The real cause of the Gulf disaster

Regular readers know of my bromance with David Brooks; his column today is a good example of why I admire his thinking so much. In Drilling for Certainty, Brooks, himself, drills deeper and thinks more broadly, in search of the causes of the BP oil disaster in the Gulf. He equates this ecological catastrophe with the financial catastrophe we experienced with the sub-prime mortgage meltdown. “These systems, which allow us to live as well as we do, are too complex for any single person to understand. Yet every day, individuals are asked to monitor the health of these networks, weigh the risks of a system failure and take appropriate measures to reduce those risks.”

He goes on to identify six principal reasons for why this often goes so horribly wrong, including the false sense of security that naturally comes with these complex systems, sighting the fact that more people are killed in crosswalks than while jay-walking, since we assume the crosswalk will protect us. It’s a great article. You should read it, although I think it is secondary to the force that precipitated the spill.

For whatever reason, Mr. Brooks has antipathy for populism. I think he thinks it’s counterproductive and anti intellectual, so he doesn’t ever want to pin the blame on the elites who run these shows. But what-the-hell, it really feels good, so let me tell you why I think the Gulf is now awash in sludge and will be for decades.

The overwhelming, undisputed, number one trend in business over the last 30 years (or more) has been the push to cut corners, save a buck, and never worry about tomorrow because that is somebody else’s problem. That’s why BP chose to use a cheaper well casing, and to remove the drilling fluid at the earliest possible time. That’s why there was no plan or equipment in place to do anything about the problem once the well blew. And once all the facts are in I’m sure there will be some similarly motivated action that lead to an impotent “blow-out preventer.” Anything to save a buck, including the sacrificing of the lives of the men who worked on the Deepwater Horizon.

As long as I’m doing my William Jennings Bryan impression, let’s also ponder who profits? Over these same thirty years while productivity soared, wages stagnated and middle class jobs disappeared at an alarming rate, the only things that are up are CEO pay, the percentage of wealth controlled by the top one tenth of one percent of the population, and the number of “free-market capitalists” who suck subsidies and favors from the government to the detriment of the public well being. Keep an eye out for Goldman Sachs, the great vampire squid. I’m sure they have their blood funnel stuck in there someplace.

Road notes

It took me seven days to drive from Central Florida to New York last week, and it’s a good thing because I needed a whole week to mentally prepare myself for the final leg of the journey – the Cross Bronx Expressway – America’s worst road and anything but an expressway.

I played a few rounds of golf in South Carolina, and visited a couple of friends in North Carolina along the way. I made at least 50% of the trip on non-interstate highways, which added a little time but still made the trip go faster. This included most of the 105 mile stretch of the Skyline Highway through Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. I think it looks like the photo above, but when I got on at the southern entry point it was drizzling and I couldn’t see much out in the distance. There are only a few exit points along the way. I skipped the first one and shortly thereafter the drizzle turned to a steady, hard rain, accompanied by a dense fog that made even the 35 mile per hour speed limit impossible to reach. But I saw a lot of pretty trees and stopped at a couple of lodges operated by the National Park Service, which look to be worth a visit some other time. You can still actually see some local character in America if you get off the I-roads.

Road music was, as usual, heavily focused on the blues. I listened to several recent Roadhouse podcasts for the second and third time, as well as “Soul Monster” by Rod Piazza. The blues comes in so many styles I’m sometimes not sure how to characterize a group. Rob in a harp player in the Chicago style, but also plays a little jump blues and does a great cover of the old Sunny and the Sunglow’s song, “Talk to Me.”And I’ve probably heard half of the new album by the Mannish Boys and have to get the whole thing. They really rock. Woody recently gave me a couple CDs by Guitar Gabriel, a real-deal old-time Delta bluesman who was once a patient of his, but who has since gone to his reward. (I’m certain these last two facts are not related in any way.) He is well worth a listen.

Tom and Ray Magliozzi are surely the funniest guys on the radio. I download “Car Talk” episodes and listen to them on my i-pod while driving. You don’t have to be a car nut to love Tom and Ray; you just have to enjoy laughing. They crack each other up with cornball jokes and old stories about the cars they owned, their families, crooked mechanics and anything else that pops into their heads. Both are MIT-trained engineers and have run an auto repair business in Cambridge, Mass for many years.

If you’ve never heard them try the April 17, 2010 episode in which we hear a very funny story about how Ray was sick and got left behind when the crew went to South Beach for a little R&R this winter. Then a wealthy grandma calls in to complain that her grandson doesn’t want to drive the Mini Cooper she offered to buy him because it is a “chick car,” which leads to an interesting sociological debate. Finally, a nebbishy Washington bureaucrat suffering from DMLC (delayed mid-life crises) calls in with a question about preserving the top on his Miata convertible. This leads to the funniest bit of all when Tommy tells him about his 1974 Chevy Caprice Classic convertible, and weaves a philosophy of life into his insistence on putting the top down in May and never raising it again until October – rain or shine. It was raining as I listened to it, but it didn’t stop me from laughing.

