Ward on Words

Nice to know that Chicagoans are really helping out Morgan Stanley improve their bottom line this year. Here's the lead in a recent Bloomberg story : "Chicago drivers will pay a Morgan Stanley-led partnership at least $11.6 billion to park at city meters over the next 75 years, 10 times what Mayor Richard Daley got when he leased the system to investors in 2008." Privatizing the parking meters in Chicago's been great for Morgan Stanley. But what about for Chicago? Well - we signed over a lucrative franchise for BILLIONS less than it appears to be worth. Morgan Stanley and its partners seem poised to reap phenomenal profits from this deal. Again, from the Bloomberg story: "Morgan Stanley, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Allianz Capital Partners may earn a profit of $9.58 billion before interest, taxes and depreciation, according to documents for a $500 million private note sale by their Chicago Parking Meters LLC venture. That is equivalent to 80 cents...

Wall Street Journal has a fabulous story today about the success of one particular government entitlement program - the bailout of the banks. While unemployment remains high in America, while those on Social Security are likely to see cuts in their entitlement program in the near future, while our federal, state and local governments are seriously in debt, our financial sector gleams brightly as a vision of success. According to the WSJ story , the average monthly salary in 2009 in finance and insurance is nearly $12,000. A month. Up 23% from a year earlier. More than double the average in NYC. And that's just the wages paid to the new hires. Imagine the possibilities for growth in this sector!!! Especially when you can sell an instrument to one party and sell insurance (or take out insurance for yourself) that allows one to profit when the instrument you created blows up after you sell it off. (As long as you disclose the names of the people who purchase the insur...

I am slowly realizing that what we talk about when we talk about unemployment in this economy is largely fictional. A couple of months ago, we celebrated a decline in unemployment. We're no longer looking at 10% unemployment; the number is now hovering at 9.5%. But when you look closer, that decline is not the result of improved employment and expanding economy. It's the result of not counting people who've despaired of finding a job in this market. If you stop looking for a job, you're no longer considered "unemployed." That's a pathetic way to look at unemployment - that we're not going to count people who've given up hope of getting a job. Because for us to truly recognize the enormity of the problem, we need to fully count ALL the millions of people who are not employed, not just the ones who remain hopeful of getting a job once again someday. Here's a link to Mark Thoma's post on the August unemployment report. Two years ago, we...

Was startled by the photo that appeared on the front page of today's WSJ. It seems strangely plopped into the general news of the day: showdown on fund taxes; incumbents in danger of losing; poor South Africans protest against government neglect. And in the middle of the page, a striking photograph of two men in a moment of intimacy. Click on that link and you'll see the image of one soldier comforting a seriously wounded comrade. This is a picture of man at his most vulnerable. A soldier wounded in Afghanistan. A man far from home. Surrounded by enemies in a foreign land. Sent there to protect his country. A friend holds a Bible and offers a cigarette to comfort the wounded man. He is reading the wounded soldier's favorite Psalm, Psalm 91. It appears as if someone else not in the picture is holding the wounded man's hand. In a moment of horror, a wounded soldier finds solace from God and men. This picture haunts me. It reminds me that in our time of need, ...

Peggy Noonan wrote a terrible column in last weekend's Wall Street Journal. "He was supposed to be competent" is the headline, and it's about how Obama's incompetence is the reason the Gulf Coast is soaked in oil right now. Come again? Peggy Noonan was Reagan's songbird. Her speechwriting for the man who named a revolution was elegant, eloquent and inspirational. Does she forget that her boss considered government the problem? That businesses were dying under the yoke of regulation? That for America to succeed, a bloodless revolution needed to take place that severed the government from the responsibility of regulating much of American business? Because untethered, according to the Reagan Revolution, businesses could fly high and soar. And their profits would trickle down into the pockets of all of us on Main Street. Which would have been great, since salaries have remained stagnant since Reagan was in office. That trickle down money could have meant ...

Innovation in the financial sector is once again turning Wall Street into the biggest roller coaster in America. It was a "glitch," apparently, that sent the markets down a very steep trajectory yesterday. According to the NY Times article on the crash, at least half of all trading is done via these "high frequency" trades. A computer is programed to do the buying and selling that once were the sole domain of the trader. "'We have a market that responds in milliseconds, but the humans monitoring respond in minutes, and unfortunately billions of dollars of damage can occur in the meantime,' said James Angel, a professor of finance at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University"(as quoted in the NY Times .) I love computers as much as anyone. But innovation coming out of the financial sector is a little scary these days. From the Times story: "The near-instantaneous swings left brokers dumbfounded." Traders weren...

Anyone remember the big Soviet demonstrations of military might on May Day? It used to be that every year on May 1st, the Soviets would unveil the power of all their many weapons by parading samples of them down some expansive street in Moscow. Grim soldiers would walk in precise steps past the aged members of the Politburo. It was indeed an impressive display of strength, impressive enough to foster "the arms race." Moscow's May Day is, of course, ancient history, taking place back when our only enemy, it seemed, was communism. Today, we face various dangerous enemies on many fronts. And in a story with a May 1st dateline, the Wall Street Journal gives us a glimpse into a mighty enemy that today threatens the United States. You can find the description of this enemy in the story they call "Number of the Week." This is one of the enemies we face today: "$132 billion." That's the dollar amount of the total losses generated by synthetic mezz...

Things I'd blog about if I had the time to blog these days: – Paulson's book – The game that got us to this point ( Liar's Poker ) – A review of Atlas Shrugged – Musings on the fate of Ken Lewis, and how the Merrill deal has destroyed his legacy, even with Paulson's stamp of approval There is more. But there is less time than usual these days. Work/life balance out of whack these days... (at least I'm working, right?!)

Brad Delong, economics professor, blogger , expert on money stuff, has a sidebar on his blog noting that he's signed up for a speaker's bureau because "the Eighteen-Year-Old is going to college next year, which means that I need to think about making more money." Which makes it a bit odd that he's got a guest post on the Berkely Blog called Is It Fair for Education to Be Cheap ? A man now on the hustings to raise money for college is well aware that "cheap" and "college" are not a likely pair. What he's referring to is the subsidized higher education one can acquire at a public university. In my state, the in-state tuition is about $22,000 a year, which makes the cost of a four-year degree close to six figures when it's all said and done. That's not "cheap" education. Or if it is, I'd like to know how a family that makes today's average income of $50K can afford to send multiple children off to school an...

It will take a while, but you'll find him if you look hard. Page past the metal-clad Gucci model... Past the the starved-looking girl in the Juicy Couture ad (note to Juicy Couture marketing execs: nothing juicy about anorexia!)... Past Kate Moss wearing little more than a purse in a cab... Past the spread on "the Warrior Way" (which has nothing to do with warriors and everything to do with "tattered minis strapped with shoulder armor and breastplates")... Past the story on Tina Fey (but before the pic-heavy story on Robert Pattison)... And there you'll find him. Tim Geithner going Vogue , "on the money," spilling his guts about the bailout, all in the March issue of Vogue magazine. Who needs the New Yorker and Atlantic profiles when Vogue is there to chat with the US Treasury Secretary about TARP and bonuses and all the other topics so dear to the hearts of Vogue readers? The article opens with this: "If last year'...