I thought today—a rare overcast, drizzly day here on the Front Range, and therefore a fine day to sit down and try to finish (again) a novel—that I'd avoid this fiddling about with politics and current events, pontificating online and the like, and maybe read some Yeats, finish the Alice Munro story in the most recent New Yorker, and get down to Finishing the Novel, so I can make millions, in addition to having the kind of fulfillment people who follow their dreams can sometimes have.
But as anyone who has ventured into this world for any length of time (and has over 100 rejection slips taped to their office wall [like some perverse kook], along with, in my case, admittedly, a copy of a check written to me for a work of fiction—an excerpt from this novel, in fact—as well as a copy of a signed agreement with my agent—again, for this novel, the one I'd better finish, and damned well, someday) knows: Giving up a decent paycheck to follow one's dream can, and often does, end in bitter failure, at least at the commercial level; and so the dreamer, unless utterly delusional (which has its advantages), spends a fair amount of time trying to shove visions of themselves sitting in a small room someday, ala Howard Hughes without the money but still with the long, untrimmed nails, say, explaining to their children that Daddy actually did try to live his dream but it just didn't work out so well, which is why, instead of playing hockey, or the cello, they need to work (unlike Daddy, whose appearance would be a problem in the job market) and, btw, give 50% of the wages they make at the fast food restaurant back to Mom and Dad, to help pay bills ... we try to shove those visions out of our mind, so we can create.
We don't even joke in this house about what happens to the writer in The Shining, though a lot of my friends do, especially the ones with jobs. Probably because they'd just love to see me lose it, entirely, so long as I didn't have to come, with my family, to live in their basement—which is how I screw with them back.
Anyway, dreamy notions of writing aside, you'd pretty much rather cut your toenails than take that initial step of planting your backside in the chair.
Well, I'm halfway to it ...
I'm just writing this first.
Having been distracted over my oatmeal by Adam Davidson's very lucid and understandable report on NPR of the government stepping in to help out the once no-brainer, must-own-in-one's-portfolio companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
As some of you may know, I am fairly sophisticated when it comes to the investment world, at creating an illusion of wealth, pulling rabbits out of my hat, that sort of thing, and over the years have taken comfort in this knowledge, here and there (when not shoving ugly visions from my mind) believing it will keep me from ending up like a penniless version of Howard Hughes, with long nails in an unkept room, explaining to my children ...
As old Ron would say: There I go again.
But ... what I mean to say is: in spite of my being able to hold my own in financial conversations at cocktail parties, I would not want to have to explain exactly what either of these two companies do ... precisely. Not to a normal person. Neither would Henry Paulsen, I don't think.
But Adam Davidson, on NPR this morning, did a pretty good job, telling us how, essentially, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac help us Americans get into debt on our homes for less money than we might otherwise. And since we get our debt on our homes so cheap, we more often than not get into more debt by buying a bunch of other stuff—a lot of it from China, as it turns out—and our doing this, buying stuff, more from other countries than the other countries do from us, is called Having a Trade Deficit.
In particular, we have a Big Trade Deficit with China—we send them about a billion dollars more each day than they send us in their currency, the yuan, to buy stuff. And what they do, then, or have been doing, with that money is buy, or invest, in our financial instruments, notably bonds issued by Fannie and Freddie, once thought to be a pretty safe bet, and with a decent yield to boot ... until it turned out that they weren't anymore, on account of all this funny bundling of mortgages, many of which, long and short, went, or are about to go, tits up. And so China didn't want to buy Fannie and Freddie's debt anymore.
Since I have small kids, I tend to think of it like the house who has all the kids over to play, and then takes the toys that the kids left behind and sells them on, say, Craig's List, to that they can afford to add a new addition, a master bathroom, a finished basement, so more kids want to come over and play and leave their toys ... until it's discovered that a few of these toys are contaminated with, say, weapons-grade plutonium, and the whole scheme falls apart.