Cleveland, Wall Street and an endoscopy

As the poet once wrote:

Cleveland city of light city of magic
Cleveland city of light you're calling me

Someday the world may agree, but not this week.

I read “The Big Short” by Michael Lewis this week and can recommend it without reservation, but with two warnings. The first is that it is fairly technical. When you finish you will have a much better understanding of the difference between CDO’s and CDS’s, and you’ll learn the importance of tranches and how Goldman Sachs and other thieving Wall Street bastards used them to obfuscate their schemes to defraud their customers and dupe the ratings agencies.

Lewis worked as a bond trader at the old Solomon Brothers twenty years ago and wrote his first best seller, “Liar’s Poker” based on his experience there. In the opening pages of “The Big Short” he talked about how the wretched excesses of the early ‘80’s on Wall Street shocked him, and how sure he was that they were ripe for a fall. He admits to finding that notion quaint today in light of what was to come.

This leads me to the second warning. This book is likely to make you angry, depressed, or both. (I finished it the same day as game five of the Cavs-Celtics series, so imagine how I felt!) Lewis tells the story of the sub-prime mortgage melt down through the words of a half dozen professional investors who saw it all coming, told anyone who would listen for several years, withstood the ridicule and scorn their opinions brought down on them, and ultimately, made hundreds of millions of dollars by betting on their beliefs.

Lewis puts to final rest the fantasy espoused by Wall Street CEO’s and government officials that the meltdown was an event of such unforeseeable randomness that no one could possibly be blamed for not having seen it coming. It also removes any doubts about the rapacious disregard Wall Street had (and has to this day) for its customers, its shareholders, and for the good of the country. And it kills the myth of the “Wall Street genius.” They might be able to kick your ass on an SAT test, but only a collection of stupendously dumb shits could have produced the end result brought about by Goldman and their imitators. Hundreds belong in jail. I hope they go and I hope they get remedial math classes while they are there.

Lewis is a wonderful writer and makes the story feel like you are reading it in real time.

I’m going back on the road for a while; I’m driving north for the summer, stopping for three rounds of golf in South Carolina, dinner in Charlotte, baseball and an endoscopy in Winston-Salem (don’t ask), and a couple of other fun things before I get to New York just in time to clean up and head out again for my daughter’s graduation in Boston. I may be out of touch for a while, but feel free to talk amongst yourselves.

"This is ridiculous"

At various times during the 2008 Presidential campaign, in moments of frustration, Barack Obama would tell David Axelrod that someday he would write a book about the election and the title would be “This is Ridiculous.” This is according to “Game Change,” by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. Many of you probably read it already, this due to my inadvertently putting myself on the wait list at the library for the large print version, which in Florida can add substantially to the wait time.

But I had to read it. I started The Daily Blank in January 2008, not to be specifically about the election, but inevitably, we spent a lot of time on the topic and I followed it more closely than any before it. We all were very invested in the process that year, and this book does a wonderful job of recapping the major events and giving them a perspective that was impossible to have as the events were taking place.

The book is remarkable in several ways. It is eminently readable, and manages to infuse drama into a narrative in which the reader knows the outcome. Some of its most sensational revelations have been well reported since it was published in January of this year, but they are all the more sensational when read in the context of the story arc. Some of the event and conversations the authors reveal are stunning; so much so one has to wonder about the accuracy, but I’m aware of no challenges to anything reported in the book, and after four months without a law suit or a major hissy fit I think we can assume they got it right.

However, as enjoyable as it was to read on one level, I ultimately found the book depressing. It not only confirms, but amplifies, the impression I have of Presidential politics as being more theater than substance.

Obama, Clinton and McCain were stars. Like Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, or Jack Nicholson. They hired professional political consultants who acted as their producers, script writers, marketers, and road managers. They cast various lesser politicians in supporting roles based more on their images rather than their abilities. They wrote different scripts for different audiences. They counter-program the way executives at NBC do against CBS. The press did its part by reviewing the shows they produced 24/7; building audiences without offering much insight into the show’s meanings or purpose.

If more than ten pages of the book were devoted to issues of political substance, I’d be surprised, but then, why should they have done so? That would have been beside the point. It would have seemed ridiculous.

Hamburger lit

I enjoy steak as much as anyone, but if no one is looking, I’ll take a good hamburger over a great steak 10 times out of 10. It’s a part of being the relentlessly low brow dude that I am. My taste in literature is similar. I have a deal with myself; every other book I read is for fun, alternating with more elevated selections. Since I decide what qualifies as “elevated” a neutral referee might score it 60-40 for the fun books.

