Throughout this latest economic crisis, we've been desperate to find someone to blame.
After all, there is a lot of lag time to fill, a lot of op-ed pages to opine on, between a multi-trillion dollar crash and eventual recovery.
As any studio head worth his seven figure paycheck can tell you, it's hard to hate a system. There's no payoff when the evil villain is all of us.
When bad things happen to good countries, there's got to be someone to indict--(and we haven't yet figured out how to make A-Rod take credit for the credit crisis.)
For a while, there was Richard Fuld, the former CEO of Lehman Brothers. He looked like a bad guy--heavy brows, a pompous manner. There was even something mildly Nixonian about his jowls that just made the hair stand up on the top of Andy Rooney's eyebrows.
But then the Fed let Lehman go under, and Fuld was out one multi-billion dollar brokerage house.
Then, there was Henry Paulson, the secretary of the federal treasury, but that was so unsatisfying, really. Let's face it: he had just taken over the job from Alan Greenspan.
Alan Greenspan actually may be the man most responsible for this mess, but he's so kindly-looking--particularly for someone who revered Ayn Rand.
Bernie Madoff stole $65 billion, a lot of it from charities and foundations. He was good to hate, but then he pled guilty and went to jail and he's already 70.
When each of the auto giants flew corporate jets into Reagan International to ask for a federal bailout, GM CEO Rick Wagoner became someone to hate--but it's hard to really, really hate anyone whose primary residence is Detroit. I say this with all sincerity. (And now I suspect Rick is just another unemployed Michigan guy looking to scalp some Final Four private box seats).
Over the last few weeks, anyone associated with AIG has been feeling the hot, sticky breath of a planet full of angry, broke people--but at the end of the day, these are insurance people. The optics suck.
It would have been nice if we could have pinned it on Dick Cheney, but he's gone hunting.
No one quite worked out as a bad guy--until Lula met Gordon.
Lula is Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the President of Brazil. Just the other day he met with Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister of England, and this is what he said.
"This crisis was caused by no black man or woman or by no indigenous person or by no poor person," Lula said after talks with the prime minister in Brasilia to discuss next week's G20 summit in London, (according to a Guardian article by Nicolas Watt).
"This crisis was fostered and boosted by irrational behaviour of some people that are white, blue-eyed. Before the crisis they looked like they knew everything about economics, and they have demonstrated they know nothing about economics."
Challenged about his claims, Lula responded: "I only record what I see in the press. I am not acquainted with a single black banker."
Finally, the credit crisis has a face, and a gender. It is, to be blunt, white guys.
As a white guy myself, whose book The White Guy: A Field Guide comes out in the U.S. May 1, my reaction to Lula's comments can probably be summed up in a single word.
Guilty!
Now this is a broad, ultimately superficial verdict based on the lowest-common denominator factors one can judge a person by--their race and gender. (All things I am sure critics of my book will enjoy pointing out to readers).
However you want to parse the facts, there is an essential truth to what Lula says: this crisis was created by white people--the same white people who spent decades telling everyone else how to manage the economies of their (broke, indebted, poorly-regulated, corrupt) countries, no matter what the human or political cost.
Who could have forseen the delicious irony that the single most broke, indebted, poorly-regulated, corrupt country of them all is the not-so-good, old, U.S.A?
Besides, it will help when Oliver Stone decides to film his version of The Credit Crisis: he can cast a real A-Lister to play the bad guy. (Anthony Hopkins as Greenspan? Frank Langella as Fuld? Leonardo DiCaprio as Wall Street?)
Memo to the banking industry: next time you're up on Capitol Hill, testifying to save your annual seven and eight figure bonuses, spare us the garbage about how those bonuses are necessary to attract the best and brightest.
What you really mean is best-(connected) and whitest.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Anvil
I wasn't a fan of Anvil the first time around, in the early 1980's. But now, 25 years later, they are the subject of a documentary look at their most recent world tour which they undertook on behalf of journeymen rockers everywhere, encountering a slew of tiny, perfect, personal indignities along the way.
Anvil are slowhopes kind of rock stars.
http://communities.canada.com/calgaryherald/blogs/bladerunner/archive/2009/04/01/anvil-coulda-woulda-shoulda.aspx
Anvil are slowhopes kind of rock stars.
http://communities.canada.com/calgaryherald/blogs/bladerunner/archive/2009/04/01/anvil-coulda-woulda-shoulda.aspx
Friday, March 27, 2009
I've been watching Catherine Keener since she played a thirtysomething New Yorker who ends up dating the video store guy (Kevin Corrigan) in Walking and Talking, Nicole Holfcenser's first film, back in the mid-1990's.
