Everywhere you look: gloom. But maybe not.

Gloom, of course, isn’t hard to spot. The other day I looked outside my office window, which fortunately, the way things are going some days, is hermetically sealed and made out of extremely strong plate glass. Outside on the sidewalk, on the other side of the avenue, was a long, long line of people that grew as the morning progressed. By 10 AM, it was tripled – three parallel lines – which of course meant that the line had gone around the block three times. It was, in short, a swarm.

A small group of people had formed at one of our windows and was watching the throng. “What is that?” I asked. “Job fair at the Hilton,” said Jeremy, who makes it his business to know everything.  ”They’re taking resumes.” I looked back at the triple line that snaked around and around and around a whole city block in this big, busy city. Just about everybody on the line was dressed for business. Ties. Suits. Serious black skirts. It was very, very cold out that day, but they waited. The line did not move. In fact, it didn’t thin out until dusk, as the street lights began to come on.

Several weeks ago, I popped up to Fifth Avenue to get a shirt at Brooks Brothers. At certain times of the year they’re quite reasonable, if you think a $60 business shirt is reasonable. I sort of do. There was only one problem. Brooks Brothers, at the corner of 53rd and Fifth, was gone. I stood there on the street like a dog who was absolutely sure he was in the correct spot at which he had buried a juicy bone, except it wasn’t there.

A rent-a-cop was standing right by the place where Brooks Brothers, the spine upon which many a serious (if slightly lumpy) business career has been built, had once stood. Paper covered the windows. The logo that had once stood over the revolving doors had been torn away, leaving an ugly stub. “It’s gone?” I asked the guard. “Gone,” he said. ”Last week.” 

“As in… gone?” I said. “Like… not refurbishing? Not opening again later?”

“That is right,” said the guard, and we exchanged one of those looks that say, “Buckle up, pal, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

Flip now to yesterday. I’m walking down Sixth Avenue and at the corner of 49th, or maybe it was 50th, what do you think I see? A store that has been empty for a while with a big new window that says, in big, bold, classy letters, “Brooks Brothers. Coming soon. Opening Summer 2009.”

They say that the closing of one door often signifies the opening of another. A lot of doors are closing these days. But if you look long and hard enough, maybe, just maybe, there’s a crack of light here and there beginning to shine through?

So yesterday Ted calls me. He’s upset. Why? “I’m looking at this story on the internet and it says that our company has been taken over by aliens and I’m actually a warlord from the planet Zox who is siphoning off public funds and sending it back to my boss back home. I don’t think I like that very much. I hope it doesn’t go viral.” 

“Where in the world did you even see such a thing?” I ask him. 

“I’m sending you the link,” he says. I wait a second and there comes the link in my inbox. It’s to something called lyingbuttheadnews.com. And no, don’t try to go there. I’m making up the name, but not the kind of destination we’re talking about. There are a ton of them. In fact, you probably read a bunch of them every day. They don’t report stories. They just talk about stuff. The way I’m doing with you right now. They don’t research. They don’t check. They just say whatever. Whatever is what the Internet is all about. 

Sure enough, there’s the story on the site. It’s quite long. It has pictures of a lot of people I know, and there’s a big headline and the whole thing is full of it, of course, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I just imagine the number of sites – financial, political, opinion, gossip – that would love to link to this kind of nonsense. 

“So Ted, tell me,” I say, “how does a guy who types with one finger figure out how to get to lyingbuttheadnews.com. I never even heard of the site. Nobody reads it. The posting itself has exactly zero comments attached to it. Why do you know about it?”

“Google alerts,” says Ted proudly. “See, Bing,” he says, “I have everything related to our company on Google (GOOG) alert. When any news at all comes out about us, anything on the entire Internet, I get an alert and I can see it.”

“But why, Ted,” I ask him. And I really want to know. “Why do you need to see every lie, every piece of whimsy, every nasty turd that somebody with no accountability wants to throw at you, at us? How are our lives enhanced by this?”

“I gotta go,” says Ted. And I can tell he’s looking at his screen again. I’m hoping we get lucky this time and it’s something nasty about one of our competitors. I read the other day that they’re the descendants of Nazi clone babies.  So far they haven’t denied it, either.

