Charge!

I’m covering India’s Republic Day celebration in New Delhi from an arm chair in Mumbai. The TV images are good.  A huge parade is passing the reviewing stand showcasing tanks, long guns and missile launchers, followed by more than 2 dozen military organizations decked out in rich ceremonial colors–red coated colonels on white horses–both wearing lots of gold braid in old British Buckingham Palace style. (I’ll send a separate pic file–too hard for me to load them here.)

Homeland Security

Each of the nation’s 26 states then presents a float highlighting its unique culture and industry. Then come acts from local and regional police, as in cops as acrobats stacked 5 high on motorcycles. Then there’s a fly over with a fighter called the Jaguar that looks like a French Mirage, capped by the release of thousands of orange, white and green, balloons.

Surfer, er Fishing Ministry Dudes

PM M. Singh

The reviewers are prime minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Ghandi, leader of the ruling Congress Party. The special guest is the prime minister of Thailand. It’s cold in Delhi and everyone is bundled up except the more attractive wives of leaders seem to be peeling off coats for shoulder shots when the cameras pan in. The old gals stay tucked into scarfs.

Well Done Old Boy!

India didn’t become a republic until 1952, 5 years after Independence. As a very young nation Republic Day isn’t just a holiday from work, it holds patriotic respect, but there are still hundreds of Mumbai folks strolling on the breakwater here overlooking the Arabian Sea enjoying a warm afternoon.

The day is a good break for me too. I’ve been running flat out since last Friday. The office drill is organize a big meeting, fly off on a distraction like getting curtain rods for my apartment or a sudden meeting with candidate for a fellowship–then a hurry up call to a researcher to finish a paper–then forget about the paper. Like Italy, somehow things get done. Nobody forgets to eat or laugh a lot. And some in the office, like Aksay who ran a reaearch group at Fidelity in Boston for 9 years, have become disciplined allies and guides to stepping away from the maelstrom.

Aksay showed me a quiet conference room yesterday where I was able plug in earphones and top edit a 12,000 word white paper–bringing it pretty close to finished. Estefa, the 25 year old NYU trained woman author, had 8 months noodling away with it on her screen, making her a sure candidate for asylum. This must stop, I vowed.

After I week I both expect to earn my plane ticket and learn something along the way.

Gotta head to my yellow park bench for some air.

The 757 touched down at 9.45 Thursday eve. It took 1.5 hours to get bags from the sardine full plane, including the one I put on in West Palm Beach and had doubts about ever seeing again. Good job United!

The next morning I shrugged off the jet lag ,made a stand up appearance before the 15 interns, researchers, fellows and directors at Gateway House, and wound up Friday night drinking way too much wine with old European friend Nicolas Krul, his Bombay wife Meher, Gateway founder Manjeet Kripalani and friends at a golf club in the heart of  Bombay. ,

The next day we checked out the apartment Erin and I will have near the office and drew up a long list of fixes–then got mugged in the afternoon and went to dinner with another large group–this time at the Bombay Cricket Club. On Sunday I took a chill.

The mugging near the Taj Hotel was supposed to be rare to “unheard of” But what better mark–anAmerican in a sea blue fishing shirt crossing the street with a shopping bag in one hand and an IPhone in the other ready to take a picture. Four teens surrounded us begging, suddenly  two grabbed my knees and as I pushed forward to break their grip a third heisted the wallet from my back pocket while the fourth pushed Manjeet to the street as she yelled “thief” in Hindi and grabbed the wallet as thestartled kid fumbled it.  She she said she was ok. Then she stood with blood flowing from lacerated  knees.

Bottom line. Wallet was recovered.  Left knee  6 stitches.  I now carry the wallet in the front pocket, Times Square style, and nobody lets begging kids get near them. The police guessed the setup was for clueless foreign types like me and that hearing someone shout thief  in Hindi scared them.

The rest of the weekend was uneventful except that Newt won and the Giants won. Even so, the run of U.S. news already looks familiar and uninteresting. Stocks up. Stocks down. Celebs screwing around. More inaccurate political comment than any nation can absorb.

India like China are  about the raw big picture–India 4 times the size of the U.S. with bad guys from Pakistan, Afghanistan, China and Nepal on the borders. Our think tank is about them and other foreign affairs. Street crime, a squiggle, only serves as a useful reminder that you’re not on the Florida beaches or charming Bell Island anymore.

