'TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE BLACK FRIDAY ...

‘Twas the night before Black Friday, and throughout the land,
Not a shopper was shopping, even for a name brand.

Merchant ads had been placed in newspapers with care,
In hopes that Christmas shoppers would soon be there.

Wall Street CEOs were nestled all snug in their beds,
With fond memories of deregulation still dancing in their heads.

And mamma in her second-hand clothes, and I in my baseball cap,
We had both popped a Xanax, so we could finally take a nap!

When out on the Internet there arose such a chatter,
I broke from my slumber to see what was the matter.

Away to my computer, I flew like a flash,
To open Explorer, and surf for cheap holiday cash.

The glare on my PC screen appeared like moonlight on a new-fallen snow,
And gave magnificent luster and mystery to thawing credit markets below.

When, what to my surfing eyes should appear?
But images of an economic team, so earnest and sincere.

And a fresh-faced leader, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment this was not St. Nick!

More rapid than eagles, Obama’s calls they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:

“Away Paulson! Away Bush! And the Ghost of Nixon!
On Geithner! On Summers! The economy needs fixin’!”

“To the credit markets you each must hurry!
Get Bernanke! Get Bernanke!” He said with a flurry.

When times are tough, Americans do not stomp or cry;
We meet each obstacle, and we look to the sky.

And so with hope, the economic team they flew,
With a sleigh full of incentives, and rate cuts too!

A few moments later, I heard at my front door,
The knock-knocking of secret service agents galore.

As I glared out the window, my eyes they were amazed,
But there stood Mr. Obama; now I was in a daze.

“How can I help you, Mr. President-elect?”
I said to him with great awe and respect.

“All Americans must do their part” he said with haste.
“Here’s a new credit card … there’s no time to waste!”

“Off to malls, off to the stores. You must shop, shop, shop!
And there’s no spending limit, so please don’t stop”

Surely, my mind was tricking me in some Xanax-induced haze,
But I thought I heard him promise “no payments for ninety days!”

“Yes Sir!” I said to America’s new commander-in-chief,
“I will do as you say, and shop, shop with no grief.”

Then, as we shook hands to seal the deal,
I heard two young girls suddenly squeal,

“Daddy, daddy, we’re late to pick up our new puppy!”
It was then I realized … as a Nation, we are truly lucky.

TOP TEN REASONS WHY I BELIEVE I’M LIVING IN A PARALLEL UNIVERSE

Here are my "TOP TEN" reasons why I believe I'm living in a parallel universe:

10. My e-mail spam catcher is full of bogus discount coupons but no herbal Viagra ads

9. Trying to boost poor ticket sales, the NFL starts broadcasting football games in 3-D

8. Michael Jackson has become a devoted follower of Cat Stevens

7. A black man has been elected president, and he’s sending his kids to an all-white private school

6. After 16 years in production, Guns n Roses releases its “Chinese Democracy” album

5. Chrysler is marketing its 19 city/24 highway PT Cruiser as a “fuel-efficient” vehicle

4. A no-name congressional aid to vice president-elect Joe Biden has been named to fill his Senate seat

3. A seven-time convicted felon lost his Senate seat by only 2500 votes

2. Political historians are seriously debating whether the term ‘Joe Six-pack” altered the outcome of the 2008 presidential election

1. George W. Bush is making statements about the economy without the aid of a Tele-prompter

An Omen for Detroit: Chrysler’s Dog Has No GOP Clout

Cerberus, the 3-headed dog guarding the gates of ... Detroit?

It must be a sign of the times.

Chrysler LLC's private equity owners can't seem to get any traction with the GOP on Detroit's effort to use the U.S. Treasury as a one-stop financing source of first resort. This lack of GOP support is most remarkable and ominous.

Since July 2007, when Daimler AG divested itself of all but a 20 percent stake, Chrysler has been 80 percent owned by private equity giant Cerberus Capital Management and a group of well-heeled Cerberus co-investors. Cerberus pumped $7.4 billion into the Chrysler purchase, hand-picked Chrysler's new CEO, Robert Nardelli, and established an advisory board that directs Chrysler's turn-around plans. Cerberus is by no means a "passive" investor; to the contrary, it is a very active one.

