You are currently browsing the monthly archive for October 2008.
Keeping track of financial crisis as well as what the Fed and our financial institutions are doing (as well as not doing) have become an obsession of mine. My MBA mind is percolating with interest and recollection of past studies, and my blood is boiling by the audacity of our government and banking industry’s leaders.
Just today, we learned in a NYT article by Edmund L. Andrews that the Fed once again cut it’s interest rate in the hopes of stimulating the economy and avoiding a deeper recession. Yet the article’s author noted that the “…Fed’s biggest weakness at the moment is that the economy’s problems have less to do with interest rates than the reluctance of banks and financial institutions to lend money. Even though the Fed has lent almost $600 billion to financial institutions in the last month alone, banks are still reluctant to lend to businesses or consumers.”
What are they doing with all that money? They sure as hell do not plan on lending any to consumers for new mortgages or for refinancing current mortgages at lower mortgage rates or for small business opportunities. A few days ago, the NYT also ran an article by Joe Nocera who learned and reported that “…the dirty little secret of the banking industry is that it has no intention of using the money to make new loans.” The same article highlights that the Fed is even giving tax incentives for banking institutions to use the government subsidies and cash injections to encourage bank mergers and acquisitions.
Are you kidding me? Major promises were made in front of Congress and to the American people. We are being sold a bailout of billions (nearly a trillion at this point) that basically helps financial institutions and their executives better conquer the world and position themselves to make even more fortunes in the future.
No help is coming for the rest of us, and more pain is on its way. As Eric Dash notes in a NYT article, the next crisis for consumers will be found in the credit card industry. An industry that strongly encouraged and created massive personal debt now begins to “…aggressively shut down inactive accounts…” and reduce “…customer credit lines by 4.5 percent in the second quarter from the previous period, according to regulatory filings….” Those once friendly lenders “…are shunning consumers already in debt and cutting credit limits for existing cardholders, especially those who live in areas ravaged by the housing crisis or who work in troubled industries.”
What does this mean? Well, for one thing borrowing is not an option if you are in financial trouble. The other thing is that once credit card companies begin shutting down inactive accounts and reducing credit lines, everyone’s credit rating will be lowered. Why? One strong measure (30% of your rating to be exact) of a credit score is based on outstanding debt in relation to available credit. As your available credit is reduced, this ratio begins looking much less attractive that your previous ratio and—presto!—your credit score now stinks without your doing anything to deserve it.
Are we having fun yet? Feels like time for some a major revolt on our industry and government.
Part I
A few months ago, Tim and I discovered the music of Bon Iver. Bon Iver (can you say good winter in French) is Justin Vernon and his cd, For Emma, For Ever Ago was written in three months while in the remote Wisconsin woods. It was recorded with a few mics and very little equipment. The cd is as sophisticated as it is simple. Take a listen to Skinny Love and let us know what you think.
Part II
1) A pair of Levi’s caught my eye as I was walking by the Harvard Square Urban Outfitters. I stopped in and grabbed a few pairs to try on. They were “skinny” jeans. I like the way they look and they are nice to wear with boots in the winter. I find Urban Outfitters a little intimating these days. I can’t decide if the store is the same as it always was and I am just old or if they have really changed their approach to selling clothes. I walk around the store asking myself questions like “who in their right mind would wear that?” “do people wear this to work?” “am I supposed to wear something under that?” Back to the dressing room, I proceed to try on the first pair which seems to look like the right waist size and leg length. In goes one foot and it will NOT come out! My leg and is stuck and my foot is stuck and I am getting increasingly concerned that I am going to need to call for assistance. No one would have heard me over the really loud music I could not identify with. I managed to get my leg out and my own clothes back on. I am vindicated when I return the jeans to the shelf and see that I had been wrestling with a size 1 instead of my normal size 4 or 6. Still, I am humbled and have vowed to shop online in the future. It must be that I am simply getting old.
Our small way of showing support for Barack Obama.
How difficult it is to find staples among office supplies from Staples as every single box is branded with the word Staples.
It feels like Christo and Jeanne-Claude have always been on my radar in some way, shape or form. I learned about them from my parents who are both somewhat art-y. I remember, as a kid, seeing books and articles
about their miraculous public art projects. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I started to fantasize about actually seeing one of their works in person. Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s wrapping of the Reichstag got me trying to find any work-related reason to get myself to Berlin. There was no way I could have afforded it on my own. I failed at that attempt. Twenty years later, however, I did see something of theirs in person, The Gates in NYC in February 2005.