Lots more later….

Jeff Bridges as Rooster Coburn

How do college kids get their parents to torture themselves like this for college kid schedules? Let’s blame it on the misguided values of the 1% . In our hedge fund capital of  Fairfield County as well as  the Bay Area’s Marin County, parts of Silicon Valley, and certainly LA, coddling kids is a way of showing how well off you are, although I suspect rich Angelos may use servants. Not sure about Dallas. Maybe Texans just say  “shove it”. Rick Perry says self reliance is what make Texas successful. (The Texas Ranger in “True Grit” says  he was glad to drink muddy water from a horse print in the dirt to stay alive)

This is a long way of saying that when the garbage trucks clanked outside our condo at 8 A.M. I wasn’t sure if Monday was a holiday or work day. Best way to find out is to tune in CNBC. There was no market chatter so it  must be a holiday. CNBC was indeed rerunning “American Greed”, one of the long documentaries it puts up when there is no market to goose.  “Greed” seemed like a fit for the start of 2012 and others must have had it on their mind too. Lynn Parramore’s column on the Huffington Post was: “Vampire Squid Watch: Four Scary Economic Trends for 2012″. The ” global financial monster is poised to steal yet more wealth and resources from the public in the coming year” she forecasts. We all remember the ” blood sucking vampire squid” story about Goldman Sachs in Rolling Stone on April 5 2009 by writer Matt Taibbi.It seems like the squid has a long run rate. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lynn-parramore/vampire-squid-watch-4-sca_b_1179339.html?ref=business). A related blog in the Fiscal Times follows up on the Fed’s swap program of lending dollars short term to Europe’s Central Bank as a back door bailout for Europe. Do U.S. taxpayers have any idea?   Of course not says the writer. The Fed never consults the public. It has to be sued to divulge that it lent $7.7 trillion–yes that’s 12 zeros trillion –to private U.S. and European banks, even though Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke was on a campaign to improve the Fed’s public image. Ron Paul, running second to Mitt Romney in Iowa has been banging against the backdoor bailout as well. He’s been joined by a former vice chairman of the Dallas Fed Gerald O’Driscoll, who calls the swaps risky, which in turn emboldens Paul to once again call for abolishing the Fed.

Ben Explains

We’ll know the Iowa results Tuesday night. No one expects the Fed to be abolished. But it might be nice to make it account to the public in full after it extends public money under the rubric of short term emergency credit. That deserves a lot more open discussion. On the other hand, I kinda feel sorry for the John Gotti family and their tight little neighborhood of Ozone Park, Queens.  Everytime the stock market closes and CNBC runs “American Greed” as a filler, the Goitti’s are treated just like the Wall Street criminals on the show and you get a lot of close-ups of the Ozone Park neighbors.

Dapper Don John

Gotti did kill a lot of mobsters and an occasional uncooperative union leader but he never did $49 trillion in global economic damage like the banks and Washington’s Fannie and Freddie did. Worse, Gotti went to and died in jail. As the Occupy folks like to point out: Not one banker from the subprime scandal even got cuffed. Wall Street immunity is heating up the political conversation today, but you won’t find it as a CNBC special. If you do, you might see values of the Fairfield County 1% changing too.

Eyes Off the Road?

Huntsman’s is Red on Black, reminds you of a Michelob label.

Dad Made Chemicals

Perry’s is Red White and Blue–Obama’s colors. Perry IS dumb!

Why Not Rick?

Newt’s are dark blue with Newt in thin White type and yes Red too, but less an Obama shade.

Romney’s is soothing Blue with White letters, a corporate as you can get.

Ron Paul’s guys hung up a huge bedsheet that said:

Ron Paul Peace

Bedsheet For Paul

An so it goes in New Hampshire.

If you’re sick of Iowa, Iowa, Iowa, come to the Granite State. The primary is Jan 10, just 7 days after Iowa , Iowa, Iowa.

The  thicket of signs that we saw were on a triangular patch of grass in Stratham, near Postsmouth. In New Hampshire people cringe at the phone calls,  mailers and TV ads that assault them throughout the day, just as people do all over the country. But they know it will be over 11 days.