Cerberus, named for the mythical three-headed dog that guards the gates of Hell, also has pristine GOP credentials. First, there's the money. According to Federal Election Commission records, Cerberus founder and CEO Stephen Feinberg and his wife Gisela have given about $240,000 to GOP candidates and committees over the last eight years. Recipients include House Minority Whip David Bonior, Senator Richard Shelby (ranking member on the powerful Senate Banking Committee) and GOP Senators Jon Kyl and Orin Hatch. Then there are the contacts. John W. Snow, Hank Paulson's immediate predecessor as Secretary of Treasury (2003-06), is Chairman of Cerberus; Snow's GOP credentials date back to the Ford Administration. Former Vice President Dan Quayle also works for Cerberus. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is a Cerberus client.

With GOP credentials like this, you would think that Cerberus would have an easy time enlisting GOP support for the proposed $25 billion Detroit bailout legislation vetted on Capitol Hill this week. After all, in Washington it's all about who you know and how you spend your money. Instead, Cerberus has been unable to rally any significant GOP support.

There are only two explanations for Cerberus's present lack of GOP clout on this issue: (i) either the $25 billion Detroit bailout package must really be a bad idea, or (ii) the GOP must really be gunning to drive Detroit under. In either case, this is not a good omen for Chrysler LLC or for Detroit as a whole.

Cerberus may be guarding the gates of Detroit, but it has no bark, bite or GOP clout.

Are Democrats the New Dr. Detroit?

Dr. Detroit (Dan Aykroyd) and his "working girls."

In the 1983 movie “Doctor Detroit”, Dan Aykroyd plays a well-intentioned college professor who unwittingly finds himself protecting four Detroit prostitutes after their pimp skips town. Caught in the middle of an ill-considered situation, Aykroyd’s character quickly morphs into a colorful new pimp who calls himself “Dr. Detroit.” Fast forward 25 years, to the current political debate over what should be done to “save” the U.S. auto industry, and the storyline sounds remarkably similar: well-intentioned congressional Democrats find themselves in the middle of an ill-considered situation and are falling all over each other to “protect” another group of Detroit prostitutes – General Motors, Ford and Chrysler – after the GOP skipped town.

Don’t get me wrong, from all outward indications GM needs substantial re-tooling in order to survive through the end of 2009, and America needs GM. Well, sort of. America needs all the jobs that flow from GM’s operations. We could do without the mismanagement, arrogance and disingenuous pleas for help coming from GM’s senior executives.

Unfortunately, now is not exactly the best time to engage in a high-minded debate about “moral hazards.” We need to do something to address this threat to the economy. In that regard, two things seem clear to me: (1) borrowing yet another $10 or $20 billion from China to lend to GM is not the best solution and (2) even a threat this serious does not need to be solved this week. Lawmakers need to slow down and consider all the options, not just the one option favored by the Big 3.

Pigs at the Trough

The first obvious problem with the Democrats’ rush to save jobs is that $10 or $20 billion now for GM will soon morph into $50 billion for the entire U.S. auto industry – once the government feeds one hooker, it has to feed them all. That includes Ford and Chrysler. Witness the feeding frenzy last week (and today) as CEOs of the Big 3 met with Washington lawmakers to plead their joint case for financial assistance. Just last month, Ford CEO Alan Mulally publicly stated that Ford had sufficient liquidity to weather this economic downturn, but now Ford wants to get in on the bailout action too. Chrysler also expects to be included in the government’s bailout largesse, an idea that strikes me as completely ridiculous.

Chrysler LLC is 80-percent owned by private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management and about ninety extremely wealthy Cerberus co-investors. If Chrysler really needs cash – and there’s no outward indication that it does – it can just ask its well-healed investors for a short-term loan. The U.S. Government should not be Chrysler’s lender of first resort when the company is backed by a syndicate of private wealth. Even if the U.S. Treasury were to ultimately turn a “profit” on a loan to Chrysler, why should taxpayers even shoulder the interim risk of a potential default? The fact that congressional leaders are even considering giving a dime to Chrysler is People’s Exhibit No. 1 that Democrats are dangerously close to pimping themselves out as the “new” Doctor Detroit.

Giving Cash to General Motors Will Not Save Jobs; Building Cars that Sell Will

The second problem should also be obvious: even if lawmakers were to write GM a blank check, no autoworker’s job will be saved until GM starts domestically producing smaller, fuel-efficient cars that people want to buy. That re-tooling will take time, perhaps a year or two. In the interim, autoworkers will still lose jobs – our response should be tailored to assist displaced workers first and GM second.

