colorado on line, fury in the ether

[gurdonark]

On the plane, one of the flight magazines was in Spanish. I muddled my way through a great article on travel to the Dominican Republic, yet another of the eighty five countries I'd love to visit but will only see through print and Discovery Channel. I am glad the word for park is parque and so forth, so that I can actually get a good idea of what I read in Spanish.

Somehow I assumed that as we flew near Denver, one would be able to look out a window and see a huge plume of forest fire smoke. That did not seem to be the case today, though. Here, it is very dry. Except for a few flowers, the hillsides look baked.

Business travel to downtown Denver is so easy. One can walk or mass transit everywhere, there are places to eat, during daylight hours there's no "weirdness", and there are copy shops and bookstores, my two travel essentials. I was amused by the fact that I remember virtually no Denver landmark from my last trip here, other than the location of the really good bookstore downtown. Other matters beckon first, however.

I'd like to come to Denver with some time to really visit some day, but this trip is another "fly out tomorrow when my meeting is done" day. Perhaps I will get a few moments outdoors late this afternoon, though, and enjoy a somewhat cooler climate than the Dallas I left.

The revelation that Worldcomm materially misstated earnings is devastating news for our economy. I feel as though the "culture war" that the "powers that be" in the House of Representatives proclaimed a few years ago is indeed in session. The problem is that I'm on the other, left side. You know, the side that spends less time trying to regulate other peoples' personal lives and more time regulating the integrity of financial statements. The very same people who are the first to pontificate about moral decline are also the first to play fast and loose with financial reporting. Somehow in our marketplace we've let financial folks forget that consequences attach to things you use to raise money from pensioners and working people. I am so bored of profit over integrity, and so bored of a regulatory climate in which genuine reporting is subordinated to "safe harbors" and "technical interpretations" which mask the true finances of a company. I haven't read much about this latest one, though, but knowing not to treat an expense as a capital investment is far from rocket science. Worldcomm already looked like it had few clothes, but now the mannequin is out of gown. The wires beneath aren't pretty.

As we watch the Dow edge down toward x,000, I hope the Republicans finally realize that an unfettered marketplace without proper regulation for investor protection will defeat the ability for anyone to raise major capital for anything. We'll all be hoist, on another misplaced right wing petard, i.e., the notion that unregulated markets are always good.
We got the Securities and Exchange Commission and the state blue sky laws during the Great Depression for a reason. The speculators had driven the economy into ruin. Now we have the apparatus in place, but it is still reactive and ham-fisted and lobbyist-beset. You can't run an economy when folks treat 3.8 billion dollars of expenses as "capital items" for the purpose showing a profit. I don't know what intent went into it all, so I'm not going to proclaim "fraud" as my internet news service today did. But I do know that we're going to have to move beyond this "cook the books to show a profit to get an executive bonus" mentality, or we are going to have an investment market in ruins. As for the auditors, words do not suffice. The thing literally speaks for itself, and it speaks volumes. But I see they've already got excuses, in a prompt press release. In this world folks don't think you have to "own up" if you can draft a good press release and hire a good attorney. But there comes a reckoning, and I am afraid all Wall Street will feel it.

Comments

[auntiesiannan.livejournal.com]

Ever visited the Denver Mint? I like the Philly one. All the shiny ribbons of metal going in, coins coming out. It doesn't matter that it's money, I have a fascination with the manufacturing of any great quantity of things. :) Piles of pink pennies!

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I wish I could see the Denver Mint. That sort of thing interests me, too.

[burninggirl.livejournal.com]

Come see the Canberra one! : ) It's five minutes from my house and right near my workplace, making it the closest tourist attraction to home.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I have never been to Australia. I'd love to see the Canberra mint, as well as some of the public gardens there.

[marstokyo.livejournal.com]

As we watch the Dow edge down toward x,000, I hope the Republicans finally realize that an unfettered marketplace without proper regulation for investor protection will defeat the ability for anyone to raise major capital for anything.

They'll never realize that as long as THEY'VE gotten out while the getting was good! It's all just *me and mine* to them.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Yes, in some instances (ImClone comes to mind), that's true. But the WorldComm type of thing is particularly ridiculous. A CFO and outside auditor who report the truth take the company down, but take it down when it should go, and take it down without hiding the truth while people play the market. If they take it down when it should go, the CFO has to get a new job, but is not tarnished. Doing it in this way, everybody is ruined for life. It's the old theory that if you're a dollar short and you can just keep playing, you'll make that dollar back. That theory has sunk many a company, many a career, and many an investor. But we have securities rules just so proper disclosure should happen. There will always be bad apples, but there are a lot more bad apples when nobody from the feds ever fumigates the trees until the worms are everywhere.

Re:

[marstokyo.livejournal.com]

ya got that right!

