goes.” It is foolish to think that consumption of baseball will go to zero due to this or some other affair. Merely, MLB will act accordingly within the confines of its demand and cost curves. Created as an unintended consequence of profit seeking, the steroid scandal has also provided MLB another dodge to addressing its own structural deficiencies. Using Mitchell as a convenient figure of probity to investigate purported endemic cheating accomplished two things. It deflected attention from constantly diminishing outrage and gradual, hardly grudging acceptance of an insider in the commissioner’s office. Second, the report functioned as a high priced, though necessary peace of spin which cast owners as concerned stewards. Regarding the necessity of the Mitchell Report, according to Selig, "There was a higher cost in not doing this." Certainly, alienating already tenuous consumers and discouraging new interest among fans presents huge costs to owners. Owners could not have imagined the public outcry supporting Clemens et al. For owners, the undeniable value of the Mitchell Report as a PR gimmick justifies its weighty price tag. The owners have been able to perform damage control, deflected criticism simultaneously, and are free to continue defending a crumbling, flawed institutional structure prone to creating its own messes. While no profit motive confronts MLB owners to allow independent oversight, or changes in market demands require a shift in organizational structure, MLB will continue to operate as a monopoly. Rather than defining the steroid scandal as a thing itself, it ought to have been sufficient cause to re-examine the special status of MLB. That the Mitchell Report did not was a wasted opportunity. Sen Mitchell, you’re better than that.

One thing before he goes...

2007-12-13T05:19:00.000-05:00

A brief golf thought: In Tiger Woods' stellar career, he has won at a higher rate than anyone in history. However, one may point to the fact that Woods has never come from behind to win a major. Every major championship he won, he led after 54 holes - no small feat given the pressure of elite-level professional tournament competition. Given the scale and scope of his accomplishments, it is a matter of time before he does win without having to play in the final pairing.

Stop + Look

2007-12-11T14:33:00.001-05:00

Welcome. I ought not try to be so funny. In abstraction, the blog will not follow a formulaic schedule of topics on given days, as some events or ideas require prolonged discussion. Nor will this be an exercise in randomness. Rather, I encourage and invite strangers and associates to comment. Shortly, I will provide some links to my limited literary exploits. For today, I will leave off in the fashion of asshole Garrison Keillor with a poem, one of my own,

in sleep, the twist and arch
arch, disquieted and still,
shades agony,
revels in contempt,
reflects cast iron light
washed white as it slides by city windows

rethink and murmur in a secret tongue
known solely by you and your devils
all tricks, unrequited vows and
the compacts of resolve.

old wars rage fiercest at dawn
and daybreak's false respite, born of boredom,
awaits the clamor to renew.

Greetings and Salutations

2007-12-10T20:39:00.000-05:00

A quick intro: I have spent the last four years of my life traveling the world as a professional tour caddie. I have pitched events sanctioned by the PGA Tour, USGA, R&A, Nationwide, Canadian, Australasian, and Tour de las Americas in six countries. Earlier this year, I opted to go straight, that is quit being a gypsy and settle into formal, traditional employment. I have, however, attained one of my ambitions: being a crotchety, old Jew. At thirty, I am way ahead of the curve. One luxury of the caddie job and lifestyle was that it allowed me a lot of time to think about not only golf, but also some other things which have always interested me: politics, economics, philosophy, the arts. Armed with a ready reserve of notions on how things ought to be and an acerbic tongue for spewing all of my self-righteous vitriol, I’m ready.