Watching Life from the Periphery: Russell Brand's Booky Wook

Lately I've been quite fascinated with British comedian Russell Brand. I first became aware of him from an appearance on a late-night show, and since then he's been on my radar screen. I recently saw his performance in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and just finished reading his Booky Wook, a "memoir of sex, drugs, and stand-up."

He's not a very cuddly or tender man. His memoir is mostly a story about his nearly career-destroying descent into heroine and sex addiction, followed by his successful rehabilitation as a stand-up comedian and actor. Along the way he wises up to his detachment from his own life and the "amoral dream of commodified sex." Though he doesn't talk much about death, Brand is clearly driven by the sense of the fleeting and fragile span of life that we're given on earth, and yearns to connect with others who feel the same. More than once he recollects with happiness those rare moments when he found "one of those rare women who recognized that life is finite and saw orgasms as a wonderful distraction."

In his life, aside from his insatiable fancy "to have sex with adult human females," one thing remains the same: his relentless ambition to become famous. From the start he knew that comedy would be his ticket - his "cursed talent." It was the only way he could relate to others and cope with his sense of always being an outsider, watching life from the periphery, and only really living it on the stage. It also makes him tolerable and charming.

I like him because he has a poet's appreciation and ear for language—"you are in for a giddy, wild ride through language," he says of his book—combined with a preference for the grandiloquent and even grotesque phrase or gesture or act over the customary, conventional, and cliched. Like all comedians who get their material by watching life from the periphery, Brand also makes some prescient observations about humans. Like their tendency to change their mind about what they want to do that evening: "People do this a lot. They don't seem to realize that the future is just like now, but in a little while, so they say they're going to do things in anticipation of some kind of seismic shift in their worldview that never actually materializes. But everything's not going to be made of leather, the world won't stink of sherbet. Tomorrow is not some mythical kingdom where you'll grow butterfly wings and be able to talk to the animals—you'll basically feel pretty much the same way you do at the moment."

As a connoisseur of sex, he knows what's sexy: "She was sexy, in a lap-dancer sort of way, which many might think, incidentally, is the best way to be sexy; other ways include: sexy like a teacher, sexy like a police-woman, a mate's sister, a biblical character, Cher, Eva Braun, a Brontë sister, a babysitter, Madonna, or The Madonna."

Brand is a cocky, confident, cheeky man. I can't wait for his next book(y wook).

Cap and Trade= Carbon Tax + Corporate Welfare part 1 million and five

I have previously stated my preference for a carbon tax over a cap and trade regimen. What I see as the weakness of a Cap and Trade program proponents see as its strength: its opaque nature. It is true that a cap and trade, were the emissions permits to be auctioned off, would simulate a carbon tax. All well and good. But the reason most cap and trade advocates prefer a cap and trade is not because it simulates a carbon tax, but that it does so and reformers can avoid saying the word tax. But as its opacity is a double edged sword, it is also much more susceptible to rent seeking as is evidenced in the form of the proposed Waxmen-Markey bill whereby 85% of the emissions permits would be allocated as opposed to auctioned off. I can imagine how rigorous the allocation methodology will be: 1. Do you pollute extensively? Check; 2. Are you headquartered in or provide service extensively in a key congressional district? Check; 3. Have you donated to my (insert namer or party) campaign? Check; 4. Here is a free emissions permit which you can now use to defray the costs of your pollution by either keeping or selling at a premium to a less politically connected power company.

Some Wit from Russell Brand

"Life is not a theme park and if it is the theme is death."
—Russell Brand, My Booky Wook, p. 150.

The Jay Leno Show

It's not a talk show, it's a vehicle for advertisers: "Mr. Farella said he also liked NBC’s promise that Mr. Leno’s show would be 'advertiser-friendly,' offering sponsors opportunities like commercials delivered by Mr. Leno and the inclusion of brands in skits."

Chrysler

Chrysler will be a millstone around the Obama administration's neck.  It doesn't appear to do all that much about the cost structure of Chrysler, it will make any company that has a sizable union presence a credit risk in the eyes of investors, and there is a pretty good chance that Chrysler will fail again, just as it has twice already in the last two decades (I am considering the Mercedes merger/acquisition as a bailout).  Pairing Chrysler with Fiat will give Chrysler access to small cars and nominally a luxury marque in the form of Alfa Romeo.  However, both Fiat and Alfa Romeo, are renowned for reliability issues.  Just as Chrysler is.  I do think the Fiat 500 might be a real hit but outside of that Chrysler doesn't get much.  

