The Bar Mitzvah Brawl: Quick Dan vs. The Rock

The Setting: Birmingham’s Townsend Hall

The Occasion: Some Kid’s Bar Mitzvah on March 21st

The Crowd: 300 people in attendance

The Main Event: Dan Gilbert vs. David Hall

 

Remember those annoying TV and radio commercials interrupting every Detroit Pistons game and on just about every other channel on TV? David Hall, former Vice President of Rock Financial, a division of Quicken Loans, would come on and discuss the latest unbelievable adjustable mortgage loan, 50 year “smart loan,” 10/30/50 balloon-fixed loan, or some other mishigoss. I listened, wondering should I refinance again and get that 0 % down loan that would allow me to buy a car or new basement or big screen TV?

            I didn’t fall for it but thousands of others did. I used to believe in the power of Rock and believed that David Hall was Rock Financial’s CEO. I didn’t know he was just a partner, vice president, and pitchman who had joined Quicken/Rock in 1985 and rose to become the head spokesperson for the organization, creating a slew of advertisements in both radio and print media. He was responsible for training thousands of bankers over his years at the organization and as a Senior Vice President, had been in a position to benefit greatly from the types of fraudulent loan activities that eventually brought down the subprime mortgage market and eventually the entire United States housing market.

The real rock, of course, behind The Rock was Dan Gilbert, founder of Quicken Loans, which owns Rock Financial. Dan fired Hall in December, 2007, supposedly for mortgage fraud. Gilbert’s lawyer, Jeffrey Morganroth, said that Hall was fired for “gross misconduct and breach of fiduciary duty.”

When the two tiny titans met again at the bar mitzvah, you could cut the tension in the air with a circumcision Gomco clamp.

According to Morganroth, representing Quick Dan, The Rock (Hall) attacked first, ready to go public with the Bar Mitzvah brawl if Gilbert didn’t buy out some investments that Hall has in some of Gilbert’s companies. But according to Birmingham Police Chief Richard Patterson, Hall came to the police and filed an assault complaint against Gilbert. Hall’s lawyer, Todd Flood, said, “David Hall did what was appropriate. He’s the victim of a crime and he took the matter to the police.”

No, the rumors aren’t right. Quick Dan Gilbert, owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, didn’t summon Lebron James to his side to pulverize The Rock and Hall didn’t bring his old buddy, Ben Wallace, to attack Quick Dan.

As far as anyone saw, this was a minor skirmish between two business associates who made a lot of money in the good old days of mortgage mischief and who are now singing the blues.

I can only imagine Hall in a new Pistons commercial singing his heart out to Quick Dan Gilbert with Madonna at his side:

 

“Don’t cry for me, Danny Gilbert.

The truth is I never left you
All through my wild days
My mad existence
I kept my promise
Don’t keep your distance

And as for fortune, and as for fame
I never invited them in
Though it seemed to the world they were all I desired

They are illusions
They are not the solutions they promised to be
The answer was here all the time
I hate you and know you hate me

But don’t cry for me, Danny Gilbert.”

Go Green

We need a jolt of hope and optimism that we in Southeastern Michigan will survive the withering away and possible death of General Motors, Chrysler, and the domestic auto industry.

 

Green is the theme of the North Farmington High School disciplinary program this year. The goal of the program is to get high schoolers and their parents to make better use of the earth by not wasting so much and being conscious of the choices they make. A recent study (“PC Energy Report US 2009”), for instance, estimates that leaving computers on overnight wastes $2.8 billion on excess energy costs in the U.S. alone.

            So shut off your computer tonight and when you turn it back on, you may learn more about the futures of GM and Chrysler. We just learned that CEO Rick Wagoner of General Motors resigned at the request of the Obama administration. Obama said over the weekend that the best chance of survival might be “utilizing the bankruptcy code in a quick and surgical way,” the same point many Republican senators said in December when they voted to turn down GM’s request for a government “bailout.”

            We have been watching the exodus of so many green dollars out of our city and state for so long that we are no longer shocked at new automotive news. We just wait and wait for the proverbial “next shoe to drop.”

            Will GM avoid bankruptcy? It doesn’t look good right now, unless the bond holders and UAW take the threat seriously. And will Chrysler be rescued by Fiat? Don’t hold your breath.

