Through the Past, Darkly

With all the turmoil going on in the stock market... and the tires popping on the financial institutions every day... I decided to go on a treasure hunt for the "Savings and Loan Scandal Trading Cards" that I bought back in the early 1990s. I wanted to get a refresher on this financial crisis from the early days of banking deregulation to see if it would give some background on what's happening now. And it sure did.

So who were the players? Let's start with card number 1, which had Ronald Reagan on it. He signed the Garn-St Germain Act in 1982 -- the legislation that deregulated the savings and loan industry--and he allegedly said it was "the most important legislation for financial institutions in fifty years...I think we have hit the jackpot." And indeed, his friends did.

Card number 14 was Neil Bush -- George W's brother, and George H. Bush's son. In 1985, he started his own savings and loan called "Silverado Banking." Heartwarming name, isn't it? He also had his own oil company, "JNB Exploration," which benefited from millions of dollars of loans from his savings and loan. His oil business didn't go well, and he didn't have to pay back the loans. And his two business partners (who were also investors in his oil company) got $90 million in loans from Silverado, which they defaulted on. According to the story, his father (then the vice-president of the USA) protected him with a team of legal specialists, and Neil got away with "a slap on the wrist."

So let's talk about the father. George H. Bush is on card number 16. As vice president, according to this card deck, he chaired the Presidential Task Force on Deregulation. They didn't just work on deregulating the banking system, but also on issues that affected things like consumer safety. But he allegedly had close ties to some of the other players in the savings and loan scandals, too--not just his son--receiving a $100,000 gift to his 1988 presidential campaign from Charles Keating himself (as in "The Keating Five," which John McCain was part of). There's speculation, not proven, that he delayed the seizure of his son Neil's Silverado Banking venture till after the 1988 election. The day after he was elected president, the bank was seized. It could just be a coincidence...

Now here's a blast from the past. Card 21....Don Regan. He was first the Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan and then Chief of Staff. But before he became part of the Reagan government, he was the head of Merrill Lynch, which is back in the news again now. According to the chronology, while heading the Treasury Department, he used his treasury position to try to deregulate the savings and loans even further. Later, he was linked to the Iran-Contra scandal and forced to resign.

Oh, but here's one more card of particular interest. Card number 35 is Alan Greenspan, former chair of the Federal Reserve. Another proponent of deregulating the banking industry, he used to work for Charles Keating. According to the card, he also pressured Congress to abolish the Glass-Steagall Act, which was created in 1933 to keep banks out of "risky businesses like stock market and real estate." How ironic that the Glass-Steagall Act created the FDIC, the very entity that is set up to rescue the failing bank institutions (and presumably our deposits) today.

Looking backwards at stories like these help to form a bigger picture of the financial debacle now, and I thought I'd take a break from rearranging my deck chairs on the Titanic to share them with you.

"The Savings and Loan Scandal Trading Cards" are copyright 1991 through Eclipse Enterprises in Forestville, CA. I don't know if they're still for sale today.

Landfill for sale

Tonight I was running an errand when I saw this pile of garbage for sale in a retail shop. While these absurd McCain versus Clinton dolls are out of date by several months already and largely irrelevant, they were already worthless crap when they were manufactured.

It's a perfect example of some of the useless merchandise that's for sale everywhere and basically needs to be discarded soon after it's purchased. In fact, these awful dolls are a bargain compared to the action-hero figures you can buy on this website. But all of these useless items will end up in the dump, along with the pet rocks, sea monkeys, and chia pets of yesteryear.

I'd love to see the numbers for the sell-through on this junk. Whoever made it thinks that people (or at least Americans) are idiots. Whoever actually buys it proves that my worst fears might be true.

New Orleans, Part Deux

As Hurricane Gustav draws closer to the coastline....and just days before the Republican National Convention begins, I'm getting angry all over again when I think about the government response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005.