If you ever wondered what living in New York is like, it's sort of just like Catherine Keener: cool, smart, not too into itself, prone to little emotional disasters, and ultimately a bit of a closet sweetheart.
It's great to see that she has gone on to have a fantastic acting career, because she always fell a little bit in the cracks between the pretty girl (I think the other one in Walking and Talking was Naomi Watts) and wacky sidekick (think Joan Cusack).
Catherine Keener is the pretty, wacky sidekick, and her presence in anything makes it worth checking out.
She has two new flicks coming out: Genova, and Where the Wild Things Are, a popular kid's yarn that Spike Jonze turned into a movie that has freaked out the studio who made it. (More about that later).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/mar/26/catherine-keener-genova
If you ever wondered what living in New York is like, it's sort of just like Catherine Keener: cool, smart, not too into itself, prone to little emotional disasters, and ultimately a bit of a closet sweetheart.
It's great to see that she has gone on to have a fantastic acting career, because she always fell a little bit in the cracks between the pretty girl (I think the other one in Walking and Talking was Naomi Watts) and wacky sidekick (think Joan Cusack).
Catherine Keener is the pretty, wacky sidekick, and her presence in anything makes it worth checking out.
She has two new flicks coming out: Genova, and Where the Wild Things Are, a popular kid's yarn that Spike Jonze turned into a movie that has freaked out the studio who made it. (More about that later).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/mar/26/catherine-keener-genova
The Great Withnail
You can have your Rocky Horror Picture Show, or your Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or any of those long ago films that have gone on to become midnight cult classics (OK, I love Rocky Horror). But for a certain generation of film lovers, one of the greatest cult comedies remains Withnail & I, Bruce Robinson's 1987 British classic about an aspiring actor and writer living the boho life in London, circa 1969.
Starring Richard E. Grant, a British actor who has worked plenty since but never in a role that quite demanded the brilliance that the part of Withnail did, it's a film that I loved. The first 45 minutes or so are just about the funniest 45 minutes of film comedy I've ever seen. The dialogue is great, the tempo spot-on and the little absurdities of London life for the poor, starving artist are abundantly on display--particularly the way the apartments in London don't really have any heat.
Here's Roger Ebert paying tribute to Withnail & I in the Chicago Sun-Times:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090325/REVIEWS08/903259987
Starring Richard E. Grant, a British actor who has worked plenty since but never in a role that quite demanded the brilliance that the part of Withnail did, it's a film that I loved. The first 45 minutes or so are just about the funniest 45 minutes of film comedy I've ever seen. The dialogue is great, the tempo spot-on and the little absurdities of London life for the poor, starving artist are abundantly on display--particularly the way the apartments in London don't really have any heat.
Here's Roger Ebert paying tribute to Withnail & I in the Chicago Sun-Times:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090325/REVIEWS08/903259987
Felder Rushing, The Slow Gardener
Some people like their yards to be nothing but a lawn, as manicured as the 12th green at Augusta National.
Others, like North Carolinan (if that's a word) Felder Rushing, have a higher tolerance for a little more variety.
Appropriating the term from the slow food movement, Rushing is preaching slow gardening these days: lo-fi, modest in scale and making use of all sorts of wacky junk most people do not associate with a garden.
He's also a radio host of a show called The Gestalt Gardener on National Public Radio.
http://the-gestalt-gardener.blogspot.com/
As you get older, the world sometimes seems to be divided between organized and disorganized people, and the organized people get all the year-end bonuses, (at least they did until year-end bonuses became little acts of economic treason).
Nice to see there's a third way: slow.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/garden/26slow.html?pagewanted=1&em
Others, like North Carolinan (if that's a word) Felder Rushing, have a higher tolerance for a little more variety.
Appropriating the term from the slow food movement, Rushing is preaching slow gardening these days: lo-fi, modest in scale and making use of all sorts of wacky junk most people do not associate with a garden.
He's also a radio host of a show called The Gestalt Gardener on National Public Radio.
http://the-gestalt-gardener.blogspot.com/
As you get older, the world sometimes seems to be divided between organized and disorganized people, and the organized people get all the year-end bonuses, (at least they did until year-end bonuses became little acts of economic treason).