            We do, however, need to take a deep breath and have faith that one day, GM and Chrysler will be the green car companies that Obama and Congress wants, producing excellent cars with great fuel economy. But that implies that they will still be alive, competitive with Toyota and Honda and Tata Motors which is now producing a car that’s cheaper and smaller than any European bug or beetle.

            At least for a week, Michiganders have something to be thankful and hopeful for, and it’s just as green. The MSU Spartans surprised the top-seeded Louisville Cardinals to make the Final Four for the 5^th time in the last 11 years. Thirty years after Magic Johnson led Michigan State to the NCAA title against Larry Bird, we have a chance to win it again at Ford Field in Detroit.

            In the first year of the new millennium, on April 3, 2000, MSU won their second championship. 58 days later, on June 1, 2000, Rick Wagoner took over as CEO of GM,  chosen to lead the largest car company in the world to new glory in the new century. Less than a decade later, Wagoner is gone but MSU has a chance to repeat, which means little to people in their pocketbooks but a lot in their hearts.

Magic Johnson, after the Elite 8 game in Indianapolis, said, “You couldn’t have dreamt this up, it’s so incredible.” (“Spartans win big for Detroit,” Bob Wojnowski, The Detroit News, March 30, 2009.) “Oh, my goodness, this is the greatest feeling in the world—for Detroit and the whole state of Michigan. You’re gonna see a lot of green and white in town. We needed this.”

We sure do. We need a jolt of hope and optimism that we in Southeastern Michigan will survive the withering away and possible death of General Motors, Chrysler, and the domestic auto industry. We need to feel that we as the world’s underdogs will slay the highly-favored Connecticut and North Carolina basketball teams and their superstars. We need to believe that we in Detroit will beat the Japanese car companies that have weakened us. We need to believe that after all is done, there will be a level playing field, in which our car companies can truly compete.

            Go Green! Beat U Conn.

Go Detroit! We need to believe we won’t end up like Moe Green in the Godfather, our hopeful visions shot right through our eyes.

            Go GM! Beat the government, the UAW, bond-holders, and the United States public that believes that you shouldn’t get any more money from taxpayers. Show them all that they are dead wrong and that you, like MSU, will be lean, mean, and green, for many years to come. 

           

TAILS OF MANHATTAN by Woody Allen (The New Yorker, March 30,2009)

This is a funny piece from Woody Allen that reminds me of the comic from the Take the Money and Run days. I do have to warn you that if you die laughing, you might be reborn as a pickled herring.

 

Two weeks ago, Abe Moscowitz dropped dead of a heart attack and was reincarnated as a lobster. Trapped off the coast of Maine, he was shipped to Manhattan and dumped into a tank at a posh Upper East Side seafood restaurant. In the tank there were several other lobsters, one of whom recognized him. “Abe, is that you?” the creature asked, his antennae perking up.

            “Who’s that? Who’s talking to me?” Moscowitz said, still dazed by the mystical slam-bang postmortem that had transmogrified him into a crustacean.

            “It’s me, Moe Silverman,” the other lobster said.

            “O.M.G.!” Moscowitz piped, recognizing the voice of an old gin-rummy colleague. “What’s going on?”

            “We’re reborn,” Moe explained. “As a couple of two-pounders.”

            “Lobsters? This is how I wind up after leading a just life? In a tank on Third Avenue?”

            “The Lord works in strange ways,” Moe Silverman explained. “Take Phil Pinchuck. The man keeled over with an aneurysm, he’s now a hamster. All day, running at the stupid wheel. For years he was a Yale professor. My point is he’s gotten to like the wheel. He pedals and pedals, running nowhere, but he smiles.”

            Moscowitz did not like his new condition at all. Why should a decent citizen like himself, a dentist, a Mensch who deserved to relive life as a soaring eagle or ensconced in the lap of some sexy socialite getting his fur stroked, come back ignominiously as an entrée on a menu? It was his cruel fate to be delicious, to turn up as Today’s Special, along with a baked potato and dessert. This led to a discussion by the two lobsters of the mysteries of existence, of religion, and how capricious the universe was, when someone like Sol Drazin, a schlemiel they knew from the catering business, came back after a fatal stroke as a stud horse impregnating cute little thoroughbred fillies for high fees. Feeling sorry for himself and angry, Moscowitz swam about, unable to buy into Silverman’s Buddha-like resignation over the prospect of being served thermidor.

            At that moment, who walked into the restaurant and sits down at a nearby table but Bernie Madoff. If Moscowitz had been bitter and agitated before, now he gasped as his tail started churning the water like an Evinrude.

