A discussion with Tom McGrath, former editor-in-chief of "Philadelphia" magazine and the author of the new book "Triumph of the Yuppies: America, the Eighties, and the Creation of an Unequal Nation"
TGIF🎉🎉🎉#BidenHarris2024. Two things for Mr. McGrath (1) As a Middle Boomer (b. 1954) who was a yuppie working in institutional finance during the 80’s, one of the biggest problems with what Milken and the LBO princelings did was packaging crap as viable product. Think Junk Bonds, and Leveraged Buyouts with non-recourse debt. (2) The attitude that if you keep reporting the same lies that trump tells incessantly it becomes white noise runs completely counter to the idea that repeating a narrative incessantly becomes self-fulfilling. Goebbels had it right, sadly. Reporting the facts of what trump spews is the ROLE of journalists, they certainly don’t seem to have a problem hammering Biden daily; think debate performance nonsense. Do better, Mr. McGrath, there are no “oh it’s too haaarrrrddd” excuses.
To be fair, this was part of a larger, and off the cuff, discussion about media problems and how to fix them. He is analyzing one of the problems, not making excuses. I encourage you to listen to the whole talk. : )
Hey, Greg. To me, you always seem to find the perfect antidote to the "news" everyone else is disseminating to capture our attention. Looking forward to listening to your interview of Mr. McGrath. As always, I will start out tentatively but then dive right in as you navigate the narrative in your usual compelling style.
And in a nod to our weather woes, a little "Summer in the City" seems appropriate:
I really believe that the way the media should handle Trump is by ignoring him. When people ask why you don't cover Trump, you tell them that until Trump stops lying, he's not news, he's entertainment. Leave him to the entertainment media.
Of course, their profits will shrink, at least for awhile.
That's the real problem - news media, like many other businesses, used to be interested in serving the public, serving the common good. Now they only exist as one more form of profit extraction.
I got interested in Milkin while watching him lon ago on an NPR interview. Complex character, prostate cancer survivor, donor, etc. I think daily about how the market affects life -- about greed: profits must increase by insane amounts every quarter, consumers' losses multiplying. The growing profits, though, don't accrue to every shareholder equally. Hence index funds, so the little-guy investor has a fighting chance. Beyond that, insider info, institutional-investor advantages, ipos, exec-suite greed sucking up options, etc. Corruption aside, the inescapable fact that, fueled by emotion, the stock market amounts to sanctioned gambling, Milkin is, by far, not the only cause of problems. Capitalism isn't the shiny system beloved by flag-fashion Trumpists. It's become a vehicle for increasing the wealthy's wealth on the backs of struggling consumers, and since there is no end in sight to analyst and market demand for ever-increasing profits, the struggle and inequality can only increase -- which, I guess, is what the book is saying, except Milkin is only one historic cause in a long, growing list. The system is badly broken, currently demonstrated by the number of peope about to vote seriously against their own best economic interests while believing they've found their savior. Now, even the Democrat wealthy are feeling afraid of Biden's wealth tax, etc. They're now racing to join the media in taking advantage of rabid age discrimination by the ignorant on both sides to get rid of Biden.
As for the media, my very varied newsfeed contains about 85% Trump "news" sprinkled lighty with maybe 15% Biden stories. ALL of the Biden pieces are negative, while virtually none of the mainstream Trump articles report in any depth on the dangers, and complaints about media bias appear more justified than ever. I used to belong to a union containing many journalists. If I still had it, I'd hide my membership card in shame -- except I can imagine the pressures from the wealthy owners to favor GOP.
Likewise, spent yesterday avoiding all things dipshit 45 and the vampire. Was hoping Hulk would find sense and body slam 45 on his fake injured ear. No such luck.
I hate tagging people, Gen whatever, it is an attempt to one size fits all that is insulting and harmful. This said I guess I fit the boomer but not yuppie class.