[geisa.livejournal.com]

AMEN!!! i'm on YOUR side and have been telling my silly "ultra-right wing, pie in the sky" family the same thing for YEARS!!!!!!!!!!!! i bet if the stock market CRASHED and they had nothing, they would still be babbling about deregulation and tax breaks!!! they DO NOT GET IT!!! and, personally, i think the media serves as a vehicle used to the corporations' advantage with spin and unverifiable information to such an extreme, that most "people" don't even have a CHANCE to know the truth!!! only when there is a MAJOR unavoidable catastrophe is anything exposed, and i use the word "anything" because no one really knows and probably never will know the seriousness of the problem until the system collapses or the sec AND congress shake themselves of lobbyist control and begin to regulate the way that they already have the authority to do.

it really concerns me that people sit around and buy into that right-wing b.s. promulgated through the "corporate owned, feel good" media and essentially take THEMSELVES out of the system via apathy and inability to understand the significance of the issues and turn into spectators while rome burns. this is a SERIOUS problem and america had better WAKE-UP!!! you're day of "reckoning" is on the horizon, mark my words.

all I want is honesty and well regulated markets

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

What's ridiculous is that the left position on this is much more pro business than the right. The denuded regulatory environment was just a short-termers dream. The SEC and the blue sky system brought us financial markets that could dependably fuel the largest economy on earth. The private efforts which preceded it, even with the efforts of relatively gifted monopolists like JP Morgan, resulted in panic after panic after panic as securities fraud denuded the markets.

Bush campaigned on investor protection, but the Bush SEC seemed to not understand at all until Global Crossing and Enron. Now as we watch our markets recede, and capital flees like crazy, now maybe they'll get it.

Meanwhile, the G8 folks sit and gloat on bringing unregulated markets to the third world. Our best and brightest post in one of my LJ forums that the solution is to go to Calgary and break windows. Sigh.

It's hard to be a "real world" lefty some days.

it ain't hard, it's just lonely

[voodoukween.livejournal.com]

i don't expect the man playing president to do anything to straighten out corporate deceit and purposeful deception. i don't expect the government to do anything either.

i do like the idea of non-participation and it does give one a clear conscience. the extent of their greed is based upon consumerism and if we consume less then we have some impact.

what really is disheartening are the thousands of hard working people who trusted that THEIR retirement money was safe. i personally know people devastated by learning they had to retire and could not retire.

let them play their monopoly game with their own monopoly money, they will have none of mine

and as for the media playing into their hands, now that all major networks are owned by major corporations what can you expect? watch and listen to NPR and see the invasion even there

read non mainstream rags and websites like http://www.buzzflash.com/ and participate in local activists groups. ours are centralized through http://activistsandiego.org/

one simple act makes you an activist

remember the ripple effect?

Re: it ain't hard, it's just lonely

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I agree with much of what you say. I am not quite ready to give up on the current economic system. I still prefer a fabian sort of remaking of it into something better. To my mind, though, it's small business capitalism, and not megacorporations, that are the worthwhile thing anyway. But some things require capital to pursue, and I'd rather have a functioning capital market than a state market. The same cigar smoking people seem to take over state economies, and wreak even more havoc. It all still comes back to the basic point, though--it's a matter of thinking. Until people think of things other than how to acquire largesse, then
we're going to have this sort of thing over and over, regardless of our economic model. I've noticed, as have you, how even NPR is starting to show a corporate tilt. I am unhappy with even the "left" media such as Pacifica, because it, too, has
ideological influences which I consider undemocratic and non-egalitarian. The conventional right, the conventional left and the mainstream all disenchant right now.

I think that we've brought this fellow/lass to the dance and have to dance with him/her, i.e., we're not going to remake our economy overnight, and may not want to.
But I do think that we've got to bring integrity back to it, or we won't have it anymore.

It's not just an "illegality" thing, either. I heard some drug company lobbyist defending radically above-inflation markups of "old line" products. He said "they work, people pay, it must be okay". Did he forget that we GIVE his company that patent? Patents are not in the Bible or Koran. We actually encourage obscene profits for intellectual property, which has its upsides. But when a company lacks the conscience to treat pensioners paying for their own medication as something other than a new "gouging" center, and then dispatch lobbyists to pontificate on NPR stations, I get irritated. Don't get me wrong--I'm pro capitalism. I'm just also pro conscience.

Although you and I have different points of view, it may come to the same thing.
if we do not get integrity back into financial markets, we'll all have to invest in
"real things" instead anyway.

Re: it ain't hard, it's just lonely

[voodoukween.livejournal.com]

i trust the universal law of pendulum swinging will come to "our" aide

and yes i am a socialist in the wrong country again

i like that you give my something to think about and the sense that i am not alone in my concern and outrage

urk! this simpleton doth say!

[inushnu.livejournal.com]

I loved this but have to admit I cannot participate in any of the discussions it brought forth :( I don't really "get" much of the political mumbogumbo. I live on a cloud somewhere apart from the news and media. I don't own a t.v., have never cared for the newspaper (except to put it beneath my bird cage..heh.. prolly where it belongs tho..), and don't read news anywhere else. I took poli sci.. i was EXCITED about it but then I realized how much I didn't know and would NEVER know and went back to talking of love and life and synergy.

BUT! I DID live in Denver for 22 years and loved EVERY minute of it. I can completely understand how you would be drawn to explore it. I never got tired of its trees and mountains and rivers and plateaus or its concrete and people and man-made structures that housed much of my adolescent growth. I was born in Monterey, CA and I often say that I have the sea in my soul and the mountains in my mind.

=) Very enjoyable post for me because, while I admit ignorance, I still yearn for enlightenment.

Re: urk! this simpleton doth say!

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I wish I had time to explore Denver! I will be stuck in a meeting all day, though, and then fly out tonight. I have too much to do back home to stay over a couple of days, and, besides, it would not be fun without my wife. But there'll be another time.