            “I don’t believe this,” he said, pressing his little black peepers to the glass walls. “That goniff who should be doing time, chopping rocks, making license plates, somehow slipped out of his apartment confinement and he’s treating himself to a shore dinner.”

            “Clock the ice on his immortal beloved,” Moe observed, scanning Mrs. M’s rings and bracelets.

            Moscowitz fought back his acid reflux, a condition that had followed him from his former life. “He’s the reason I’m here,” he said, riled to a fever pitch.

            “Tell me about it,” Moe Silverman said. “I played golf with the man in Florida, which incidentally he’ll move the ball with his foot if you’re not watching.”

            “Each month I got a statement from him,” Moscowitz ranted. “I knew such numbers looked too good to be kosher, and when I joked to him how it sounded like a Ponzi scheme he choked on his kugel. I had to do the Heimlich maneuver. Finally, after all that high living, it comes out he was a fraud and my net worth was bupkes. P. S., I had a myocardial infarction that registered at the oceanography lab in Tokyo.”

            “With me he played it coy,” Silverman said, instinctively frisking his carapace for a Xanax. “He told me at first he had no room for another investor. The more he put me off, the more I wanted in. I had him to dinner, and because he liked Rosalee’s blintzes he promised me the next opening would be mine. The day I found out he could handle my account I was so thrilled I cut my wife’s head out of our wedding photo and put his in. When I learned I was broke, I committed suicide by jumping off the roof of our golf club in Palm Beach. I had to wait half an hour to jump, I was twelfth in line.”

            At this moment, the captain escorted Madoff to the lobster tank, where the unctuous sharpie analyzed the assorted saltwater candidates for potential succulence and pointed to Moscowitz and Silverman. An obliging smile played on the captain’s face as he summoned a waiter to extract the pair from the tank.

            “This is the last straw!” Moscowitz cried, bracing himself for the consummate outrage. “To swindle me out of my life’s savings and then to nosh me in butter sauce! What kind of universe is this?”

            Moscowitz and Silverman, their ire reaching cosmic dimensions, rocked the tank to and fro until it toppled off its table, smashing its glass walls and flooding the hexagonal-tile-floor. Heads turned as the alarmed captain looked on in stunned disbelief. Bent on vengeance, the two lobsters scuttled swiftly after Madoff. They reached his table in an instant, and Silverman went for his ankle. Moscowitz, summoning the strength of a madman, leaped from the floor and with one giant pincer took firm hold of Madoff’s nose. Screaming with pain, the gray-haired con artist hopped from the chair as Silverman strangled his instep with both claws. Patrons could not believe their eyes as they recognized Madoff, and began to cheer the lobsters.

            “This is for the widows and charities!” yelled Moscowitz. “Thanks to you, Hatikvah Hospital is now a skating rink!”

            Madoff, unable to free himself from the two Atlantic denizens, bolted from the restaurant and fled yelping into traffic. When Moscowitz tightened his viselike grip on his septum and Silverman tore through his shoe, they persuaded the oily scammer to plead guilty and apologize for his monumental hustle.

            By the end of the day, Madoff was in Lenox Hill Hospital, awash in welts and abrasions. The two renegade main courses, their rage slaked, had just enough strength left to flop away into the cold, deep waters of Sheepshead Bay, where, if I’m not mistaken, Moscowitz lives to this day with Yetta Belkin, whom he recognized from shopping at Fairway. In life she had always resembled a flounder, and after her fatal plane crash she came back as one.

 

 

 

 

 

Duck Soup for the Depressed Soul

 

“The last man nearly ruined this place
He didn’t know what to do with it
If you think this country’s bad off now
Just wait ’til I get through with it
The country’s taxes must be fixed
And I know what to do with it
If you think you’re paying too much now
Just wait ’til I get through with it…”

Groucho Marx as Rufus T. Firefly, Duck Soup (1933)

 

When you’re feeling down and out, I have the perfect prescription. Just take a hot, steaming bowl of Duck Soup, (not the kind from the New Mandarin Garden,) savor it, and call me in the morning.

            If you’re desperate for a tonic to escape the blithering talking heads discussing ruined financial institutions mixed with massive amounts of government intervention sprinkled with a touch of two ongoing wars and covered with worries about new batches of terrorism, you don’t need a prescription of Zanax, Proloft, or Cymbalta. Instead, you need a medicine cup of laughter, the kind that Harpo, Chico, Zeppo, and Groucho supply in large dosages.