A true story. In 1980s I was CFO of a smaller Wall Street service company, off the radar but very profitable, clients were every household name Wall Street firm. At the time Milken worked at Drexel Burnham Lambert although this a misnomer as DBL existed for MM. Our parent desperately wanted to get into bed with MMDBL and as our operation dealt on a daily basis with DBL, it fell to us to establish a relationship. My memory may be rocky but I recall MM moved his operation from Manhattan to Palm Springs to demonstrate his independence. Our foray into Milkenland was to participate in a leveraged buyout (LBO) he engineered. Our role was to be a big part of a syndicate that would allow the target to be debt free for an overnight. Complexities aside I was responsible to manage our participation in the syndicate. On transaction day the paperwork arrived very late in the day and was incomplete. I refused to wire the funds until all paperwork was received and our security interest perfected. As it was very late in the day we were running up against the fed wire deadline. Phone rings, on the other end one of MM's key lieutenants, a lady, to be polite. An expletive filled explosion occurs, threats of ruining my career, our parent would be cut out of every big deal forever. Send money now, eff the damn paperwork. A simple retort from me, get me the effing correct paperwork, you get your effing money. Hang up. Deal got delayed by one day, correct paperwork arrived, money sent. Never was there any repercussions for me personally or the firm. Welcome to MMLand, a damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead operation if there ever was one.
We live in a time of history is made and forgotten in nanosecond increments. This disease has infected every tag line generation. While I hate to say so dipshit 45 seems to understand this better than most. He is well ahead of the curve, giving him an edge in the race to the Oval. Traditional media is playing a constant game of catch up because, well they are traditional. Dipshit 45's biggest focus, simply stay ahead of the curve, employ distraction as a means to keep the edge, makes us all grasshoppers, jumping from one lily pad to the next. The Dems are mired in chaos, Project 2025 is looking more like our new reality come November 5. Our daughter who lives in London just sent me His Majesty's forms to reinstate our residency which we previously held for some 25 years. One has gotta do what one has gotta do!
I have always viewed stock markets as criminal enterprises. I have never believed technology would "save" the human race but more likely end it.
I checked in with Malthus this morning. He commented that Trump will be president and accelerate the planets destruction while Elon Musk figures out how to get his 12 children and other family members to Mars. That includes Elons father's 10 kids.
As your investment advisor. Don't forget to invest in the Australian Lithium mining company getting ready to destroy more of Nevada.
Magas are far less numerous than they want you to believe, just as the 2000 active Leninists in 1917 called themselves the Bolsheviks party which means "the great, big, powerful" party. Republicans have always been the US minority party, depending on scaring the middle class to get their margins of victory. But trump is too well known as the scariest thing in the room & this year he's been so unhinged that he won't get those undecided votes. What Democrats have to be concerned about is propaganda products here & from abroad and State-level rigging, cheating & voter suppression.
Since I'm in the midst of reading absolute trash right now, I'll have to get Tom's book. It sounds interesting as a history of the world that I lived through but was never touched by. I've never once thought of investing money in the stock market. I've always seen it as little more than a gaming table at a Trump casino. That viewpoint comes partly from ignorant bliss on my part, and stories I've heard and read through the years. For years, the yuppie and Wall Street were locked in my mind as modeled by Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko. But it's really more like Patrick Bateman in AMERICAN PSYCHO, isn't it? The metaphor of Bateman as Wall Street serial killer seems apt -- not that Wall Street types are actual serial killers except in a metaphorical sense.
I can still remember a phone call I had at work in the early 2000s from a cold caller trying to get me to invest in something, talking about "increasing the value of my portfolio," and "making a killing" (See?) on some stock he was trying to hawk. I told him, because for some reason I didn't just hang up) that I had NO investments in the stock market. He reacted as though I'd murdered his mother AND his dog. "You DON'T? Why not???" THAT'S when I hung up. How rude! He wanted my hard-earned money to play with in the stock market. As if!
