Procrastinet

The Slim But Persistent Possibility That Our Kid is Actually Nuts

filed under: Dadditudes

We went for a "nature walk" while visiting my folks in North Carolina for Christmas, and ended up on the dam that makes the man-made lake they live on. Max looked out over the dusk-lit lake, dotted with Christmas lights, and declared:

Max: That is New Hampshire.

Daddy: What, buddy?

Max: That. It's Concord, New Hampshire.

Mommy: ...

Max: It's a model of Concord, New Hampshire.

Grandma: Um...

Max: And it's made out of water.

Daddy, Mommy & Grandma: ...

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Concord, New Hampshire. A model of Concord, New Hampshire. Made out of water.

Happy Jesus' Birthday!

filed under: Hey, What's The Big Idea

I have done a bad job holding up the Christian end of Max's upbringing, I think. We spent part of Christmas Eve watching Beauty & The Beast, and at the end, when the beast turns back into a human prince, with a strong nose and long light brown hair, Max looked earnestly up at the screen and asked: "Is that... is that Jesus?"

"No, buddy," I said. "That's not Jesus."

Max nodded to himself and said quietly, "I think that's Jesus."

Happy Jesus' Birthday, everybody. Hug your loved ones and be nice to each other.

xoxo
- RJ

NominObama? ObamaNation?

filed under: Idle Chatter

I called it way back when.

As soon as his speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention was over, I said "I think that's our next President..."

My faith had wavered recently - during the chatterbox commentary on election night '06 his off-the-cuff stuff was underwhelming compared to his prepared speeches. He seemed a little green. And honestly, though I am a sometime political junkie, I haven't had the heart to get into the primary race.

But I've been seeing his poll surge lately, as the narrative cycle takes the inevitable turn from "HILLARY AND RUDY ARE SHOE-INS!" to "UH-OH NOW IT'S A RACE!"

And today, I think Hillary may have had her Dean Scream. During the Democratic Iowa Debates, when Obama was asked how he can represent a change when he has so many Clinton advisors, Hillary cackled over the beginning of his sober reply and interjected with "I want to hear that too" or something like that.

He looked up, smiled, and said "Well, Hillary, I'm looking forward to you advising me as well..."

Now, that's just a moderately good debate zinger, and the focus on debate zingers is a huge part of what's wrecking our political system. So shame on me for piling on.

But what got my attention wasn't the zinger - it was that, ten minutes after watching the clip, the skin on my back was still crawling from the sound of that laugh. It was piercingly obnoxious. It was an unguarded moment from a candidate who can not allow herself any.

And I think there's a very good chance that it will lose her the nomination.

Unless, of course, the Right Wing Noise Machine buries it. Because, of course, they are DESPERATE for a Hillary nomination. Their entire playbook for '08 is geared for Hillary. So it may not get the Dean Scream endless loop repeat.

But if it does, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's the beginning of the end, and Obama takes.

For the Record

filed under: Stuff to worry about

I've been, quietly online and not-so-quietly in person, worried about the economy. Maybe it's a product of sitting, at my dayjob, surrounded by attorneys whose practice group (Structured Finance, aka "Asset Backed Securities," aka "Toxic Waste") has, as one of them said, "fallen off the face of the earth."

Or maybe it's just that I've recently followed a personal pattern by reading very intelligent people intelligently holding forth on just why we're all well and truly hosed. The "why" changes (Y2K! Bird Flu!) but I do seem to have the Civilization-Ending-Panic-Du-Jour Syndrome.

To wit: Calculated Risk. Really, really smart writing (and comments) about the housing/home finance meltdown.

So here's my brief statement of panic, which will cause Procrastimom to let me know that I'm telling myself the wrong Story and thereby helping bring about the reality I fear: the (unanimously acknowledged) credit bubble of the last few years is unwinding.

There's a chance it will go like the S&Ls, where there's a major correction and lots of people lose lots of money and then we all get on with our lives. There's a chance that it will be worse than that, and/or will link up with some geopolitical goodies and we'll have weird/bad shit like the fuel lines in the 70s.

And there's a slim chance that the last decade's worth of our newly global economic system was built entirely on quicksand and is about to suffer "general systemic collapse."

Which would be bad.

For the record, Larry Kudlow (a very conservative Rich Old Man) says there is and will be no recession.

Mike Shedlock, at excellent stock-trader site Minyanville, staunchly disagrees.

UPDATE:

Some news on the upside: all the discussion I've read of the "Freeze Plan" which will probably be announced Thursday has been of the "too little, too late" or the "bandaid on a broken bone" variety. But the current coverage at calculated risk sounds upbeat. Snip:

So asking, in essence, why we are "rewarding" people with the worst credit profiles is, really, missing the point. The point is that the cost of this goes directly to investors in asset-backed securities, and those investors are being asked to forgo 10% (the reset rate) and take 7.70% (the current or start rate). They are not being asked, say, to forgo 7.70% and take 5.70%, which is roughly what it would be if this "freeze" were extended to the significantly-over-660 crowd (Alt-A and prime ARMs).

So far, I'm prepared to believe assurances that this will not involve taxpayer subsidies: the cost of this is, actually, going to be absorbed by investors in mortgage-backed securities. This is why "good credit" borrowers are not going to be "rewarded"--because investors cannot be brought to forgo that much interest. Somebody did the math, and somebody concluded that freezing a rate that is still about 200-250 bps over the 6-month LIBOR isn't going to be a disaster (at least not compared to having to foreclose these things).

Looks like somebody might have figured out something smart the government can do. I hope that's right.