Nice to see there's a third way: slow.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/garden/26slow.html?pagewanted=1&em
Sunday, February 15, 2009
David Barton
One of Slowhopes favorite movies is Tootsie, if for no other reason than its better-than-average depiction of the life of a middle-aged New York actor named Michael Dorsey. Although I never was a middle-aged New York actor, I hung around a few, and the essential conceit of Tootsie--that Michael would do absolutely anything to get cast in a part--revealed itself plenty of times. It's just hard to be an actor, and the subtext of "New York actor" is that you're talking about a certain type: a character actor, not a leading man. Not a looker, but someone possessing something, but not necessarily something that earns them many juicy parts in their twenties and thirties.
Character actors, like fine wine, usually take a few years to emerge into their best light.
(All of which is fine and dandy, but tell that to a schlubby, eager, sensitive young man with a little too much hair growing on his back that he may not really work until he hits his forties).
Of course, there are exceptions: Liev Schrieber is the patron saint of character actors, and has worked steadily since he graduated from Yale 15 years ago.
David Barton isn't Liev Schrieber. He was a high school teacher in Hendersonville, Tennessee, married to a minister and the father of two daughters until, in spring 2007, he decided to visit New York for spring break, for two reasons: 1. His daughter was in grad school and he could hang out with her for a week, and 2. There was an open call for a touring production of Annie, and Barton had always played Daddy Warbucks in various amateur community productions over the years. He was Daddy Warbucks before he turned 30.
So he flew to New York, and at the age of 47, became a working New York actor for the very first time.
Here's a story I wrote about him in the Herald:
http://www2.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/entertainment/story.html?id=81031f2d-0bae-497a-bcb9-e50a3ff37602
Character actors, like fine wine, usually take a few years to emerge into their best light.
(All of which is fine and dandy, but tell that to a schlubby, eager, sensitive young man with a little too much hair growing on his back that he may not really work until he hits his forties).
Of course, there are exceptions: Liev Schrieber is the patron saint of character actors, and has worked steadily since he graduated from Yale 15 years ago.
David Barton isn't Liev Schrieber. He was a high school teacher in Hendersonville, Tennessee, married to a minister and the father of two daughters until, in spring 2007, he decided to visit New York for spring break, for two reasons: 1. His daughter was in grad school and he could hang out with her for a week, and 2. There was an open call for a touring production of Annie, and Barton had always played Daddy Warbucks in various amateur community productions over the years. He was Daddy Warbucks before he turned 30.
So he flew to New York, and at the age of 47, became a working New York actor for the very first time.
Here's a story I wrote about him in the Herald:
http://www2.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/entertainment/story.html?id=81031f2d-0bae-497a-bcb9-e50a3ff37602
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
U.S. Economy: I Used Performance Enhancing Drugs
by Stephen Hunt
NEW YORK. In a startling televised interview, the American economy today confessed that it used illegal performance enhancing drugs, but that it has since stopped.
"It's true, I did ingest a banned substance," said a chastened economy, referring to the period beginning in the late 1990's and continuing through to the bursting of the housing bubble in 2008. "But you must understand: everyone was doing derivatives in those days. There was no testing. No regulation. We were all into them--Iceland, Spain, Ireland, the UK. We thought we were part of the next wave of economic innovation."
Instead, the popping of the economic bubble has resulted in the near-collapse of economies around the globe. Iceland's economy has melted. The Irish are fondly recalling the famine of the 1840's as the good old days, and a condo on the Costa del Sol can be had for llittle more than the price of a bus ticket.
The English economy is so bad, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a dour, doughy Scottish economist with the personality of a stewed turnip, is beginning to look good.
(The Canadian economy issued a press release following the American economy's interview with Katie Couric denying that it had taken any performance enhancing drugs. "Canadians don't do derivatives," it said. "We believe in being boring. As everyone now knows, boring is the new interesting." The Canadian economy wore beige, pleated cordoroys, sensible shoes and a baby blue denim shirt when it made this statement).
The dramatic confession by the American economy came after weekend reports leaked drug tests performed anonymously on global economies during the 2003 fiscal year, at the behest of the IMF, which showed that a whole lot of bankers, brokers and politicians knew something was broken, but decided that the American way was to let the market decide when it would implode and spark a global economic crisis rather than suggest that letting the market decide was the problem.
(The market continues to insist that its fine, although it could use a trillion or two in public funds to help it decide for sure.)
The American economy has been hoping for some time now that everyone would just leave it alone, and that the trillion dollar bailout by the U.S. Treasury would catch up all the banks and allow those same bankers to collect their multi-million dollar year-end bonuses, buy $35,000 drapes with which to redecorate their corporate offices and host lavish retreats in five star resorts, where they would get to know their new colleagues: everyone from the investment houses they bought out for a nickel on the dollar, because no one from those investment houses went to (economics! LOL!) school with the Secretary of the Treasury and thus had no access to the TARP fund, designed to save the American economy from itself.
