I figure I’ll have a better shot at living up to my resolutions if I made them achievable:

• Go to work every day I’m expected to and none that I am not.

• Drink no more than three drinks a day, and never before 6 PM, and never alone unless I don’t have anybody with me.

• Eat no more than 3000 calories a day. Anything over that should be very well prepared.

• Have dinner in no restaurant whose entrees do not cover at least 45 percent of the plate.

• Pick up all checks I absolutely have to.

• Invest in nothing that is not insured by some reputable underwriter, if any still exist.

• Never use “impact” as a verb or “impactful” as an adjective, and refrain as much as possible from utilizing military or sports metaphors in business conversation, unless we’re field stripping the ordnance and pushing through the red zone.

• Fall asleep in as few meetings as possible, and only in those that deserve it.

• Never get a bluetooth earpiece unless its surgical implantation becomes mandatory by the corporation.

• Retain my Executive Platinum status.

• Get at least three hours of sleep a night.

• Not answer my cell phone or work my BlackBerry while dining, even if my companion is doing so.

• Never apologize in public for any private gaffes.

• Accept all bonuses that are offered to me.

• Only yell at people who truly deserve it.

• Keep my electronics charged.

• Shave.

Let’s have a good year, everybody.

Dear Santa,

I know you’re busy with everybody else in the world, but here’s my list. I’ve been good, by the way. In fact, compared with prior years, my goodness quotient is up triple digits. So cough it up, please.

• Ford Flex
• Apple 13″ Powerbook
• Small, vintage Marshall amplifier
• Continuing amusement from AIG bonus situation
• Coal in the stockings of security analysts who undervalued our stock, hedge fund managers who shorted it, and everybody else who pissed me off on Wall Street this year. Actually, forget the coal. Have you got any dead fish around?
• Cheese/Beef log (for discussion purposes only)
• Nikon D3x digital camera
• A new husband for my ex-wife
• Peace on earth
• Goodwill toward everybody
• Everybody off Tiger Woods’ back for a while.

Merry non-denominational, deracinated holiday of your choice, everybody.

“DEAR BLOGGER: I am very old and live at the North Pole. All of my little friends up here say that there is no Virginia any more. Mrs. Claus says that if I see it on the your website, it’s so. Please tell me the truth: Is there a Virginia? Signed, Chris (Santa) Claus, 115 Workshop Way, North Pole.

CHRIS, your little friends are wrong. They have been consuming too much media, and have been infected by the material that gains the most attention there. They do not believe that which doesn’t rise to the top of the search stack or get the highest ratings 18-49. They think that nothing exists but that which is measured by hits, twitters and chatter, or makes its way by other means to the top of our collective mind.

You see, Chris, in this world of ours, all attention spans, be they those of children or of adults, are very tiny, very short, and very, very fragile. As we make our way through the vast cloud of information, entertainment, opinion, music, random noise and other forms of auditory, visual, and intellectual stimulation, each human being is a minuscule atom, a quark within the boundless physical and virtual universe that surrounds us. None of us can grasp the total picture.

Yes, SANTA CLAUS, there is a Virginia. She still exists as certainly as love and hope and childhood exist inside every person, as you know they do, shining unaided within each of us and lighting our way to true peace and joy that transcends this time and place.

Good Lord! How gray the world would be if there were no Virginia. It would be as gray as if there were no Santa Claus! There would be no song, no poetry, no rhythm to our existence beyond that which we can do and see and want and buy.  The eternal childhood that makes our lives have meaning would be extinguished. Not believe in Virginia! You might as well not believe in quantum physics!

Can you find her? Perhaps not by looking with your eyes. You might get your elves to scour the brick-and-mortar malls and online destinations, chat rooms and Facebook pages from one end of the world to the other on Christmas Eve to catch her, but even if they did not see her hanging out in one random location or another, what would that prove? Nobody sees Virginia, but that doesn’t mean she’s not out there.

Did you ever see an aura? Of course not, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have one. Or karma? Can it be measured? Certainly not. But still it shapes the length and color of our days. How about the Higgs boson? Talk to 1,000 scientists from here to CERN and not one will disbelieve in it, and yet nobody can find a single one, even with a trillion dollar accelerator.

There is a firewall between us and the unseen world. Only love, kindness, understanding, and simplicity can lift that veil. And in the end, amid all the noise and haste, what lies beyond is really all that matters, all that has ever mattered. No Virginia? Thank God, she lives, Santa, and she always will. Ten thousand years from now, when we have evolved into strange, unrecognizable amalgams of organic material and cybernetic wetware, she will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

When I was a boy, I used to worry if I didn’t get enough sleep. I would go to bed thinking, “Boy, I hope I’m not too tired to function tomorrow morning.” I would get up at whatever hour was required of me, and if I hadn’t logged my seven or eight hours, I would say to myself, “Wow, I’d better get a nap in later or I’m going to fall asleep at the afternoon meeting.” And sometimes I even did.

That assumption — that I’m ever going to get enough sleep — seems like a luxury to me now, a fond dream, albeit a waking one.  I work in two time zones, for one thing. I learned pretty quickly that the only way you function, moving from New York to LA, is to pretend that there is no such thing as a time zone. Midnight is midnight. Noon is noon. So when I wake in New York at 6 AM after a week in Los Angeles, I don’t even register any more that it’s really 3 AM in my head. It’s 6 AM. It’s time to get up. Yeah, there’s a kind of cottony softness to everything for an hour or so, but so what? Shake it off. On the other side of the continent, when I wake up at 3 AM LA time as bright and frisky as a wounded beaver, I simply hop online and get the day started a tad early. If I thought about the whole thing too much, I guess I’d be horrified. Instead, I’m just a little dragged out now and then and perhaps a tad more cranky. Who isn’t these days?

One major lesson I’ve learned, and it’s not a good one, probably, is that I can actually function on three or four hours, not just now and then, but consistently. Some days I need to close my door and faint for a couple of minutes to set things right, a habit I’ve been pursuing since I was new to the corporation. I used to sleep on the floor with my head right next to the closed door, so that if anybody opened it I would be slammed in the head and wake. Sounds stupid, I know, but it worked. “What are you doing down there?” they would say, and I would reply, “Looking for a cuff link. What’s up.” And life would go on.

Today I just put my feet up on my desk and faint completely. The state is something that can’t really be called sleep per se. It’s more like death. Total systemic shut-down. It’s possible I drool. When the phone rings, I awake in a much better place, ready for whatever the next couple of hours has to hold. At night, when others are contemplating slumber, I often find myself most alert, weirdly. So it begins all over again.

I may be wrong here, but I think most of senior management, in corporations and governments alike, function on something like this very same sleep schedule. Work all day. Stay up late. Get up early. I wonder what it does to our decision-making processes. Actually, I don’t have to wonder. I know what it does. It makes people a little bit grouchy, more impatient, more solution-oriented, with shorter attention spans and a greater need for visual, auditory and sensory stimulation. We are never tired. We are always tired. And if we stop moving forward, we sink in the water, like sharks. They don’t sleep much either, do they. Maybe that’s why they’re one of the few species to survive while so many others have fallen to the wayside. And why they pretty much run any corner of the ocean they choose to inhabit, come to think of it.

Twas the week before Christmas, and all through the bank,
Four thousand mortgages were still in the tank
Then spoke Sanjiv Das (with very good diction):
“For one month, we’ll have no foreclosure or eviction!”

But seriously. It’s kind of a nice thing that CitiMortgage announced today. It only lasts for 30 days, which as one crabby blogger pointed out will simply put more people on the street in a much colder month. But it’s something, isn’t it? And yes, it helps the company close out the year without more foreclosures on its books, but still, that can’t be the only reason they’re doing it, right? And okay, companies do these kinds of things to get a good PR pop out of the action, but so what? They deserve a few hours of good PR! The result is that 4000 mortgage-holders will have another month to figure out what they can do to save their homes. That can’t be bad, right?

My point is, that sometimes Big Business does do good things simply because it’s made up of people just like you and me. The landscape abounds with companies that in this season of love and giving and doing something nice. I’m trying to think of some other examples…

Let’s see…

Hmmm….

Okay! Well, there’s my friend Morton’s corporation that promised it wouldn’t fire any more people until January… perhaps we can do better…

There’s the stores that have generously extended Black Friday in perpetuity, except that for some it now takes place on a Saturday… but really, that’s just a sales ploy, isn’t it.

Give me some time. We’ll get there…

How about this: My flight attendant on American Airlines gave me an extra banana at breakfast during my flight this morning… does that count? I mean, it was nice of her. But it doesn’t really represent an institutional act of kindness, does it…

I’ve got it! How about all those nice financial institutions that are going to pay back their TARP money by the end of the year? That’s a lot of money that the Federal Government will have that it thought might have just been washed down the drain in the big flood of ‘08. There are a lot of things that we can do with that money, and I think it’s great that the banks and insurance companies are giving it back. Of course, it is possible that in doing so they make themselves eligible for ‘09 bonuses that are under less scrutiny by Obama’s pay czar, but that can’t be the only reason. I know somebody at one of the TARP companies said, “Hey, guys, this is the season of giving, so let’s give it back!” Could have happened that way, right?

What else? I’m coming up short here. Perhaps you can help.

I certainly rail against the boneheads on the Internet who don’t check their facts carefully enough, so it’s kind of embarrassing that here I am one of them today. As many of you noticed in your comments, I was completely messed up when I said that the Arthur Anderson that was involved with Enron was the same as Accenture. It isn’t. The following explanation comes from Jim McAvoy of Accenture, which I will print in its entirety:

Accenture was not involved in the Enron scandal. Accenture is a management consulting and technology services company.  Accenture does not now, and has never, engaged in the practice of public accounting.  
 
From its establishment in 1989 until its incorporation in 2001, Accenture, then known as Andersen Consulting, was a separate legal entity from Arthur Andersen and operated independently from that company.
 
In 1990, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission recognized that Accenture’s predecessor, Andersen Consulting, was a legal entity distinct from Arthur Andersen.  After 1989, Arthur Andersen formed its own consulting practice, which was distinct and separate from Accenture’s business.
 
In 2000, in an International Chamber of Commerce arbitration decision, the ICC also recognized that the partnership then named Andersen Consulting was a legally separate entity from Andersen Worldwide and the Arthur Andersen firms.  The arbitrator agreed that Andersen Consulting was not a subsidiary or division of Arthur Andersen or Andersen Worldwide.  The decision confirmed that Andersen Consulting was not owned by Arthur Andersen, so there was no spin-off or break-off, and no parental link.

Under the terms of the ICC ruling, Andersen Consulting was given until December 31, 2000 to adopt a new name. Accenture began operating under its new brand on January 1, 2001.  Accenture then went public on the New York Stock Exchange in July 2001.  The Enron scandal, and Arthur Andersen’s role in it, did not become public until the fall of 2001 — ten months after we began operating under the name Accenture.