            And that’s exactly what I needed when I found the DVD on Blockbuster Online as part of a Marx Brothers series which included other good tonics like Horse Feathers and Animal Crackers.  I think Duck Soup is the funniest movie ever made and that includes such classics as the Marx Brothers’ Night at the Opera or more modern classics like Woody’s Take the Money and Run; it’s the perfect movie for tough times, an absurdist, frenetic, satire about the stupidity of government and war.

            The teaser for the DVD says, “In this 1933 Marx Brother’s film, the mythical country of Freedonia is broke and on the verge of revolution. Mrs. Teasdale (Margaret Dumont), Freedonia’s principal benefactress, will lend the country 20 million dollars if the president withdraws and places the government in the hands of the ‘fearless progressive,’ Rufus T. Firefly.” Duck Soup was not appreciated when it was made in the midst of the Great Depression. As Tim Dirks wrote in www.filmsite.org, “The outrageous film was both a critical and commercial failure at the time of its release – audiences were taken aback by such preposterous political disrespect, buffoonery and cynicism at a time of political and economic crisis, with Roosevelt’s struggle against Depression in the US amidst the rising power of Hitler in Germany.”

            The movie, eventually, started becoming popular in the 60s, watched by college students in revival film festivals and museum showings. My friends and I became Marx Brothers fanatics when their movies played at the 8 Mile Road Cabaret Theatre. Rob, Rick, Steve, Scott, and I were lucky then to see most of their classic movies. We didn’t care if the theatre was old and rickety and the sound quality poor. I don’t remember how many people usually attended the movies. I just recall that we would laugh like wild hyenas often and loudly and it didn’t matter to us if anyone could hear the lines amidst our laughter. We just loved convulsing in serious fits of laughter.

            When we were young, we didn’t know that laughter produces endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers, increases activated T cells, decreases stress hormones, and increases gamma interferon which activates the immune system. We didn’t think much about health or worry alot about Nixon, Watergate, a stagnant stock market, Ford, Carter, or high inflation. We didn’t think a lot about the deeper meanings of Duck Soup; how it satirized high society, manners, government, war, the court system, marriage, and wealth. We just liked to laugh at the delightfully hilarious moments, gags, fast-moving acts, comedy routines, puns, pure silliness, zany improvisations, and insult-spewed lines of dialogue. The crazier it was, the more we laughed. We laughed at absurd scenes like this one, set in the federal courtroom, when the Minister of Finance interrupts the trial of Chicolini (Chico Marx) for treason:

Minister of Finance: Something must be done! War would mean a prohibitive increase in our taxes.
Chicolini: Hey, I got an uncle lives in Taxes.
Minister of Finance: No, I’m talking about taxes – money, dollars.
Chicolini: Dollars! There’s-a where my uncle lives! Dollars, Taxes!
Minister of Finance: Aww!

Aww, there’s a lot of stuff in Duck Soup that might cause grimaces and eye rolls, but there’s a lot more that can really make you chuckle out loud.

I had seen Duck Soup a half dozen times over the years but I was up again to seeing Harpo resting with his horse in bed after dressing like Paul Revere and warning the town about the coming war. I was ready to listen to the hilarious “Laws of My Administration” and “The Country’s Going To War” musical number which includes the Negro spiritual “All God’s Chillun Got Guns.” I was ready to smile at Chico mirroring Groucho in the mirror pantomine scene, and laugh again at the large white flower vase stuck on Groucho’s head in the final war scene, the one with Groucho’s face and moustache on it. And it never grows old, the moment at the end of the film, when Mrs. Teasdale starts belting the national anthem of Freedonia, “Hail, hail Freedonia, land of the brave…” and is pelted by the four Marx Brothers with tomatoes, apples, and oranges.

If you like to cry when you watch a country that’s broke but deep in the muck of warfare, watch CNN, Fox, or MSNBC. If you’re depressed but would rather laugh as you watch a country that’s broke become absurdly entangled in war, check out Duck Soup.

And why is the movie about the mismanagement of government and the craziness of war called Duck Soup? Is it because it refers to “gullible suckers?” Not according to Groucho. He reportedly provided the following recipe to explain the title: “Take two turkeys, one goose, four cabbages, but no duck, and mix them together. After one taste, you’ll duck soup for the rest of your life.”