Fair’s fair. I teased the Viziers of Vista (MSFT) yesterday when they requisitioned some dough from those whose severance they overpaid. Yesterday the Company took a deep breath, bethought itself, and reversed its policy. In fact, CNET reports that that head of Human Resources herself made the calls to the 25 folks involved. 

Later in the afternoon, Microsoft issued the following statement:

Last week, 25 former Microsoft employees were informed that they were overpaid as a part of their severance payments from the company. This was a mistake on our part. We should have handled this situation in a more thoughtful manner. We are reaching out to those impacted to relay that we will not seek any payment from those individuals.

There are several things notable about this development. First, it’s interesting that somebody at Microsoft actually thought it was worth hitting up the 25 people for the approximately $5,000 they were each overpaid. That’s $125,000 that the billion-dollar organization was trying to recoup.  Yes, times are hard. But that hard?

Decisions made under stress are often not the best ones.

But congratulations, Microsoft. I know how hard it is to reverse a company decision once it’s made. Lots of meetings. Lots of people sitting around and wondering whether the story will go away if you just ignore it for a day. And it’s true. A lot do. The blogosphere is an angry, stupid beast. It feeds on meat and plant material alike, the innocent as well as the guilty, and as soon as its belly is full it moves on to the next meal with virtually no memory of the last. So it’s tempting to simply lie very still while the predator snuffles at you or even gores you a bit, waiting for it to cast its eye on a subsequent victim. Nobody ever got a second round of poison in their eye for sitting quietly and doing nothing.

So once again, congratulations, Microsoft, and most particularly to Lisa Brummel, the HR executive who, I bet, said, “I’ll do it,” and picked up the phone and told each one of the overpaid 25 that they could keep their cash. When a decision like that is reached, in the end, there’s always one person who has to say, “Enough talking already. I’ll do it.”

But wait. Congratulations, as well-earned as they may be, may also be premature. So disgusted is the American public with corporations, with large corporations in particular, and with certain large corporations specifically, that the vast majority of us have no room in our hearts for understanding or forgiveness or even a little bit of the benefit of the doubt. 

Why do I say that? Because in a news.com poll taken since Microsoft made its rather sensible change of course, 84.9 percent of the nearly 1000 people queried said that the Company did it to “save face.”  Another 6.1 percent said “it wasn’t that much money,” and only 9% opted for “because it was the right thing to do.”

I wonder what the number was before I voted. Because you know what? That’s what I believe. I believe somebody at Microsoft had a human thought and said, “Hey, this is stupid, we’re taking money away from people we just fired. Let’s bag it.” And then they did the right thing.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that it wasn’t that much money.

Our thanks go to Microsoft (MSFT), that gray and lumbering incarnation of serious business, for providing us with a moment of bittersweet amusement on this scary mid-recession Monday.

It seems that the software giant from Redmond miscalculated the severance owed to certain of its former corporate citizens. It was sort of like the Three Bears. Some received the proper amount. Others got a check that was too small. And finally there were those who got too much.

There is no record as yet that I’ve found of how Microsoft communicated with those who were shafted. I’m think they’re perhaps still working on that thorny issue. But those who were on the receiving end of the excessive generosity received a letter specifying the amount owed by the laid-off employee to his or her former employer, and requesting that a check be mailed off immediately, made out to Microsoft.

I’m thinking that if I was unemployed, suddenly and somewhat unexpectedly, and planning on how to live off my severance for a while, a letter like this would put me into something of a quandry. A number of possible responses would suggest themselves.

First would be laughter, immediately followed by the urge to toss the letter into the circular file. I think that’s probably what I would do, actually; throw the letter away and wait to see how many times The Company sent me follow-up communications before they got nasty. It’s not only insurance companies who can stall, delay, “lose” things and become “confused” about financial obligations. Ordinary people can do it too, although seldom as flamboyantly.

I suppose I could also write them a check that was faulty in some fundamental way. It’s often effective to write a perfectly good check but forget to sign it. Or date it 1909. Or 2109. There are many ways to make a check uncashable. So that might be a good tactic.

In the end, I guess, I could pay the company back. I could take out my checkbook and look at my balance, which is now being depleted daily with no incoming salary to augment it, and write a check to the multi-billion dollar entity that cast my entire family into the pit of uncertainty. It would be the right thing to do, of course.