Instead, the nattering nabobs of negativity who now dominate the business pages of the world's floundering newspapers continue to harp on a bunch of office expenses and act as if earning eight figure year-end bonuses paid for by American taxpayers is anything but business as usual.
"Without paying our top people competitive salaries, we lose the chance to recruit best and the brightest," said the economy, while neglecting to mention that it was the best and brightest who got us in this mess.
A recent initiative by President Barack Obama to limit the salaries of CEO's who accept bailout funds to $500,000 has been met with what can only be described as limited enthusiasm by the American economy.
"What am I supposed to do with 500K?" asked one corporate CEO. "That's car service money--if you don't pay the taxes!"
The startling admission by the economy was a coup for perky CBS anchor Katie Couric, whose stock is way up following her stern questioning of Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin during the 2008 election.
"Katie hit the ball out of the park in the one on one with The Economy," said a CBS insider who declined to be identified for fear that his superiors would discover he had an opinion about anything. "If you can bring The Economy to its knees on national TV, you can pretty much write your ticket in Washington these days."
-30-
NEW YORK. In a startling televised interview, the American economy today confessed that it used illegal performance enhancing drugs, but that it has since stopped.
"It's true, I did ingest a banned substance," said a chastened economy, referring to the period beginning in the late 1990's and continuing through to the bursting of the housing bubble in 2008. "But you must understand: everyone was doing derivatives in those days. There was no testing. No regulation. We were all into them--Iceland, Spain, Ireland, the UK. We thought we were part of the next wave of economic innovation."
Instead, the popping of the economic bubble has resulted in the near-collapse of economies around the globe. Iceland's economy has melted. The Irish are fondly recalling the famine of the 1840's as the good old days, and a condo on the Costa del Sol can be had for llittle more than the price of a bus ticket.
The English economy is so bad, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a dour, doughy Scottish economist with the personality of a stewed turnip, is beginning to look good.
(The Canadian economy issued a press release following the American economy's interview with Katie Couric denying that it had taken any performance enhancing drugs. "Canadians don't do derivatives," it said. "We believe in being boring. As everyone now knows, boring is the new interesting." The Canadian economy wore beige, pleated cordoroys, sensible shoes and a baby blue denim shirt when it made this statement).
The dramatic confession by the American economy came after weekend reports leaked drug tests performed anonymously on global economies during the 2003 fiscal year, at the behest of the IMF, which showed that a whole lot of bankers, brokers and politicians knew something was broken, but decided that the American way was to let the market decide when it would implode and spark a global economic crisis rather than suggest that letting the market decide was the problem.
(The market continues to insist that its fine, although it could use a trillion or two in public funds to help it decide for sure.)
The American economy has been hoping for some time now that everyone would just leave it alone, and that the trillion dollar bailout by the U.S. Treasury would catch up all the banks and allow those same bankers to collect their multi-million dollar year-end bonuses, buy $35,000 drapes with which to redecorate their corporate offices and host lavish retreats in five star resorts, where they would get to know their new colleagues: everyone from the investment houses they bought out for a nickel on the dollar, because no one from those investment houses went to (economics! LOL!) school with the Secretary of the Treasury and thus had no access to the TARP fund, designed to save the American economy from itself.
Instead, the nattering nabobs of negativity who now dominate the business pages of the world's floundering newspapers continue to harp on a bunch of office expenses and act as if earning eight figure year-end bonuses paid for by American taxpayers is anything but business as usual.
"Without paying our top people competitive salaries, we lose the chance to recruit best and the brightest," said the economy, while neglecting to mention that it was the best and brightest who got us in this mess.
A recent initiative by President Barack Obama to limit the salaries of CEO's who accept bailout funds to $500,000 has been met with what can only be described as limited enthusiasm by the American economy.
"What am I supposed to do with 500K?" asked one corporate CEO. "That's car service money--if you don't pay the taxes!"
The startling admission by the economy was a coup for perky CBS anchor Katie Couric, whose stock is way up following her stern questioning of Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin during the 2008 election.
"Katie hit the ball out of the park in the one on one with The Economy," said a CBS insider who declined to be identified for fear that his superiors would discover he had an opinion about anything. "If you can bring The Economy to its knees on national TV, you can pretty much write your ticket in Washington these days."
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