Fun books can take many forms but I love the mystery/thriller genre above all – this is my literary hamburger. I don’t really know how to review books, but below is a list of some of my current favorites. Feel free to offer your own selections:

1. Lee Child, the Reacher books. Child was an English television writer before moving to New York. He’s about to publish his 14^th Jack Reacher book. Reacher is a former Army Major who served as an investigator for 15 years before retiring early from the peacetime Army. Now he wanders the country wearing the clothes on his back, a toothbrush in his pocket. He has an ATM card, but no credit cards, no cell phone, no car, no other possessions of any kind. When his clothes get dirty he buys a new set and throws the old ones away. He’s kind of a modern day Kung Fu. Reacher is 6’6,” weighs 250 and has little sympathy for people who need a beating. He may also be the most logical thinker ever in print. Child’s plots are inventive and complex. He publishes a new hardback every year and last year’s comes out in paperback around the same time. I just finished it: Gone Tomorrow. It did not disappoint.

2. Michael Connelly, a former newspaper crime reporter, is unusual in that he has two lead characters. Mickey Haller is a lawyer in LA. He doesn’t like working in an office so he has 2-3 identical Lincoln Town cars outfitted as mobile offices. Harry Bosch is an LA police detective who Connelly intentionally paints as beige as possible, and yet he fascinates. The Brass Verdict features both Haller and Bosch and is a top pick.

3. Stieg Larsson was a Swedish journalist. He delivered three full books to his publisher, the only books he ever wrote, and then dropped dead of a heart attack at 50 before any of them saw print. The first two, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire were both international best sellers. The third book is due out soon. He offers an unusual protagonist in Lisbeth Salander, a 5-foot-nothing, 95 pound, anti-social, computer-hacker, tattooed and pierced-up waif who may, or may not also be a sociopath. International settings and innovative plots make these books a lot of fun.

4. Randy Wayne White I know little about, except that he was a full time fishing guide before becoming a writer. He has no web site. His character is Doc Ford, a marine biologist who lives in his combination house and lab on an island in Florida where he collects marine specimens for clients. (Does this sound at all familiar to you Steinbeck fans?) Doc has a scientist’s mind and a mysterious history that seems to have involved hurting people (Navy Seal maybe?). The setting are unusual, which leads to interesting plots. Captiva is a good place to start.

I plan to read more from George Pelecanos, author of The Night Gardener. He is a very tough and gritty writer; this is inner city crime as I suspect it really is and not for sensitive types. Pelecanos has been a contributing writer for the HBO series, The Wire.

I loved P. D. James’ Devices and Desires, the only one of her 20 books I’ve read. Ms. James is an Englishwoman of a certain age, but she doesn’t shy away from the rough side of life; these aren’t mysteries for girlies. That said, she might reasonably be called “the thinking man’s thrillerist.” (I think I just made that word up.) There is a literary quality to her work you don’t often find amidst the guns and the bodies. I’ll be reading more from James too.

Finally, if you’ve never read Robert Ludlum, you can’t go wrong with the Bourne books. Now I’m talking about the books Ludlum wrote before he died in 2001. His publisher keeps putting out books under his name but I don’t read them.

My life as a Fed

I got my first “professional” job in 1972 when I went to work as an investigator for the Federal Trade Commission in Washington. There were so many whacky things about the gestalt of me being any kind of Federal employee it would be a struggle to tell the story completely, but it’s important to me because it was there that I first became interested in writing well, so that’s the part of the story I will tell.

There were twelve of us doing research and field interviews for the lawyers who ran the investigations. We were enforcing regulations that were mission-critical to keeping the American economy humming along; for example, The Wool Products Labeling Act and the Fair Credit Reporting Act. As interesting as those statutes are, I’ll be focusing on one of our tangential activities: answering the mail.

The office received about 20 non-specific letters per day. By non-specific, I mean they weren’t addressed to any particular person, nor were they related to a particular open investigation. So every twelfth day each of us would get that day’s mail and the assignment to respond to it.

About half the letters could have been answered with a simple form letter that explained to the consumer that the FTC is only permitted by law to investigate a fairly narrow range of transgressions, and that said transgression had to involve interstate commerce in order for us to have jurisdiction. But, this being the new, friendly FTC we weren’t allowed to use form letters. Instead, we struggled each day to find new and friendly ways to say the same things, over and over again, in our responses.

For example, if the consumer wrote to her Congressman complaining that there were only 11 donuts in the bag of a dozen that she bought at Kroger’s that morning, the letter would work its way to us, and we could not just pass the buck with the old “no interstate commerce” line. We’d also throw in a little sympathy and suggest that she contact her local Better Business Bureau, helpfully enclosing the address and copying her Congressman, of course.