Wouldn’t it?

Washington, February 20 — The Federal Government today announced that for the first time in more than eight years, and possibly longer, it would begin to enforce finance and banking laws.

The announcement came on the heels of the Government’s second requisition of information from UBS, a Swiss banking company that has allegedly been offering tax-free havens for savvy American investors for some years.

The move was viewed with consternation by many in the banking industry, and a formal statement of government policy was thought necessary, according to sources. “These banking laws have been on the books for years, but nobody has taken them very seriously,” said one banker who declined to be named because he was afraid of everything. ”Now all of a sudden they’re coming after us with hammer and tongs. It’s just not fair.”

Federal authorities disagree. In recent weeks, they have demonstrated a flurry of activity, cracking the Madoff case (after Mr. Madoff confessed) and moving smartly in to arrest Robert Allen Stanford before his alleged fraud reached an even $10 billion. At the same time, investigation into thousands of e-mails sent by UBS to clients attempting to avoid onerous taxation is now underway. Some of these e-mail date back to 2004.

“We’ve been very busy enforcing a variety of accounting rules at essentially law-abiding corporations,” said a government official who declined to be named on general principle, “but now we’re going to take a hard look at some of the laws that may need more active enforcement. There are a lot of them, you know. And we’re very short-staffed.”

Analysts conjectured that the change of policy may have something to do with the new administration. “I don’t think the reduction of taxation by virtually any means necessary was viewed as a punishable offense until very recently,” said one, adding, “And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m headed to the Cayman Islands on a completely unrelated matter.”

The little post begins a series I intend to pursue for a while, on and off, or whenever the spirit moves me, on economic panics throughout history. The subject seems appropriate an interesting at that point in time. I’m not quite sure why.

The nation had indulged in a huge real estate boom involving the western territories of the new United States. When that bubble burst, a number of state banks failed, leading to a collapse in the credit market. People had gotten used to borrowing to meet their personal and business needs, and it proved to be a hard habit to shake. Foreclosures proliferated, followed by a recession, and then a six-year depression.

The president at the time was James Monroe. His constituency had no experience in dealing with the situation, since this was the first in the boom/bust cycles that have since been integral to the character of American capitalism. In 1819, he addressed the nation, stating that, 

” The great reduction of the currency which the banks have been constrained to make in order to continue specie payments, and the vitiated character of it where such reductions have not been attempted, instead of placing within the reach of these establishments the pecuniary aid necessary to avail themselves of the advantages resulting from the reduction in the prices of the raw materials and of labor, have compelled the banks to withdraw from them a portion of the capital heretofore advanced to them. That aid which has been refused by the banks has not been obtained from other sources, owing to the loss of individual confidence from the frequent failures which have recently occurred in some of our principal commercial cities.”

In other words, the banks called in their loans and stopped giving credit. In response, Monroe cut taxes and otherwise floundered around until the end of the cycle.

Let’s see what elements may be found in this iteration of the story:

• Wild speculation in real estate
• Collapse of real estate market
• Excessive borrowing and lending
• Banks fail
• Bigger banks survive but are almost mortally wounded and stop giving credit
• Prices fall because people have no money
• Depression sets in
• New boom is required to break cycle.

I’d like to thank The History Box, an excellent website, for being such a good source on this. I’ll be back whenever I like to look at other examples of mass stupidity and hysteria throughout history, both here and elsewhere.

Two things are remarkable, in the end. First, how all such catastrophes essentially all look the same when you strip away the funny clothes, hats and languages, and second, why, if that is so, no one has demonstrated the ability to predict or avoid them.

Coming soon: Panic in Rome!

I read yesterday, as the idiot wind blew the market down another couple hundred points, that the final bubble had popped. 

The hope bubble. We had it for a time. Now it’s gone.

Of all the bubbles that have bubbled up since bubbling began, I think I liked the hope bubble best.  It made me want to blubber when it busted.  But I guess that would be bootless. You can’t bawl over burst bubbles.

The Street had produced the hope bubble while waiting for particulars of the Obama bundle, and when news of the the bare bones of the bailout finally broke, it was immediately bummed out. It went at the hope bubble with a pin. Pop! And then it was gone, just like that, and with it billions of bucks in bread.