Finally, On November 7, 2003, the federal court in Houston approved the settlement of the class actions on behalf of shareholders and employees of Enron. Accenture was not a party to the settlement agreement, and under the terms of the final settlement with the class plaintiffs, Accenture was released from all claims that were brought by these plaintiff groups. This was final and conclusive proof that there was no connection between Accenture and either Arthur Andersen or Enron.
 
I think you will agree, these facts disprove  your allegations that Accenture was Arthur Anderson.

Yes, it does, Jim, and I’m sorry about the mix-up. Hope this post sets things right, so I can go back tomorrow making fun of people who make the same kind of mistakes.

The House of Representatives, that hotbed of liberalism, is now working on legislation that would make sure the depredations of the 00’s would never happen again. I consider this a very good thing, as long as none of the regulations apply to me personally.

For instance, I’m all for the idea of a consumer protection agency mandated to oversee credit cards and mortgages. It’s clear that excesses in those arenas led to the virtual collapse of our economy, and that changes in the area are not only necessary, but wouldn’t have a negative impact on me at all. I might even benefit from it in some remote way. So that sounds pretty good.

I also applaud the effort to use TARP money to help protect the unemployed from foreclosures. There is no reason why those big dollops of cash should be used exclusively to help financial institutions and their managers. Everyday Americans in trouble should have access to them too. Also, a solid real estate market can only benefit people who own their own homes, like me. Once again, way to go, House.

I’m a little more dubious about the idea of rewarding whistle blowers who rat on their own executives, even if the latter are engaging in securities fraud. As a concept, it sounds good. But too many whistle blowers are loose cannons. I’m a corporate executive. I hate loose cannons. I only like cannons that are securely tied down. So I’m not against supporting whistle blowers, really. It just makes me a little nervous.

As for the notion of giving shareholders an advisory vote on executive pay… no, I don’t think I like that one at all. Who does the House think it is? What is this? Russia? Thank God we have the Senate around to protect my interests, or else I’d be really worried.

Next week marks the publication of my new paperback – How To Relax Without Getting The Axe. It’s a thorough rethinking and repositioning of my seminal work on executive life, Executricks, or How To Retire While You’re Still Working, published about six seconds before the recession hit over a year or so ago. The premise of that book was that he or she who perfects an executive lifestyle can emulate the existence of an affluent retiree. The basic concept of that book, and the suite of executive strategies contained therein, stands tall to this day, and those who acquired the work in hard cover have nothing to complain about. It was clear, however, when I contemplated the publication of the paperback this fall, that nobody at this juncture is thinking about retirement, affluent or otherwise. We’re all thinking about how to hang on to what we’ve got and protect our flanks from competitors, ambitious peers and colleagues and vicious McKinseyites now running down our hallways with silver hatchets.

So as much as I hate actual work, I sat down and rewrote the book for the somewhat despicable times in which we live. I believe it is very important that we all continue to live and work with distinction as true executives do, even if we are not executives, even if many executives now labor in somewhat reduced circumstances. The basic tools of executive life remain as solid and staunch as  they were in better times. People still delegate. They continue to operate from remote and inaccessible locations. They use/abuse the perks of their jobs. They work on the things they choose, for intense, brief bursts. They define their jobs more than you or I can do. They have more fun. And as we see from today’s news from the world of banking, they continue to live without shame and suck up huge bonuses if they can get them.

There is no reason why people like you and I cannot study these executricks, modifying them for the world we now live in, and soldier through the muck and mire to, as much as possible, relax without getting the axe. Others are doing it. We can, too. With, of course, the right guide at hand. It’s now available on Amazon both in print and in a Kindle edition for you e-readers. I discuss the book at some length today on Reuters, if you are interested.

And by the way. If in the next month or so you go to an airport bookstore and they do not have my book, please let me know about it. I’m not in a perfectly sanguine mood these days and there are some butts I’d like to kick if I get the slightest provocation. That’s a well-known executive skill too, you know.

To follow Stanley Bing on Twitter, go to twitter.com/thebingblog.

Those who wonder why the President took a hectoring tone last night with the guys on Wall Street who run the banks that run the banks that manipulate the markets that shape the economy need look no further, I think, than the story sent in by Laura Cosino in Cincinnati, Ohio. It’s an inspiring tale — if you’re an accountant. It demonstrates just how creative and innovative that profession can be, particularly when its practitioners work for a big institution that makes its own rules. Laura writes:

“I actually let my bank know how much I appreciate Over-draft protection! I got a letter in the mail stating that I was $374 over-drawn and they would like me to do something immediately. I was confused by this because I didn’t remember making any purchases. It turned out that I had overdrafted my account by $1.36 through a subtraction error I had made in my checkbook. I called the bank to tell them there was a mistake! I had only overdrafted one time, but yet they had charged me 7 overdraft fees. I told them that I had gone through my check register multiple times and no matter how I did it, I was only short on one transaction. They informed me that they don’t do their accounting the same way as I do, they don’t deduct the transaction the same day that it is made. The bank likes to put everything in “pending” deduct it from my balance, then pick the largest transactions and let them clear first (they thought larger transactions may be more important-paying a credit card bill) and after they do that…they leave all of your other small transactions for the end. They then pay those transactions, and charge you a fee for every single one. I was totally confused by this, I don’t remember my high school accounting class teaching to balance your check book this way. Needless to say, they don’t refund any charges no matter the reason…and according to the rep on the phone, there is no one higher at Fifth Third Bank than him.”

Too bad, Laura! You’re out of luck. We all are, actually, if the audience at that fund-raiser gets its secret druthers. They might have paid $30,000 to attend their public flogging, but I would venture to say that not one person in that room is willing to submit to the lesson that was articulated. And when Finance is allowed to implement its own ideas of regulation and control we can all look forward to being caught in the overdraft.

During the latter years of the century just past, there were many interesting things going on in the various incarnations of my office, and when I say “office,” I mean a work spaces that stretched through the top floors of a number of imposing towers:

• The vice president of new business development was sleeping with the vice president of Marketing’s assistant;
• The vice president of Marketing was sleeping with the vice president of new business development’s assistant;
• The top guy in our law department was having daily assignations with a junior sales rep in an empty office on the executive floor;
• There were many boondoggles every year at romantic locations where people got hammered and slipped into hot tubs with each other. Nothing happened at most of these occasions except that relatively unattractive people got naked. What happened AFTER they left the hot tubs was never documented;
• Departmental staff meetings would often begin on Monday morning with ribald accounts of everybody’s weekend activities;
• The president of Sales routinely utilized the big table in the Board Room for purposes other than those for which it was intended;
• The senior vice president of Public Affairs had a big telescope in his office through which he observed the showering activities of the residents of the residential apartment building across the airshaft;
• One of the senior officers travelled frequently to locations that enabled him to pursue his alternative sexual preference;
• Many Quality conferences concluded with field trips to strip joints;
• Assorted local hotels had standing accounts for midday sojourns;
• A significant percentage of the female support staff all possessed the exact same pair of earrings, which had been given to them for service in the line of duty by the senior officer of the company.

And that’s just what I remember. On a personal note, I want to assure you that while all this amused and amazed me, I never got any action, even though it occasionally occurred to me, I won’t lie to you. And it never once occurred to me that any of this, as long as it was consensual, was in any way inconsistent with business life.

Now things are much more evolved, of course. We never take a meeting with a member of another gender with a closed door, and I know of no relations of any kind that do not conclude with a pristine trip down the aisle. I’m sure that’s how it is everywhere, right? Everything on the up-and-up where you work?

I’m sorry if I’m a little late today. I was in an all-morning meeting talking about how the economy is improving. But I didn’t want to let today go without bringing to your notice, if you haven’t seen them already, two of the most contrasting quotes I have ever seen appear in public on the same issue. One displays the righteous indignation of the public about the depredations of bonus-happy Finance, the other comes from the other side of that great divide.

Quote #1: ““The S.E.C. gets to claim that it is exposing wrongdoing on the part of the Bank of America in a high-profile merger… and the Bank’s management gets to claim that they have been coerced into an onerous settlement by overzealous regulators.” Judge Jed S. Rakoff, rejecting the SEC-BOA settlement on Merrill Lynch bonuses, which he said, “does not comport with the most elementary notions of justice and morality.”

Quote #2: “I’m having a difficult time understanding who was harmed here. Why is this company being put into court over a series of events that benefited the nation, its economy, its financial system, the shareholders of Bank of America and the bank itself.” Richard X. Bove, a banking analyst with Rochdale Securities, as quoted in the New York Times.

So it’s either a moral question that goes to the heart of our justice and financial systems… or it’s nothing at all. What do you think?

1. Watch a cat dancing with a hamster.

2. Find that recipe for whole wheat pancakes that doesn’t taste like shirt cardboard.

3. Check how many times Elizabeth Taylor has been married.

4. Peruse the contents of the memo to all staff that Armbruster sent as an attachment to a cover note, because the zoom feature on my new BlackBerry doesn’t really zoom, it sort of peers into things at a very great distance.

5. Download the director’s cut of Watchmen.  

6. Purchase the Camden 69″ sofa from Crate and Barrel for Tuesday delivery.

7. Play Warhammer online.

8. Cruise for fascinating and informative updates on CNNMONEY.com or lesser financial websites.

9.  Investigate unsourced quasi-news on a variety of highly opinionated aggregators.

10. Publish and reply to my comments to this blog.  

Sorry. I was moving from one apartment to another yesterday and the cable guy didn’t show up. I don’t really care about the TV part, or the phone, either. But to live without internet is like being on Devil’s Island in the 19th Century, the only difference being that the bugs you have to eat are in your shareware, not your underwear.

I was kind of shocked by the reaction to my support of Tim Geithner’s bad temper, not so much by the anti-Administration people whose mood is almost as bad as Timmy’s, but by the number of you who never swear and never yell at people when they frustrate you, even on the job.

I’ll go on the record and say this: I don’t approve of yelling philosophically and I certainly don’t like bullies one bit. But I have never spent time around anybody in a position of Authority that didn’t yell at some time, and that includes my first boss, my father and many, many bosses thereafter. I’m not saying I always enjoyed being on the receiving end, and as a boss I myself try to avoid it as much as possible, but the truth is, it’s not always possible. Like, a few years ago I had an assistant who shoved all my business expenses in a drawer and forgot about them. By the time I found out about it, my phone, BlackBerry and corporate plastic had been shut off. I’m sorry. I found yelling at her to be the only rational solution to the problem. I didn’t fire her, mind you. I just yelled my head off. And I’m glad I did. She deserved it. It took months to straighten things out. She left well before that time, by the way. I gave her a good recommendation, too, but stipulated that any new position she obtained should probably not involve math.

The fact is, I don’t trust bosses who don’t express some form of anger now and then. In my experience, they’re weasels. I believe Gandhi was grouchy a good amount of the time, and I’m not too sure that Mother Theresa was a bag of sunshine every morning, either.  A leader who excises temper from his game isn’t really playing with a full deck.

