Yachts & Malls

As a stockbroker drives a prospect by the marina he points to a beautiful 40 foot yacht gleaming in the sunlight and proudly announces that he owns it. “Great,” replies the prospect, “but where are the customers’ yachts?”

I’m telling this old joke in honor of the release of Wall Street bonus data showing a very good year -- #6 all time, on par with 2004 when the Dow hit 10,000 and times were good. It’s a reminder of why people choose Wall Street careers: when you win, they win. When you lose, they win anyway. And when times are really tough we lend them the money to pay themselves well.

I’m not jumping off the Obama bandwagon yet, but I am very disappointed in how things are going so far. The recovery bill is either a toothless, pork-laden, business-as-usual Congressional welfare plan, or the administration has done a really poor job of selling its benefits. One of the reasons I voted for Obama was because I was so impressed with his communications skills, and the marketing savvy of his team, but those skills seem to have abandoned them now that they are in office. They couldn’t convince one Republican to go along with them?

Speaking of the GOP, the Times reports that they forced the Dems to drop the $200 million renovation of the Washington Mall from the plan. What in God’s name was the point of that? Have any of you been there lately? I walked from the WWII Memorial to the Lincoln Memorial last November and was shocked at the condition of the Mall. It looked like a public park in some third world country; it was truly an embarrassment and should be fixed immediately, although I think I could do it for $100 million if I didn’t have to check my workers’ immigration papers.

While all car sales are down, sales of small cars have fallen off the table now that gas prices are back to $2. Those of you with no sympathy for Detroit auto execs should ask yourselves what you’d be doing now to save your companies, and 2 million jobs. Would you make what people are buying, or stick to your philosophical guns and keep pumping out those roller skates?

Requiem

By JOHN UPDIKE

It came to me the other day:

Were I to die, no one would say,

“Oh, what a shame! So young, so full

Of promise — depths unplumbable!”

Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes

Will greet my overdue demise;

The wide response will be, I know,

“I thought he died a while ago.”

For life’s a shabby subterfuge,

And death is real, and dark, and huge.

The shock of it will register

Nowhere but where it will occur.