Kathryn Schulz wrote a best selling book called 'Being Wrong:Adventures in the Margin of Error'. What does being wrong have to do with the Political Dogfight or everyday life? Watch this video and imagine having a better understanding of some of todays political theatre. Listen to what she says to us. It's very impactful.
This photo is of a condo building in downtown Kona one block from the water. At one time I owned the 3rd floor and all but one of the 4th floor. The plan was to take them to Japan, where Century 21 has just opened at network with no inventory, and sell them one month at a time. It was just before the Japanese vacation invasion of Hawaii. It was a helluva plan.
Due to a faulty partnership we never got to Japan and I was left holding a $6000 mo negative cashflow. This was not a good thing. Anyway just enjoy the idea that you could have owned one of these units because I was literally giving them away.
[sounds of plane crashing and burning]
We may disagree on many issues but Democrats know that dismantling government, deliberately starving government to death as Grover Norquist planned decades ago, is not an answer. Dismantling Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Dept of Education, the Endowment for the Arts and on and on...this is no answer. There is no future in those actions. They do not lay the foundation for a new future.
Now is the time to step into large boots, take a deep breath and jump into the deep end of creating the future. The deep end of what? The deep end of fixing the sewers and water systems in our major cities, most of which are over 100 years old; the deep end of jumping into the decades long project for building a more efficient, and preferably, intelligent grid across the United States; the deep end of dedicating ourselves to rebuilding our bridges using innovative designs that will last even longer than the originals; it's the deep end of going through the Northern States and insulating the homes of the the elderly so they won't freeze to death; it's the deep end of going into American deserts and insulating houses so the elderly and poor don't, literally, bake to death; it's the deep end of building all forms of alternative energy on farms by the thousands of acres far bigger than anything we seen yet or is even on the drawing boards; it's the deep end of offering free college tuition to any student who will give their summers and 3 years after they graduate to causes that need their talent.
The list could go on. With each of these building projects we commit to hiring journeyman and master craftsman as well as the unskilled. unemployed, who will be employed at lower wages, but who won't be taught in classrooms by teachers who've never suffered in the cold while putting the powerlines back up. They will be taught as they work in the cold with the journeymen who already have 15-20 years experience. Then those newly qualified professionals can help with the expanding energy gird or other projects and earn a good wage that supports their families.
It's time to step up. It's time to do as our grandfathers and fathers did. We must build the unbuildable dam; build the unbuildable interlocking network of interstate freeways taking less than 15 years; take the human talent that put a man on the moon in less than 10 years when we started not even knowing how to get the rocket off the ground and turn them loose on other problems with a guaranteed government backed research and development budget that will be, as the saying goes, 'off the charts'. We did it then. We can do it now. We can do all this without turning our back on the world. We need not become isolationist.
How do we pay for this? We don't pay for it right away. It's an investment. Over a 20 year span we will get our investment back in multiple amounts. We cannot imagine the payback in 30 year, 40 years. What was a computer in 1979? It was bigger than a house. Could we have imagined household appliances with more computation power than the house sized computer of just 30 years ago? Do we pay some form of price today? Yes. Maybe it is fractionally higher taxes. Maybe it's sales tax increases. Maybe it's gas tax increases.
If those taxes, in whatever form, were to create a future that we could loving bequeath to our heirs would it be too much to ask? If we were certain that the projects, the education, the training programs were locked in place for decades, not subject to the temporary political winds, would it be too much to ask of ourselves? Is the concept of "sacrificing" for today to create a better tomorrow out of date? At the same time, we can take immediate action and demand that we be allowed to fund the America future.
Let us voluntarily contribute to specific types of projects and programs. Let us invest some of our retirement in new instruments based on an old concept. Is it 'Infrastructure Bonds'? Is it 'Public Works Bonds'? Is it 'College Education Bonds'? It's all them and many more. Or perhaps not. Is it possible that we could help pay for the projects so needed? How many employed Americans would take $25-$100 from each paycheck, or dedicate some portion of their IRA or 401K contribution, and buy a bond that was going to create a better America for their children and grandchildren? Perhaps millions, imagine the funds raised if two million or 4 million out of our 300 million, made the choice to build a better future.
How many would commit to a scheduled amount per month. Would you?
If yes, start calling for giving Americans a chance to tangibly, and voluntarily, support America in the most important, basic way: funding the projects that will change the face of America in the next decades. Remember the change from the post-war decades from 1949 to 2009? That was overwhelmingly revolutionary change. Today it may look like we're slipping backwards in this 2010 election but it won't last forever. Frankly, whether the social agenda gets pushed back or not, all the projects, all the training, all the life-saving rebuilding of cities and homes, all the education of young adults, all of it needs to happen anyway. We're the only country in the world that is 95%+ populated by immigrants. We are the only country in the world that took 50 entities and turned it into a united country. We are the only country in the world dedicated to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'. We are a country that can design and fund our own future.
”All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.
T.E. Lawrence
"The Seven Pillars of Wisdom"
During the mortgage crisis congressional committees interrogated the CEO’s of the largest banks. These men have no idea of the day to day reality of their own business practices. They may set policy but are they in the trenches making sure it is implemented? No.
So who should the Congress have been interrogating to understand the Mortgage Crisis?
As part of the answer imagine this simple visual of the reality of the CEO and the loan officer:
So if you want to know the culture and practices that lead to the Mortgage Crisis, for example how the subprime market became so toxic, who should you talk to first? Should you talk to, under oath, the CEO or the man that was, on a daily basis, creating the mortgages themselves?
Mortgage company CEO’s know absolutely nothing about making a loan. If they were provided the most qualified borrower and given a blank loan packet they would have no idea how to proceed. None.
Many would question that statement. He is, after all, the CEO of the corporation. There is a simple answer to that question.
Being a CEO is a different profession than being a loan officer. The two are not interchangeable. The loan officer has no idea of a CEO’s job and the CEO has no idea of the loan officers job.
While the salaried CEO and board of directors set policy, the lower levels of that corporation operated on a commission only or salary plus commission/bonus structure. The pressure to create a larger income changed everything within the corporate culture regardless of the board’s commands.
A first step for Congress to understand the pressure packed reality of the street level culture, the congressional committees must hold hearings with loan officers and their managers. Congress will then begin to peel back the multi-layered enigma that is the Mortgage Crisis and the mortgage business.
The crisis is going to get worse as banks are forced to put their 'shadow' inventory, that houses they haven't foreclosed on and the one's they haven't marketed, on the public market,
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