Wall Street was disappointed for two reasons. First, Wall Street HATES ambiguity. So when some details came out, there were not enough of them, and everybody went nuts because now they didn’t know anything about all the things they wanted to know more about. Second, Wall Street HATES specificity. It LOATHES it. So when some details came out, everybody went nuts because now they knew something and they didn’t like that, either. 

And thus the hope bubble departed, leaving us all bubbleless, at least for now. When will another come again? No one knows. Anybody got any ideas? We could propose it to whoever is in charge of these things. See if we could make something happen.

Or I guess we could just let it bubble up.

I have to say that I feel pretty bad for Shoichi Nakagawa right now. Just a few minutes ago, it was announced that the now-former Japanese Finance Minister had resigned after his bizarre performance at the G7 conference in Rome this past weekend.

If you watch the video, you see a business executive, completely exhausted and a little bit drunk, attempting to pull off another boring presentation without falling face down into his cream of wheat. He just picked the wrong boring presentation in which to lose it, not to mention that nothing happens in the world right now without it goes up on YouTube immediately.

Let me speculate. The Japanese are among the great iron men of business. They commute long, long hours to their jobs. The guys I have known drink prodigious amounts of scotch and smoke like fiends. One year not long ago I flew to Japan on a morning flight. The Japan Air lounge was full of Japanese businessmen slamming back the Suntory and wolfing down their smokes at 6 a.m. I say this with tremendous respect. 

The Japanese are, to my knowledge, the only culture that has an exact word for the concept of Death from Overwork. They call it Karoshi. Now flip to  Nakagawa in that hot little conference room in Rome, trying to stay awake, suffering under the weight of jet lag, wine and cold medicine. How far was he from total unconsciousness? How much partying had he done in the Eternal City the night before? How amazingly BORING was the discussion in that room? And in the end, if your body really wants to go to sleep, is there anything at all you can do to stop it?

I’m telling you. There really isn’t. Not when the room is close, your veins are full of a variety of popular substances, all sold over the counter, you’ve had maybe four hours of sleep in the last three days and the discussion is both aggravating and tedious. In that case, Karoshi might be a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Brief story: a few decades back I attended a presentation at NASA in Florida. My buds and I had been out rampaging through the night spots of Orlando until 3 a.m. or so. Back then the whole idea of free scotch was new to me, my body was only just beginning to turn the corner, and I truly knew no limits. When I woke up the next morning I was still half in the bag. My head felt like somebody had wrapped it in very soft cotton and then hit it repeatedly with a mallet.

I slept on the bus out to the Kennedy Space Center. We were then marched through some security area and ushered into a hot little room where we all sat on uncomfortable folding chairs and watched some guy with bars on his chest give a talk about safety, quality and the popular concept of the day, “Getting it right the first time.” 

I knew I was in trouble when he showed up with a foot-tall stack of color overheads under his arm. That was in the days before PowerPoint. The lights went down. The first overhead went up. His voice droned. And my eyes would not stay open. “I’ll just rest them a little bit,” I thought. And then… lethe.

Throughout that horrible 90 minutes, my pal next to me kept jamming me in the ribs with his elbow, harder and harder when it became necessary. Afterward, he took me aside and said, “You can fall asleep in meeting if you have to, man. But you can’t snore.” I’ve lived by those words ever since.

Mr. Nakagawa may be the worst Finance Minister ever. Japan’s economy is right now in lusty competition with ours for the title of Worst in the World. That doesn’t stop me from taking a moment as he leaves the world stage to bow my head in empathy.  I, too, suffer on occasion from terminal bouts of meeting narcolepsy. So far, thank goodness, I’ve been able to pick the meetings I sleep through with some care.

But tomorrow, who knows? The way most meetings are going these days, sleep is an attractive option.

If you read this site, or any site like it, or any site at all, you may come to the conclusion at this point that a) the world either is coming to an end or already has achieved that status and we are all living in a post-world world; b) there is no hope for anybody anywhere anyhow; c) we might as well just sit in a corner and collect dust for the next couple of years.

This all may be true. But I wonder whether any of these conclusions offers a viable basis for a forward-looking strategy. In fact, no. I don’t wonder. I know it doesn’t.

People, economies, societies – those that do well are those that have the capability of visualizing greatness. The only greatness we all can see in our minds’ eyes right now is the magnificent size of our miscreants and mistakes.