The principle purpose behind this reorganization seems to be to preserve UAW pensions and health benefits.  But I think this will be viewed as a pyrrhic victory for the UAW and the union movement writ large.  I don't think the UAW is out of the woods yet.  What if Chrysler continues to make crappy cars that people don't want to buy?  I don't see how a tie-up with Fiat changes that trajectory.  If so, four or five years, I doubt Obama will be able to pull off the same hijinx and will probably just have to let them enter into a normal bankruptcy process which could very well result in liquidation whereby those UAW pensions are dropped onto the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.  This is what should have happpened this time around.  There is in fact some value to be found in each individual brand (especially Dodge and Jeep).  It's not as if Chrysler were to go into liquidation that every job would be lost and those brands would be gone forever.  Nissan was just recently looking at having Dodge manufacture trucks for them to be rebadged.  If Chrysler went into liquidation wouldn't Hyundai, Nissan or potentially a Chinese manufacturer be interested in buying one of those brands, whether to supplement their offering in the case of a Hyundai or to get a foothold in the American market in the case of a Chinese manufacturer.

But I think the broader fallout for the Obama administration will not just be the needless waste of taxpayer money but will be the affect this has on unions.  The UAW has largely been identified as the culprit of Chrysler and GM, however, a lot of the blame has been misplaced.  While the UAW did cause a cost structure that made for some unsuitable compromises (such as the precluding the manufacture of a competitive small car) management deserves the bulk of the blame.   The cars that GM and Chrysler have made of the years have been crap.  Some of this is the result of cost cutting but it has also been to a large degree a function of design, concept and quality.  Most of those three things are ultimately the responsibility of management and Chrysler and GM management have failed on all three accounts.  However, by stiffing the senior creditors to reward the UAW with GM and Chrysler equity stakes and the preservation of their benefits, this would seem to create a substantial risk in the eyes of investors where it concerns union companies.  Why would you want to lend to a company with a union when there is a decent chance if things go south that the government will subvert your claims to those of their preferred special interest: the unions.  Now not only will a union company' exhibit a cost structure disadvantage but also a disadvantage from the perspective of borrowing costs.  

The Bidens and Ponzi Schemes

One of my favorite finance bloggers is John Hempton, an Australian.  He has been machine gun posting about a firm Paradigm Global, which happens to be owned/run by Joe Biden's brother and son.  He makes a fairly compelling case that the Biden's brother and son are at least entangled in a ponzi scheme, and possibly running one.

Anyway, here are his posts on Paradigm Global:

http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2009/04/just-how-sloppy-is-paradigm-global.html

http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2009/04/statement-by-paradigm-and-some.html

http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2009/04/economics-of-paradigm-global-alleged.html

http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2009/04/another-post-i-did-not-make.html

http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2009/04/first-post-i-did-not-make-on-ponta.html

http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2009/04/fraudulent-hedge-fund-associated-with.html

The difference between a Pandemic and an Epidemic

I don't have the source for this; probably something I wrote down from the NYT or NYRB:

Pandemic, an adjective from the Greek pandemos, "of all the people," becomes a noun to mean "the outbreak of a disease spreading over a large geographic area," now construed as "worldwide." Epidemic, disease visited on a large segment of a population, is now considered regional rather than global.

On Miss California/Perez Hilton

You've all seen the video of Miss California at the Miss America competition expressing her belief that marriage should be between "a man and a woman," much to the visible chagrin of the gay judge, Perez Hilton. Many people have written in defense of Miss California, saying that she should not be "persecuted" for her views about gay marriage, views which many people in California and elsewhere also share. Fair enough. However, it seems that most people who are ready to offer their comments on the exchange between Miss California and Perez Hilton haven't paid attention to the question she was actually asked and to the answer she actually gave. Here is my transcript of the exchange:

Perez Hilton: Vermont recently became the fourth state to legalize same-sex marriage [crowd cheers]. Do you think every state should follow suit? Why or why not?

Miss California: Why I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. Um, we live in a land that you can choose -- same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. And, you know what, in my country, in my family, I think that - I believe that - a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there [crowd cheers]. But that’s how I was raised and that’s how I think it should be between a man and a woman. Thank you.

First of all, and not to put too fine a point on it, Miss California was not asked whether she supports gay marriage or not. She was asked whether other states should legalize same-sex marriage. There are many ways she could have answered that question without making her own views public. She didn't want to offend anybody, and she could have done so, if she said, for example, that that question is a political question and should be left to each state to decide. Period.