As for cursing, I agree that the general linguistic state of play is very low these days. You can’t walk down a street without hearing bad things about somebody’s mother. It would be great if everybody cleaned up their act in this regard. But overuse of a tool doesn’t invalidate its use altogether. People drive too much but we still need cars. People eat too much but we still require food. People drink too much but life would be dingy indeed without the occasional pop from Mr. Walker or his patriotic friend Mr. Sam Adams. Proper use of profanity very often adds a certain spice to interpersonal communications without which our culture would be flatter, smoother and more boring. Chaucer used it. So did Churchill and Harold Geneen. I’m not even invoking George Carlin, Lenny Bruce or Joan Rivers.

Finally, in the context of business, I simply don’t know where a lot of you have been living. I have been with a big corporation since before many of you knew half the words to which you righteously object. I have attended meetings in every major city in the United States. And in every one of them, when the spirit moves them, people yell, people wag their fingers and, yes, people occasionally curse. It’s the ones who don’t who have scared me the most.

I’d like to thank Mr. Tim Geithner for providing much food for thought. And I’d like to wish him and his colleagues well in their attempts to remake our financial regulatory system. There’s a lot at stake, so I understand why he and Bernanke and the others who are charged with this massive responsibility might lose their patience now and then. I would advise them to try to keep it together for the most part, however. Nobody will benefit if the guys in charge pop a collective aneurism, and the benefits of ill temper diminish over time.

President Obamawent to Russia and did a lot of interesting things, none of which was covered by the Russian media. No TV. No Radio. No Obama for the Russkies.

The top company in the world is an oil company, Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.B). Also the #2 company. Also the #4 company. Also the #5 company. Wal-Mart (WMT) somehow managed to sandwich itself in there as #3, but it’s only a matter of time before all the top companies in the world are selling a product that will one day disappear. One analyst blithely tied the slightly decreasing price of oil to the uptick in unemployment, tacitly verifying my long-held belief that our entire economy is tied to a string whose other end is somewhere far away and very hot and sandy, and I’m not talking about Texas.

The market is very nervous because it feels like all the green shoots have fallen off and the whole fruit seems a little bumpier and less tender than it should. Just as it convinced itself that everything was getting better a month or two ago, it has now scared its little self into a tremblicious state and is now in the process of sticking its tiny head back into its shell until it can’t see it’s own shadow anymore.

Michael Jackson’s mother doesn’t like the fact that the estate is in the hands of two lawyers, neither of which are her. One of them is the guy who helped Michael squirrel away the Beatle’s music library from Paul McCartney. The problem for Mrs. Jackson is that there is reportedly a clause in the will that says if she challenges the document and loses, she must forfeit her bequest, which comes to 40% of whatever is left after the promoters, relatives, banks, agents and assorted advisors, doctors, parasites and other friends of Michael make their claim. There seems to be a fight brewing between those who want the Michael Jackson museum to be at Neverland (the corporation that owns half of it and recently tried to auction off his memorabilia) and the more convenient site for tourists of Las Vegas (the promotion company that mounted the 50-event London concert tour that arguably drove him to his death). On the bright side, as long as this nonsense goes on a significant chunk of the world population doesn’t have to think about what Wall Street is doing for minutes at a time.

The moguls are in Sun Valley again. It’s a little bit reduced in circumstances right now, because the debt and equity people are walking around in adult diapers should an actual deal materialize.

Google (GOOG) is going to launch an operating system next year to compete with Windows, following Microsoft’s (MSFT) majestic launch of Bing the Search Engine, which goes after Google. Competition in the software business! What next?

Seventy-one percent of all young people plan to look for a new job when the downturn is over. Let’s hope they’re not out of the demo by then.

And that seems to be that, unless you want to start talking about Afghanistan. This L-Shaped recovery is kind of a bore, don’tcha think?

1. Don’t do too much.

2. Take it a little easy at first.

3. Don’t sweat the small stuff.

4. Don’t worry. Be happy.

5. Stay hydrated.

6. Only see people you don’t have to.

7. Put off for tomorrow what you should do today.

8. Have a nice piece of fruit.

9. Knock off early.

10.

As you may have guessed from yesterday’s post, I am at this very moment trying to tear myself away from life as I know it and suspend operations for a while. 

True, the world will not stop while I do. Ned and Ted and Len and Edna and Clarissa and Elizabeth and Otto will still need things immediately. The Flute Reamer Division will still have those transition issues. Bob may need a speech or two. The IR department will still worry about its upcoming presentation in Bophutswana. But all that will have to go on without me, I most dearly hope. 

Yes, I will have my BlackBerry. I will do my best to look at it only twice a day. The rest of the time it will be in a drawer. I find this better than imagining the thousands of idiotic e-mails and perhaps 10 important ones that will be piling up during the interregnum.

And yes, a few people will know where I am, my assistant Beverly being the most important. It will be up to her to figure out what’s worth bothering me for. She is aware of Bing’s Law, which, as you may remember, states that every minute of work on a vacation requires one full hour for the re-establishment of proper mental equilibrium. Thus, a ten minute conference call demands a full 10 hours of recovery time. Longer than that? You do the math.

I will, of course, have my little laptop with me, so who knows. Maybe I’ll drop you a line now and then. In any event, I’ll see you all after the 4th. Don’t work too hard while I’m away, okay?

1. Send a memo to Bob, asking him if it’s okay for you to take two whole weeks together, and informing him of the date and perhaps asking whether it fits with his vacation plans. This will not only serve the function of informing him of your potential non-presence and coordinating it with his own, but also remind him that he, too, will be taking some time off and that others might be entitled to some also. 

2. Inform your colleagues and, if you are a manager of some sort, your reportees that you will be away, telling them when, and making sure that your functions are covered during your absence. If any important subordinates were planning to take the same time, and it would destroy your peace of mind while you are away if they did so, simply tell them that they’re out of luck. Establishing a bona fide vacation is a war. There are going to be casualties, one of which should not be your vacation. 

3. Make sure you have your passport up to date, if you are traveling abroad. Once you ascertain that all is in order, make sure to drop the fact that you have done so to Bob, employing a breezy and informative style that let’s him know that your vacation is proceeding according to plan and that you’re happy about it and hope he shares that happiness, seeing how he’s so tuned in to other people’s feelings and all. 

4. Make sure that your electronics work at the location to which you are going. Cell phones are not as important as BlackBerrys. This is not because you will be doing e-mails all the time or that you wish to be reachable 24-7, but because by doing half an hour of messaging first thing in the morning and at the end of the day, you will be avoiding the nightmare of returning to 8,756 e-mails in your inbox, some of which were marked URGENT! even though you put up an away message. After you have done this, by the way, you may observe to Bob in an offhand way how incredible it is that BlackBerrys work in the mountains of Wyoming. 

5. Get any shots that you require if you are going to places like Belize, which has bugs as big as footballs, and jungles that sport diseases that haven’t been invented in humans yet. Don’t forget to complain that those inoculations hurt within earshot of Bob. 

6. One week before your vacation, take a look at your schedule. People will have stuffed it with things to do for the two weeks you are planning to be away. There is no logical reason why this happens, but it does. “What’s this meeting with Beanie and Cecil doing on my calendar?” you may ask the person who put it there. “I’m going to be away, as I told you sixteen times already.” To which they will reply, “You’re going away? Really?” In all cases, set about clearing your time and delegating the important stuff to other people. 

7. If you are a manager, a few days before your departure call in each of your key people and once again inquire what they are planning to do during your absence. At least one will mention that he or she was planning to be away, in spite of the fact that you have ensured that nobody was going to be doing so. There is no logical reason why this happens, but it does. Be kind to this person, because they are likely to be a future boss and you have to be careful how you treat people when they’re on the way up, because they may be the ones who are treating you on the way down. But do make sure that your ducks are in order for your time away, which means that they are all present and accounted for. Don’t forget to complain to Bob about how hard it is to do this. 

8.  Wednesday before your last Friday, Bob will inform you of an important meeting/project that will have to be done “next week.” This is a critical moment. Fools and wimps will in a trembling voice remind Bob of their vacation plans, but promise to be “reachable” when necessary. Do not do this. Executive amnesia is a form of authoritarian terrorism that must be fought. “Bob,” you may say as calmly and inoffensively as possible, “As I told you several times, I’m out next week and the week after.” Bob will look confused and hurt. He may even lightly question your loyalty or dedication. That’s all right. A display of spine is seldom out of place in what we do. Of course, if the corporation is being sold, or you are about to be named to a big new position, all bets may be off. Organizations can spoil the best of plans and often do. But 99.99% of the time, the ability to disregard other people’s needs is pure executive brain flatulence. Manage it. 

9. On Friday morning, as you begin the process of packing up to leave, a host, a myriad, a phalanx of problems, challenges and effluvia will fly up and hit you in the face. In some cases, this will be just bad luck and you will have to work your head off to get rid of them. Sometimes it will be other people’s anxieties surfacing in the knowledge that you are actually not going to be there, a notion that is making them freak out. You may soothe them by telling them quietly that you will be on BlackBerry now and then, but that if they bother you with little stuff you will rip off their noses when you return. Make sure your desk is clear. Leave an away message on your e-mail. Say goodbye to your colleagues and thank them for covering your butt while you’re away. Then wait for the inevitable phone call. 

10. At 5:45 in the evening of the day you are leaving the office for the last time in the next couple of weeks, Bob will call. It will be about nothing. You will laugh and scratch for a while. He will mention that he’s looking forward to the weekend. You will say NOTHING about your vacation, but allow how you can’t wait to get out of the office either. Then, as you are wrapping up this pleasant conversation, Bob will say, “So, I’ll see you Monday, then.” Breathe. Let the silence grow between you on the phone line. “Bob,” you may then say, but that is all. Nine times out of ten, that will be enough. “Oh, right,” Bob will reply after some time, very sad, very hurt, a tiny puppy being abandoned by its owner, “You’re flaking out for a couple of weeks.” To which you may say, “Right.” He will then wish you bon voyage, and probably tell you all about his vacation plans. The one time out of ten that he gives you a hard time? What can I say. Do what you have to do. The guy’s a madman. But even madmen need limits, maybe more than other people, even. 

Now… breaking your desire to stay in touch while you’re away? That’s another story.

My Friday post about the digital transition seems to have flushed a bunch of anti-TV folks out of their weedy, book-lined dens. This has stimulated my urge to defend perhaps the oldest friend I have in the world. This isn’t the first time. I live in a community where people at parties talk about how much they like that new program that’s on the air now: Friends. “Did you see Friends the other night?” they will inquire. To which I reply, “No, I’ve been awake for the last couple of years.” Equally daunting is the type who admits shamefacedly, “I do catch an episode of Antique Road Show now and then. Can’t help it. Guilty pleasure.” Worst of all, in my opinion, are the people who strip their children of social awareness and all chance of popularity by denying them the American right to watch the programming of their choice. “We do allow little Tiffany the occasional Sesame Street. But only when I’m hyperstressed,” one mother told me not long ago. 