The Gates was comprised of 7,503 metal and fabric “gates” expanding over 23 miles of walkways in Central Park. It took them 26 years and $26 million dollars to pull off project. It remained on view for 16 days.
Being amongst The Gates made me feel small and insignificant yet part of something very important and relevant. It was simultaneously a very public yet intensely private experience. Although I was with thousands
of people, I had my own inaction with and experience of the art. There was also no headphone with a narrator telling me what to think, when to stop and what to see, how to feel or how to interpret.
Unlike a museum, which typically draws a certain demographic, The Gates, was free, open 24 hours a day and available to any one who was willing to trek into Central Park. In my mind, it was what public art
should be. It was breathtakingly beautiful and an experience I reflect on often.
I was reminded of this experience recently because Harvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation recently awarded Christo and Jeanne-Claude its Great Negotiator award. In my mind this is particularly noteworthy because the “Great Negotiators” of the past have included business people, U.S. ambassadors and politicians, not artists. PON (home, in a roundabout way to two bibles of negotiation, Getting to Yes and Difficult Conversations) was able to see beyond its regular turf and see what extraordinary negotiators Christo and Jeanne-Claude are. They are true artists, but art is only a small part of what they do. They are fundraisers and business people. They raise millions of dollars (they fund all their projects), work with city governments, neighborhood groups and businesses to produce and create their projects. No wonder it takes them decades to see a project to completion. Next on my list is Over the River, in Colorado. I would love for all of us to experience it together.
One of my proudest moments as the owner of Newtonville Books was talking Jim Harrison and the good folks at Grove Atlantic into having Jim visit my bookstore for a reading. Harrison was on tour for his novel True North, the book that for me firmly established him as one of our greatest writers and teachers of living life.
I’d first become a fan while working for John Evans at Lemuria Bookstore, and I’ve since been a fan of Harrison’s work, including his novels, food writing, short stories and poetry. My first introduction to Harrison was the novel A Good Day to Die, a wild, entertaining ride of two unusual environmentalists that ends tragically. I’ve enjoyed his food writing for a while now, which is collected in the highly recommended book, The Raw & the Cooked. I also constantly read and revisit his poetry, and a favorite book of poems is After Ikkyu & Other Poems. One particular poem in that collection bubbles up in my mind every day is:
Not here and now but now and here.
If you don’t know the difference
is a matter of life and death, get down
naked on bare knees in the snow
and study the ticking of your watch.
John and Jim are old friends and great admirers of one another. I have a vivid memory of being in Chicago for a book convention and catching a glimpse of the deep friendship between them. We were at the Drake Hotel, and, as usual, the most rowdy publishers and booksellers were settling in the bar area just moments after checking in. John, Eliza and I had just arrived. When Jim saw John, he roared with laughter and waved for him to sit down next to him, taking John’s hand in his own and holding it as they talked. It was a tender moment, watching two seemingly gruff, older men hold hands. It captured for me the essence of what it means to be masculine without being macho and to be in love with living life to the fullest without ego. It was a small moment that became to represent classic Harrison.
Since hosting him a few years ago, I have read or reread—as well as recommended to anyone who will listen—several other books by Harrison. True North is one of the best and among my favorite novels of all time. With fully realized and three dimensional characters who stand up visibly from his gorgeous prose, it wonderfully explores how the sins of a father torment his family and afflict particularly his son throughout each of their lives. After True North, Harrison published a sequel called Returning to Earth, which is a novel that fittingly bookends his literary teachings of a good, passionate life as it teaches equally of the importance of a good, aware death.
Other highlights and recommended works are two collections of novellas: The Beast God Forgot to Invent and The Summer He Didn’t Die. In The Beast God Forgot to Invent, we are given a gem in that it contains a story of Brown Dog, a Native American and wildly popular character who surfaces in many if Jim’s works. The title story of that collection was the finest. It is a densely and beautifully written story exploring the conflicts and connections of beasts and humans, civilization and wilderness, visions and insanity. The title story in The Summer He Didn’t Die offers another and the finest Brown Dog story, one that explores the joys, trials, meaning and responsibilities of parenting.
Having just finished his latest novel, The English Major, I can say that his writing, humor and insights on life have continued to flourish and grow. Hope you’ll browse all of Harrison’s books available through your local independent bookstore, as well as browse the signed, collectible books available through Lemuria Bookstore.
On my desk I now have waiting his memoir, Off to the Side, written several years ago but saved for reasons that I am not sure of. Some books you just need to be ready to read to enjoy fully.