Good News

I don’t about you but I am sick and tired of being sick and tired. I am tired of being pummeled by the constant drumbeat of negative news: terrible economy, companies going broke, people losing jobs, yada, yada, yada. We hear it everyday, we read about it, see it on TV, and listen about it from friends and family.

            I just have to say loud and clearly: ENOUGH ALREADY!!

Of course, I know that I’m as responsible as the next person for bringing this negativity to the level it is today. As I have written about what I see and feel and think, I know that I have been as saddened and pessimistic as some of the most cynical columnists.

            So today, I’m telling myself now to SHUT UP and smell the hot, roasted, organic, free-trade coffee that I was lucky enough to buy a cup of today. I’m telling myself to focus more on appreciation than on griping and criticism.

            Yeah, I know that AIG sucks and that the government is just a collection of drunken spenders living it up on our paychecks and taxes. I know that Wall Street was filled with greedy selfish people not worrying about the consequences of their actions. I know that some of our most precious companies will go bankrupt and that more people will lose jobs.

            But I myself am not going to take it anymore! I’m not going to get angry but instead be thankful and appreciative for what I have. And that’s the message that I want to send. That message is so desperately needed in our country and our world.

            I have been sending positive messages to my company, even though our sales are still down compared to last year. I am focused on our new catalog, our 20^th Annual Trade Show a few weeks ago, and finding any bit of good news to share. I have asked the managers and they are responding with news about high quality performance from employees, weddings, inventory reductions. Heck, I’ll take any good news because the truth is: we can’t get enough of it. We hear hundreds of things every day to fear and be worried about, to get depressed about. It’s time to turn this whole mishigoss around.

            It’s well known that positive people who express positive emotions are more resilient when facing stress, challenges and adversity. It’s time to get positive. It’s time to be grateful for the lives we have, the people in our lives that we forget about, the things we enjoy, the food we eat, water we drink, the air we breathe.

            Those who read this are still alive. We’re still over ground. And we should be thankful we are.

            So my little mitzvah for today is to share the little mitzvahs of others, to be a positive influence on my company, my friends, and my family.

            This will not be easy, because old, negative habits are hard to break.

            But I will give it a shot. My first bit of advice is to turn off CNN and CNBC and click on www.goodnewsnetwork.org. Did you know that Father Maurice Chase celebrated his 90th birthday on St. Patrick’s Day by taking $15,000 in cash to Los Angeles‘ Skid Row and doling out the money to hundreds of the needy? How about that a Michigan Semi-Conductor plant posted double digit profits? Yes, even in Michigan.

Joining the Good News Network costs $2 a month, a bargain for someone desperately searching the world for good news. But believe it or not, good news is everywhere you look.

It’s right under your nose, within your heart and your brain.

LOL

“I have two last pieces of advice. First, being pre-approved for a credit card does not mean you have to apply for it. And lastly, the best career advice I can give you is to get your own TV show. It pays well, the hours are good, and you are famous. And eventually some very nice people will give you a doctorate in fine arts for doing jack squat.” –Stephen Colbert, delivering the commencement address at Knox College

 

Did you hear the one about the unemployment rate in Michigan? It shot up in the first month of the year like it was on Cialis. The 2009 unemployment rate of 11.6 percent was 59% higher than the 7.3 percent rate from January 2008.

            But there is a little hope for us Michiganders and the hope comes from a late-night talk-show host from LA. Jay Leno, the multi-millionaire who at last count owned 84 cars and 73 motorcycles, is coming to the Detroit area in early April. For those hoping Jay is coming for job restoration, think again. NBC is not hiring Michigan TV workers for Leno’s new 10 PM show coming in the fall. Instead, he is coming to the Palace of Auburn Hills in April for not just one but two nights of comedy. Maybe it’s because of guilt that he’s one of the last people in America not hurt by the economic downturn or maybe it’s because he really does love Detroit because he loves cars. But whatever the reason, Jay is offering suffering Detroiters a first: if you don’t have a job, his night of comedy is FREE.

            Leno’s “Comedy Stimulus Plan” show is being offered to the unemployed in Michigan at no charge. If you wait in line and tell the box office attendant that you don’t have a job, you can get up to four tickets free. Two Leno shows will allow almost 15,000 a night to laugh instead of crying.