Did you know that in spite of the Internet, in spite of Hulu, in spite of YouTube and ITunes and all that jazz, the average time spent watching television in this nation is slightly on the rise? Horrors?! No way. Television is our common language, our history, our heritage. Of course most of it stinks. It always has. You think that when the common groundling went to the theater in Shakespeare’s day all that was on the stage was Shakespeare? Do most books remind you of Hemmingway or Sedaris? How about music? Lots of Mozarts and Mathers around? A medium can’t be defined by its worst examples. You have to look to the best. And during my lifetime, the great unifying cultural events have always taken place inand around the television set. Let’s look at them briefly. I’m afraid it has to be brief, because the TV has destroyed my attention span. What were we talking about again? Oh, yes. Shows that have rocked my world. You may remember some or none:  

• Wonderama: A variety show featuring Terrytoons, early cartoons that may now be found on YouTube. They’re terrible. We all loved them. 
• Winky Dink: An early atrocity in which children were encouraged to draw with crayons on the television set. 
• Soupy Sales: A very funny schtick meister who played with puppets. He came to ruin, at least for a while, when he instructed his audience to go to their parents’ wallets, remove the pictures of either George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, I can’t remember, and mail them in. Kids did so. Parents were upset. 
• The Rifleman: Not as popular as Gunsmoke, the story of a single dad who set things right with a really cool gun. 
• Have Gun Will Travel: A vigilante in black. Used to watch it with my dad. 
• 77 Sunset Strip: The coolest show of its day; three private eyes in slick, Sinatra-era LA. A character named Cookie had a lot of hair, that he combed into a modified ducktail. So did we. 
• Mannix: One of the many Quinn Martin productions that neatly divided themselves into acts, usually with an epilogue. Usually about a detective or other law-enforcement type. After a lot of talk and sneaking around, always ended with a very brief action sequence in an underground parking lot. 
• MTM: As hard as it may be to believe, America used to gather — all generations — on Saturday night, to watch the CBS lineup that included The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Bob Newhart, some other stuff I can’t recall. We weren’t always sober, but we thought it was pretty funny stuff. 
• Masterpiece Theater: I particularly liked the one about Henry the Eighth, who is now disporting himself once again on Showtime. Also terrific was the grand guignol excess of I, Claudius. Derek Jacobi made a stammer and a limp look like the trappings of power. 
• Fawlty Towers: The ultimate extension of the Monty Python spirit that for a brief time graced us. 
• Seinfeld: Still crazy after all these years in syndication. 
• CSI: I watch a lot of procedurals. Everybody underestimates not only the intricate plotting over huge story arcs, but also the differences between examples of the genre, which may be our most potent one at this point in time, including the great Law & Order franchise and a host of others. 

That’s just a very short list. These days I catch most of the shows I’ve liked whenever I can. I also love House, which is one of the best television programs not only of our day but of any other, and do admit to catching the reality make-over program, What Not To Wear, whenever I fly on JetBlue. I don’t watch Gossip Girl, of course, which is only an indication of how out of it I’m starting to get. And I will always decline to give a flying photon about Jon & Kate, even if he did cheat on her on her birthday. 

I also read books, by the way, and do a number of non-digital activities. Personally, I think blogs rot your brain a whole lot worse than anything else, except perhaps for aggregators.

A lot of you were pretty tough on Ryan, the trader who will probably work like a galley slave until either retires at the age of 40 or keels over at 50. I may have even jumped to some conclusions myself. It’s amazing, on the other hand, what a little knowledge about the reality of a situation can do to moderate the whole judgmental thing. This most wise and tough-minded comment on the subject comes from Cliff Tan of Sarasota, Florida. “I can’t speak for “Ryan” because I have never been a trader,” he writes, “but I’ve worked around enough of them that perhaps this post will reduce some of the heat and shed a little more light.”

“Ryan’s” workday is not really a matter of individual choice for him, as many respondents seem to think. As a trader he simply must be at his desk early enough to prepare for the trading day ahead and will finish whenever the market finishes. He sounds like he’s on the mortgage desk so maybe the first deals in New York get started around 7am and is really going by 8am. Getting there by 6:30am might actually be cutting it close. In other markets (e.g., foreign exchange) I knew traders who were at their desk by the time “Ryan” boarded his train.

And you need to get a couple of hours’ jump on the markets because there’s a lot to read. All the overnight news/events that might affect trading that day, of course. But also – if you’re part of a global book that gets passed into your timezone – you need to know any special events that occurred as part of overnight trading. Your salespeople might have some special deals that need to be done that day, and you need to think about how to execute that. Your investment bankers might have a new structure for which you are expected to provide trading support, and you need to have a razor-sharp idea of how much this stuff they’re peddling is really worth.

And once the trading day really gets started, how are you going to leave? Because usually except for lunch you are on the “dealer” (interactive chat) with your counterparts at other banks, your salespeople call over with new stuff they need to do for their clients (either they’re told or they’ve cajoled somebody to trade an existing position for some reason), you’re on the phone with some of the bigger clients talking about the markets and giving them your thoughts about what they want to do, you need to read the news and events that occur during your day, you might be talking to the “quants” who maintain the pricing models which help determine the right values (you think) of the various credit tranches you’re trading, you might even have a model or two of your own you need to tweak, occasionally you will read some research coming out of your own credit research team or from another bank which someone has forwarded to you. Oh, and you need to make sure you pass the right information to the middle and back offices so your trades are recorded correctly (which determines your P/L, profit/loss, which determines your year-end bonus), and that you pass your book onto the next timezone accurately…

I’m with Bing in that there seems to be quite a bit of Jerry-Springer like quality in some of the posts here. I’m reasonably certain work-life balance has come up before in the “Ryan” household and while I can certainly understand how some fathers throw away their families in the name of work, I think the ethos and common sense of an earlier generation – that you don’t snap to judgment about how another man is raising his children, e.g. – might be far more appropriate.

Good stuff, huh? Thanks, Cliff. Although it’s pretty depressing, frankly. Thank goodness that there’s a ton of work going on in the Human Resources profession on what’s called work life initiatives. If you Bing! (or of course Google (GOOG)) the phrase “work life initiatives,” all kinds of gooey stuff about workshops and seminars and white papers pops up, exploring the upside of, say, a mandatory four day work week, or how a person can be at their post for twelve or fourteen hours a day and, you know, still have a family, friends, and non work-related bad habits. How? By establishing a proper work life balance, of course.

For executives, this can be a godsend, as is made clear by a really funny post from Tim, who is in Tokyo, which is only fitting. Japan invented this problem. Perhaps they’ll be on the cutting edge of solving it, at least for the very top salarymen. Tim writes: 

I used to work for Merrill (MER) in Tokyo and they had the fabled work life balance initiative, which means that us grunts got to continue working weekends and sometimes 24 hours straight, while the managers flew around to run marathons or take care of their soccer clubs or other pursuits like taking university courses. Overall there was work life balance but somewhat skewed, we worked like dogs and the mangers had a nice life. No wonder the place self destructed.

Personally, I kind of like that balance. As a manager, I mean. You work. I have a life. Nothing wrong with that.

It’s clear I’m in the wrong business. With everything else that’s going on in the world, any stroll past a magazine stand will tell you that the majority of public interest continues to focus on Jon & Kate. Why to any of bother to focus on anything else? That’s where the money is, clearly.

Yet one day, as impossible as it may seem, the fascinating situation surrounding two of television’s hottest reality stars will be over. Jon & Kate will have exploded into a ball of flaming chicken fat. Their kids will, I am sure, all be tabloid material of their own. And the great, suppurating maw of popular entertainment will be in need of new heros willing to let it all hang out for Mother.

I mean to get into the action next time around. So I’ve studied the situation, both as a professional and as a consumer of anything that will engage my dwindling attention span. And having looked deeply into the landscape, I believe I have come up with the quintessential next steps in the march of time. Two programs I think could really make it and push the envelope until it squeals. I’m looking for investors. Tell me which one you want to get in on.

1. Married Until We Got To Them picks up where  Jon & Kate leaves off, takes what was wildly popular about that program and jettisons the rest. Gone are the kids. Gone is everything but the weekly update on how two people are going about the business of tearing their marriage apart with infidelity, betrayal, violence, drunkeness and, if it’s on cable, as much nudity as possible, all financed by the willing couple’s weekly stipend from the production company. In later weeks, an added element could be introduced — other miscreant pairs prepared to strip themselves bare (sometimes literally) for the notoriety and money. Couples could compete for a prize awarded to the one that can fall apart fastest. Or possibly even engage in interesting new configurations, depending on the daypart in which the program airs.

To date, all reality programs have provided a framework for the display of human frailty, a plot contrivance of some sort. This program completely dispenses with that and simply cuts to the chase. Cheap to produce. Almost writes itself. Hard to see how it could fail.

Second, and possibly even more interesting, is a show I’m calling So You’re Too Fat To Dance? A mix of several genres, this one puts it all together for pure, guilty pleasure. Contestants join the show when still very adipose,  pleasant people who really can’t dance very well at all. They try, but they for the most part fail to accomplish the complicated choreography outlined for them by the show’s panel of showbiz sadists. Over the 16 weeks, contestants are put through a grueling regime of diet and exercise in which they lose tons of weight very quickly, putting their health at risk while at the same time making themselves far more flexible, pliant and capable of graceful dives, sweeps and fancy footwork.  By the end of the series, we have a few people who punished themselves enough to make the grade and dance off with the prize, and probably a lot more who fell by the wayside, panting. Part make-over, part weight loss, part exercise in pure humiliation, I think this show will have it all.

That’s only the first two that I’m currently working on, although a third is taking shape in my mind, something about a worldwide hunt for the money stolen by Bernie Madoff, kind of a cross between The Amazing Race and Treasure Hunt with Stubby Kaye.

Clearly, however, the upside here is huge. With the ascension of a couple who has nothing to offer but their misery, a new barrier has apparently been broken down. When a new door like that opens, it doesn’t take a genius to know that opportunity may well lie on the other side of the transom. Those interested in an investment that’s certainly as solid as any other may drop me a line.

Today Microsoft announced it would be launching a new search engine that will compete with Yahoo and Google in the vast hunt for search bucks. In an incredible act of branding sagacity, they announced that the name of the new search engine will be: Bing. 

In response to this, today I have issued the following news release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

BING VS. BING

LONG-TIME FORTUNE COLUMNIST AND BEST-SELLING AUTHOR STANLEY BING CONDEMNS “BRAND INTRUSION” BY NEW MICROSOFT SEARCH ENGINE, ALSO TO BE NAMED “BING”

OFFERS SERVICES TO NEW ENTITY FOR “ANY REASONABLE OFFER”

NEW YORK, MAY 28, 2009 – Stanley Bing, FORTUNE Magazine columnist and best-selling author, today expressed “moderate outrage” at the branding of the new search engine to be offered by Microsoft, also to be called Bing. At the same time, Bing the Author took the unusual step of offering an initial olive branch to Bing the Search Engine, proposing that the two powerful brands merge into one for which Mr. Bing could be the logo, corporate symbol and spokesman, to the extent that it fits in with his other duties. 

