Mark Maynard | 2008 | October

here’s your bonus

By Mark | October 27, 2008

In the recent bailout of U.S. financial institutions, JP Morgan Chase was given $25 billion by us, the American tax-payers. The hope, at least as it was expressed to us by our legislators, was that, with this money, the company would once again begin making loans, thereby returning things to normal. According to New York Times reporter Joe Nocera, however, that wasn’t necessarily the intention of the leadership at Chase. According to Nocera, who sat in on a JP Morgan Chase conference call yesterday without the knowledge of participating executives, the company has no intention of using the bailout money given to them in order to start making new loans. Their plan is to use the funds instead to acquire other banks.

And that’s not the worst of the news today. According to Time, a considerable portion of the money given to financial institutions will, despite the complaints of the American people, be spent on executive bonuses. Here’s a clip:

…Uncle Sam has a new name on Wall Street — Sugar Daddy. Bonuses for investment bankers and traders are projected to fall by 40% this year. But analysts, compensation consultants and recruiters say the drop would be much more severe, perhaps as much as 70%, had it not been for the government’s efforts to prop up the financial firms. “Year-end pay on Wall Street will be higher than it would have been had it not been for the government and mergers,” says Alan Johnson, a leading compensation consultant. “You would expect it to be down much more.”

Johnson predicts the average managing director at an investment bank, a title typically earned around eight years on the job, will receive a bonus of $625,000. That’s down from nearly $1.1 million last year, but it is still 15 times the income of the average American household. Top bankers could receive as much as $1 million. Even a bond trader just out of business school could see his or her bank account enriched by as much as $170,000 this Christmas. “The firms have had an extremely difficult year,” says Joan Zimmerman, a Wall Street career coach. “But they can’t afford to lose talent either”…

So, how does that make you feel, America? Don’t you feel sorry for the men and women of Wall Street who are only likely to get 70% of the bonuses they’ve become accustomed to?

In a way, it’s kind of like getting attacked, and then charged for your forensics kit by the police, isn’t it?

How do you like knowing that not only you, but your kids and your unborn grandkids are going into debt so that the incompetent managing directors of failing investment banks can take home Christmas bonuses of $625,000? (And that’s in addition to their regular pay.)

And how do you feel about the fact that the money that’s left after pay and bonuses won’t be put into circulation as it was intended, but, instead, used by the company to facilitate their growth through acquisition?

Feel like rioting yet?

Posted in Other | 11 Comments

underage chinese gymnast

By Mark | October 27, 2008

Why didn’t I think of this?

A few years ago, I posted something on this site about wanting to dress my daughter Clementine as a sick bird for Halloween and use it an opportunity to educate my neighbors about the risk of an avian flu pandemic. I, of course, never did it, but, as coincidence would have it, another father to an adorable little Eurasian girl named Celementine several hundred miles away did. And then, somehow, through the magic of the internet, he found me and we began corresponding on our parallel existences. Anyway, we still exchange notes on Halloween costumes and the like, and he just sent me a link to a guy’s site on which he talks about dressing his young daughter as an underage Chinese gymnast. (The photo is from his site. Hopefully he doesn’t mind.) And now I’m kicking myself for not having thought of it first. I totally suck as a father.

Posted in Mark's Life | 5 Comments

dean kamen and the stirling engine

By Mark | October 27, 2008

Having suffered greatly at the hands of critics who found his most notable invention to date, the Segway Personal Transporter, to be both over-hyped and… well… ridiculous, you would think that Kamen would know better than to, once again, build an invention up beyond any hope of delivery, but here he is in today’s Telegraph claiming to have cracked the puzzle of the Stirling engine. Here’s a clip:

…Beneath the false floor in the boot he and the Deka engineers have mounted a Stirling engine. Conceived in Scotland almost 200 years ago, the Stirling is a marvel of thermo-dynamics that could help to replace the internal combustion engine – in theory it can turn any source of heat into electricity, in silence and with 100 percent efficiency. But corporations including Phillips, Ford and Nasa have devoted decades of research, and millions of dollars, to developing the engine, and all retired defeated, having failed to find a way of turning the theoretical principles of the engine into a workable everyday application. Kamen, nevertheless, has spent the past 10 years and, he estimates, up to $40 million working on the problem.