            For the last few years, too many Michigan job holders have wept when they lost their jobs, their homes, their self-esteem, and their confidence. Over 500,000 have lost jobs in the last six years, many of them in the beleaguered automotive industry. And while GM and Chrysler fight for survival and bailout money from the government while automotive suppliers hang on financial threads or go bankrupt, thousands more wait to see if they will be next for the unemployment line.

            Just think: if Jay can come here to do pro-bono comedy, how about a few other gifts to people without jobs? How about the thousands of American cars sitting on new car lots that could be donated to those desperate without work? How about the banks offering some of their foreclosed properties to the unemployed? Stuff for free could really help those banging their heads day after day, searching the employment ads, begging for a job, just any job.

            Over the last year, Michigan payroll jobs fell by 6.2 percent. That included: An 114,000-job loss in manufacturing; a 60,000-job loss in professional and business services; a 49,000-job loss in trade, transportation and utilities; an 18,000-job loss in construction; a 14,000-job loss in leisure and hospitality services; and a 12,000-job loss in the financial activities sector.

            Laughing amidst the fear and sadness is good medicine. 55-year-old Brenda Smith of Warren who lost her job with Chrysler 18 months ago, said, “This is just what this area needs” (“Leno: Let’s make it 2 shows,” Korie Wilkins, Detroit Free Press, March 17, 2009). The hope of simply laughing without paying for one night shows how desperate the Detroit area is. We will take whatever we can get.

            Workers who still have jobs are afraid because companies are desperate to survive so they cut costs, and that means cutting employees. And if you don’t have a job, what company that has slowing sales is going to hire you?  It’s a vicious circle that needs to stop, but what is going to stop it? Good jokes and laughter? Well, I guess that doesn’t hurt. If you can’t afford health insurance, at least you can laugh out loud (LOL) about doctors. Jay Leno once said, “The New England Journal of Medicine reports that 9 out of 10 doctors agree that 1 out of 10 doctors is an idiot.”

            There are a lot of idiots other than doctors who have helped put the economy into the toilet. You could get mad about the 40 AIG employees who are due to collect $165 million in bonuses after nearly bankrupting the company and forcing AIG to receive $170 billion so far in government aid. Or you can get mad like Jon Stewart at Jim Cramer and CNBC for not warning viewers enough about banks and the stock market in 2007.

            Or you can find glimmers of hope amidst the fear. Spring is around the corner, MLB’s Opening Day will be here in a few weeks, and this week begins the NCAA basketball tournament which will end in Detroit at Ford Field on April 6^th. So forget about lost jobs and dream that your favorite college basketball team might win the big one and be crowned champion in Detroit.

            I prefer to laugh with Jay Leno and John Stewart instead of getting mad or getting lost in sports. Maybe you’ll laugh at this quote from Jon Stewart: “You just have to keep trying to do good work, and hope that it leads to more good work. I want to look back on my career and be proud of the work, and be proud that I tried everything. Yes, I want to look back and know that I was terrible at a variety of things.”

            Let’s all start laughing again, pushing ourselves to believe that each day will be less terrible than the day before and that good work and good days will be here soon.

Contagion of Chaos

I wish millions of Americans had read John R. Talbott’s The Coming Crash in the Housing Market: 10 Things You Can Do Now to Protect Your Most Valuable Investment when it was published in April of 2003. And for those who didn’t read that, it would have been nice if a few million Americans would have read his book, Sell Now!: The End of the Housing Bubble in the beginning of 2006. Millions of dollars and thousands of foreclosures might have been stopped if the media had made us aware of these books.

            Talbott published Obamanomics in July of 2008 before he was elected, warning what Obama might bring to economic markets here and abroad. Maybe because it is still not acceptable to criticize Obama in much of the media, we hear little about Talbott’s newest book, Contagion: The Financial Epidemic that is Sweeping the Global Economy…And How to Protect Yourself from It.

            Here is the description of Contagion in Amazon.com: “Tough times are ahead and Talbott argues that the coming recession will be on a global scale, affecting economies across the world. We have had no real growth in GDP for the last ten years if purchases with government and personal debt are excluded. In effect, government borrowing and spending on the war and healthcare and Social Security and corporate give-aways combined with dramatic increases in personal spending funded by credit card and mortgage debt have funded unsustainable levels of personal and government consumption. The world’s banks are threatened with insolvency due to bad mortgage loans and will not be making new loans for any purposes for a very long time. Consumption, by definition, has to decline. Our financial markets worldwide are in chaos with the inability of any financial house or big hedge fund going bankrupt without pulling down the whole $400 trillion derivatives market and the global financial markets at the same time.”