“This is an unprecedented case of brand intrusion by one of the most powerful and wealthy corporations in the world,” said Bing the Author, as opposed to Bing the Search Engine, which, unlike Mr. Bing himself, cannot be called for comment because it is not a person. “At the same time, I believe I can propose a solution to this problem that with work to the benefit of both Bings, me and the other one,” he added. 

Mr. Bing (the Author) issued these statements in reaction to the announcement, made today by Microsoft at the D: All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, Calif, that the software giant is set to launch an $80 million to $100 million campaign for Bing, the search engine it hopes will help it grab a bigger slice of the online ad market. This huge campaign will be conducted by JWT, the massive advertising agency, and is viewed by many to be an attack on the market position of Google, long the search engine leader. Little notice has been taken to date, however, of the serious implications for Mr. Bing or, for that matter, any other Bings, which Mr. Bing made clear he doesn’t care about. 

“For nearly 25 years, I have jealously guarded the value of my brand,” Bing (the original) continued. “For several years, it was threatened by the enormous reputation of Rudolf Bing, the fictional presence of Chandler Bing and the high-profile persona of Stephen Bing. This, however, is the worst challenge the Bing Brand has faced to date, particularly in regards to my search engine optimization positioning.”

In conjunction with these statements, Mr. Bing has offered to open discussions with Bing the Search Engine and its representatives to iron out differences and challenges to each respective brand. “I think we’re a lot more powerful together than we are apart,” he added. “At least I’m pretty sure I am.” 

Bing (Stanley) indicated that the shape and specific nature of the merged branding opportunities have yet to be hammered out, but that he is available from the second week in June onward, for the most part, and would be willing to consider “any reasonable offer” for his services, or simply to provide no services, if that’s what seems best. 

Mr. Bing began his column in FORTUNE in 1995. Prior to that, he was at Esquire Magazine for 11 years, where he built a considerable following. He is also the author of numerous books and is the host of a popular Web destination on CNNMoney.com and writes regularly for Huffingtonpost.com. He has been cultivating the Bing brand since 1983. 

Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975. It has been establishing the Bing brand for about seventeen minutes.

Contact:  Stanley Bing
                   bingblog@gmail.com 

I will only add that I absolutely no intention of initiating any form of legal action against Bing (the Search Engine) unless he/it feels it would be mutually beneficial for us to do so. And that I do look forward to being massively well-optimized on my new friend.

I wish I could think of something to say about the recession right now.

I wish I could find an observation to make about the realities of the new economy.

I wish I had the power to offer some interesting strategies for dealing with the difficult operating environment in which we find ourselves.

I wish I could impart some wisdom on current trends in the commercial marketplace.

But I can’t. Half my floor is empty today. A few minutes ago, I sent an e-mail to my department that generated a veritable forest of OUT OF OFFICE replies. In the executive wing, many seem to have wandered off into pleasant digital space. On the west coast, a lot of folks seem to be “working from home.” Here in New York, the sun is shining very brightly, and there is a heavy, humid heat in the air that whispers one delicious word, and that word is BEACH.

I have no plans to go to the beach. I have no plans to go to the shore. I have no plans to do much of anything except go home. I will not be reading interesting business analysis on the plane. I will not be thinking about excellence or debt or equity, except perhaps the sweat equity it will take to put my lawn to rights when I get there.

I am hereby shutting down the part of my brain that thinks about things more than three days out. I hope you have the power to do the same, whether you have the permission to do so or not.  Go ahead. Switch it off.

Have a great long weekend, my friends. Sometime during that three days take a few moments to remember why we earned that extra lazy Monday. Go to a parade if you can find one. We don’t do enough parades.

I’ll talk with you Tuesday, God willing. Whatever we’ve all got going on will be waiting for us then, of that I am sure. Let it wait, okay?

I just thought, on my out of the office again, that I would point out that now the Star has a cover on Jon & Kate, outlining their odd marriage, which I can’t tell you about, because I will not read it, and this for two reasons.

1. I have decided to read nothing about Jon & Kate.

2. I am too busy.

This week my company had its big sales presentation. We go out there about the same time each year and try to move a few billion dollars worth of product. It’s going pretty well. Two observations:

1. People are jamming the restaurants all around Manhattan. It’s very hard to get a table.

2. Everybody is just as drunk as they always were in the best of times.

I take this to be another sign of economic regeneration. And now I’ve got to take off again. Another day. Another presentation. Another couple hundred million dollars. Wish us luck, ladies and gentlemen. As we go, so goes the whole shooting match, I think.

We had a run up last week. For the last couple of days, we’re running down. There was good news among the bad and people were talking about sunlight for a while. This week, the credit markets are getting nervous again and we’re not so sure. Plus, it’s drizzling. Doesn’t May seem colder than usual? Does this mean there’s no more global warming? Or is this just a pause before we all quite literally melt down?

Are we recovering? Are we sliding back? Is the upswing over? Are we just taking a breather? Unemployment is still bad but not growing quite so fast as it was a few months ago. But Wal-Mart’s revenue ticked down a little. Does that mean people ran out of money in April? Will it be the same in May? How about June? Worse? Better?

See, now would be the time for those professionals with a totally disinterested position in the markets, if any such there be, to employ their skills to tell us what’s going on. Is this all emotional? Are there some metrics we should be employing to get a little bit of visibility into the future? Forget the future, how about right now? Is there an analyst, an economist, a professor, government regulator, seer, dowser or astrologer out there who can actually tell anybody what’s going on?

In the meantime, who should we be listening to? Paul Krugman? Nostradamus? Susan Boyle?

1. Economics is a bunch of bushwah. Now we know it. Economists are obviously not only behind the curve on what has occured, they are in many cases the cause of it. It is not a science. It is not even an art. At best, it’s a craft, like pottery. As things improve, we can expect a bunch to begin operating pretty much as usual, though. Why shouldn’t they? It’s a living.

2. Wherever there’s money around, there will be crooks. Many of these crooks are well-dressed. Often they are at the top of whatever game they are bilking. Next time this all happens, people will once again be surprised that the guy who ran the exchange is the person who also managed the Ponzi scheme.

3. The Law is a ass. I believe it was Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist who said it, but recognition of the unique aspect of the legal profession goes back to Shakespeare and beyond. Virtually all of the regulators and legislators who were supposed to be monitoring the finance industry were certainly lawyers, as were the lawmakers who were asleep at the switch until they could be assured of airtime on cable on the subject.

4. In God We Trust. All others pay cash. Every panic in history has been precipitated by the same stupid sequence of events. In Rome, for instance, a huge panic not that dissimilar to ours happened when some rich bankers underwrote a bunch of ships that were sent to the east. The ships foundered. The banks had over-extended themselves. They ran out of cash. People freaked out. In 1837, following another crash a few decades earlier, the banks once again forgot about the whole debt/equity thing and doled out huge amounts of money in western real estate. The market went bust. The banks went boom. The economy went into the tank for 10 years. A few years ago, my own corporation almost went belly up after its Financial Services Division lent a bunch of dough to a sleazy real estate outfit in New Orleans that just didn’t pay us back. Now we have this, and everybody asks, “How could all these smart people lend out so much stupid money?” Because that’s what they do to MAKE stupid money, Sparky. As soon as nobody is looking they’ll do so again.

5. The rich are not like other people. They’re not smarter. They’re not happier. They just know how the game is played and, for the most part, what to do to stay there. Sometimes everybody forgets that the whole thing is designed to keep the powerful in power and the rich in their McMansions, and the People are sold the idea that everybody can have their Baby Benz. And for a while, everybody sort of gets high on the idea that capitalism is a populist enterprise. It’s not. It’s for just a few lucky souls and manipulative hedgers and, really, the rest of us should really just buckle down behind our plows and keep our pennies in that coffee can by the window ledge. We’ll forget that, of course, as soon as the markets simmer down. Then the Ralph Kramden side of us will once again emerge from the closet where it’s been whimpering for the last 18 months, and we’ll all be back in the hunt for the next mystery appetizer.

6. The press is the running dog of the system. Of course there are exceptions. But in general the media covers the winners and puts a nice shine on their helmets. What you read is what they get. Now that there are fewer reporters than ever, and more blogspit in the machine, everything will only get worse in this regard. Right now, even at the height of our troubles, the food chain goes from security analyst and quote monkey straight to the wires and blogs and directly to you. And you read it and think whatever occupies your brain pan for the most recent five minutes.

7. Be careful who you insult while they’re on their way down. They will either rise up one last time, like Carrie’s dirt-encrusted fist from the grave, and pull you down with them, or they will meet you as they are on the way back up and chew your head off now that they can. Those in need of proof on this subject need only consider two short words: John Thain.

8. Nothing lasts forever. Not good times, and not bad times, either. And nobody knows when whatever train we’re on will arrive at the next station. Not nobody. Anybody who tells you they do is smoking something. You can either ask for some of what they’ve got or ignore them entirely, depending on how you’re feeling or what day of the week it might happen to be.

9. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Even when nobody else is picking up the check. Later on, when that starts again? Even moreso.

1. I am sick of… 

a. Rotten bankers
b. Stinking pirates
c. Posturing bureaucrats
d. Winter

2. I can certainly do without any additional advice or comments from… 

a. Economists
b. Regulators without entertaining facial hair
c. Former heads of corporations who are now in the tank
d. My mother

3. I’m very bored with…

a. Paul Krugman
b. Drunken celebrities
c. Sober celebrities, unless they’re naked
d. Artisan cheese

4. A day without ___________ is a day without sunshine. 

a. Glen Beck
b. Barney Frank
c. Another fabulous Chapter 11
d. 8 oz. of vodka

5. Please wake me when…

a. There’s some good news for me personally. 
b. Wall Street melts down into a small pile of phlegm. No, wait! It already has!  

c. There’s something to watch on TV.
d. All of the above.

Score yourself however you like.

Oh, goody! Look at my package… so big and shiny! The New York Times and Wall Street Journal just put me in the top 50 big earners of the year in their annual blockbuster overviews of executive compensation.  They say I made more than $50 million last year! Hooray!

Except wait a minute. Hm. I’m looking at my bank account and it doesn’t look so hot. If I’m so rich, how come I don’t have a whole lot more money? Not that I’m poor or anything. But there’s no question I’m going to have to keep working if I want to keep all the moving pieces in place.

How the frig did they calculate my number? Let’s see…

Well, first there’s my actual salary. $200,000 isn’t chump change. I’m not complaining. But I haven’t had a raise in that department in three years, because they “took care of me” on all the other front. And how! What generosity!

