The Straw Man

My wife made a wonderfully insightful comment this morning. She suggested that the reason the proposal by Paulson was so light on content and demanded no oversight was to shift the debate away from whether or not we should have a $700 billion+ bailout to a debate about how we are going to do it.

We talked back and forth about what letters we should write to our congresspeople and my letter was just over 2000 characters long. I think that the message she chose to send after careful consideration was exponentially more effective and succinct: If you vote for this bill I will not vote for you in the next election. It captured what I was trying to say in very powerful way.

I have long thought that she is smarter than I am and this is just another example of why. You can see why I love this woman.

Garbage in garbage out

I heard a piece on NPR yesterday morning (at ~2:35) where the analyst or broker being interviewed blamed the current financial crisis on "rocket scientists in the backroom" playing with "Bunsen burners" and "test tubes." I don't think that it takes a rocket scientist to realize that the rate of increase in home prices was greater than the rate of increase in income. That is a freshman calculus problem and everyone on Wall Street should have taken that class. The entire model was unsustainable. (and very likely unstable if you looked at the second derivative.)

I am irritated that the incompetence of these people is swept under the rug by blaming the stereotype of a scientist in a backroom for the failings in the boardroom. No one questions this notion that scientists are inherently bad people. It feeds into a general intellectual phobia in this country where mental achievement is dismissed and mocked while monetary achievement is valued even if it is accompanied by ignorance and a lack of intellectual curiosity. I believe that this entire problem is due to greed and lack of discipline. Come on people this isn't rocket science.

National Economy: What happened to high risk - high reward?

I must say that I am a little frightened and a lot outraged by the current financial situation. First off, I am vehemently opposed to the bailout plan as proposed by the Administration. Between the various wars that we are waging and at least $700 billion it seems unlikely that the next Administration will be able to accomplish anything other than cleaning up this mess. There will be no money for tax cuts or for new programs. This level of debt hampers those programs that I would like to see enacted by the next administration. I encourage everyone to write your congressperons and the President to express your opinion on this topic, either pro or con. The interests of the nation will be best served at a time like this if more of us voice our opinions and concerns.

In my letter, I encouraged all parties to take a measured approach that draws from the wealth of expertise and intelligence that we have in this country. While a timely solution may be required, I don't think that rushing this is a good idea. This is a time to call on the country's best and brightest to develop a reasoned and measured plan. These people know how to work under pressure and compromise.

Also, I am not impressed with any $700 billion plan that can be written on three pages of paper. Grant proposals for $3ook/year are often detailed 30-50 page documents with hundreds of references justifying the proposed work. The Large Hadron Collider is estimated to cost around $3 billion and I am sure that proposal came in several volumes.

Paul Krugman (economist, Princeton faculty, columnist) has had some interesting analysis on this topic.

A quick update

I have been fairly busy the last few weeks and have been remiss in posting here. I submitted a draft of my paper to my advisor and I feel pretty good about it. We will see what she says. Otherwise, I have had a fairly productive few weeks.

I am concerned about the current financial crisis and I can't say that I am thrilled about the proposal that was put forward by the administration. I will have more to say on this later.

Stay tuned for pics of my latest project. (The Ark)

I think we're gonna need a bigger boat

I was surprised about a week ago when I went outside and found that Odontcidium Tyler Ku 'Ben Berliner' was developing an inflorescence. In that short amount of time it has grown to be over 2' long and is still in its early stage of development! I have never bloomed this before and I am not sure how big it is going to get. This, along with most of my current collection, was a generous gift from Bob Hamilton and John Leathers. This particular plant came from the back corner of their greenhouse where all of the plants have an impressive number of flowers on massive spikes. I am excited to see where this goes but I am also nervous that I am not going to have enough space. I currently have this in my 4' high shade house on my patio. To give you a sense of scale, the mesh in the background has a 1/2" spacing.