But there are glimmers. I won’t speak of the political realm, because while there are huge rays of sunshine finally breaking through there are also a whole ream of stinky dark clouds that seem determined to stick around and obscure the light as long as they possibly can. So let’s just say that while there is some potential warmth there, the jury is still out on whether it will ever have a chance truly to warm our bones.

But there is plenty of life around us still. All we have to do is look. No, not to Wall Street. Not to Madison Avenue or Silicon Valley or Hollywood Boulevard. Just take a look around you with eyes that aren’t shrouded by depression, fear and incipient hysteria. I know it’s hard. But you can do it. Go ahead. Try.

You will see people congregating, perhaps not in the same places they did last year, but getting together, eating, drinking and laughing. I’ve been in LA for the last few days and, frankly, I was amazed at how many funky dudes and ladies I saw hunkered down over their beverages and quite obviously having a good and noisy time. I would say that the hottest food in the entire metropolitan LA region right now is the hamburger. Had an absolutely terrific one in Culver City two nights ago, and everywhere you look — from Sunset to Santa Monica Boulevard to the Valley, there are hamburger joints, some old, some new. Also hot dogs. And they’re all crowded.

Don’t these people know we’re in the dumpster? Sure they do. They’re just waiting it out with a beer and a burger. Seems like a good idea. There are sure a lot of them. Why not find the nearest bunch and wade in? It’s better than watching the leading economic indicators. Maybe there’s a time to stop looking at the numbers and just start living, to stay away from the Thompson readout that worms into your brain with constant updates on your stock price and take a walk.

Walking is free. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t get a parking space at Runyon Canyon yesterday. Human beings in all shapes and sizes, young and old, some with ostentatious sweat bands and spandex, others in shorts and tee shirts that were purchased when people thought debt was as good a way to buy something as cash. People talking. Hitting on each other. Breathing heavy. Stretching. You know… living.

I have an idea. Let’s all unplug this weekend. Ignore the morons, whoever you may define as such for you. Skip the power breakfast or expensive muffin if you have to and head for the nearest IHOP. Those little pancake wrapped sausages are out of this world. Which is pretty much where we all want to be right now, I think.

So we have our stimulus package. I don’t think anybody truly understands where the benefits will truly be felt most immediately, but if the thing creates even half the number of jobs that the president thinks it will that will be a good thing.

When a victim is lying bleeding on a sidewalk, it’s time for the triage people to step in, with less concern for how that individual is going to provide profitable income for the rehab facility later. I think all those who are prognosticating all sorts of gloom and doom as a result of this particular triage effort should shut up. They had their turn. They got us here. Thanks a million. Now get out of town and stay there.

Speaking of millions, I would like to take a brief moment to congratulate each of the 700 people at Merrill Lynch whose bonuses topped out at more than $1,000,000. I’m pretty sure that each of you received more last year, but are also relieved to get even that small percentage of what you might have earned had a bunch of variables beyond your control been more upsidey.

If the economy had not gone into the tank, for instance, you would have hit the number you’d achieved many times in the past.

Likewise, if Wall Street hadn’t been infested with squirrels and gutless wieners, many of your prognostications would have paid off much more profitably for your investors and the pool you’re sipping from now would have been much bigger, I’m sure.

If all the deadbeats who believed the housing loan sales weasels in the last decade or so had made good on their sub-prime mortgages and not been forced into foreclosure, you’d have hit a totally different kind of nut, wouldn’t you.

And if there wasn’t so much nasty media attention on your sector, there’s no question your comp committee would have been more likely to disgorge the kind of sums to which you’ve been accustomed over the years.

Still, I’m pleased for you. Sure, it’s only, like, $565,453 after taxes and much of it is spoken for already. But it’s something. Put a little in the bank. Then go out and spend a big chunk of it, okay? We all have to do our parts to fuel this recovery, no matter how badly we’re hurting right now.

I was fascinated by how many of you defended the $35 cheeseburger yesterday. Supporters seemed to break up into two camps.

The first were people who simply said, hey, that’s what the market will bear and more power to the burgermeisters. That argument is fine as far as it goes, but actually proves my point. The market is careening down in a plume of black smoke. Price will perforce have to follow. 

