Bobcats and drama
posted in Economy, Garden, News, OmegaDad, OmegaDotter, Politics |Bobcat: So we bought a kids plaything with swings and slides and a tower, courtesy of some money GrannyJ provided us, plus savings from the dotter’s dollar container.
This requires installation, of course.
Which requires a spot in the yard.
Which requires that OmegaDad make things complex, by planning to dig the area out, surround it with beams, and fill it with wood chips.
All very well and good, but there’s this “digging out” that needs doing. Yesterday a.m., OmegaDad dresses in his scruffiest work clothes, grabs his shovel and pick and wheelbarrow, and sets out, all manly-like, to do his yeoman duty.
I wander out a little later, and he mutters about how it would all be easier if he had a Bobcat.
He mutters it to me a little later. And once more. And I say to him, “Well, why don’t we rent one?”
After some to-ing and fro-ing, we decide to do it, he calls the rental place, they bring a Bobcat over, and he starts to work.
…
Have I mentioned it’s been raining like crazy lately? And that the yard is soaked?
…
Do you know what happens when you drive a Bobcat around a rain-soaked lawn?
And when someone who used to be expert at smoothing out lawns but hasn’t done it for 20 years decides to go at it?
Let me just say that at a point yesterday, I was out in the yard and just peered sadly at the large hole.
To add insult to injury, it rained like crazy last night, as well. So the hole is now a big mud hole.
OmegaDad promises me that it will be fixed and by next summer the lawn will be looking bee-yoo-tiful again.
Drama: We had OmegaDotter’s current BFF, K., over to spend the night. The end result was two full-on scenes with tears and misery on both sides, and one time OmegaDad asking why they bothered to be friends, since they made each other miserable, and one time OmegaMom did the same thing. When they weren’t fiercely hurting each others’ feelings, they were busy running around and being happily noisy. How two girls, 6 and 7 years old, can make the house sounds like it’s filled with an entire soccer team of little girls, plus a couple of elephants, I have no idea.
More Drama: The Mother of All Bailouts. Treasury Secretary Paulson is running a $700 billion save-the-markets-from-total-meltdown program by the Congress and the President as I type. The markets were down 900 points in two days until rumors of the bailout began floating, at which point the markets gained more in two days, percent-wise, than they have since…
…are you ready…
…1929. Oh, boy, isn’t that reassuring?!
The current plan is all of one page long. It includes this fun little piece:
“Sec. 8. Review.
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”
Ahem. That’s not funny, folks.
This $700 billion is to be spent purchasing assets of unknown worth from faltering financial companies, then figuring out how to sell them to someone else. The problem is that many of those assets are backstopped by mortgages on real estate where the price is still falling. No-one knows how much that stuff is worth. But Uncle Sugar Sam is gonna make everything all better, you betcha, and those financial companies that went blindly ahead playing with money on the assumption that real estate always goes up (wrap your head around that one for a few minutes) are going to be taken care of, all nice and tidy.
My personal preference is a conglomeration of suggestions from various commenters on various financial websites:
- Rather than create this new, sweeping agency/power backed by $700 billion, increase FDIC to $500 billion, or the entire $700 billion.
- Increase deposit insurance to $250,000 per depositor. Insure money market deposits and interbank loans for 12 months.
- FDIC judges ACTUAL capital ratios (not fakery reported on balance sheets), and seizes banks that don’t meet existing FDIC regulations.
- FDIC seizes BIGGEST weak banks first (the original commenter names a bank rumored to be very big and very much in trouble, but I’m removing that) and moves down, to maximize positive impact on public trust.
- FDIC corrals bad assets and auctions them off slowly over time. FDIC sells good assets and deposits to good banks.
- Investors in seized banks are treated as in a bankruptcy: equity is wiped out, debt is worked out based on remaining equity, if any.
- Executive management of seized banks, is fired, blackballed from other seized banks, and passed to FBI for investigation.
- Dividends of $.01 from all financial companies until things are cleaned up.
- Any “golden parachute” clauses for current financial company executives are null and void.
- Institute a website that lists each transaction purchased by the government. This could list the details of the asset, the PAR value, the selling institution, the underlying characteristics, the originators of the loans, the price the government paid (and eventual sold the asset for) and any other relevant detail.
Right now, there’s wrangling going on. The Dems are saying, well, if you’re going to throw $700 billion at this problem, let’s add some more money to create another stimulus check.
Shee-it.
Look, the whole financial market went into a tailspin and almost froze up last week. There are plenty of commenters at my regular blog stops who think the Paulson plan is only going to postpone things. There are plenty of people who are terrified that if nothing gets done, and quickly, the tailspin and freeze are going to continue on Monday. I don’t know what the answer is, but I’m pretty sure I don’t really like the plan as it currently stands…