Except, you know, then there’s the whole thing about my bonus, which is less than half of what it was last year.  That’s okay. I get why.  Business was terrible. Of course, it was terrible for everybody. And our stock was down. Of course, so was everybody’s. And I didn’t give out a bunch of sub-prime mortgage loans. Nor did we get any government bailouts. But there you have it.  It is, as they say, what it is.

So far it all adds up to about $7 million. I know it sounds like a lot. And it is! I know it is. But it’s not more than $50 million, is it? I mean, my background is in Marketing, but even I know there’s a decimal point missing there somewhere.

I guess they must be counting the stock I received at its face value. I wonder why. True, when it was issued to me it was worth about $20 million. That was at the beginning of ‘08. It doesn’t fully vest for another three or four years. That means two things are true. 1) They’re worthless to me now, even if they retained their value, and 2) They’re worth a lot less than the number they put into the chart even if I could sell them, which I can’t, not for a really long time. So that’s $20 million they say I have that I don’t have.

Now, a bunch of stock DID vest last January, so that’s in there. Except it’s valued at what it was worth then. That not what it’s worth anymore, not by a long shot. What’s interesting is that I had to pay taxes on the original amount, and they didn’t withhold enough back then, you know how that is. So I owe additional tax on a fictional amount of money that I can’t cash in because the stock is really too low to sell.

And then there’s my stock options. I’m looking at their calculations and they say my options are worth $30 million. Right now, they’re worth nothing, even if they were vested, which of course they’re not.

I find that vaguely mysterious. Who made up these rules? Mr. Black? Mr. Scholes? I can understand that if I exercised some of them, and got the cash, that would be income… but right now all they are is paper. If they ever go above water, every shareholder of the corporation will be dancing in the aisles. But that could take years. 

So let’s add it up. The papers say I made more than $50 million. I’m looking at a little more than $7 million, before taxes. And everybody hates me.

There’s only one solution for it, I think. I gotta get fired. That won’t take too much doing, the way things are going! I guess that proves there’s a silver lining to every dark cloud, huh? In the meantime, I wonder where I’m having lunch… Thank God I still have my plastic. As things stand, I really need it.

When is enough of a good thing way too much? When you’re flying American (AMR). Somewhere along the line somebody must have done a focus group or something, because it’s apparent that the airline believes that fulsome, frank communications with passengers is of fabulous benefit to everybody. The effort is obviously well-intentioned. But the outcome is perhaps not.

I first noticed this a few years ago, when I would be sitting and waiting for a mysterious amount of time on the tarmac and then Chuck Yeager would come on the public address system with something like, “First of all, I’d like to thank you all for your patience…” This immediately drained whatever patience I was trying to cultivate. I hate being thanked for my patience. “… but there’s an amber light here in the cockpit that we’re checking out.”

That was bad. There are a lot of reasons for amber lights, none of them particularly encouraging. Did I need to know about the amber light? Maybe. Did I want to fly in a plane that sported one, even briefly? Again, not too sure. I did know that the announcement did very little to help my frame of mind, but I guess they were just trying to be responsible and blah blah blah.

The trend has continued to develop, with ever-increasing levels of frankness being employed to win our admiration and regard. Which is fine. Unless, you know, it freaks us out entirely.

It’s my perception, which may be completely off base (but I don’t think so) that American Airlines hasn’t put a new plane into domestic service in quite some time.  A little while back, they fooled me for a while with some new seating arrangements, but then I realized the snazzy new electric chairs had been installed into the same old Boeings. What American does instead, and it is very much to its credit, is to swarm over every airplane before it is permitted to leave the ground, fixing, checking, making sure that it is truly airworthy. This means a lot of late departures and safe arrivals. Still, I sometimes think they should post all take-off and landing times with a big fat asterisk.

Anyhow, yesterday I was scheduled to depart at 1:50 from San Francisco. The plane was slow to board. It is my belief, based on years of experience, that even the most infinitesimal delay at any point in the chain usually results in hours and hours of snafus and fubars, very often ending in the scrubbing of the flight and total decomposition of my day/week.  So my hair-trigger gut was telling me a) we had a problem and b) there was, therefore, a 68.4% chance that we would never take off at all, when Chuck Yeager came on the intercom.

“Well,” he said, “we were all ready to go, but it appears that the brakes on the left side of the plane need to be replaced.” He then went on about how that was really not a very big deal at all and that it might take less than half an hour and so on and so forth, but I didn’t hear a thing, all I could get into my mind was the image of a plane landing at Kennedy Airport in New York and careening into Jamaica Bay when its brakes gave out.

“This is too much information for me,” I said to the dead-heading flight attendant in the next seat.

“Well,” he said, “I guess they’re just trying to be honest.”

I get that. Honesty is a virtue. In this case, however, something seems out of whack. Next time I would suggest something like, “There’s a bit of weather in New York, and we’re going to make sure that we have clear skies for your landing there. Kick back and have a free drink on us.”

I like that much better. Not that such obfuscation is always called for. How different the world would look now if some honest broker had announced, “Well, we were doing fine until about a month ago, when it became obvious that our insurance was underwritten by a host of bad mortgage loans…”

The ongoing AIG mess provides us with an interesting sidelight today – the use of an excuse that is no longer acceptable in the unwired global universe in which we now live. The unacceptable excuse is still unfortunately in wide use among public relations professionals who represent disgraced or beleaguered executives. Here it is, from today’s New York Times: 

Since November, A.I.G.’s financial products unit has been led by Gerry Pasciucco, a former vice chairman of Morgan Stanley who was brought in by Mr. Liddy with instructions to wind down the unit. Company executives said they faced a need to keep skilled professionals in the business unit, which traded trillions of dollars worth of financial derivatives, because it would take great expertise to shut down the business in an orderly manner and without causing more turmoil.

Christina Pretto, a spokeswoman for A.I.G., said Mr. Pasciucco was traveling on Monday and was unavailable. But she said that since his arrival, the company had reduced the volume of its financial positions by more than 25 percent, starting with the “complex and difficult-to-manage positions.”

Now, Mr. Pasciucco, the AIG executive running the bonus-hungry unit of that clueless insurance company, may be in Timbuktu, or in Katmandu, or simply in a Ramada Inn in Fresno, but I assure you that no matter how far he has travelled, how distant his locale, how remote his whereabouts, he can be reached by cell phone or BlackBerry. Be he at the bottom of the ocean! Or perched atop a Himalayan peak! He can be found.

The contemporary business climate in which we now suffer presents us with many complexities, many indignities. One of them is, unfortunately, the ubiquity of digital communications. This has many benefits, and an equal number of personal liabilities. One of them is the demise of certain excuses that used to make life more tolerable. Included are such now out-of-date chestnuts as “I’ll read that when I receive it tomorrow morning and get you an answer on it by noontime,” which was killed by the fax machine, and “I can’t get there until Tuesday so let’s postpone the meeting until then,” which was laid low by teleconference technology. And now, I’m afraid, spokespeople of executives who wish to hide from the media, the government or their estranged spouses must now come up with a replacement for “He’s traveling right now and cannot be reached.”

How about, “Hello? I can’t hear you! I’m going into a tunnel!”

Aren’t you bored with career strategies? Don’t you feel sometimes, when you’re looking at business magazines or books or listening to drivel from guys who supposedly know everything, that everybody is simply reinventing the same wheel over and over again?

You’re right. The problem is that business people often need to hear the same things over and over again. It’s not because we’re stupid. Probably.

The good thing in this case is that the story is about me. I know I’m not stupid. I mean, I think I do. And yet…

Anyway, here it is: I had a problem earlier this week closing a certain situation that required resolution so that I could sleep. It wasn’t a huge thing. It was just something that I wanted done that had certain financial implications for me personally. So what did I do? I started sending e-mails.

My first e-mail went to a guy who I’d dealt with on this issue throughout the process. As happens sometimes these days, I got a message back that there was no person at the corporate e-mail address. Woooo. Spooky. Dude no longer existed. Bye bye, bro.

So I bethought myself and went down one notch on his corporate ladder, found the second person I knew in that location and e-mailed her. Nothing. That was Monday. By Tuesday, there was still nothing. I was reminded of an old song, reprised by one of my favorite groups when I was a kid. It was called Nothing. Here’s how it went:

Monday nothing
Tuesday nothing
Wednesday and Thursday nothing
Friday for a change a little more nothing
Saturday and Sunday nothing

It’s an existential song that pretty much summed up the matter as far as I was concerned. Last night I went to bed thinking that the entire deal was in the dumpster. It made me sad. During my 3:30 AM anxiety hour, I spent at least fifteen minutes obsessing about it before falling back asleep thanks to extreme boredom with myself.

This morning I went nuts. I did something I haven’t done on this kind of situation for quite some time. I abandoned the e-mail protocol and picked up a phone. Got the woman on the third ring. Turns out she’d been sick for two days. Apologized for being very busy after that. No problemo. Everything is copacetic.

This tedious conclusion is exactly what I was seeking and I could have short-circuited the whole process if I had simply talked to the person when I first had an inkling that something was awry. Sounds idiotically simple, does it not? But do you know how many people are festering right now because their corporate culture mandates exclusive use of digital communications? He’s not answering his BlackBerry! I left him six e-mails! Aieee!

I’m going to kick it up a notch from here on in. I’ve got a bone to pick with Fredricks, who owes me a nice little memo to remove my personal responsibility on a certain subject. I’ve e-mailed him about it; no response. It’s easy to ignore an e-mail. I’ve also left him two voice mails. No reply – it’s almost equally easy to duck that kind of incoming also. But it’s hard to ignore a guy who’s standing in your doorway, and the guy is quite literally right down the hall.

According to a new survey conducted in late January by Charles Schwab, 85% of all independent advisors believe that the recession will be over in a couple of years. Two or so, they think. Perhaps a little more. Or less.

Some believe that it will be over by the end of this year, but not many.

Others think it’s going to be bad until late 2011, although they are in the minority, or they were in late January.

Most think it’s going to be two years. Or thereabouts. Which is probably what they’re saying when they’re advising people who presumably listen to them.

Who are these people? That’s what I’d like to know.

Because according to my personal survey, conducted with the inside of my brain pan six seconds ago, 97.2 percent of non-stupid people have stopped listening to anybody’s advice, particularly that of those who offer any.

72.3% of all respondents have stopped believing that the Market is driven by any metrics at all. 82% of those have come to the conclusion that a bunch of scared lunatics have taken control of the machinery of capitalism and that there’s no sense to what these losers may do on any given day.

Interestingly, 83.4% of all intelligent people have decided that numbers themselves are weird little creatures that are about as meaningful as a plate of chocolate pudding and just as solid. Of those, 71.3% figure there is no way that anybody knows anything in a world where Warren Buffett had the worst year of his career.

And speaking personally? 100% of me wants to slap somebody when they offer a view on what other people should be doing with their money.

