• Banking crisis?

    I was listening to NPR on the ride home, and I heard a story about bank failures, in light of the IndyMac collapse. I think it was someone from the FDIC being interviewed – but whoever it was, they pointed out the actual/projected bank failures of the current crisis weren’t on a track that would even approach the S&L crisis of the 1980s.

    Two problems came to mind.

    1. It seems like our economic projections tend to be crap.

    2. One bank failure in 1985 may not equal one bank failure in 2008.

    If I recall, we went through a period of banking consolidation a little while back (didn’t we?). If so, banks today may have a lot more assets/deposits than the banks of the 1980s – even controlled for inflation. Wouldn’t it suggest the over all impact of a single bank failure is greater today, and comparisons to the 1980s are meaningless?

    I’m doing a bang up job of depressing myself today.

  • Cheap shot?

    It’s possible this entry is a little over the top. If it makes you feel any better, it’s a lot calmer than the first half dozen or so drafts.

    This is too easy. It might have nothing to do with his qualifications to be President, or everything. Tell me dear reader: is it possible being a maverick in all things can be a liability?

    “I don’t need a f—ing computer to tell me what’s what. My mind’s like a steel trap!”

    Yes, the article I’ve linked to deals with a whole bunch of stuff, a lot of it unrelated to his google savvy, but it was hard to see through all the glare.

    My mother-in-law can hardly work the DVD player we bought her a few years back (bless her heart), but even she sees the value of computers. She’s been able to surf the treacherous waves of the internet for years – unsupervised no less. Hasn’t McCain been a little curious to see what all the PC fuss has been about in the last thirty years? Some folks say this doesn’t reflect a lack of curiosity, so much as a lack of necessity. Sure it doesn’t… not when you have staffers who can pull up web sites and print them out for you. WTF?!? I have this picture in my mind of him looking over his wife’s shoulder, with a petulant look on his face, as she pulls up something on the web she thinks he ought to see.

    Am I being unfair? Just because I spend a fair amount of time online, it doesn’t mean everyone should. Then again, maybe he wouldn’t mix up Sunni and Shi’a if he knew how to press a power button and click the little “e” icon on the desktop – assuming he has the misfortune to own a Windows machine. Hell, just having the wrong answer to the Mac or PC question is almost a disqualification by itself. It’s unfathomable a person of his station could answer “neither…” and not mean Linix.

    I don’t know how you can spin this in a good way. It either shows a lack of curiosity (re: Bush 2), a stunning lack of initiative (re: lazy), or an old curmudgeon that refuses to change with the times. Do you want any of the above sitting in the oval office, wielding the kind of power Bush has appropriated?

    Maybe the jokes about his age aren’t unkind… they’re too kind.

  • Schooled

    I learned something interesting this weekend on our trip to Orlando. Even if you’re a surgeon, with thirteen years of medical training (give or take a year), some hospitals still insist you to take a CPR class as part of new-hire orientation.

    I think they’re really on to something here. I wonder where our stress level would be if more of our employers required a class in reading comprehension, or even better: typing. I really dig waiting on a highly paid professional, watching them hunt and peck through a paragraph. It’s almost as fun as sharpening a pencil with my thumbnail, or cutting my hair with a pair of pliers.

    The real question is: how can I draw out this entry more? I mean, come on! My highly trained brother-in-law has to take a CPR course and I can only come up with a few sentences. I’m sitting on blog gold here! Maybe doctors are on to something with this whole sleep thing (us getting it, not them having it). They say caffeine isn’t a substitute for a good night’s sleep, but I usually feel more creative after my daily infusion (re: coffee). I wonder if it’s possible to substitute sleep for caffeine?