As for covering Trump, the media will do what the media does, and we're back to shareholders. They REALLY don't give a shit what they cover, or how it's covered, just that it gets viewers/clicks so they can earn more advertising revenue for their shareholders. News media, in my opinion, should be non-profit organizations. Stop running endless (and I do mean ENDLESS) ads for cars, health care products, and fucking Jardiance, whose little jingle walks around with me for DAYS after seeing one of their extravaganza commercials. I feel safe in painting with a broad brush when I say that EVERYTHING, even local news, has become a focal point for money-making. I'm starting to see the most sensationalized things on local news -- feature stories, no less -- that I didn't see, even five years ago. Last night, I avoided Trump's lying speech all night. No local news until it was over, and at last check, he was still babbling at 10:35 CT, so we went to The Game Show Network because I'd rather watch Steve Harvey and Family Feud for an hour than even a second of Trump talking. The stupid "look at me!!" bandage doesn't add any extra value to him, even though he seems to think it does.
And while I'm on the subject, if and when Biden is replaced on the ticket (because that's what the tea leaves are pointing to), I WILL be blaming the Democrats for that, most especially if Trump wins the election. The idea that people who I used to RESPECT like Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, and even Barack Obama, are now, either privately or publicly, calling for Biden to step aside, APPALLS me beyond belief. Fourteen to fifteen million of us JUST voted for him in the primary. He hasn't changed since then. What the actual fuck is going on? Because of a bad night at a debate? I won't belabor this because I feel like I have already, but for fuck's sake, I am embarrassed to be a Democrat right now, where I can't even have any effect on stopping this nonsense. The time for questions was a year ago, NOW you stand behind your candidate. Period. Joe Biden has given WAY over half his life to public service, and this is how he's treated by the fucking Democrats! Unbelievable!
The stock market is legalized gambling, although gambling is also legal now, and I know more about the Knicks than I do about any actual business. A guy cold-called me a while ago...he wanted my retirement business...I talked to him for a minute or two before he hung up on me in disgust after he realized that I didn't have a few million just lying around for him to invest. "What do you have, like a million or two?" "I have a million or two less than that."
Well, the motherfuckers got their way, but it's been encouraging to see everyone line up behind Kamala. I was very nervous that they would do what AOC said and knock her out, too. Trump seems nervous af, which is a nice bonus.
I spend more time than I’d like to admit on Facebook, because I find people likeminded in terms of politics and religion, and it’s good for a lot of laughs. But I’m annoyed at the prevalence of the old farts—many of them decades younger than me—longing for the good old days. “This generation wouldn’t understand …” and the sentence ends with something about record players or stick shifts or whatever. I have enough faith in the human race to believe that each generation skillfully plays the hand it was dealt and manages to take us places we’ve never been before. Like McGrath says, we’re used to a slower pace. They’ll figure it out!
Milken's Drexel was the golden goose for a generation of underwriters & bond salespeople, so he was in a position to, and did, compel his best customers to eat a certain amount of truly doomed issues if they wanted to stay on his A-list when he was bringing juicy junk to market. His justification for doing it to his besties will go down in history: "If you can't fuck your friends, who can you fuck???"
Mitt Romney likewise put a lot of people out of work from a perch in Bain Capital, a leveraged buyout firm. For a complete non sequitor, but one that certainly happened in the same life we, Milken & Romney also inhabit, I knew a girl whose father, a retired narcotics detective, committed suicide with his off-duty revolver. Her mother, who also had a permit (as did my 76 y.o. father, whose business was exposed to late-nite robberies) afterward retrieved the gun from NYPD. After which, everyone in the house referred to it when depressed, as "the family gun."
Greg as usual I look forward to your scribbling. But my hearing does not allow me to listen to audio stuff. I'm into almost 7 years of no TV.
Currently here in my motorhome in the desert today it's only a 109. The Quail, rabbits and coyotes are resting in my shade. Occasionally sipping water I leave about.
Today I started and finished the book,
The Deadly Path by Peter J Forcelli sent to me by an retired crime fighter friend.
Tonight I'll try and finish The New West, Edward Abbey by deceased Nevada professor Ann Ronald.
The rise of shareholder capitalism--and the switch away from a capitalism more attuned to the community--is, like social media, the only thing many people now have ever lived with. And for many people not in, or not yet in, a job with a 401K it feels like something only benefitting the already rich.
That creates a Division: Bag all regulation to let companies do what they want, or Bag Capitalism, with no middle ground of "what well-regulated capitalism can do for all of us." (It deepens the mystery of why so many working class trumpites are so entranced by his policies clearly benefitting ONLY shareholders).