A quick survey of private houses in the Portsmouth suburbs seemed to show more Romney signs than others. As the former governor of next door Massachusetts Romney is   a favorite son. A loss in the Granite State would be a huge blow to his campaign.

Ron Paul is said to be running well with his loyalists troops. Newt had the most signs clustered on the green, but that doesn’t mean much.

So what about the colors? If you’re selling magazines on a newsstand, there is no better background than white. Boring as white is, it allow you to read the cover language in the time of a handclap. Huntsman’s dark red H seems arrogant and hard to get, especially on black. But no one does this stuff without surveys, testing, consultants and color hue coordinators. You can be sure they’ve dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars already on the sign selection.

I’m sure there’s a good inside story on how they all came to favor black or blue or a bed sheet.

But it’s New Year’s Weekend. Give it a Rest Bob!

Twas the Day After Christmas

And all through the town.

The trash was high piled,

Strewn in a mound

Cardboard cases stacked off the ground

One for a  Samsung flat screen 64″ wide

Another that held a “Tight Lie” golf set with a putter guide

Just off the curb an empty case of Dewar’s

And a John Deere Green cab truck

Complete with twin battery skewers

Out on the tarmac I spied such a clash

Of recyclable blue bins next to 1,000 year trash

Oh where is the landfill to hold such a smatter

Of green plastic sacks and Styrofoam matter?

Well China’s the place to ship it of course

For that’s where it came from in bar coded gloss

Before kiddies ripped it, shredded it, mashed it to debris

On Christmas morn with ecstatic glee.

Shouting where is there more, more more for Me?

Now that it’s over, except for the tree

You can see the event in cold re-al-i-ty

The pipeline from China gushes transitory glee

At a 10X markup from WalMart to thee

The reindeer were phony

And so was the fee–that said Visa bought

Love in a Containership Socie-ty

Greetings From Al

The guys from Al’s Carting will expunge the illusion

That those boxes from China were a faithful extrusion

Of your heartfelt feelings for family and kin

When the Asian Invasion was really much trash for the bin

So as you settle down by the fire

Worn out, broke, a hangover still to expire

Remember the lesson of Christmas Day After

It’s not what you give that makes hearts patter

It’s 3 days enduring the family

Still with a dollop of love for all to see

That proves your true humanity.

The small group meeting at the blue bandshell at Memorial Park didn’t note it formally but today marked the three month anniversary for the Occupy movement.  In New York there was a celebratory march in Times Square and an effort to force an entry into the court yard of Trinity Church off Wall Street. Since being evicted from Zuccotti Park, New York Occupy has been campaigning to take over downtown Durate Park, which is owned by Trinity Church. The church, which expresses sympathy for OWS, is opposed.

In LA, Portland and larger cities marches focused on Wall Street bailouts, the wealthy 1%, corporate campaign contributions and a new law that might lead to indefinite detention of terrorist suspects and illegals. A number of protestors were arrested for passive civil disobedience as they planned to be.

Then came Time, making  ”The Protestor” the cover person of the year.

In  Stuart, by contrast, there was an active discussion about not getting arrested or causing lockouts. “I don’t agree with the movement to shut down the ports. It makes us look like disrupters, hippies, harming the economy. If the movement goes in that direction I will have to leave it, ” said one senior during the Stuart “Soap Box” session.

“Avoid all name calling in online responses” warned another. We’re have an image problem, don’t feed it”. The speaker was referring to the vitriol from online commentators on the Stuart News web site about Occupy.

This points up a real divide. The Stuart group is middle class weighted toward seniors. It meets every Saturday and focuses a lot on local issues. At its first meeting there were 136. There were 32 today.

A key point a few weeks ago was how to protest plans for two mega housing developments that opponents said would carry heavy tax and environmental costs. Since then, it looks like the plans have been tabled.  A new debate is how to stop Florida Light and Power from installing new smart meters on houses without permission. Ben, a local activist, says there have been 30 fires around the state traced to the meters. The utility says the fires are from faulty house wiring and not its concern.

Can it get any grittier than this?  Probably not.  So the question is whether deep local is good or bad. Local translates easily, admits Pat Wedemeyer, who wants to repeal corporate campaign contributions and close the Fed and is afraid of losing “the big picture”.Liz Piel, a part time resident from Sharon, Ct want to focus on corporate campaign funding.

