Friday, November 21, 2008

When CEOs come a begging

Bank CEOs got sloppy in their lending and it swamped their boat. So the government provided money for a bailout. They were expected to start lending again. Instead, they hoarded the money. But that’s not all they did. Bank CEOs bought other banks. They paid dividends. And they continued to draw their own excessive salaries.

Have they no shame? Had they taken salary cuts it would have demonstrated sincerity and contrition. But they continued to behave like it was business as usual. Did Nero fiddle while Rome burned? Damn right, he did. Does history repeat itself? No, why should it? Thankfully, they didn’t get all the money at once. Before they get the rest, they should be held accountable for how it gets spent.

When CEOs from the automotive sector came begging yesterday, Congress sent them home. “Come back when you have a plan,” it told them. Rightly so. After eight years of no bid contracts to privatize a war that wasn’t necessary, it’s about time that accountability came into fashion again. Tough financial decisions will soon need to be made. Let’s hope the government decides wisely.

—extrapolated from this mornings stories on NPR.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

It looked kinda like this...

Shrieking, slithering, torrential shadows of red viscous madness chasing one another through endless, ensanguined corridors of purple fulgurous sky...

H. P. Lovecraft - The Lurking Fear

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Well known Boston surgeon, Herbert West, disappears.

Suspicions were aroused today when Dr. Herbert West and his long time assistant failed to arrive at their clinic. Dr. West’s servants were alerted and subsequently found his assistant unconscious in the mansion’s sub-cellar laboratory.

Police investigating the scene found blood profusely spattered around the laboratory, but no evidence of a body. The laboratory’s large incinerator contained recent ashes. However, it could not immediately be determined if they were of human or reptilian origin.

Dr. West was murdered by a group of men who entered the laboratory through an ancient tomb, claimed his assistant. However, police consider this doubtful since the plaster shows no sign of disturbance.

Both Dr. West and his assistant were graduates of Miskatonic University Medical School in Arkham. Their careers, though successful, have been accompanied by rumors of unprofessional behavior. Some of these go as far back as their student days. Though some felt Dr. West’s theories regarding restoring the dead to life to be brilliant, others such as, Mishkatonic’s Dean, the late Dr. Allan Halsey, found them unpractical and morbid.

Though Dr. West’s disappearance has not yet been labeled a murder, his assistant is being held for further questioning. Further details regarding “Herbert West—Reanimator,” are divided into six episodes and can be found at dagonbytes.com .

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

The Spiritual Benefits of Recession.

Are there spiritual lessons to be gleaned from the economy’s rapid ride into Hell? I believe there are.

The first lesson is moderation. Lenders and borrowers both took excessive risks. When something looks too good to be true, it probably is. But avarice makes us want to believe when we should doubt. That’s why con artists are able to cheat us. Isn’t avarice one of the seven deadly sins?

Another lesson is that we are all interconnected. Even though you paid your mortgage and kept your house, you’ll have to suffer along with those who defaulted on their mortgages. When cash is tight and the economy slows, the effect is felt everywhere. Someone sneezes on Wall Street and someone else in India loses his job. There’s no escaping the fact — we are one.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Get rich working part-time

According to today's article at Galleycat, there's big money to be made in blogging. Not. At least not for the bottom ninety-eight percent of bloggers. Apparently, if you're after the big money, your blog needs to score anywhere from 100,000 to millions of hits per month.

I'm rooting for ya. We're all in this together.