The second were more interesting to me. These were the economist types who tried to do the math and came up with the idea that a more profitable niche product, one that destroys circulation and cuts down on ancillary revenue also used to pay overhead, was preferable.

What I liked about these latter types was the sureness with which they offered their arguments. They were wrong on two counts: 1) the math itself failed to recognize that there are many fixed costs attached to the restaurant and simply tried to pour all operating costs – from rent to electricity – into that poor little cheeseburger; and 2) there is never any excuse, no matter how many numbers and charts you deploy against it, that makes an empty restaurant, plane seat or hotel room better than a full one.

When you can fill the room by demanding outrageous prices, more power to you. But the relationship between price, value and ability to pay is going to have to be evaluated. In my lifetime alone, I’ve seen things go absolutely crazy, with the cost of things sometimes escalating to a point where it feels like 1980 was 1880. I look at what a diner breakfast would have set you back 25 years ago and it reads like one of those menus from the Old West, where a meal of steak, potatoes and coffee was  a nickel.

What’s going to come down? 

Cars? Many of my pals in the corporation – not all of them super-players – are driving around in mid-range foreign jobs that cost more than my mom and dad paid for our house in the suburbs back when I was a kid. I looked at a little tin can the other day that cost nearly $30,000. 

Hotels? You can’t stay in any major city for less than $300 unless you find a fire sale price online. Some teeny rooms in Manhattan go for $800 and up. When I was in Rome a while back I went to have a drink at one of the finest hotels in the world, The Hassler. We had martinis and some nuts. Came to about $100. That’s not the intriguing part. The lobby was utterly and totally deserted. The shops were empty. That whole hotel was all dressed up with no place to go. Think they can go on that way?

And then there’s food. More people will be eating at home for quite some time, that’s for sure, when they’re not at McDonald’s or Denny’s. Recently, Whole Foods designed a Recession Menu for people who want to shop there without losing their life savings. That’s smart. I didn’t look at it yet. I’ve been too busy going to Safeway.

We don’t have to worry about gasoline, of course. Those prices are already carefully set by the masters of oil, who carefully judge what we can pay, making sure never to freak us out so entirely that we consider doing anything immediate and serious to break our dependence on their product.

What do you think is out of whack? Postage? Cheese logs? College? The price of your company’s stock? No, wait! That should be higher, right?

With major companies now trading on the Market for the price of a hamburger, you’ve got to wonder what a SALE! sign means when you see it in every retailer’s window. I don’t think their idea of a SALE! is my idea of a sale. Like, before this whole depression works its way through the system, I think the idea of pricing is going to need a good hard look.

I’ll give you a few examples.

I eat a restaurant that business people frequent in order to a) have lunch and b) feel they’re important. It’s been a hot spot for quite a while, and its prices never really mattered because everyone there conducted their lives on plastic. That of course is changing. The big dudes who are doing all right still go, but the mid-level and borderline players no longer throng.  I want you to guess the price of their cheeseburger. Give up? $35. That’s right. I asked the maitre d’ the other day whether they were planning a Recession Special to keep the seats somewhat more filled. He got very offended and went off on a screed about how expensive it is to maintain a restaurant in midtown Manhattan. Of course it is. But unless they moderate the prices, I’m guessing the grand institution will be out of business soon. Which is better? Selling five cheeseburgers for $35 or fifteen cheeseburgers for $20? You do the math.

In my little California town, there is a furniture store. It’s always had ridiculous prices, but their stuff is nice. There was, in particular, a bedroom dresser that we had our eye on. It was, I think, worth about $400 in real American dollars, so naturally, throughout the Fall, they had it in their window for $2500. No, I’m not kidding you. The store catered to people with too much money, and people with too much money don’t want to pay a little bit for the things they like, they want to pay a lot. Except there aren’t so many of those people around anymore. So last weekend there was a big SALE! sign in their window, as there is right now in virtually every window of every store in the United States, from Madison Avenue to Wilshire Boulevard. And we went in to look at the dresser and indeed, yes, it was ON SALE! For $2000. Come on, man. Give me a break. That is not a SALE. That is not even a recognition of reality. I’m positive that, just as my restaurant paid $1.29 for the meat with which they make their $35 cheeseburger, this place paid $300 at some yard sale for that dresser. When it’s ON SALE for $400 or $500, let me know. Because I like it.