On the media looking "to the new." Uh, I'd say that Project 2025, while not actually "new", is newly in the American consciousness. And still we see the breathless hearsay about Biden. I'm not really sure "new" is really what fully explains the disinclination to cover trump's lies. After all, we just saw a lot of "new" people making those very same lies. But look at all the papers with headlines touting the "new improved trump" when it didn't actually happen. They couldn't wait till he actually finished speaking to write their stories and headlines. Well, it wasn't clear he was ever going to finish speaking, but well before minute 92 he was fully into same old same old. SURELY the big "news" was that stupid angel did absolutely ZIP to reform trump.
A lot of the papers ran with "Trump pitches unity" stories, not waiting to actually hear the speech. Disgraceful.
There has to be a way, and I'm sure a smarter person than me has already figured it out, to tweak capitalism so that it is forced to consider more than just shareholder value. These companies HQ overseas now to avoid taxes...it's a big mess, and we have to figure out a way to tax them properly and save us from them and them from themselves...
TGIF🎉🎉🎉#BidenHarris2024. Two things for Mr. McGrath (1) As a Middle Boomer (b. 1954) who was a yuppie working in institutional finance during the 80’s, one of the biggest problems with what Milken and the LBO princelings did was packaging crap as viable product. Think Junk Bonds, and Leveraged Buyouts with non-recourse debt. (2) The attitude that if you keep reporting the same lies that trump tells incessantly it becomes white noise runs completely counter to the idea that repeating a narrative incessantly becomes self-fulfilling. Goebbels had it right, sadly. Reporting the facts of what trump spews is the ROLE of journalists, they certainly don’t seem to have a problem hammering Biden daily; think debate performance nonsense. Do better, Mr. McGrath, there are no “oh it’s too haaarrrrddd” excuses.
To be fair, this was part of a larger, and off the cuff, discussion about media problems and how to fix them. He is analyzing one of the problems, not making excuses. I encourage you to listen to the whole talk. : )
Hey, Greg. To me, you always seem to find the perfect antidote to the "news" everyone else is disseminating to capture our attention. Looking forward to listening to your interview of Mr. McGrath. As always, I will start out tentatively but then dive right in as you navigate the narrative in your usual compelling style.
And in a nod to our weather woes, a little "Summer in the City" seems appropriate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT9_CJOw7E4&t=37s
or perhaps some "All the party people say they feelin' hot, comin ' to the party with what they got"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkGgdIBX1to&t=29s
Love me some Spoonful! Thanks, Lynell.
I really believe that the way the media should handle Trump is by ignoring him. When people ask why you don't cover Trump, you tell them that until Trump stops lying, he's not news, he's entertainment. Leave him to the entertainment media.
Of course, their profits will shrink, at least for awhile.
That's the real problem - news media, like many other businesses, used to be interested in serving the public, serving the common good. Now they only exist as one more form of profit extraction.
It will be interesting to see how they cover him now, post-Joe. He is a scared rat right now.
My kids who are now in their 60's, will likely not appreciate me sending this to them, but hell, I'm 87, might as well tell them truth. Love, Mom
Thanks, Barb!
👍🏻Will do!
I got interested in Milkin while watching him lon ago on an NPR interview. Complex character, prostate cancer survivor, donor, etc. I think daily about how the market affects life -- about greed: profits must increase by insane amounts every quarter, consumers' losses multiplying. The growing profits, though, don't accrue to every shareholder equally. Hence index funds, so the little-guy investor has a fighting chance. Beyond that, insider info, institutional-investor advantages, ipos, exec-suite greed sucking up options, etc. Corruption aside, the inescapable fact that, fueled by emotion, the stock market amounts to sanctioned gambling, Milkin is, by far, not the only cause of problems. Capitalism isn't the shiny system beloved by flag-fashion Trumpists. It's become a vehicle for increasing the wealthy's wealth on the backs of struggling consumers, and since there is no end in sight to analyst and market demand for ever-increasing profits, the struggle and inequality can only increase -- which, I guess, is what the book is saying, except Milkin is only one historic cause in a long, growing list. The system is badly broken, currently demonstrated by the number of peope about to vote seriously against their own best economic interests while believing they've found their savior. Now, even the Democrat wealthy are feeling afraid of Biden's wealth tax, etc. They're now racing to join the media in taking advantage of rabid age discrimination by the ignorant on both sides to get rid of Biden.