Liz Piel

There were a lot of middle aged and seniors at Zuccotti Park when I visited during a number of days in October who were pretty much ignored by main stream media. But I remember a blogger who wrote then that Occupy would only succeed when the folks in sport shirts, chinos and slacks showed up.  Occupy encampments became a magnet for the homeless, the needy, wackos and radicals who want headline confrontation. Like the Tea Party a year ago, Occupy in Florida is getting networked. Maybe the little Stuart group is a bellweather for creating a middle class base.

Are you Tony?

Then a computer at Citi noticed there were charges that we not getting paid. Voila!. The collection machine,  actually a robotic phone dialer, went into action delivering 42 automatic calls of concern with no one on the other end. Then one day a woman in Missouri named Lilly was on the other end and we started to make progress. I’ve attached the story written for the Stuart News.

But it gets better. A few days ago I was about to automatically pay off a United Airlines card managed by Chase. The $2,880 balance would automatically come out of a Wells Fargo checking account. Then the little buzzer went off in my head and I decided to look at the charges carefully. There was a $25 late fee and a $31.26 interest charge. I slogged through the Chase telephone tree and reached a Chase rep. named Christine Stuck in Missouri. She said the payment, due on Nov. 24, was late even though it was paid AUTOMATICALLY on Nov. 24.  Chase didn’t credit the payment until Nov. 26 “But this was a keystroke payment, how can that be” I asked. She said it seems Wells Fargo didn’t release the funds for two days. If I had the account with Chase it would have been credited that day she explained.

If I had paid by voice, reading my check book number into the Chase computer, it would have been credited on time. But Chase and Wells move billions with a keystroke every minute, I thought. Then I thought: “never mind”. In the old days crediting payments late was called “playing the float”. I thought the Fed had eliminated that game. Guess not .

But it gets even better. By paying off the current balance in full on Dec 14, I delivered to Chase 10 days in ADVANCE. Even Wells wouldn’t dare play the float that long I figured. But with Megabanks nothing is really over. Christine warned I’d likely see another interest charge on the next bill because the $56.26 she was removing would not register with the computer. She couldn’t explain how this “residual ” interest fully works, but told me to call again next month if I wanted to get it removed. I’m starting to believe these gals in Missouri might work for a third party card management service and during rest breaks probably gossip about a lot of funny stuff that goes on as Chase, Citi, Wells, and Bank of America cook up new tricks to shaft the customers. Give those gals immunity from prosecution and they might offer an interesting day of Congressional hearings. But then what?

Right now if you are determined enough to wade through a telephone tree each time there’s a mistake, they will usually waive the fee. But for the millions of customers too w0rn out, enfeebled or unaware, the banks win every time. Maybe what’s needed is a Megabank Malpractice Act that imposes fines of say 10 times what the banks had to refund when they screwed you. Combine that with a rule that makes CEO’s personally be responsible when there was intent to defraud and you’re getting somewhere. Then I remembered most of Congress runs on Megabank campaign contributions. But there’s always the President–who just delivered a rip snorting blast against the banks in Kansas last week. Then I remembered that the guy who sits outside his door, Chief of Staff Bill Daley, was Chase’s chief bank lobbyist until this year. It might be hard to get an appointment.

Harry "The Hero"McCandless

Harry “The Hero” McCandless kept a respectful distance from the folks gathered along the Riverwalk for an Occupy rally here on this bright Saturday morning. Harry drives an electric shuttle to take locals, snowbirds and tourists people around downtown Stuart.  He looked more than casually  interested so I asked, “are you part of this?

“I work for the city so I don’t take sides. But I agree with most of what they’re saying. I’m 74 but I have to keep working to pay for my medical insurance and meds. The city said they couldn’t cover me anymore. It’s expensive, $406 a month.”

Harry by my count would have been the 135th person at the 2 hour gathering of mostly middle aged to seniors who came to represent the now familiar Occupy “99%”. Pretty interesting I thought for one of the more conservative towns in Florida.