I know what I’m going to do with mine right now. I’m going to have a turkey sandwich. After that, I’m not making any predictions for the rest of the day, other than declaring that there’s a 100% likelihood that I’m going to be ignoring any putative punditry until 2012. Perhaps a little sooner. Or later.

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.

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 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.

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?

The storm clouds have gathered. Hell, it’s raining. But that doesn’t mean we have to be stupid. So I’ve decided to avoid, deride and abjure the following group of bad actors that right now are circling in the mist: 

First, the Executioners. There are those, mostly from Wharton, for some reason, who believe that every problem in the business universe can be solved by firing people. While this does solve some problems immediately after we leave fat city, it begins to pale as a strategy well before those who are addicted to it decide to put down their quick fix. I’m going to keep a keen eye out for these types and see if I can leave them at the station after the rest of us have departed for better climes. 

Next, Revisionistas. These are the guys who are working real hard to avoid accepting the blame for what has happened, and are spending most of the time repositioning themselves and their cadre. We know who’s to blame. Everybody. But in the end? I’m going to regard these losers as I would a bunch of teenagers caught with a bag of weed. It’s usually the guy who protests his innocence the loudest who’s the dealer. 

Rear Admirals: Of course there are those who were very happy in the last iteration of our economy. They’ll be out in force trying to kill the new one. Did you know that Franklin D. Roosevelt was responsible for the Great Depression of the 1930s? Neither did I. But these guys do. Know why? Because if Roosevelt was a bad guy, the fellow who’s being compared to him right now must be too, right? Look, friends. If there’s one thing we know, it’s this: over the past decade or two, we’ve been spun. Let’s not get twirled by the same spin doctors again, now that for the most part the only spinning they should be doing is down the drain. 

Insecurity Analysts: Bozos to the left of us! Bozos to the right of us! And still we fight on. The job of an analyst is to look at a specific company and run models. Their models are fraudulent, stuck together with bad glue and yet they continue to analyze, because they are analysts, and that’s what they do. Inherent in their deal is that they look at each company they cover as if it existed in a bubble. Why? Because their job is to analyze  and so on and blah blah blah. If they won’t shut up, it doesn’t mean we have to listen. If I never hear another learned opinion from one of these guys it will be too soon. 

Economists: See above. 

Ostriches: They live all around us, their butts in the air, their heads in the sand. A lot of the time they’re in charge of budgets, but they can also be in any cornice of the corporation. And while doing business as usual is a good thing, a nice look around at the operating environment doesn’t hurt, either. Ostriches are scared, impatient and likely to run for the horizon at the slightest perturbation. They make me nervous. Nervous is bad. 

Weasels: In spite of all appearances, there are those who always believe, perhaps as a demented part of the American dream, that every horrible eventuality carries with it the seeds of tremendous opportunity. Perhaps it does, for Warren Buffet. For the rest of us, this not a time for greed and getting over on our fellow citizens. I partially blame business magazines, many of which now sport huge cover stories about how 2009 is going to be A GREAT YEAR FOR YOU! It’s not. My goal is to live through it. I’m not looking for a huge upside, and I’ve got a real gimlet eye for anybody offering me one. 

Rastas: Don’t worry. Be happy. Ridiculous, right? On the other hand… We’ve already got the dreads. 

It’s the last day I’ll be spending at the office this year. Always a funny feeling. Another year is gone. A new calendar must be cracked open. I feel like I should clean up, but there’s really nothing to get rid of. One day I guess I’ll leave this place for real, and perhaps it will feel a little bit like this, only moreso. This time around, I’m luckier than some. I get to come back and see how things work out for another cycle.

I won’t say a lot about 2008. I suppose there were many good things about it, although it’s hard to remember them now, what with all the Spitzers and Blagojeviches and Madoffs and Greenspans and Paulsons and Bernankes and assorted Wall Street miscreants, the bailouts and the purges and the blown hedges and wilted WaMus and all that. The list of losers grows so long that it’s hard to remember who we were mad at last month, last week, yesterday.

You kind of want to hope that 2009 will be different, and maybe it will be. We’ll have a new president. The markets will have to return to some kind of normalcy after a long period of disease. Like, creditors will have to start giving people credit again at some point, right? The debt folks will have to do what they do for a living, more responsibly, we hope. Car makers will have to figure out a way to sell some cars, which probably means somebody will start advertising again. Life will find a way.

The general feeling I get is that we’re all pretty glad to get out of 2008 with at least a portion of our skins on. Nobody I know is sad to see the old year go. That twinkle in the common eye might not be tears of sadness or rage. It might be a glimmer of hope.

Thanks to all of you who come here to browse, get excited, feel outrage or occasional amusement. I love to read what you write. I am very happy to publish the lot of you, as long as you keep it relatively clean and marginally on-point. One thing I do know about the year to come. I look forward to hanging with all of you as we chew over – and occasionally spit out – the events of this world as they unfold.

Now I guess I’ll just lock up and get out of here. I’ll see you when I see you, guys.

Christmas, they say, comes but once a year and while this is good news for our wallets, it’s probably a bit of a bummer for the snail-mail guys. For it’s during this season that all kinds of business people haul out their paper envelopes, cards and stamps and set the air a-humming with jolly wishes. There seem to be fewer such this year, which is either a sign of the market conditions in which we live, where every little financial outlay, even postage, must be scrutinzed, or evidence that I’m less popular than I used to be. 

Most evident in their absence are the lengthy, one-size-fits-all newsletters that people used to send, updating friends, family and assorted associates about the interesting doings of their clan. “Betsy has left the coven and is now celebrating her “solstice” with us, and little Harry recently was awarded the lead in his middle-school production of Annie!” Perhaps folks are using e-mail for that kind of thing now.

Still, there’s a cornucopia of good stuff to enjoy.

There are the cards from colleagues that are, as always, very much appreciated. In vogue this year are pictures of kids, puppies and kitties. A fair number of holiday salutations share portraits of the offspring and assorted family mammals with absolutely no evidence of adult life at all. In this economy, the message seems to be: “You may not be interested in me personally at all, but here are my dependents. Aren’t they cute? Some go to private schools or are headed for an expensive college education. The point is, I’m a human being that has a real existence outside of my professional function. Please don’t fire me.” Or maybe that’s just my imagination.

Second on the stack are the lovely missives from people who either a) do not sign their cards but leave the printed message as sufficient to contain their best wishes or b) sign it quite illegibly and bear no informative return address. These I keep in a very special place in my credenza, for re-use next year.

There are, of course, the law, consulting or insurance firms who do a mass holiday mailing, with each member of the organization scrawling their weeny name in a corner of an acceptably deracinated card that conveys all non-denominational jollies of the season. One just came from the out-of-house counsel we just fired. Here’s another from the management consulting firm that engineered a bunch of our industry’s recent layoffs! So toasty.

I particularly enjoyed the tiny calendar in its faux-leather holder sent to me by my broker. The fact that we’re still talking to each other means my 2008 was not as bad as some others.

But the one that most expressed the merry vibrations of this particular holiday season came from the air conditioning guy who installed the AC machines in my apartment not long ago. I’m going to call him Sidney Roth, although that is not his name. On one sheet of very simple letterhead almost Dickensian in its stark functionality, the following holiday message in 16-point Times Roman is sent to all his clients:

To: All Non-Contract Service Accounts

Effective January 1, 2009, all services will be terminated.

Our new policy for services will be “Payment upon completion of service” (COD).

Our field technicians will receive the applicable service charges while at your residence once your call is completed.

A formal invoice indicating your payment will be mailed the work day following the service visit.

As always, we appreciate your patronage.

Sidney Roth Company Services Dept.

I imagine that last bit – the part about how they appreciate our patronage? - was added by some thoughtful assistant to provide a softer touch. It doesn’t seem all that sincere in the context. What I get from the mailing is a very clear image of a working man, sitting behind his scarred and battered desk, looking at a bunch of invoices that are 91 days past due. All his clients owe him a ton of money. And nobody is paying, not at least until they see how things look come January 1. “The hell with this,” he says to himself. “No more free lunch.”

Of all the holiday communications I’ve received this year, this one feels the most appropriate. Holiday schmoliday. Gotta get paid, right?

I’ve read a lot about the whole Bernie Madoff thing now, and questions still remain. I’ll leave most of them to the forensic accountants and the gumshoes now on the trail of who knew what, when. I do have one very simple one I’d like to offer anybody within the sound of my voice. 

Where’s the money? 

I know this seems like a rudimentary issue, and one I’m sure a lot of people are investigating right now. But I’ve attended a number of meetings, parties and private conversations over the last week or so that Madoff has been front page news, and I have yet to get a clear answer. 

Where’s the money? If the location has been revealed anywhere in video, print or online, I’ve missed it. 

Is it possible that he and his family spent it? I don’t think so. Even the greediest jerk in the world would have a hard time unloading $50 billion on sundries like houses, cars, boats, planes, even. If you spent like a manic chicken for decades, it’s hard to see how you would put out more than, say, $5 billion. I’ve made a list of things I would get if I had Madoff’s war chest and I’m afraid I can’t even get to that single digit number. 

Did he give it to charity? No, he seems to have preyed on charities as well as on the gullible wealthy. Yeshiva even gave him an honorary degree while he allegedly was fleecing them. 

Did he share it with cohorts? Perhaps. Maybe there’s something to that. Maybe we’ll find out that some of those who were ostensibly gulled were in fact themselves intermediaries who profited from the credulous losers who helped to erect this particular pyramid out of golden bricks and platinum straw. Still, $50 billion? That’s a lot of vigorish to spread around without leaving some footprint in the dust. 

So… where’s the money? 

Do any of you know? I’m really asking. Perhaps if it’s just lying around somewhere, we could go and pick up some of it. And if the guy still has any, don’t you think it would be appropriate to get it back? A whole bunch of people are missing it pretty badly, particularly at this festive time of year.

I had a dream last night. More of a nightmare, actually. I woke up trembling and very cold, even though the room itself was quite warm. I thought perhaps if I told you about it, the sense of unease I still carry with me without dissipate somewhat. 

I was in a strange room, having slept there because I could not find my way home. I thought maybe I had had too much to drink the night before and fallen asleep on an alien bed. When I awoke, it was bright day, and I was hyper-aware that time was a-wasting. I had a powerful sense that I needed to get in touch with the office or something terrible would happen. 

This is no surprise, I think. Something terrible is happening pretty much every day now, and not in dreamland, either. 

I got dressed and went looking for my BlackBerry and cell phone. They were both dead. I realized I was in an unfamiliar place and there might be a huge issue finding chargers for my electronic devices. I saw on a table in the living room of the place a jumble of chargers. I started looking through them. Each held promise, but when I got to the service end of it that was meant to interface with my phone or BlackBerry, it was the wrong type. I tried one. Then I tried another. None of the chargers fit. Somewhere in there somebody came to the door of the apartment. It was a guy from High School I haven’t seen in a long time and had no desire to see now, particularly in this desperate situation with the chargers and everything. He started to talk to me about insurance. I left him in the hall and continued looking. 