As for the media, my very varied newsfeed contains about 85% Trump "news" sprinkled lighty with maybe 15% Biden stories. ALL of the Biden pieces are negative, while virtually none of the mainstream Trump articles report in any depth on the dangers, and complaints about media bias appear more justified than ever. I used to belong to a union containing many journalists. If I still had it, I'd hide my membership card in shame -- except I can imagine the pressures from the wealthy owners to favor GOP.
He's a fascinating guy for sure. Not as horrible as Welch maybe, but still pretty awful.
Re the media, we wait to see how they cover Kamala...
I gotta agree with ignoring trump no matter how entertaining he is. I think a false equivalency has been created by media. He uses it well.
On the whole I think our systems of government are pretty good. I’d hate to see them change for the worse.
Viva democracy! Billserle.com.
Amen to that, Bill.
Likewise, spent yesterday avoiding all things dipshit 45 and the vampire. Was hoping Hulk would find sense and body slam 45 on his fake injured ear. No such luck.
I hate tagging people, Gen whatever, it is an attempt to one size fits all that is insulting and harmful. This said I guess I fit the boomer but not yuppie class.
A true story. In 1980s I was CFO of a smaller Wall Street service company, off the radar but very profitable, clients were every household name Wall Street firm. At the time Milken worked at Drexel Burnham Lambert although this a misnomer as DBL existed for MM. Our parent desperately wanted to get into bed with MMDBL and as our operation dealt on a daily basis with DBL, it fell to us to establish a relationship. My memory may be rocky but I recall MM moved his operation from Manhattan to Palm Springs to demonstrate his independence. Our foray into Milkenland was to participate in a leveraged buyout (LBO) he engineered. Our role was to be a big part of a syndicate that would allow the target to be debt free for an overnight. Complexities aside I was responsible to manage our participation in the syndicate. On transaction day the paperwork arrived very late in the day and was incomplete. I refused to wire the funds until all paperwork was received and our security interest perfected. As it was very late in the day we were running up against the fed wire deadline. Phone rings, on the other end one of MM's key lieutenants, a lady, to be polite. An expletive filled explosion occurs, threats of ruining my career, our parent would be cut out of every big deal forever. Send money now, eff the damn paperwork. A simple retort from me, get me the effing correct paperwork, you get your effing money. Hang up. Deal got delayed by one day, correct paperwork arrived, money sent. Never was there any repercussions for me personally or the firm. Welcome to MMLand, a damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead operation if there ever was one.
We live in a time of history is made and forgotten in nanosecond increments. This disease has infected every tag line generation. While I hate to say so dipshit 45 seems to understand this better than most. He is well ahead of the curve, giving him an edge in the race to the Oval. Traditional media is playing a constant game of catch up because, well they are traditional. Dipshit 45's biggest focus, simply stay ahead of the curve, employ distraction as a means to keep the edge, makes us all grasshoppers, jumping from one lily pad to the next. The Dems are mired in chaos, Project 2025 is looking more like our new reality come November 5. Our daughter who lives in London just sent me His Majesty's forms to reinstate our residency which we previously held for some 25 years. One has gotta do what one has gotta do!
Thanks for this, Old Man. That's a great story...and good on you for holding the line. Enormous pressure not to do so.
45 was ahead of the curve until yesterday. Now he doesn't seem to know what hit him...
I have always viewed stock markets as criminal enterprises. I have never believed technology would "save" the human race but more likely end it.
I checked in with Malthus this morning. He commented that Trump will be president and accelerate the planets destruction while Elon Musk figures out how to get his 12 children and other family members to Mars. That includes Elons father's 10 kids.
As your investment advisor. Don't forget to invest in the Australian Lithium mining company getting ready to destroy more of Nevada.