Never before has this country allowed an entire city to be destroyed: this government turned away planes bearing foreign aid of food and supplies, and banned the Red Cross from entering New Orleans. They left the people sitting in crowded stadiums for days without food and water. They left the dead lying on the streets. When Bush finally took an interest to what was happening in New Orleans, he told his FEMA director "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" (he wasn't), and talked about how sorry he was that Trent Lott's vacation home was damaged in Mississippi.

Instead of helping the people in New Orleans who were under water or swimming for their lives -- they shot some of them. On TV, we watched Louisiana state troopers turning people away from a bridge....their only escape out of town. Even today, we don't know how many people died there. We never had a memorial or a public commemoration. By some accounts, 1,600 people died. Others estimate the death toll as much higher.

Now, in an election year, with another hurricane barreling in, we can't forget what happened -- we shouldn't dismiss the images we watched in horror on TV just three years ago. Barack Obama nailed it in his speech the other night when he asked if we wanted a US government that "sat on its hands while a city drowned."

We can't control natural disasters. But we *can* control how we respond to them. To the evacuees from New Orleans in 2008: my thoughts are with you. And I hope you're not abandoned by the government this time.

"Our government should work for us, not against us. "

In case you missed Barack Obama's monumental speech at the Democratic National Convention....or you just want to watch it again and feel empowered for a change....here's the speech in its entirety.

Livin' la vida local

During the past few years, I've spent part of my summer in Paris. This year, however, I couldn't do it logistically or financially. But I realized that -- in some ways, anyway -- I can live in my own hometown in a similar way that I can when I'm in Paris.

So I took the metro to the local farmer's market on Saturday (the open market at the ferry building downtown) and loaded up on produce and goodies...then made a feast for myself at home of local dry-farmed tomatoes (the most amazing tomatoes you'll ever eat!), fresh basil, mozzarella, garlic curd (from the local Spring Hill Creamery...garlic curd sounds weird, but it's delicious), olive oil, and balsamic glaze. The result? Delicious.

I live in a cool city, too, and there are lots of local things to enjoy. For now, if I'm missing Paris, I can just turn on TV5 Monde and pretend...

A little night music

I just finished reading a news story about the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) and a judge's ruling earlier today about "fair use." The case in question: a 29-second YouTube video of a dancing toddler that had a Prince song playing in the background. The record company said it was a copyright violation; the creator of the offending video said it qualified as "fair use."

In this case, the judge ruled in favor of fair use and not the record company. And thank goodness....because at this rate, we might have to start wearing special earplugs to avoid accidentally overhearing music that we didn't pay for...like, from that open car window, for instance.

I like this statement from the court:

"A good faith consideration of whether a particular use is fair use is consistent with the purpose of the statute. Requiring owners to consider fair use will help “ensure that the efficiency of the Internet will continue to improve and that the variety and quality of services on the Internet will expand” without compromising “the movies, music, software and literary works that are the fruit of American creative genius.”

And not just American creative genius, I might add. The issues of copyright are challenging, and that's why my own downtempo music podcasts focus predominantly on artists and labels who offer Creative Commons-licensed music as much as possible...except in a few cases where the musician or the label gives me permission to include their work.

Curious? Check out my latest podcast episode. (There's only a brief voiceover intro followed by 50 minutes of uninterrupted music, then a summary of artists and track names at the end.)

There's a lot of great, independent music out there that's not signed with the big labels, so some of this brouhaha can be avoided altogether....

MuniMe

It's been awhile since I've had to take the Muni Metro system during rush hour, but today I needed to go downtown at the height of the commuter hours. And with the increased use of the transit system over these past few months -- that is, with people finally figuring out that public transit is a saner option than driving a gas-guzzling automobile around the bay area -- I was hoping that Muni was stepping up to accommodate the growing masses. You know, decreasing the time between trams, increasing the number of cars attached together during heavy commute hours...making the system more tolerable, rather than a chiropractor's dream come true. I'm a huge advocate of using public transit, having used it most of my life--I'm practically a cheerleader for trains, trams, and buses. And I want San Francisco to rise to a higher standard. (Think: Zürich.)

Here's a photo of what I was greeted with today when I entered the metro station....mind you, the tram cars were already full with passengers on arrival...let's hope there was a good reason for this.