Cool, my first meta-post.  I decided to turn off anonymous comments.  I'm not sure if the Greater Internet @#$% Theory was at play, or whether one of my several friends had decided to make comments, but the comments were much more amusing that this blog, and I couldn't have that. 

I find your so-called "blogging" to be both amateurish and unprofessional. YES! BOTH! 

Though the simple design and color scheme of your page is both inviting and soothing. Which to your great benefit distracts from the content, which is indistinguishable from what would happen if cat poop was able to be on the internet... SO GOOD FOR YOU YOU COMPUTER JERK!

This of course is true.  This is both amateurish and unprofessional, as I am both when it comes to blogging.  I just wanted to create a web log, where I can spout some ramblings and not have to repeat them multiple times.

The question of what to do with a pile of cat POOP in your bed is way beyond your intelligence and expertise to answer! Ha! The answer STUPID is to throw it away!

I'm offended by the notion that I haven't had to deal with cat poop in my bed before, and through trial and error couldn't have discovered the correct course of action.

Securitization, Zombies, and my Mark Cuban Man-Crush

There's no site I find that makes some of the complex economic components at play in this incredibly complex moment than The Baseline Scenario. And I think James Kwak's most recent post on the effects of securitization on finance and economics really illustrates that. It also stirred some dormant thoughts that I had thought of posting months ago, but stopped pondering when PPIP came out, since so much of the good bank/bad bank debate now seemed moot.

I'll admit it, I do a man-crush on Mark Cuban. I can always count on him to have a piece that makes me think. I don't always agree with his premise, but it is frequently innovative, and always entertaining. Several months ago Cuban laid out a plan to make better use of the increased savings rate, based on the idea of tax credits to individuals that save in institutions that can guarantee a certain percentage of that savings will be used for investment.

Cuban's central assumption, I believe, is that savings per-se isn't problematic. To some extent, the loss in spending can be offset by the multiplier effect that can come from properly functioning credit markets. Specifically if those savings are used to invest, we can more quickly rebuild our economy. I think Cuban is a big believer in Creative Destruction, as am I (at the very least, it's a version of making lemonade out of the lemons so many are getting). So, why not incentivize people to put their savings into institutions that will lend the funds to business that can use them to more rapidly rebuild our economy and have the stimulus come from the private sector.

I've been thinking for a while about what the hidden problems are with this. Obviously, the biggest risk is that reckless lending is what got us into this pickle, and we'd just incentivizing more risk taking. I'm of the opinion though that everyone's too scared of excessive risk right now to not temper that incentive. I'm not sure if I'd want this incentive when the economy is humming along (actually I'm sure I don't). But for right now, incentivizing institutions to lend money and make "better" economic use of it than shoring up their balance sheets .

The other obvious "problem" with this is that could/should accelerate market share gains for those banks with solid balance sheets, and correspondingly losses for those already in trouble) There seems little doubt that this could easily hasten the death of banks like Citi, which the Feds have already deemed to big too fail. There's an entirely plausible opinion by William Bueiter in the Financial Times that gives serious economic weight to the old fashion "rip the band-aid off" philosophy. But that's in the abstract. Would I want to lose my job because we decided to rapidly accelerate the unwinding of toxic assets, and caused more financial panic? Heck no.

But man those zombie banks sound scary. I personally believe that if by prolonging the life of sustained recession that Japan saw because of it's zombie banks would cause more harm in the end. And while PPIP might do a lot to allow the unwind of the "toxic assets" and thus , since it has no mechanism to force the sale of the assets, it could still do nothing. And even if does work, giving the smaller banks that do have good balance sheets a chance to capture market share from these reckless behemoths is probably a good thing.   If we want the banks that capture shares to be able to help fund investments anywhere that might be wise, and not be limited by the banks physical presence, then we must face the same securitization question that Kwak poses. But while I agree with Kwak's position that securitization might be a root cause of the crazed lending bubble we saw, I think the credit-default-swap market was a proximate cause and played a much bigger role. That's another post at a more reasonable hour though.

So why not go try out Cuban's plan? I mean, other than ignoring details like:

• What type of financial transactions would count as a "proper" investment (security purchases, bonds, CDS)?