Controls on the Use of Cash are NOT Enforceable

The third problem with the proposal being pushed by the Big 3 is that once the money goes into corporate coffers, the government will have no effective way to determine which dollar was used for which expense. As businessmen say, “cash is cash.” Even if lawmakers could devise some elaborate mechanism to monitor how the cash was used, there would be no way to get the money back if Detroit were to break its promise.

There’s a good reason why General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner told lawmakers that he would be willing to accept almost any restriction: he knows that once GM has the cash, there’s no effective way for the government to enforce the restriction.

Restrictions on Executive Pay Won’t Make a Bad Bailout Better

Attempts to place restrictions on the excessive compensation of corporate executives – a favorite whipping boy of congressional Democrats – are not selling points for an otherwise bad fiscal stimulus idea. Yes, our executive compensation system is broken, but now is not the time to deal with that incestuous system.

Moreover, does any serious observer really believe that Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli – the former Home Depot CEO roundly criticized for his outsized compensation during a period when his company’s earnings were flat – will accept a true cut in his total pay at Chrysler? If he gives up income now, Cerberus will just give him a fatter bonus when it exits its investment in two or three years.

Attempts to curb executive pay in Detroit are really just “window dressing” – a marketing attempt to sell a bad fiscal stimulus plan to Americans who are rightly outraged over executive compensation. Doctor Detroit can dress his prostitutes in new clothes, high heels, wigs and ruby-red lipstick, but at the end of the day all he has are hookers.

Before you think that I have gone too far with my Doctor Detroit analogy, let me just add one more thing. I am a proud, registered Democrat; I canvassed neighborhoods for Obama two weeks ago, and I have given a decent amount of money to Democratic candidates over the past couple of years. Those are my bona fides. I just think this blank check approach is ill-considered.

Her Majesty’s Disingenuous Opposition: the GOP refusal to aid Detroit

As much I as believe that current democratic efforts are ill-advised, at least the Democrats are trying to address the problem. GOP lawmakers are doing nothing to help, thus returning to the party’s historic, insular role of providing only opposition, not leadership. Don’t be fooled by high-brow protestations against state ownership of industry and talk fiscal constraint, GOP lawmakers and the Bush White House are not supporting these efforts for the same basic reason Democrats are: (i) the jobs to be saved belong to unionized auto workers, who overwhelmingly vote democratic, and (ii) those jobs are concentrated in three industrial states – Michigan, Ohio and Indiana – that all supported the winning Obama-Biden ticket. For the GOP, it’s payback time, pure and simple.

Perhaps that’s a bit too harsh. Perhaps there are some GOP lawmakers who want to help save Detroit. My question is simple: where are they?

Waiting to Exhale

The GOP’s current refusal to help U.S. automakers may prove to be a blessing in disguise. Their opposition forces Democrats to stop, take a deep breath, and exhale before rushing to pass legislation enshrining the only option that has been presented to them.

A Semi-automatic Reason Why Gay Marriage Matters

This is not my story, but it is a story that I need to tell.

My best friend of 23 years is a professor at a liberal arts college about three hours outside of Memphis, Tennessee. His partner of 8+ years, Tom (not his real name), lives in Memphis proper -- neither community has viable employment options for the other, so they commute back and forth, managing to spend 2 or 3 nights a week together. The fact that they've been able to make this medium-distance relationship work for so long speaks volumes about their commitment to each other. The fact that I must refer to these friends generically speaks volumes about the challenges still facing gay men (and women) in the South in 2008.

Tom works at a retail shop in the Midtown area of Memphis. About four months ago, an armed robber entered the store and put a 9mm pistol to Tom's head, demanding that he open and empty the company’s cash drawer and safe. As Tom fumbled, seven times, under duress to remember the proper codes, the gunman cocked the pistol and an empty shell fell out of the chamber and onto the floor. Tom finally managed to enter the proper codes; the gunman then grabbed the cash and fled.

There's nothing like the near-loss of a loved one to cause a person to ponder the gift of life and meaning of love. My best friend soon realized that had Tom been disabled or killed, he would have had: (i) no visitation/access rights during hospitalization, (ii) no say in Tom’s medical treatment and (iii) no say or control over Tom’s burial. More importantly, my buddy realized that he would never have had the opportunity to publicly affirm his love for his partner.

Six weeks ago, my best friend called me to announce that he and Tom were planning a trip to San Francisco this Christmas to get married. I was elated; he was ecstatic.

That was then. The reality of California Proposition 8 is now.

This is why gay marriage matters