Their signs said”

“Save the Middle Class”

“Tax Deadbeat Corporations”

“Tax the 1%, the 99% Deserve a Break”

People took turns getting up to talk. It was orderly and polite and everyone was white.  “I’m a retired nurse and I think we have to get a better balance in this country. We have allowed corporations to usurp our rights” saidConnie Gilmore, 68.

Matt Elliott, a Ron Paul supporter, made a pitch for a gold backed dollar and a 10% surtax on incomes over $1 million. Dave Lehoullier, an IT consultant,  said he would disallow any synthetic mortgage derivatives . “There are more mortgages out there than there are houses. We need to get back to basics” he told the group.

There are Occupy sleep ins in Tampa and Orlanda and Miami but Stuart may be the smallest town to host a gathering. A year ago a the Tea Party started a chapter that is going strong. Herman Cain, the conservative Republican presidential candidate, polls ahead of all challengers in Florida. The legislature is more than 70% Republican but Florida also has the 4th highest number of foreclosures in the nation. It will be a must win swing state and therefore a campaign battle ground next year. .

Will Occupy even be around by then? Who knows?  I plan to keep in touch with Harry.

Do I Hear $2,000?

Gold went to $1,909 today–Here’s what the Good Book says

On the first day God created economy. A man who learns comparative advantage will be more efficient and have more free time to pray and do good works, he explained.

On the second day God created markets. Had Eve learned the art of negotiation and the value of prices, she might have bargained for something better than an apple and kept man from falling into original sin, he observed.

On the third day God created coins. I thought they’d figure this one out but they didn’t. So rather than bartering clamshells for ginko root or saris for sandals, I’ll give them a solid gold coin for universal exchange.

On the fourth day God created banks. I’m not sure this is my best move, he said. But the pirates are burying gold coins in chests on islands, the Royals are socking them away in leather sacks in the palaces, the women look like harlots with all the precious stones they’ve bought with the coins, and there’s this guy running around Sherwood Forest gabbing pouches of the coins to give to the poor who use them to buy drink. If everyone is either hoarding or drunk, it raises hell with the money supply and means I don’t get the growth I planned on in day one. So I’ll treat the bankers as a necessary evil.

On the fifth day God created paper money. I just gave them solid gold coins and I see the leaders are already clipping off small amounts of gold for themselves and calling it seignorage which is theft by another name. Clipping a corner off paper money will make the corner worthless. As I feared, nobody trusts the bankers.

On the sixth day God created a central bank. Today it’s  pretty clear that man isn’t smart enough to even manage paper money. We have Smith bills, Nash bills, O’Reilly bills, Bush bills. They even put their faces on the paper which creates false idolatry. Let a Federal Reserve create one money for universal exchange and call it the dollar and regulate banks to make them trustworthy/

On the 7th day God created gold bars and rested. Sonofabitch, he said, I guess it’s back to the future. After Uruguay, Argentina and even the Germans printed paper money until it was worthless, I figured the smart guys would wise up. Then we get Greenspan and now this Bernanke running a digital printing press for the dollar, the currency I decreed as world standard. Then they insult me personally by calling it Operation QEI and QEII, like I’m supposed to think its a new ocean liner. So who would trust them to regulate banks.

The BS stops here. I’m pissed enough to throw lightening shaft into Jackson Hole, park a black cloud over Princeton and send a tremor down Constitution Ave strong enough to crumble that marble Fed palace right into Greenspan’s favorite tennis court next door. Maybe with a little luck, the Goldman “doing God’s work” guys will be inside.

Nein Times 4

In 1998 Erin, Brenden and I went to Stelvio Park in Northwest Italy. In August, it’s one of the few places you can avoid crowds. It’s Tyrolean and the first language is Swiss German, not Italian. The most used word is Nein–or “No,Don’t”. The signs in the park are long lists of Neins.  Every since we call Germany the Nation of Nein.

Erin got a quick reminder as she approached a Lufthansa agent about possibly getting on a flight to New York rather than Newark.

“First off this is an award ticket” said the close cropped unsmiling woman.”It is impossible to do anything.

Second off, you should know this is August, all the planes to the U.S. are full for weeks. Even if I could to something, it would be impossible.

Third off, the airline you will fly is United Even if I had seats it would not matter because this is United’s problem”

No questions. We thank her and left. Fly the friendly skies of Lufthansa!