• What, if any types of hedging would we disallow to ensure that the risk at the source of the investment is properly accounted for?



• What percentage of the new reservers should go to new investments versus what needed to be kept for capital reserve requirements ?



• What should be the trigger that ensures this program dies when the credit markets correct to prevent another bubble and other perverse incentives?

Unfortunately those questions are way beyond my intelligence and expertise to answer. But I'm hoping that someone is on the track of answering them, because I think this plan deserves serious consideration.

In the last two years, I've done more personal development than I had since college. While I was not a failure by any means, I had stagnated in my personal and professional development. A combination of irresponsibility and vast disorganization was really holding me back from reaching any type of potential that I had. I definitely can pinpoint April 17, 2007 as a day that my life changed.   I found out I was getting back a sizable amount from the IRS, and decided to finally purchase a Mac, and my youngest daughter was born

With the standard re-evaluation that happens with the birth of a child, I realized the old saying of "work smarter, not harder" was one I had forgotten. I was not happy where I was professionally, and my stress levels were much too high, and I knew it would get worse with an infant. I realized I hadn't really done proper self-analysis into how I worked, and how I stumbled through life.  For a long time I had prided myself on my ability to multi-task, and to have low context switching costs. In addition to the fact that I probably overestimated these abilities, I also ignored the natural downside of this trait. My self-diagnosed ADD killed my productivity. When a "brilliant" idea would come my way, I'd drop what I was doing and further develop it, sometimes even acting on it. At the same time, I avoided mundane but necessary tasks figuring that I would remember to do them (despite all evidence to the contrary). The problem was that I was relying on my brain, which is good at tricking me into doing what it wanted to do. It's a useful tool, but it's unreliable, especially when you naturally flit to the latest shiny bauble. I had forgotten two of my basic principles, balance and , which is to have enough confidence to be empowered, while always striving for self-improvement. Oh, I thought I was improving. I was constantly reading anything I could get my hands on. But I was able to do almost nothing with that new information, other than occasionally find a cleaner more elegant computer algorithm or framework. Meanwhile, my internal systems for translating all the thoughts into actions was stagnating. And with another huge responsibility staring me in my face, I knew I had to change.

So, being a geek, I sought my salvation in technology. Once I unwrapped my shiny new toy, with some great suggestions from one of the most productive and insightful guys I personally know I quickly stumbled on to Merlin Mann at 43folders and started hearing about David Allen's Getting Things Done. As I dug more and more, I began to see how it fit me perfectly. Looking into how people were implementing GTD, I saw a lot of the adherents were mac fan-bois. Several simple GTD systems sufficed, and started making a noticable difference while I eagerly awaited the delivery of Omnifocus.  Omnifocus was in so small part based on a brilliant collection of scripts Mann had written.

With Omnifocus as my GTD system for managing all of my commitments, and Yojimbo as my everything else database that is trivial to add to and search (though if I were starting from scratch now, I'd probably go with Evernote). I don't worry about creating a structure that I know that I'll abandon for notes and other artifacts, I just tag it all.I still have hundreds of "projects" (anything that takes more than two physical actions to complete in GTD nomenclature) from work to getting ready for our next child, to clearing up a debt. But my mind doesn't constantly wander to them, as I know and trust that eventually I'll get around to it when it is approriate, and my systems now do a much better job of telling me when it's approiate. And It's so trivial now when I read an interesting blog post or bit of documentation to make a quick note that I will revisit later during my reviews, that I don't worry about running after the latest shiny ball. I just make note that there is a shiny ball and store it away, knowing that when my contexts and priorites align. A context in GTD is a place that you are in, be it mental or physical. Sometimes I just have enough time to make a five minute call, I look at my call items and do it. Sometimes I feel like planning, and I see what all of my planning items are.