The directive that each letter should appear to be unique and personal produced a wide range of interpretations, and here’s where it got interesting. This being the Federal government they weren’t going to let a bunch of GS-9’s send letters to voters without scrutiny. This was well before the word processor found its way into office life, let alone email. This is how the process worked.

When my turn came up I took the day’s mail to my office and wrote out responses to each in longhand. This took 2-3 days. I then took them to the typing pool. A day later they emerged in a batch (Each day’s mail had to stay together until they were all ready to be mailed – like a litter of puppies all weaned together.) Inevitably a typist would have misinterpreted something I wrote and I’d have to make a few corrections, which would have to go back to the pool for retyping. With luck, I was done with this first draft by day four.

At this point the batch went to my boss, Irv. There are two things you need to know about Irv. The first is that he was not a lawyer – he came up through the civil service ranks, and it took him about twenty years to get to where he was managing our group. As a non-lawyer he had absolutely no status with the lawyers, who were the Princes of the agency and who ran the cases. Therefore, they never clued Irv in on anything going on with the cases and treated us like their direct reports, leaving Irv bureaucratically emasculated and isolated.

The second thing to know about Irv is that he looked exactly like Sammy Davis Junior, both in face and in stature. This would be a significant personal burden anytime, but had a special weight to it in 1972, the year Sammy gave Richard Nixon “the hug.” Irv needed a way to allow the master-of-the-universe portion of his personality to see the light of day, and torturing the mail-answerers was the only option open to him.

Irv also had plenty of time on his hands, so those letters came back to us very quickly, and when they arrived each looked like a New York subway map; a maze of multicolored lines, arrows and notations. On a good first pass I might get 1-2 of the simplest letters through unscathed. I was solidly in the middle of a very narrow range of similar results with my peers. Irv simply lived to correct us.

I would then make the corrections and send the letters back to the typing pool, because Irv wouldn’t read them unless they were neatly typed. A day later Irv dictated that perhaps ten of the letters undergo a second round of changes. Then back to the typing pool. Then back to Irv for more changes. Sometimes he’d change “white to black” on the first round and then “black to white” on the third round. Only we noticed as Irv had a dozen of these correspondence circle-jerks going at once with me and my colleagues.

This volley of revisions went on for the next several days. By the end of the second week after their arrival at the FTC, a 20-letter batch would have gone through 40-50 revisions, and been professionally typed the same number of times just to get past Irv. Then the lawyers got them.

The Assistant Regional Director, who was a lawyer making a pretty good buck, got first crack at them. His first order of business was to remove whatever friendly, colloquial language remained after Irv had worked his magic. The friendly stuff was the language we had been urged to use to show the consumer how much their government loved them, and it was replaced with some impenetrable legalese intended to either impress or confuse the recipient (or her Congressman). About a quarter of each batch received revision orders at this level, which prompted another trip to the pool. (Most of the women in the typing pool – and they were all women -- could have answered these letters in their sleep after a few months given how many times they’d read the same drivel.)

Then came the final stop the Regional Director’s desk, another lawyer and the top dog in our world, but we think he only read the letters that had cc’s to someone really important because he made very few changes. Once they came back from the pool the final time, out they went – just as the next batch came in. None of us was ever without of a batch of letters in some state of processing.

Maybe the reason the boss man made few changes was because he hated hearing us all bitch so much about the letter answering process. So to show how progressive he was, he brought in a writing expert to teach us all how to write clear, legally correct letters. And we got to take two days away from the office to learn from a master.

The guy was really good. On the first morning he told us the story of the admirer of Michelangelo’s David who asked the artist how he turns rough stone into something so beautiful. Michelangelo was said to have replied: "I just carve away anything that isn't David.”

“Writing is no different,” he told us, “You must remove that which isn’t necessary to tell your story. Anything additional detracts from what is important.”

We each brought in samples of letters we’d written and he took us through them sentence-by-sentence, stripping away the unnecessary verbiage and substituting clear, direct language for the flowery obtuseness of government-speak.

We were enthusiastic, but equally sure that letters written in this new, direct and intelligible style would suffer a near 100% rejection rate from Irv and his masters. We were so adamant on this point that the instructor apparently told the regional director of our skepticism at the end of the day, so first thing the next morning our capo showed up in the classroom and gruffly admonished us for our cynicism and assured us he would not have spent good money to bring in a writing coach if he wanted us to keep writing the same old way.

It was at this point that one of the bolder among us gave him a handful of our rewritten, new and improved letters. His face became a scene from a silent movie. His eyes bulged and then popped. His hair stood on end. Smoke came out of his ears. A steam whistle blew. “Jesus Christ! You can’t say this!” he screamed. He turned on the instructor and boomed, “What the hell are you teaching these people?!”

It was at approximately this point in my life that I realized I was not cut out for public service, and that I wanted to write like that always.