Bugsy Siegel, CEO.
CRIMINAL ENTERPRISES OPERATER
Thanks, Buggsy.
Harris & any solid, intelligent Democrat will clean maga's clock & add to the Senate majority.
Thank you for your optimistic post
Magas are far less numerous than they want you to believe, just as the 2000 active Leninists in 1917 called themselves the Bolsheviks party which means "the great, big, powerful" party. Republicans have always been the US minority party, depending on scaring the middle class to get their margins of victory. But trump is too well known as the scariest thing in the room & this year he's been so unhinged that he won't get those undecided votes. What Democrats have to be concerned about is propaganda products here & from abroad and State-level rigging, cheating & voter suppression.
Ok
Trump presidency.
"Learning to Die in the Anthropocene"
Since I'm in the midst of reading absolute trash right now, I'll have to get Tom's book. It sounds interesting as a history of the world that I lived through but was never touched by. I've never once thought of investing money in the stock market. I've always seen it as little more than a gaming table at a Trump casino. That viewpoint comes partly from ignorant bliss on my part, and stories I've heard and read through the years. For years, the yuppie and Wall Street were locked in my mind as modeled by Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko. But it's really more like Patrick Bateman in AMERICAN PSYCHO, isn't it? The metaphor of Bateman as Wall Street serial killer seems apt -- not that Wall Street types are actual serial killers except in a metaphorical sense.
I can still remember a phone call I had at work in the early 2000s from a cold caller trying to get me to invest in something, talking about "increasing the value of my portfolio," and "making a killing" (See?) on some stock he was trying to hawk. I told him, because for some reason I didn't just hang up) that I had NO investments in the stock market. He reacted as though I'd murdered his mother AND his dog. "You DON'T? Why not???" THAT'S when I hung up. How rude! He wanted my hard-earned money to play with in the stock market. As if!
As for covering Trump, the media will do what the media does, and we're back to shareholders. They REALLY don't give a shit what they cover, or how it's covered, just that it gets viewers/clicks so they can earn more advertising revenue for their shareholders. News media, in my opinion, should be non-profit organizations. Stop running endless (and I do mean ENDLESS) ads for cars, health care products, and fucking Jardiance, whose little jingle walks around with me for DAYS after seeing one of their extravaganza commercials. I feel safe in painting with a broad brush when I say that EVERYTHING, even local news, has become a focal point for money-making. I'm starting to see the most sensationalized things on local news -- feature stories, no less -- that I didn't see, even five years ago. Last night, I avoided Trump's lying speech all night. No local news until it was over, and at last check, he was still babbling at 10:35 CT, so we went to The Game Show Network because I'd rather watch Steve Harvey and Family Feud for an hour than even a second of Trump talking. The stupid "look at me!!" bandage doesn't add any extra value to him, even though he seems to think it does.
And while I'm on the subject, if and when Biden is replaced on the ticket (because that's what the tea leaves are pointing to), I WILL be blaming the Democrats for that, most especially if Trump wins the election. The idea that people who I used to RESPECT like Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, and even Barack Obama, are now, either privately or publicly, calling for Biden to step aside, APPALLS me beyond belief. Fourteen to fifteen million of us JUST voted for him in the primary. He hasn't changed since then. What the actual fuck is going on? Because of a bad night at a debate? I won't belabor this because I feel like I have already, but for fuck's sake, I am embarrassed to be a Democrat right now, where I can't even have any effect on stopping this nonsense. The time for questions was a year ago, NOW you stand behind your candidate. Period. Joe Biden has given WAY over half his life to public service, and this is how he's treated by the fucking Democrats! Unbelievable!
Was Leonardo DiCaprio the stock market caller?
I don't think so, but maybe. LOL I loved/hated that movie!
The stock market is legalized gambling, although gambling is also legal now, and I know more about the Knicks than I do about any actual business. A guy cold-called me a while ago...he wanted my retirement business...I talked to him for a minute or two before he hung up on me in disgust after he realized that I didn't have a few million just lying around for him to invest. "What do you have, like a million or two?" "I have a million or two less than that."