Talbott wrote and finished this book right after the fall of Lehman and the TARP bailout engineered by Paulson, Bush, and Congress. Yet, as I read this book, I was astounded that what were predictions then have already been nearly 100% accurate and it’s only been a few months since publication. As I’ve been reading this book on my Amazon Kindle, I kept wondering if Talbott will get something wrong.

If he doesn’t get something wrong, we are all in deep trouble.

I don’t need to read a book to figure out the economic black hole we’re in. The government borrows and spends trillions within the first six weeks of Obama’s administration. The GDP falls (revised down 6.2% last quarter), job losses widen, Detroit automakers and auto suppliers teeter close to bankruptcy (even with the last government handout) while the government owned banks (Citibank and others,) Fannie and Freddie, and AIG keep asking for more government money before they land in total insolvency. GE, the model of industrial strength and reliability, has its stock near $8 a share and even Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway, the highest valued stock in the world, has fallen 44% in a year. In his yearly address to shareholders, Buffett admitted that the U.S. economy will certainly be in “shambles” in 2009 and “probably well beyond.” Yet, Buffett, with his characteristic optimism, wrote, “America’s best days lie ahead.”

Don’t bet Talbott on that one. He believes that as the baby boomers begin their retirement years, there is no way that Medicare and Social Security will be solvent. The older citizens will battle the younger ones for limited dollars and jobs will remain scarce. He also believes that the companies that caused havoc to our economy and wouldn’t survive without government help shouldn’t survive. This list includes AIG, GM, and Citigroup. If what they did over many years leads them to bankruptcy, so be it. The strong will come in and buy them out or they will get stronger after bankruptcy.

Bush and Paulsen begrudgingly set the tone of “bailout nation” and Obama’s gang is continuing the bailouts at an accelerated pace, giving more money to AIG, Fannie Mae, Citibank, and Bank of America. They are also proposing helping home owners who can’t pay their mortgages to avoid foreclosures with “cramdown” provisions that banks and mortgage companies must provide.

Who knows if or when the bailouts will ever end? Nothing seems to be giving anyone any confidence and helping the economy heal.

Jim Cramer, certainly no fiscal conservative, has been vehemently opposed to the “radical agenda” of “President Polosi, I mean Obama,” as he jokingly refers. This “White House of Pain” has presided over what Jim called “the greatest wealth destruction I have seen by a US president.” When Obama’s press secretary laughed and commented that Jim Cramer’s television audience was “small,” Jim shot back that “the only thing small about my audience is their 401Ks, pension plans, and annuities.”

Yet, Jim doesn’t yell to get people stuck in despair to do nothing. He wants people to “stay in the game.” It is important to look at your retirement statements regularly, not just stay away. Investor Todd Harrison (“Investors Assume the ‘Ostrich Position,” Minyanville.com, March 4, 2009) wrote about a member of his family who told him last September when buying GE and Apple that “Things will eventually go back up. It always does.” Now, he just stops looking at his account.

Instead of burying your head and hoping for the best, Harrison writes, “be proactive” He compares financial awareness to going on a scale.  “Just because you ate donuts—whether they look like Citigroup or smell like General Electric—doesn’t mean you must continue to operate in the same manner. Read the ingredients, look at the expiration date, balance your budget and be psyched—genuinely psyched—that you’re gonna look and feel better than you did yesterday.”

Talbott recommends gold and cash and TIP funds (funds that pay based on the inflation rate.) Others recommend looking at the long term but making sure that we don’t lose interest and stop watching the markets. No matter how pessimistic we are in this contagion of financial chaos, we should not bury our heads. We need to take action every week and weigh ourselves financially so we don’t crumble under the psychological weight. We need to stay strong and be positive that we will survive whatever Obama, Geithner, Bernanke, and the markets throw at us.

What else can we do?

 

 

 

 

Confessions from the Killing Fields

Confessions from the Killing Fields

 

The horrifying secrets held by thousands of elderly Ukrainians had been kept hidden from the world for 60 years. Soviet secrecy and anti-Semitic apathy buried the other side of the Holocaust in the same deep, dark holes in which over one and one half million Jews were killed and shoved into the earth.