Second, her answer suggests that she has no strong view about the issue. First she says that it is a "great" thing that gays can marry each other in America. Then she offers her now famous opinion that she believes that marriage should be between a man and a woman. Those two statements aren't necessarily contradictory. She may not support same-sex marriage, but she doesn't wish to condemn Vermont and the other three states for legalizing it either. In any case, she seemed to fail to fully register the fact that she was being asked a political question and that she should have responded accordingly. She only realized this after she had put forth her opinion, but by then it was too late. Many people "out there" were already offended and that offense wasn't remedied by the words "no offense to anybody." Her answer would have been better received if she didn't refer to her audience as people "out there" and to the source of her beliefs as "my country...my family."

A little bit of sympathy for persons like Perez (who was after all a judge in the competition) would have gone a long way. And that's why she lost.

Dear Gov. Perry:

I recently heard that you were contemplating Texas' ability to secede.  The right to secede has a storied history in the United States.  You may have heard of a thing called the Civil War, well as a fellow Southerner (though I am only one by technicality, hailing from Northern Virginia), it may have been called "the War between the States" or "the War of Northern Aggression".  Anyhow, this question was put into practice during the Civil War, that question being whether states could freely secede, and President Lincoln provided an answer: no.  Ironically, there is another gangly and inexperienced fellow from Illinois in the Oval Office just as there was then.  My suspicion is that his answer would also be no.

Tea Parties

I didn't realize teabagging was so popular.

The Political Facts of Torture in America

In the latest issue of the New York Review of Books, Mark Danner observers the politically convenient fact that most Americans are willing to "countenance" the use of torture against America's enemies. The pertinent passages from "The Red Cross Torture Report: What It Means" are as follows:

It is because of the claim that torture protected the US that the many Americans who still nod their heads when they hear Dick Cheney's claims about the necessity for "tough, mean, dirty, nasty" tactics in the war on terror respond to its revelation not by instantly condemning it but instead by asking further questions. For example: Was it necessary? And: Did it work? To these questions the last president and vice-president, who "kept the country safe" for "seven-plus years," respond "yes," and "yes." And though as time passes the numbers of those insisting on asking those questions, and willing to accept those answers, no doubt falls, it remains significant, and would likely grow substantially after another successful attack.

...

It is a regrettable but undeniable fact that torture's illegality, or the political harm it may do to the country's reputation, is not sufficient to discourage the willingness of many Americans to countenance it. However one might prefer that this be an argument about legality or morality, it is also an argument about national security and, in the end, about politics. However much one agrees with President Obama that Cheney's "notion" that "somehow...we can't reconcile our core values, our Constitution, our belief that we don't torture, with our national security interests," the fact is that many people continue to believe the contrary, and this group includes the former president and vice-president of the United States and many senior officials who served them.

The Bush Administration knew then what is still quite true today: for many Americans, America is regarded as a privileged torturer.

Building Anew

There's a lot of truth to Ilya's post but I have to quibble with it.  It is clear that over the last decade there was significant overbuilding in housing, excessive capacity in auto manufacturing, etc. Ironically, it is now that I appreciate Galbraith's old bit about the private sector being rich and the public sector poor.  Much of our resources over the last decade or so have been misallocated due to poor tax incentives, easy credit, regulatory arbitrage, and rampant stupidity on the part of the entire finance industry.  Our schools do a piss poor job of educating the next generation, our health care system is incredibly expensive yet an ungodly amount of people are uninsured, come summer parts of the country will experience rolling blackouts (not to mention the fact that the grid could come down entirely as it did a couple of years ago), and people lose more and more of their time wasted commuting (and thus their standard of living decreasing as both their disposable income and time diminish).  We need more mass transit, a smarter grid, cleaner energy generation, etc.  That requires building and should have been built a long time ago.  Instead we built McMansions in the exurbs financed by easy credit extended on the basis of foolish models and fraud.

Why Not Hatchbacks

In Europe hatchbacks are prevalent whereas in the U.S. they are more of a niche item.  Americans opt for sedans and car manufacturers are reluctant to bring hatchbacks over here.  I don't understand this.  A hatchback is a sedan that just has a little more cargo room (significantly more really) and is easier to load.  They're quite utilitarian and perform every bit as well as their sedan platform mates on the road.  I find them more attractive personally but I am apparently in a very small minority.  I wonder how much of the American buying public's aversion to hatchbacks is rooted in a hatchback's likeness to a station wagon (considered a baby mover and a dowdy one at that- yet again, I like station wagons).  Or, maybe Americans do secretly love hatchbacks and car manufacturers marketing departments are filled with dolts.  I hope it's the latter.

