Hurray for the House, Part 2

The mainstream press' coverage of the bailout has been what I have recently heard described as an "echo chamber". Mere repetition of the talking points coming from the politicians, with no follow-up questioning or skepticism. I image a lot of reporters don't feel qualified to question confident declarations from experts.

A few days ago, I read an article (wish I could remember where) about a psychological experiment where it was shown that most test subjects would not dissent from the unanimous opinion expressed by a test group. However, as soon as one other person expressed a dissenting opinion, many test subjects would feel freed to express their own doubts. This is hardly a shocking scientific finding; we all know the story of the "Emperor's New Clothes."

I'm hoping that one of the best effects of today's No vote will be that the press will start presenting more dissenting points of view on the idea that we need a huge, hurried bailout.

Hurray for the House!

The House did the right thing by voting down the bailout plan today. The hasty, ill-conceived plan (has Bush ever met a hasty, ill-conceived plan he didn't love?) was built around two bad ideas:

First, that we can mitigate the effect this credit crisis will have on "Main Street" Americans by having the government borrow an amount of money, in one mind-blowing orgy of spending, equal to the on-the-books cost of the Iraq War. (The actual cost of the Iraq War is a few hundred billion more than the figures Republicans like to quote.) This is money on credit that will have to be repaid, with interest, either through inflation or higher taxes -- either way, "Main Street" Americans would suffer.

The plan has been sold with a bit of intentional misinformation: a claim that the mortgage-backed securities would be bought up at a deep discount. Not necessarily so. Paulson's original write-up proposed to buy up the assets at their maturity price. Furthermore, one of the factors making this mess such a huge mess is that nobody knows what the securities are worth. They are very difficult to value.

Second, the misconception that the $700 billion asking price is based on some kind of in-depth analysis of the economy. The truth is that the $700 billion figure is arbitrary. Paulson took the value of all mortgages held by U.S. banks, then multiplied by 0.05. Why 5%? No particular reason. Paulson has never claimed otherwise, and has never claimed by the way, that he knows whether the plan will work or not.

It's unlikely that he came up with just the right plan or the right amount. You can make a pretty good case that the economy will bounce back after its own after a downturn, in which case the bailout isn't really needed. At least not a bailout of this size. You can also make a pretty good case that we're heading towards another depression, in which case the bailout isn't going to prevent it.

So what can the government do? Just a few ideas better than what has been proposed:

1. Cut spending. A good place to start would be bringing the troops home from Iraq. Cutting spending is the only way our heavily indebted government can put real money back into the economy.

2. Require banks to hold larger reserves. A lot of the current short-term stock market crisis is driven by lack of confidence. Reform of the weak regulation that allowed the financial sector to get into this mess in the first place will help restore confidence.

3. If we must spend money, be prepared to spend it on a possible failure of FDIC guarantees. Or to help folks who are at risk of defaulting on their payments.

The best thing about today's vote-down may be that it has damaged John McCain's credibility. In this tough economic situation, the last thing we need is a war-loving President.

Nate & Daddy's Weekend: Day Three: Undamaged Kid

Thing went pretty smoothly today. For the most part. At the start of Nate's meal last night, I kicked off my shoes under his high chair. This morning when I inserted my foot into my sneakers, big piece of squashy banana in the toe!

I'm getting more confident with his new bike seat. We went on an hour and a half bike ride from our house, through Palo Alto, just up to the point where we would have to cross the train tracks and El Camino Real to enter Stanford University. We'll leave that adventure for another day.

We were both so glad to see Mommy!

Nate & Daddy's Weekend: Day Two: A Walk in the Park

Nate is starting to miss his mommy. Right before his nap, when he was getting tired and fussy, he pointed at her picture on the mantle and shot me a look like, "What did you do to her?!" He calmed down after some cuddling. Every once in a while he would point to her picture or walk around the house looking for her.

Today's big fun was a walk at Shoreline Park with fellow Geek Scout, Oliver, and his daddy, Greg.

Here's a photo from our regular morning outing to the neighborhood play park:

And here's Nate reading all his books:

Nate & Daddy's Weekend: Day One: Fry's Made My Child Cry!

My wife is in Seattle for a long girl's weekend with my sisters, so it's just me and the boy for three days. Really makes me appreciate all she does to take care of him all day while I'm at work. He's in bed, and the last of the going-to-sleep noises have faded on the baby monitor, so it looks like I've survived the first day.

Today's only tantrum was at lunch time when I tried to put on his Baby Bjorn bib. He has been starting to rebel against the hard plastic collar that holds it around his neck. But it was resolved quickly by my giving him his way: we just bought a soft bib that goes over his entire upper body, but we hadn't had a chance to try it yet. I felt like a bad parent giving in to a tantrum, but I had to balance that against his actually having a legitimate grievance. And I don't think he has the communication skills at his age to complain about something like that without throwing a tantrum.

After his mid-day nap, we headed to Fry's. Nothing to buy, we were just geeking out. Nate used his special balloon-dar sense to immediately spot a bunch of balloons attached to a line of clearance sale bins. There was one sort of runt-of-the-litter balloon that was only half inflated. An employee was about to throw it away, so I asked if Nate could have it. By the time we had driven half way home it had completely shriveled.

(One could argue that I played some part in this tragedy by selecting a known defective balloon. But it's just too much fun to hate on Fry's. Did I mention that he didn't really cry. He just looked kinda disappointed.)

Finally, we went on a bike ride around the neighborhood. We just installed a Topeak carrier on my bike. We've only test ridden it a couple of times, so I'm still not comfortable doing anything other than a slow ride on quiet streets. It makes the bike very back heavy, so I have to be cautious not to let the bike get out of control when stopped, and I have to avoid sharp turns. Plus, right now, I stop every couple of minutes to make sure he hasn't figured out how to unbuckle the safety harness -- he's always trying to figure stuff like that out.

The Seventies Get What They Deserve

If you didn't spend your teenage years living in L.A., tuned into 70's FM radio, you might not get the stupendously awesome catharsis that is Yacht Rock. If you did, here's your chance to be an eyewitness to the approximately-true history of how Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald fought their way to the top of L.A's smooth rock scene. (Warning: Extremely crude humor)

Half A Book Review: Noble House

Noble House by James Clavell



I got through about one-hundred fifty pages. Just couldn't finish it.

I thought it might be full of anecdotes about the history and culture of Hong Kong. I now have in-laws there and from there, we've visited once and we'll be visiting again one of these days. I was fascinated by the place and would like to learn more about it.

That, and my original plan was to read my wife's old paperback copy of Shogun, but the print was too small for my middle-aged eyesight. Noble House looked like the best pick from the hardcover Clavell novels on the shelves of our local library.

Turns out it is like an especially tedious episode of Dynasty set in Hong Kong. Ayeeyah! The main characters aren't even Chinese -- they're bloody, boring Brits.