            The killing fields have been slowly and meticulously uncovered since 2002, thanks to a French Roman Catholic priest who simply wanted to understand what his grandfather meant when he said that, “for others (in Rava-Ruska, just outside of Poland) it was worse.” When Father Patrick Desbois visited the town in 2002, he asked the mayor where the 18,000 Jews who had been killed in Rava-Ruska had been buried. The mayor said he did not know.

            A year later, the new mayor of Rava-Ruska took the priest to a forest where over 100 villagers had gathered, waiting to tell their secret stories and help uncover the graves buried beneath their feet. Thus began the priest’s travels into the heart of the killing fields and his journey to find every mass grave hidden beneath the Ukrainian earth.

            Father Desbois, author of Holocaust by Bullets: A Priest’s Journey to Uncover the Truth behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews, visited the Jewish Center of West Bloomfield on February 24th to present his findings in front of hundreds of Detroit area Jews. The video and photos and stories that Desbois shared brought gasps from the crowd of hundreds. Many Jews have for years wondered about their Ukrainian Jewish ancestors, trying to imagine how they had lived and died.

The answers are devastating. In the six years that the priest crisscrossed the Ukraine countryside to locate every possible grave (he has uncovered over 800 mass graves so far,) collect artifacts of rusty bullets and shell casings, skulls and bones, and record video testimonies from eyewitnesses, what he discovered was unimaginable. The elderly men and women who were children during the Holocaust pored out their stories to him, almost all of them wondering why they weren’t asked about their experiences before. They admitted that they were silent for six decades because simply no one had ever asked them what they had witnessed.

The priest and his team listened without judgment as hundreds of eyewitnesses told them what they remembered. After reading Soviet and German documents and asking questions to try to understand the details of the mass killings, he listened to stories about Jewish neighbors, acquaintances, friends, and even schoolmates who were killed publicly in front of swarms of onlookers. They were murdered brutally, individually, and often publicly, near their homes, shot into pits or in open fields, sometimes buried alive, and often within sight of the children who were condemned to remember such atrocities. 887 Ukrainian witnesses, who had been forced as children to dig graves, carry Jews, step on Jews, and sell their clothes had been traumatized as children and when asked, wanted to reveal everything before they died.

They had seen thousands of slayings by the Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing squads composed of SS and police personnel. The Nazi killers were advised by law to eliminate the Jewish people, one by one, only one bullet per Jew. The Father often repeated the horrifying refrain: “One Jew, one bullet; one bullet, one Jew.”

I am still haunted by the book and will never forget the overwhelming image that Desbois heard over and over. So many women and children and elderly men were each shot by a bullet in the back of the head, fell or pushed into graves, some without bullets and buried beneath others, then covered with dirt. Here is the memory mentioned often by these witnesses that seers the soul: the oft-repeated image of Jews alive and dead, buried together: how the “earth moved for three days.”

Why did the Father spend nine months each year and why is he still working to research unending tragedies? He is motivated by family history, an intense belief in ethics, his undying faith in God, and his fervor for remembrance. Ever since working with Mother Theresa and after studying Hebrew and Jewish history, he has devoted much of his life to working to improve relations and communications between Christians and Jews and is an advisor to the Vatican on Jewish relations. He told us how the Cain and Abel story had impacted him, especially when the Lord said to Cain, “The voice of thy brother’s blood cries to me from the ground.” Desbois told us that he works tirelessly to uncover each Jewish soul because he hears these words, “Where is your Jewish brother?” 

He toils to help us bury our dead, symbolically. On the last day in December 2007 he led a group of Ukrainian Jews who drove to Rava-Ruska from Lviv, an hour away, and gathered in the snow around the grave to recite Kaddish. For Desbois, the ceremony in the woods was a high mark after his years of unbearable work and part of the reason for his efforts. The Jews from Ukraine did not just disappear as the Germans wanted. They were murdered one by one and dumped into the earth. Father Patrick said, “I want to see these people properly buried.” The Nazis had acted quickly with savage violence, hoping to exterminate every Jew, wanting the world to know nothing. Now, because of the incredible dedication of one man, we know. We know.

In a world filled with terror and inhumanity, it is comforting that there are righteous people like Father Patrick Desbois. He has devoted his life to confronting anti-Semitism and furthering Catholic-Jewish understanding, which are “acts of loving kindness.” Father Desbois said he hears these Jewish souls “crying from earth unto heaven.” Because of the efforts of one righteous man, we can now hear again the muffled cries of our brothers and sisters.

We hear them weeping loudly and clearly now.

And We Will Never Forget Them.