Now he and his engineers have built and tested a range of Stirling engines suitable for mass production that can be run on anything from jet fuel to cow dung. The one in the boot of the small blue car is designed to extend its range and constantly recharge its batteries to make a new kind of hybrid vehicle: one fit for the roads of the 21st century. A Stirling-electric hybrid, Kamen tells me, can travel farther and more efficiently than conventional electric cars; it generates enough power to run energy-hungry devices such as heaters and defrosters that are essential for drivers who, unlike those he calls the ‘tofu heads’ of California, must cope with a cold climate; and even using petrol, the engine runs far cleaner than petrol-electric hybrids such as Toyota’s Prius…

The author of the piece doesn’t actually see one working, and we know that Kamen wasn’t right when he predicted that the Segway would revolutionize transportation, but what if he is right here? Can you imagine how a development like this might spark a new automotive era? Maybe it’s desperation, but, when I read a story like this, I can’t help but think that there might be hope for Michigan yet… At the risk of sounding like the boy who traded his family’s cow for a handful of magic beans, I really do think that it might be a good use of our Governor’s time to fly out and pay Kamen a visit. I realize that Kamen has been talking about the Sterling engine for years, and that he’s yet to produce one that he can demonstrate, but really what else have we got to be optimistic about?

[This post is brought to you by Granholm’s newly announced Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth (DELEG).]

Posted in Alternative Energy | 2 Comments

if you’ve come here though google, chances are you just want to masturbate

By Mark | October 27, 2008

Every once in a while, when I’m bored, or when I’m trying to avoid doing something, like bathing, I head over to Google Analytics and check out our readership numbers. Well, I just did, and it looks as though our stats are way up. Even on bad days, like tonight, when I don’t write anything even remotely worth reading, we’re apparently getting over 1,000 people coming here… Of course, a good percentage of them, according to Google, are just here searching for images of a Sarah Palin look-alike getting drilled like the north slope of Alaska. (SFW)

Speaking of Larry Flynt’s film “Nailin’ Paylin” (which my friend Terry, with whom I wholeheartedly agree, thinks should be called “Veep Throat”), I haven’t heard anything back from my reader at Hustler. Last I heard, he was trying to get me an interview with the actress playing the part of the candidate. As I didn’t have any great questions for her, it’s probably best that it didn’t happen, but I think it would have been fun to talk with her. My plan was not talk about porn, or the plot of the film at all, but about her personal politics and thoughts on the election…. Some of you are too young to remember this, but several years ago, there was an adult film actress who used to leave comments on this site. Her name was Kami Andrews, and, before getting into the world of adult entertainment, she worked at Wal-Mart, which she said was more degrading… At any rate, I thought that it would be interesting to ask this actress playing Palin what she thought about the condition of the country and the fact that she was, in some very small way, going to be forever linked to this campaign in history.

And that’s right… according to this chart, almost 10,000 people came to this site by way of Google in October looking for information about “Nailin’ Palin,” far eclipsing those here looking for evidence of Barack Obama being “evil.” I suppose that’s a good thing.

It’s times like this that I think about retiring from blogging altogether. I should know better than to look at the web stats. I’d be happier laboring under the illusion that everyone out there in the audience is good, decent, and just online looking for information on how to make the world a better place. In reality, though, you’re all just chronic masturbators and paranoid religious freaks. (Which are you, I wonder.)

Posted in Observations | 6 Comments

wassup, barack?

By Mark | October 26, 2008

8 years ago, Budweiser launched a wildly popular series of television ads featuring a bunch of guys in the habit of calling one another up and saying, “Wassup?” in funny voices. This team of beer-drinking slacker icons rode the cultural zeitgeist for several years, but, like Spuds MacKenzie before them, at some point popular culture shifted and they fell by the wayside, looking on helplessly as taco-selling chiuauas and cavemen touting auto insurance began demanding the attention of the dumbed down American consumer. Well, it’s been over 6 years since we’ve heard from the Wassup friends, but now they’re back.

The good news is, they’re all still alive. Other than that, though, things aren’t so good. According to new video that surfaced today, they’ve all suffered incredibly under the Bush administration. One of the four friends, we’re shown, has lost his home to foreclosure. Another is serving in Iraq and wants to return home. The third is suicidal over his losses in the stock market. The fourth, who we’re led to believe is uninsured, has had to deal with serious health problems. When they say “Wassup?” now, they do so without the optimistic exuberance they once did. Looking into their eyes, we see that the American dream has died. These once proud men are beaten down and demoralized. They’re as good as dead…

Apparently, however, there’s hope.

This is just an aside, but are there any folks left in the annals of American popular culture who haven’t yet been pulled into this race? Is the “Where’s the Beef” woman still around? How about Willie Tyler and Lester? Has Baby Jessica weighed in? And how about that fat guy who ate all the Subway sandwiches? Surely there’s someone we haven’t heard from yet.

Posted in Pop Culture | 9 Comments