I think the other reason I've become such a ridiculous Mac shill is friction. Being someone who is prone to procrastinating, I would internally sense when something I wanted to do took any "wasted action". Why wait for 2 minutes for something to compile while I could be researching some other piece of technology or taking care of an email. The problem was, when I'd go off while waiting for something, I'd . While I only found the Productive Programmer recently, it does an excellent job of showing how to streamline all of one's processes. I don't think this is necessarily critical for everyone. People with discipline and focus probably don't have the issue that if a process takes 30 seconds longer than it should that the task should be avoided to do something else more "productive". They probably just deal with the 30 seconds, and actually finish the task, and end up being much more productive in the aggregate. For people like me though, the cost is not a mere 30 seconds, but much longer, as I avoid doing the things I should do since I think I have so many more items clamoring for my attention. Between the scripting, and wonderful integration, and all the great baked in developer tools, I spend little time thinking of how to make my computer do what I want in an efficient manner, and now just do.

I still have to fight my tendencies all the time to get back on track. But the need to constantly improve as a parent gives me the motivation to fight those tendencies and constantly improve the velocity at which I get things done. I've got a long way to catch up, but I'm gaining fast.

Giving this bloggin thing a try again

In trying to figure out why I have had such trouble getting myself to follow through on blogging, since I so often enjoy pontificating on things I have no real knowledge of. I tried years ago, but just didn't muster up the discipline to stick with it. My working theory (other than the obvious lack of time-management skills and laziness) is that the Bush years were just too depressing for me. I'm naturally a contrarian, and most of my friends were strongly anti-Bush already. I couldn't help but try and defend him, and that quickly became emotionally draining. At the same time, I was upset by the "netroots" rhetoric. I did think it was not constructive, and highly divisive (as indeed was much of the right blogosphere).

Anywho, I hope this takes this time. Even if I am know just of several bajillgiion bloggers, and my words all fall of deaf ears.

Just wanted to be the first to say it (though I'm probably too late). Watch Cheney, watch Bush. It's never been more obvious who wears the pants in this family.

A diplomatic coup for Bush? Certainly, no matter why this happened, it's huge news. And certainly, this makes Bush's denunciation of Chen's referendum make a lot more sense. In which case, the administration has a string of remarkable successes to point at, when the deserving criticisism of the foreign policy of the administration. While I still think that the diplomacy of this country leading up to the war in Iraq was a clusterfuck of unbelivable proportions, I need to give credit where credit is due. And between this, Libya, and Iran (I know, I know it was the Europeans, but we obviously played a huge role), the Adminsitration has several important successes it can tout.

I frequently see visceral reaction to those who look for the "root causes" of acts of terror of crime. Jeff Jarvis eventually says that looking for reasons for hate crimes is futile and immoral by citing the example of the Nazis.

The Nazi example is great one to use, because I think it proves the opposite point on why it is rational to look for the causes of hate. There is a big difference between a reason and an excuse. Of course what the Nazi's did is inexcusable. But the question of what could cause so many ordinary people to have so much hate is relevant, simply because if we can do things to prevent, or at least mitigate the hate, without compromising our own values , it is worth doing. In the case of the Nazis, after WWII our leaders looked and said that the treaty of Versailles after WWI doomed Germany to economic misfortune for years, and humiliated them. An entire country was humiliated and in dire straits, and an unspeakable evil rose up in some of those and took advantage of it and blamed it all on the Jews (which of course was patently false). Hitler was pure evil from the get go, but I have doubts of whether the rest of Germany that either participated, or at least acquiesced was evil from their inception as human beings. They were receptive to the evil because of the hate and shame they had subsequent to Versailles, and they were given an easy target to direct that hate and shame at, and eventually hate and shame morphed into pure, unmitigated evil.

And so, understanding parts of this, our leaders decided that after this victory, they would pour their efforts into restoring Germany to its glory (minus the world domination and genocidal bits), rather than imposing on them the costs of war by the victors (as was done at Versailles). And what did we see from Germany (and Japan) after WWII? Amazing success at creating vibrant democracies that grew to be the third and second largest economies in the world.

While I think it is futile to look at what created Hitler, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, or Pol Pot, I do not think it is futile to look at why so many people have been receptive to them. And we can do all of this without saying it is our fault. Take the emotions and pride out of looking why people hate us, and you see that sometimes, from a purely practical perspective, you can make some changes, without changing who you are.

We won't ever cause everyone to stop hating us, but I'm convinced that it is not a black and white game of them hating us or not. There is a level of hatred, and a number of people who are infected, and those numbers can be changed.

That is what fighting the "roots" of terrorism is about, not self-loathing.