This week we passed by a certain milestone for a modest little community like ours. We posted our 10,000th comment. It came from Laurel, of Santa Barbara, California, whose observation on that day was typical of the kind of thing that has made this blogspace such an addictive experience for me. Here is our 10,000th comment, rich with personal anecdote and interesting observation from someplace that is Not Here:

I live in a tourist town, santa barbara, ca. I have been watching the stores close for a few years now and the staff in the remaining ones becoming more harried. I see the workers taking on so much more and thankful to boot, that they still have a job. They are tired though. I also could swear I see new workers in the grocery store and banks, and they appear to be more qualified. Maybe I am imagining this, that employers are merging, hiring and keeping only the best. I don’t know what to think of this but everyone is nicer to each other.

Small business owners have usually sunk all that they have in their business and watching them lose everything, their hopes and dreams, everything, is reason enough to spend whatever it takes. So, if people are saving just in case, think again and spend a little, tip more, and drop the “were doomed” attitude and see what Bing sees; we can, we will, and we are going to make it.

on a personal note, i lost my job in epidemiology, but found out i could make the same teaching high school science and demand is high for females teaching math, statistics and physics. i recently had a legal matter, so i had to refinance for cash. The refinancing rate actually saved me more money then I lost. (I thought of Bing’s article when i calculated the new mortgage rate and realized my luck.)

Thanks Bing, you made my life a little better by pointing out to look for the cracks of light!

Thank you, Laurel. And thanks to all of you, first time commenters, long-time bloviators, story-tellers, complainers, philosophers, cranks and wisenheimers, for making this space what it is, whatever it is. You’ve given me your thoughts on airline travel, recession, depression, incessant solicitations from Chase, the triumphs of Apple and, sometimes, Microsoft, Bernanke, Paulson, Madoff and other great symbols of high finance up to and including Mike the Headless Chicken and Alan Greenspan.

Right now it’s pretty unclear what the future holds. I hope, frankly, that it starts surprising us in a completely different way pretty soon. But either way, if it does or if it doesn’t, I’ll keep showing up if you do. And who knows. I may have a few surprises coming soon myself.

And Laurel? Send me an email to bingblog@gmail.com with your info. I’ll send you something nice.

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?