Well, the motherfuckers got their way, but it's been encouraging to see everyone line up behind Kamala. I was very nervous that they would do what AOC said and knock her out, too. Trump seems nervous af, which is a nice bonus.
Note: Vietnams Marxist stock market just took a .05 jump.
Your pal reporter.
The Quiet American.
Yep I'm still here in the the same Saigon hotel scribbling away with my now aging consort taking care of my daily needs.
Are you really there, Cal?
I spend more time than I’d like to admit on Facebook, because I find people likeminded in terms of politics and religion, and it’s good for a lot of laughs. But I’m annoyed at the prevalence of the old farts—many of them decades younger than me—longing for the good old days. “This generation wouldn’t understand …” and the sentence ends with something about record players or stick shifts or whatever. I have enough faith in the human race to believe that each generation skillfully plays the hand it was dealt and manages to take us places we’ve never been before. Like McGrath says, we’re used to a slower pace. They’ll figure it out!
Earl like my deceased pal scribbler Chuck Bowden you are an optimistic dude.
At 84 I consider Facebook and religion evil.
I was born a pessimist on the kitchen floor of a run down farmhouse in a river bottom.
It was a great point, and it made me feel more hopeful.
Milken's Drexel was the golden goose for a generation of underwriters & bond salespeople, so he was in a position to, and did, compel his best customers to eat a certain amount of truly doomed issues if they wanted to stay on his A-list when he was bringing juicy junk to market. His justification for doing it to his besties will go down in history: "If you can't fuck your friends, who can you fuck???"
Some guy. Disgusting. Thanks for sharing, Richard.
Mitt Romney likewise put a lot of people out of work from a perch in Bain Capital, a leveraged buyout firm. For a complete non sequitor, but one that certainly happened in the same life we, Milken & Romney also inhabit, I knew a girl whose father, a retired narcotics detective, committed suicide with his off-duty revolver. Her mother, who also had a permit (as did my 76 y.o. father, whose business was exposed to late-nite robberies) afterward retrieved the gun from NYPD. After which, everyone in the house referred to it when depressed, as "the family gun."
Greg as usual I look forward to your scribbling. But my hearing does not allow me to listen to audio stuff. I'm into almost 7 years of no TV.
Currently here in my motorhome in the desert today it's only a 109. The Quail, rabbits and coyotes are resting in my shade. Occasionally sipping water I leave about.
Today I started and finished the book,
The Deadly Path by Peter J Forcelli sent to me by an retired crime fighter friend.
Tonight I'll try and finish The New West, Edward Abbey by deceased Nevada professor Ann Ronald.
Hasta luego
The rise of shareholder capitalism--and the switch away from a capitalism more attuned to the community--is, like social media, the only thing many people now have ever lived with. And for many people not in, or not yet in, a job with a 401K it feels like something only benefitting the already rich.
That creates a Division: Bag all regulation to let companies do what they want, or Bag Capitalism, with no middle ground of "what well-regulated capitalism can do for all of us." (It deepens the mystery of why so many working class trumpites are so entranced by his policies clearly benefitting ONLY shareholders).
On the media looking "to the new." Uh, I'd say that Project 2025, while not actually "new", is newly in the American consciousness. And still we see the breathless hearsay about Biden. I'm not really sure "new" is really what fully explains the disinclination to cover trump's lies. After all, we just saw a lot of "new" people making those very same lies. But look at all the papers with headlines touting the "new improved trump" when it didn't actually happen. They couldn't wait till he actually finished speaking to write their stories and headlines. Well, it wasn't clear he was ever going to finish speaking, but well before minute 92 he was fully into same old same old. SURELY the big "news" was that stupid angel did absolutely ZIP to reform trump.
A lot of the papers ran with "Trump pitches unity" stories, not waiting to actually hear the speech. Disgraceful.
There has to be a way, and I'm sure a smarter person than me has already figured it out, to tweak capitalism so that it is forced to consider more than just shareholder value. These companies HQ overseas now to avoid taxes...it's a big mess, and we have to figure out a way to tax them properly and save us from them and them from themselves...