Almost a year without blog posts?

Wow. I could wait another month and a half and set a record of no postings for a whole year, but then again, ten and a half months without a post? What planet have I been on?

I gotta get back to Dear Bloggerizing, entertaining my... two (2?) "followers". Lead them to where no man has gone before! whoa!

The Bottle

Yes, it's true, faith and world order are restored, everything will be all right.

On Saturday 4/11/09, we had just dined a fine dismal dinner at Casa Bonita and we were returning to Pops & Betsy's digs when Wifey says we should get him some wine. After missing many Liquor stores on Wadsworth, Sis-in-law yelled, "Liquor store on the right, pull in!". I pulled hard right into a store which looked awful dismal at first. As always after a look through what we needed, wine, I ambled to the Whisky section, The Single Malts, - that is, and there they had your regular fare of fair malts.

But there in the back there was a single, lone box with a purple strip across: 18 Years Old it said; Distilled 1976, it said underneath. And as I grabbed it faithlessly to see if it was "it", the Asian owner came and made sure I would not drop The Bottle. "That's a very expensive bottle," he said, "been here very very long time".

I bet. It was way cheaper than I thought it should have cost, which got me thinking that there was something wrong with The Bottle. (Price censored to protect the guilty and ignorati).

We skedaddled with our wines. At Pops' excellent abode I immediately jumped online and "researched" The Bottle. Sure enough, it was the real Mccoy; it was an 18 year old Sherry Oak Cask aged Single Highland Malt Scotch Whisky, distilled in 1976, bottled in 1994 and prior to Macallan's sherry oak cask shortage fiasco. This was a goodie!

I had to have The Bottle.

But how? The store was closed. Damn Colorado with liquor stores and ridiculous prohibition-age lifestyle grumble grumble... And of course the next day was Easter Sunday; one would need to raise the dead before liquor stores opened on that day! And I was traveling back to California that day.

No problem. The Bottle had been there "for a very very long time". Clearly nobody in Wheat Ridge or Arvada knew a Macallan from a PBR ("The PBR" is slightly cheaper than this bottle) and this bottle sat lonely on a shelf for some years. It was pretty dusty.

I wanted The Bottle.

I NEEDED The Bottle.

I left town without The Bottle.

For two days I could think of nothing but The Bottle. I messed with taxes, I thought of The Bottle. I drank my dwindling supply of The Previous Bottle, I thought of The Bottle.

The Bottle.

In came Wifey & Pops to the rescue. Lord, I knew there was a reason for marriage, family, diapers, teenagers and hybrid cars! Pops went out and found The Bottle and Wifelet dearly escorted it back to Los Angeles today.

Dear, dear Wifelet!

I have The Bottle.

I opened The Bottle.

I let it breathe a couple of minutes as I read the labels and admired its rich rosewood tint.

Then Wifelet and I sipped it. Slowly. Deliberately.

And there was light.

I'm no elite single malt illuminati, but it does not take one to know the difference between The Whisky, and regular Joe whisky. This explodes supernova in taste, depth, variety, hues and sexy hints. Compared to this regular scotch is like listening to a symphony through a telephone. You know how much I love the phone...

With deep appreciation and gratitude to my Wifelet, Sis-in-law, Pops and providence, there shall be wide spectrum light for the next four score and many forthnights.

I love you all.

What If they gave a Bailout Bash and nobody came?

I still have no idea how the auto industry is using hard-earned taxpayer funds to bail itself out of the hole they dug itself into. Restructuring, refinancing, Renegotiating, consolidating are all great accounting buzzwords, but is there walk behind the talk?

I know however how I would like to see the funds used: give them to the taxpayers who want to buy select, forward-looking technologies from the industry, subsidizing the rapid growth of these technologies.

For example, take the Chevy Volt. Hybrids and Electrics are an up and coming transportation technology, and we want it. But there is not enough infrastructure out there yet, and it's going to take time to ramp it up, etc.

Let's say the Volt will be priced at $40K. Give any individual taxpayer who wishes to purchase a Volt $20K to make it affordable. Give another $5K to GM to build infrastructure for it in cities. That's $25K per car. If 100,000 Volts are purchased, that is $2.5 billion dollars - nearly a tenth of the bailout bill the US is footing for the auto industry right now. Plus, 100,000 taxpayers will benefit from a low-cost upgrade to their cars, and forward looking technologies in their service.

What if not enough Volts sell? If a company's products are not in demand, there's no point to having the company exist. Let it fade away.

What if the company is not ready with the Volt in time? String it along with just enough bailout funds to keep it out of bankrupcy, and prioritize the desirable technologies. The point is that the company is on emergency life support only to produce the desired technologies.

Today, the US is bailing out the auto industry to the tune of $30-50 billion dollars. At $25K, that is nearly 2 million subsidized Volts. My numbers are arbitrary and can be tweaked, but the point remains that the bailout would best serve in the hands of the buying public towards technologies that this country needs, and needs them out there fast. Don't hand it out to the companies for nebulous restructuring, renegotiating, refinancing and other wallstreetspeak.

Asbed

Asbed's Law of Important Events in Meetings

The simple statement of this important law is:

Everything important in a meeting happens between the time you leave it and before it ends.

In greater detail:

During any meeting, even a multi-hour, boring meeting which drags on, everything important will happen between the time you leave it, and the time the meeting ends, even if you leave the meeting seconds before it ends.

Asbed

Too Big To Fail

If we're to learn something from this economic crisis, it is that size matters. If companies can become "too big to fail", then we can't let them get "too big". When they get too big, government should act to break up the company into units that can continue to grow and prosper. The current crisis shows that "Too big to fail" is a national security concern.

How big is too big? Best left for the Secretary of the Treasury to answer.

How do you define too big? There are many criteria one can use:

• Capitalization: What was the smallest company that NEEDED to be bailed out this time around? Limit should be set there for starters.
• Number of employees: can the country suffer the loss of that many jobs if the company goes under?
• Retirement stakes: how will retirement funds - through mutual funds, as well as employee retirement programs, - fare, if the company fails?
• Industry position: what would be the effect of the company's failure on various industries, and the trickle-down effect into the economy?
• And probably many other criteria I'm not thinking about right now.

Clearly there needs to be regulation and monitoring. Both are dirty words in an open market economy, but necessary for the safeguarding of peoples' jobs, investments and welfare. But there's no need to make this into a religious debate for or against regulation, we can have it both ways.

I propose that regulation should be optional.

1. If a company opts to be regulated, then it will be, and in case of failure the government will rescue it. All stakeholders will be safe.
2. If a company opts to not be regulated, then in case of failure the company will be left to fold and its stakeholders lose.
   

Let the people vote with their patronage. Would they choose regulated companies or prefer the riskier, but possibly, or allegedly, more rewarding unregulated companies?

Asbed

Screaming in the desert

Zero followers. Must... drown... sorrow... in... Macallan 18.

Celebrating The Dream!

This year, America should have officially declared 2 days off for Martin Luther King day:

• Martin Luther King day as usual, on January 19; and
• Inauguration day on January 20, to celebrate "The Dream", of achieving a giant milestone in the march against racism.

Zero followers. It follows that nobody listens to me. It follows that it doesn't matter what I write! This is like the tree that falls in the forest and nobody hears it...

Now that I have a blog, I need to go to blogging school so I know what to say.
In any case, welcome to The Liquid Podium.