Which, getting back to Fannie and Freddie's bonds, was a problem. And not just for Fannie and Freddie, which, you'd think, us being all free market nuts and all, we'd just say, Tough Shit, Fannie and Freddie.
But, turns out we can't do that. Since our country, after the surplus days created by the liberal, buy and spend Clinton Administration, is now in debt up to its yin-yang after being run by the no funny business, Grover Norquist ally free marketers, the conservative Bush Administration. And so we can't, unfortunately, here in the short-term, at least, afford to have flush commie run countries like China not buying Fannie and Freddie's debt instruments.
Unless we, the whole country, wants to end up just like Fannie and Freddie.
Which is why our current administration—the one who wanted to privatize social security, the one who vociferously opposes, as a rule, the government getting into our business (except when it comes to abortion, and gays getting married, and little libraries in Wasilla having books like The Catcher in the Rye on its shelves—nonsense like that), decided that it would be best for everyone involved if they just took over the companies. Nationalized them, as it were, at least in the short-term. Though that sounds terrible.
And maybe isn't exactly the same thing as when that nut job Hugo Chavez does it down south.
Though, again, I wouldn't want to have to explain the difference to someone at a cocktail party who doesn't know the difference.
Anyway, the great thing I know, being a sharp money guy and all the rest, is that we—taxpayers—have just bought a couple of formerly top notch companies with government ties on the cheap. On a big dip. Which what they mean when they say, Buy Low, Sell High. Buy while the blood was flowing in the streets, as they say in the investment world. And so if we just sit tight, when Fannie and Freddie roar back someday, we're all going to be rich, right?
No? Not necessarily?
Well ... actually, it turns out, we haven't really, the taxpayers, invested in these companies in quite that way.
The better way to look at it is: it's like when you lend money to one of your relatives, with the unspoken understanding that, having slid them some cash, they won't bug you for a while. You don't really expect the cash back, to get a return, really, you'll just be happy, frankly, if they don't come next month and want to move into your basement.
It's more like that.
And that's what we, the taxpayers, did today. Kept some tits up relatives from moving into our basement.
Where, keep in mind, without Social Security, and Medicaid, we might not have the room in the first place. Our basements would be packed full of tits up relatives who bought too much stuff from China and didn't dollar-cost-average into the market from the time they were young, like smart people managing their own retirement ought to, but wouldn't necessarily have to. Which might well bring out in all of us that Special Kind of Love that Ms. Heartbeat Away talks about. Or not. But it could happen.
So, before you go, read a little more on Ms. Heartbeat Away, and try to keep in mind that if history is any guide, people are going to eat her up. After all, the much maligned (now) Checker's Speech by Richard Nixon back in the early fifties saved his career (the first time). People, by and large, loved it.
And Sarah, I'd say, is doing better than talking about good Republican cloth coats.
Keeping in mind, for all her charm and good looks and sassiness, that she pretty well believes that dinosaur fossils are God's way of screwing with our heads (perhaps she would put The Natural History Museum, all of them, on eBay, turn them into big churches, that wouldn't have to pay taxes), that she was in favor of that bridge to nowhere before she wasn't, and likes her pork as well as she does her caribou, that she believes, as a practical matter, that if your uncle takes a lurid shine to you when you're 14 and you end up pregnant, that you ought to have the child and like it, because that's just the way the chips fell for you, sweetheart, and all the sex education in all the public schools supported by government money [like Ms. Heartbeat Away's salary] ain't gonna change that, or ruin your chances to develop a Special Kind of Love with you and your uncle's offspring.
So, buck up girls—and parents, get your girls a horse, or a 30-06, something to take their minds off the cold hard facts of life, which we have no business talking about anyway.
Read it, because McCain and Ms. Heartbeat Away are now up 50-46% in the latest USA Today/Gallup poll. Mostly because folks just think Sarah's a kick.
Thankfully, no one has taken me up on that $100 yet.
I'm going to be sick, and then finish that novel, right now.
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