Why bankers rule

In the past couple of days, much anger has arisen regarding bonuses paid to bankers on Wall Street or in the City of London among populist good-for-nothing welfare-state leeches like poor people and the uber-liberal-Sarah-Palin-hating "mainstream media" who, in between their worship of Barack Obama's statuette, find it so easy to bash anyone or anything that has a connection to financial services!

In an unusual effort to quell these outrageous attempts by all those pesky median-income or minimum-wage earners out there who can't get enough of taking a free ride off the hard work of rich people (all of whom got rich only by the virtues of hard work), the elastic thinker has decided to produce a list of 8 reasons why there is no problem paying out massive bonuses to bankers during an economic crisis that has produced unemployment of 9.5% (and rising):

1. Contrary to public opinion, bankers are actually the smartest people in the world. Unlike the money you earn, theirs requires $60,000/year MBAs, which means they're really, really smart. They actually earn their money, 'cause they figure out how to make money using other people's money.

2. Bankers work harder than you do. What? You want a bonus during a recession? Mortgage tough to pay? Well, bud, you shouldn't have bought that house. If you were smart enough to read that 10-K filing or actually turn on that Bloomberg terminal you have at home, you would've seen all this coming. What's that you say? You don't have a Bloomberg terminal? You snooze, you lose.

Again, that's why they get paid more than you, because they are actually smarter! Don't you know economics? Skill and its scarcity in the labor market are rewarded largely through compensation. That's why you make less, because you just couldn't make the cut.

3. Had Goldman Sachs and all the other God-affiliated institutions didn't pay bonuses, they couldn't attract such amazing talent! If they didn't pay bonuses, some other bank would find a few million to throw at them. That would risk a massive brain drain.

4. Bankers are prophets and decipherers of mysterious information that normal people simply are too incompetent to understand. I mean, come on, this is why one day the markets jump and the dollar gets stronger, and the next day the opposite happens based on new information. Let's leave figuring all that out to the bankers. They know best.

5. If it weren't for bankers, we would not have the movie "Wall Street," the actress Darryl Hannah, or the name Gordon Gecko in our vocabularies.

6. Bankers have more culture than you. They drive better cars, eat better food, wear better clothes, use BlackBerrys and go to better gyms than you. Not only that, they don't have to sit with the commoners at sporting events. They can get their caesar salad, Chardonnay and chicken fingers with dijon mustard dipping sauce in an air-conditioned box while you stand in line for 15 minutes to get your aluminum-foil-wrapped hot dog. Remember, perks like this are necessary to keep bankers happy. They are very busy people and need to relax every now and then to blow off some steam. Strip clubs help, too.

7. Bankers represent what the American economy's future is all about. Who needs to make useless widgets when you make knowledge?? It's the knowledge economy, baby!

8. Bankers are the backbone of America, generally speaking. When national challenges arise, they are the first to go to war ('we rate Halliburton a strong BUY'), show their patriotism (speculating on foreign currencies), and campaign for a cause ($240 million in lobby spending in election year '08!)!

The Unforgettable Fire

Last weekend I had the opportunity to live a dream -- twice. My sister gifted me with the immaculate graduation gift - tickets to see one of my favorite bands in their home city. And so it was, my sister, myself, and our friend Brennan on the Emerald Isle to hear one of the greatest rock bands of our time "melt some faces" (Jack Black).

U2 at Croke Park in the north side of Dublin, Ireland, did not disappoint. These guys, more than 30 years on, still have it.

The first show we saw was on Friday July 24 - we had pitch (standing) seats...we couldn't get enough so the next day, we got scalper tickets and sat on the upper levels!! Both shows were incredible.

Among the highlights:
- seeing my sister go absolutely nuts :)
- hearing some of my favorite songs live by the band that wrote them!!
- watching the Edge, Larry Mullen Jr., Adam Clayton and Bono play like they're back in 1983
- an acoustic version of "Desire"
- a techno remake of "I'll Go Crazy if I Don't go Crazy.."
- "Sunday Bloody Sunday" under the green lights to honor protesters in Iran, with a little "Rock the Casbah" intertwined

Here is a sampler video - I intentionally did not take too much video of one particular song because I only had one memory card and wanted to get as much as I could (most of it is on YouTube anyway) - just thought you might like to see it from my perspective!

Taro Aso's Nightmare

Less than one year after Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso took the reigns of the hobbling Japanese government and economy, he is faced with a daunting prospect - the end of his term as Japan's leader, and of one-party rule in Japan.

While Aso is well regarded by foreign leaders, his tenure is sure to come to a close now that Tokyo municipal elections delivered a smashing blow to Aso's party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), in favor of the rival Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ).

As various news outlets have reported, Aso has attempted to use pork barrel spending - a time-worn tradition in modern Japanese politics - to assuage voters ahead of the election he has called for Aug. 30. And recent economic data show Japan's slump could be nearing an end. Aso hopes these factors will renew some public trust in the LDP's national leadership in the next month.

The elastic thinker thinks Japan deserves and is ready for political change. The LDP has not necessarily squandered Japan's economic might - but it has certainly allowed back-room politics to become even more entrenched. Whether the DPJ will bring fresh ideas, or serve simply as the "anti-LDP," is a huge question mark, but one that the Japanese people deserve an answer for after years of LDP dominance. The biggest risk from DPJ election gains, of course, is a government that much more politically polarized that solving Japan's myriad economic issues will become even more onerous.

But the Japanese public, who are about to descend in what could be another "lost decade" of economic stagnation, most likely want change. It appears they will get it this time around. This will prove to be a significant development in world politics, and in the world's second largest economy.

(A) judgement cometh

When Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation purchased The Wall Street Journal in 2007, promises were made by Murdoch, the world's 21st-century William Randolph Hearst, that the Journal's sterling editorial integrity and independence from ownership would go unscathed.

Even when a popular managing editor in Marcus Brauchli was replaced after the acquisition with Murdoch's choice, Robert Thomson, there were few other conspicuous signs that Murdoch had the same sort of stranglehold on the Journal's day-to-day news coverage which he has shown with his other newspapers. In the initial months of News Corp.'s ownership of the Journal, it seemed Murdoch would keep his promise.

But recent developments will truly test the mettle of the United States' second-largest newspaper by circulation. A report by one of the few daring newspapers left in the English-language news media, The Guardian, revealed evidence that the News of the World and other trashy News Corp. tabloids illegally hacked into the phones of British politicians and other public figures. While the news has caught international attention, the Journal's coverage has been markedly muted, and is limited to an un-bylined "Wall Street Journal Roundup" - likely extracted from a wire service. This article makes no disclosure statement that the Journal itself is owned by News Corp. until the 8th paragraph, by which time most readers have already moved their attention to YouTube, Hulu.com (d'oh, also jointly owned by News Corp.!) or Facebook. It is a highly unusual way to cover a highly newsworthy event involving the world's best-known media mogul, no?

Indeed, it's another example of a news organization struggling with its corporate parent, a time-old challenge of keeping big business out of the truth's way (see NBC trying to cover General Electric, or ABC trying to report on Disney - it just doesn't happen). I suppose we shouldn't be surprised.