I’ll tell you two places that know what a SALE means. The first is Wal-Mart (WMT). Today I heard an ad on the radio promoting greeting cards that start at 44-cents. Okay. That’s an amount I haven’t heard mentioned in a while. Their numbers beat analysts’ expectations last week. The other is McDonald’s (MCD), where sales were recently up 7.1%. I can assure you that a very good Big Mac in that establishment tops out at well under $35, and is probably a better buy at that price than most bank stocks that come to mind.

Oh, the whining over fine dining that’s been heard in the all-but empty bistros of Manhattan as the last expense account executives cut into their exquisitely tender veal and complain about the Obama salary cap!

Sure, a limit on comp will change the make-up of the individuals who surface for the top slots in banking and industry. And that’s a bad thing why? If a company needs a bailout — hey, let’s call it what it is: a handout — shouldn’t it come with certain strings attached? Son, if you want this money for college, you’re not going to be spending it on a car. Right? Only a wayward teen would expect otherwise.

Is $500,000 base, with a bonus to be decided upon performance, an unrealistic sum? It seems so to people accustomed to the good life that was promised to them in business school and the lucre they accumulated during the boom. But where does it fall in the vast scheme of things?

A little review of the factsyields some perspective. The numbers seem kind of unbelievable to me, but then I live in a variety of charming urban areas where a dinner for two that comes in under $100 is considered an eyepopping steal.

Median base salaries:

Elementary School Teacher: $49,979

Physician: $147,480

Manager: $128,540

Attorney: $88,944 (who are these guys?)

Architect: $56,637

Registered Nurse: $61, 603

Now granted, these are median salaries. The 75th percentile of these jobs, which are arguably every bit as important in our social scheme as that of Banker, are about 20% higher than the median in each case. And of course there are those at the top of their professions that make a lot more. But this gives you some notion of what a base of $500,000 means to just about everybody but a Banker.

I have an idea. How about we open the top slots at failing fiduciary institutions to Teachers, Architects and Registered Nurses? Let’s leave attorneys out of it. They’re already in there somewhere making hay while the the sun don’t shine, I bet.

First of all, let me say that I’m supportive of President Obama’s measures to limit executive pay in companies that accept new bailout money. There are loopholes that I’m sure smart guys will be able to finesse a bit, but for the most part it limits the comp of senior executives working in such firms to $500,000. Now, this may seem like a lot of money to people who do more than push various colors of paper around for a living, but in actuality, for a banker, you might as well be offering a salary of $1 per year. Okay, that may be an exaggeration, but not by much. 

So I’m trying to figure out who will be attracted to the job of running the next big bank to suck up some more of the public weal. Who will NOT be taking the job will be anybody who has considered themselves a banker up until now, guys who were trained for it and are now in mid-career, who have built up lives dependent on the kind of money that bankers, up until now, could expect to draw down. It’s not only the base salary that’s a laughable pittance to such individuals. It’s the fact that bonuses will be tied directly to performance, and closely monitored by angry shareholders who have only one criteria for executive success: the stock price. 

Do you have any idea how irrational the stock market is? Great, profitable companies languish in the single digits. Idiotic brain farts out in left field are rewarded with huge multiples. Hoards of lemmings skitter back and forth, driven over a variety of cliffs by fear and greed. Would you want your comp based on that? I don’t think so. Not when there are so many other things you can do. Like be a consultant. 

I figure there are three kinds of people who will be running bailout institutions: 

1. Rich guys who have already made their nuts and who will provide either gravitas or branding power to their crumbling edifices, presiding over a cadre of hungry young pups who do all the work. Think Alan Greenspan, Warren Buffett, Donald Trump. 
2. Young business school graduates who want to make a name for themselves in both Finance and in the governmental functions that will be overseeing that industry; where these dudes used to gravitate to McKinsey to make their bones, they’ll now hop into banking and do a little workout samba on those bongos. 
3. Politicians with a background in accounting. Think about it. Five hundred grand is a molehill to a real banker. But it’s a mountainous pile to a politician. The top job in the field pays less, doesn’t it? 

It remains to be seen whether any of these will be qualified to lead the large fiduciary entities that form the foundation upon which our economy rests. On the other hand, how could they do any worse than the bozos who took all that money to screw things up?