We Do Not Need to "Rebuild" Our Economy

I find Obama's vows to "rebuild" our economy misguided. Our problem is not one of building or rebuilding anything. If anything, there has been way too much building. "During a decade of easy credit and loose spending," begins this NYT article on empty restaurants, "American businesses built too many cars, houses, stores and factories. It turns out the country built too many restaurants, too." People need income, and thus jobs, not more building(s).

Bethesda

According to Forbes Bethesda is one of the most livable cities in America.  I couldn't agree more except for two facts: 1. Bethesda sucks; 2. Bethesda is in Montgomery County which sucks.  Other than that it rules.  Any sane person, which by definition excludes any resident of Montgomery County, knows that the commonwealth is vastly superior.

Here's my brief against Montgomery County:

1. The roads are awful

2. The drivers are the worst in the country

3. Taxes are significantly higher than neighboring jurisdicitons such as Arlington, yet the level of service is lower.

4. Car insurance is goddawful expensive in Montgomery County (my car insurance was $2k annually while it was $800 annually at its highest in Virginia)

5. The housing stock is poor, and the lots on which the houses reside are stingy.

But I come from Northern Virginia and there is simply something that is hard to explain but we from Northern Virginia find Montgomery County unappealing and the feeling is reciprocated.  Bethesda is actually a pretty nice place.  It's very expensive but it does have close proximity to a lot of cultural amenities, it has convenient access to mass transit, it is right on the border of the city and has some wonderful dining options.  It feels sterile to me but sterile is better in my view than some crime-ridden shithole.

Was the Recession Caused by an Oil Shock?

That's James Hamilton's contrarian thesis.  He thinks the economy would be showing slow GDP growth presently if it weren't for the oil shock last year.  I am not sure I buy it but still worth reading.

Pepsi Natural

April Fools! Just kidding. This product has been available for some time, but I saw it for the first time in my local grocery store last week. Seeing the word "Pepsi "followed by "natural" left me a bit puzzled. Of course, by "natural" they mean that it is composed of "all natural ingredients" as opposed to traditional Pepsi, which is composed of artificial ingredients such as fructose corn syrup, sugar, artificial colourings, phosphoric acid, caffeine, citric acid, and so on. But isn't this a distinction without a difference? Natural Pepsi is just as much a part of a large industrial process of production as traditional Pepsi. And if natural Pepsi is natural, does that make regular Pepsi unnatural? Natural Pepsi is not a new product, it is merely a new ingredient in an old, unhealthy, artificial product. It's amazing how a company can add one ingredient - sugar - and market the product as new and natural.

Clover

Yesterday I visited the Intelligentsia coffee shop on Broadway (in Chicago) to get a taste of coffee made from a Clover machine. A few months ago that outlet got rid of its conventional drip machine and in its place installed 3 Clover machines. Which means that each cup of coffee--your cup of coffee--is made soon after you order it, and the whole process takes less than a minute. The Clover machine is slick and quick. It's like a high-tech French press. Unlike French press coffee, however, the coffee that the Clover makes is much smoother. I paid $2.60 for a 12oz cup. You pay for what you get, and it's worth it, especially compared to the price of 12oz of coffee at Starbucks. It is really a shame that the Clover machine (from what I understand) is now owned by Starbucks and they seem reluctant to use it in their own stores and to see it used by anybody else.

Pie-Eyed Pickle of the Week: Dennis Rodman

Dennis Rodman had a reputation--at least among those who didn't know him personally or care to be apprised of his criminal record--that was secured by his glorious days on the basketball court. But after his run on Celebrity Apprentice, the whole world now knows that he is an obnoxious, lecherous, aimless drunk. Dennis, for the sake of your own reputation, you should have stayed out of the public eye and in those Canadian strip clubs.

Payroll Tax Holiday

Rick Hertzberg pimps the idea of a payroll tax holiday as a stimulus option and then also advocates abolishing the payroll tax altogether.  Abolishing the payroll tax would be a step in the right direction policy wise.  It is a regressive tax and it is a tax on labor thereby reducing the returns to work.  That said, the payroll tax currently comprises about 1/3 of all federal revenues.  Even if you implemented some taxes such as a carbon tax and a securities transaction tax, you would only be a 1/3 if the way towards offsetting payroll tax revenues.  If you were to completely offset the payroll tax you would have to implement a VAT or consumption tax of some form in addition to a carbon tax/securities transaction tax.  Such a shift would probably have negligible distributional effects but it would be a lot more efficient.