Experts seem relatively unified, if such a thing is possible, on the issue of direct economic stimulus to every taxpayer. They’re against it. If all the various monies now being set aside were used, the check for each of us would come to nearly 10 grand, apparently. But the economists don’t think it’s a good idea.

The problem is that given all the bad news, past and future, most of us, it is feared, would simply do what the big banks have done with their bailouts: tuck them away for a rainier day. They were supposed to take their money and fork it over to people who wanted to borrow it. Ha! they said. We’re keeping it warm and dry, except for the cash we’re earmarked for bonuses. Smart bankers. They care about the economy. They know that if you give an executive hundreds of millions of dollars they will spend a bunch of it, and that will stimulate everybody.

Us smaller fry, it is thought, would take the $10,000 from Uncle Sam and put it in one of those teetering institutions, rather than putting it back into the economy where it is so desperately needed. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out yesterday, people aren’t spending enough, inventories are rising, the system is going stagnant and we’re all doomed. Or perhaps that was Sunday. It doesn’t matter. The gist is clear. We’re all very selfish and if we got a bailout of any kind we wouldn’t be responsible citizens and spend it right away.

Well I, for one, would like to assure the government that, should I receive $10,000 as a part of the national recovery effort, I would spend every penny of it. Possible areas of expenditure include:

• Blind auctions for certain educational and religious institutions
• New shocks for old Volvo
• Vacations (domestic)
• Cost of maintaining elderly cocker spaniel
• Expenses associated with under-compensated semi-adult children
• Heat, electricity, gas, etc.
• Grass-fed beef
• Wine

This is of course just a cursory list. I’m sure I could generate a whole bunch more if I really thought about it. Just sitting here I’m probably spending money on something I don’t even know about. In fact, 10 grand might not do it. Give me 20 and I’ll really show ‘em something.

How about you. Are you willing to take the pledge? Write your Congressman. Tell him or her that you are committed to spending whatever they give us. If all of us come together in one giant shout, perhaps we’ll get the job done to the benefit of us all.  Have you seen the price of dinner and movie these days?

I woke up this morning and realized something was definitely off. Wrong, you know. A kind of… squirrely feeling, like something was lurking just around the corner, and that was before I even left the house. I walked into the living room and there was nothing there. But there had been. There was a scent of something lingering that didn’t belong. I couldn’t quite place it. I threw on my clothes and got out of there.

It was no better on the street. There seemed to be something  just out of sight, beyond the scope of my peripheral vision. Every time I would glance in its general direction – where I felt it might be – it sort of vaporized, leaving a vague aura where something, perhaps, had been.

It was cold, so I decided to take a cab. The truth was, I also felt kind of nervous being out there. Who knew what might be gaining on me if I moved too slowly?

As I always do, I looked at my BlackBerry while sitting in traffic. That’s when I saw what was going on. “Hi, stanbing,” it said. “Jonathan Sirlin is now following your updates on Twitter.”

I should have known. It’s happened a lot recently. Only last Friday, while I was downstairs doing some laundry, I opened up the dryer to find Lex Warschovsky in there. He was all crumpled up in a little ball, as you can imagine, but it was definitely him. He looked okay otherwise. I haven’t seen him since we were both newbies at the corporation. Lex didn’t make it and is, I believe, doing Marketing Communications somewhere in the midwest right now. I wish him well, but I have no desire to have him following me. I deleted his profile the minute I got upstairs and he hasn’t bothered me since.

That wasn’t the first time, either. There was Norval Popper, who I believe was a college associate of mine for a time. Don’t remember much about him, so it was pretty much of a shock when I found him taking a shower in my hotel room last time I was in LA.  I deleted him pretty quick. But it bugged me plenty, I won’t lie to you.

Now they’re coming fast and furious and it’s all I can do to get rid of them all. I have to get busy right now, in fact. I just looked out the window of my office and yes, that’s him, Sirlin, standing by the hot dog stand at the corner and peering up at my building.  And down the street, isn’t that Rosencrantz, my former bunkmate at summer camp, sitting on a bench and peeking out from behind a newspaper?

There’s only one solution to this nonsense. I’m going to have to delete myself. It may be painful for a brief time, but in the end, I guess, some virtual lives are not worth living.