Finally I realized there was still a tiny bit of charge in my BlackBerry, because it was ringing. I answered it, even though I hate to use those things as a phone. They always remind me of Maxwell Smart talking to 99 with a shoe in his ear. 

“Hello?” I said into the dying BlackBerry. 

“You need help,” said a voice I didn’t recognize. “We’re all worried about you.” 

Then I woke up.  I wonder what it means. 

I’m glad I told you about it, even though I don’t feel much better. In fact, I now realize that my cell phone is downstairs and it’s getting kind of late. I wonder if I charged it last night. I fear I didn’t. See you later.

We cede our territory today to TJ Knowles of San Diego, whose comment on yesterday’s post carries the double benefit of being interesting and extremely cogent, and also obviating the need for me to write anything today. Since the weather is fine and I don’t feel much like looking at the financial news, or considering anything appropriately bleak, I want to thank TJ and turn over the conch to him for a little while. Here’s what he says:

On Monday I took my Toyota Matrix (best car I’ve ever had – except for my 1930 Model A) to a guy who is one of the most intelligent, practical and highly skilled men I have ever known. He works as a handyman, but his experience and expertise as a mechanic, expert welder, and all-around construction problem-solver are a constant amazement to me.

He completed some major brake work and electrical repair, gave me great advice and sent me on my way with an invoice that would have been triple at any Dealer service.

During our conversation, he said he was concerned about the economy and his workload.

It occurred to me – and I told him, that he was mistaken – that he was sitting in the catbird seat and would thrive in this dismal economy because he actually KNOWS HOW TO DO THINGS. And the things he knows how to do are a staple in today’s world.

In some ways, the cliff-diving our economy has been doing is a blessing – we are getting the big wake-up call to see that we have become a nation of consumers – not producers. We have invented 200 names for money, and none of them is worth a tinker’s dam now.

We are clever manipulators of information, which translates into zippo-nada-zero in a world in which Substance now rises from the ashes like the mythical Phoenix, devouring the pathetic, paper-pushing and ethernet-laced house of cards we have been referring to for years as an “unstoppable” economy.

It is still a real world. Tools, hard work, physical labor and a laborer’s pride will be the honorable watchwords of the day.

I watch Ken as he struggles with my car’s serpentine belt that fights him for control.

Ken will win.

Thanks, TJ. From your lips to God’s ears.

Look, I don’t want to be a pill and rain on the whole gloom thing we’re all experiencing. There’s no doubt it’s real. I look at the numbers the same as you do. Revenue is down. Unemployment is up. We’re circling the drain, definitely, I’m not arguing with anybody about that. It’s the worst black hole since all those black and white pictures were taking during the depths of the century just past. 

But it’s got to be one of the weirdest recession/depressions on record. I just spent the same weekend you did. Turkey. Ham. Leftovers. And, of course, shopping. So I’m wondering if you saw the same thing I did. As in: Crowds. Lines. People clawing at stuff on racks as if their lives depended on it. Hoards of greedy Americans shoving lunchtime carbs into their faces so they wouldn’t have to break stride in mid-spend. 

So I have to ask: What’s up? 

Started Friday, after a Thanksgiving filled with good cheer, grog and incessant radio and television spots screaming about unprecedented buying opportunities. I asked myself: Who are these numbskulls who get up at dawn to purchase a flat screen TV? Who would stand online at 3 a.m. to get a ticket so they can come back later and get a Wii for a couple bucks off? 

The new day dawned early. “Let’s go to Best Buy,” said my son over breakfast. “Really?” I said. 

We were there by 10. As we rolled into the parking lot, I said to him, “You know, this recession is hitting everybody right now. Even me.” Perhaps he was wearing those tiny earphones I got him for his birthday, because he didn’t answer. The lot was full. Like, totally. I had to park in the overflow area.

In the store, the scene was nuts. Huge crowds around the gaming systems, the HDTVs, the computers, the DVDs. Lines at the register. We went over to the area in which we had an interest: car audio. He has a new/old clunker whose main deficiency, it seems, is in the quality of its sound system. 

There was a massive megadeal posted on the wall. A fabulous complete set-up for just $600. The car itself is worth about that, maybe a buck or two less. “Do you have any super-mega-awesome-once-in-a-lifetime Black Friday deals?” I asked the clerk, who was younger than the car in question. He looked at the deal posted on the wall and ripped it down. “That deal ended a couple of weeks ago,” he said. “But we can work something out.” He did some figures on the back of an envelope. “We can do a mid-range system for… $875, plus tax. That includes installation.” 

I noted that the price seemed to be a simple total of the hardware necessary, plus about $300 for installation. “What happened to the meta-mooga-humongous deals for Black Friday?” I asked. “They’re not store-wide,” he said. We left, fighting our way through the mob of frenzied consumers toward fresh air and light. 

So obviously, there was no panic about the recession at Best Buy. True, there were absolutely NO people in their installation area, so maybe they’ll be sorry later they didn’t moderate their prices a bit on the car stereo question. Maybe they’re getting the overflow from other places that have gone under. But who are all these people forking over piles of green? Aren’t they aware that the economy is in the sump? 

Throughout the weekend, the same story proliferated. Target was full. At Costco, you couldn’t get a seat at the hot dog stand. I had to knock over an old lady to get to a 50-pound bag of frozen shrimp.

So I’m open to suggestion. What do YOU think is going on here?

I flew from here to there last night. As sometimes happens in Business, I ran into somebody who is in business. We swapped a few observations for a while. After some time, I felt so appalled that I was forced to feign sleep. I think it was over St. Louis.

I should have known I was in some trouble when we were still on the ground in Los Angeles. The chief flight attendant had just announced that turkey wraps were available for $10 each to people in Coach. “Boy,” he said. “Why don’t they just charge an extra $10 for the ticket and give the things away for free?” I didn’t know and told him so. “These guys who run the airlines are so stupid at that kind of little stuff. What makes you think we can trust them to service and fly airplanes with all these people on them?”

This violated the first rule of in-flight discourse: No talk about anything related to airplane malfunctions.

It developed that we had both been in the same business at one point. I asked him what he did now. “I sold my business a little while back for a small fortune,” he said, indulging in the kind of bragging you get used to after a while. Not. “Now I’m an investor.”

“You must be taking it on the chin,” I said, possibly to get back at him for being so forthcoming about all that “small fortune” stuff. He allowed that he had been hurt, but was still investing. We then discussed a variety of issues relating to a number of business sectors. By the time we got over Nebraska, it was clear that this guy knew absolutely nothing. I’m not talking about insight here. I’m talking about events. Facts. Things that are happening. Mergers that took place and rocked the world. Companies that were no longer in business. Guys who had died. I’m not going to go into all of it. It was when he expressed surprise that you could download movies and watch them on your computer that I tuned him out.

Perhaps he’s smart and informed in other things. He seemed up on politics. He did seem knowledgeable about Warren Buffett’s less successful investments. He was reading an intelligent book, I saw, over which he fell asleep two or three times. Perhaps he’s just one of those people who do nothing but watch CNBC and read soft economics and analysts’ reports from firms that are now receiving bailouts. Maybe he knows a lot about cheese futures or something.

A few years ago there was a big debate about “Who owns the corporation” and all the wizards who know nothing at a very high level came to an agreement: It was the shareholders who owned the company. Not the employees who make the product, who work over years to build the value of the operation and live and die by its fate. Not the customers who use the stuff they make. No, it was guys like this one, who have a little bit of the enterprise and can unload it at any time without feeling a pinch.

Look at the paper. This is where that kind of thinking has led us.

At this point I believe that Wall Street and our entire stockholder-centric culture is killing American business. What’s good for investors is not always good for the companies and the workers who have to live in the system, not just feed off it after paying a small price for admission. Is it possible, that at some time in the future, the welfare of the companies we serve could be divorced from the fear, the greed, the feral hysteria of the securities marketplace?

When I was a much greener geek, I wrote for the Ziff Davis magazines. The book was called PC Computing, and I really loved doing it. There was a smell of everything new in the air back then, and a sense of amazement at what computers could do, an expanding consciousness that all kinds of stuff that used to be boring was suddenly exciting and cool. The greatest magazine in the field was not the one I was working for, however. It was its sister publication: PC Magazine.

PC Magazine ruled. It had John Dvorak, who extruded two terrific, high-energy columns in each issue, and a bunch of other guys who pretty much defined the interface between nerdy and awesome. And it was fat. Some issues were so fat they had to split them into two.

The PC business was exploding, and this was its bible.

Many of you may be too young to remember that there were once many, many beautiful charting programs, for instance, all of which have been replaced by the infinitely less lovely and more tedious PowerPoint. There was Harvard Graphics, and Persuasion, and many others. They came in big boxes with dozens of big floppy disks holding huge amounts of programming data you had to install over a period of hours. There were a lot of word processing programs, too, not just Word or Word Perfect, and a nice selection of spreadsheets. All we have now is Excel. It’s good. We use it. But some of the fun is gone.

Back then Macs were mostly for schools and spiky people. Real computer lovers were totally PC. We swapped cards in and out of the machine. We were unafraid of opening the box. We tweaked our software and knew which cables went to which arcane interface. It was the closest I ever got to feeling like one of the jocks with whom I went to high school, the guys who slicked their hair back and knew their way around a transmission.

Yesterday it was announced that the paper edition of PC Magazine would cease publication, and that the product would now be totally online. I’m sure they’ll do fine. It’s probably the right business decision. But it made me sad. Not because the magazine itself has been important to me recently, because it hasn’t. I own Apples now. PCs bore me completely. I haven’t installed a new video card in years.

But the idea of never holding that big fat paper dream machine in my hand again is a little hard to fathom. What’s next? No more General Motors?

One of my very hostile but articulate readers, Mike from Spokane, gives me both barrels between the eyes this morning. I think Mike thinks I won’t publish it, because I’m a panty-waist business type swilling gin at breakfast. Here’s what he says:

Bing…with all due respect (as you recently stated to me), you have no idea what you’re frigging talking about. You, and corporate America, are so far removed from the realities of Main Street America, that you continue to confuse your personal financial comfort concerns with those of middle America.

I fully expect that you will delete all posts contrary to your limited and self-serving view, but at least you (or one of your corporate lackeys) will have to read statements that reflect what most of America regards as self-evident…that expanding and supporting corporate greed through taxpayer handouts for incompetence is no path out of the mess we’re in. Not much satisfaction from this end, but at least you, or one of your timorous syncophants, will know that your world has finally sunk below used car salesmen in terms of universal public esteem.

Finally, fearing being one step from flinging fries at the local ‘In&Out’ joint may play well while swilling $20 cocktails in some high-end Manhattan watering hole, but it is a daily reality for millions of Americans who invested billions in now collapsed 401K plans.

Mike, it’s always a pleasure to hear from you. But sometimes it’s hard to see things clearly with so much blood in your eye. I sent my corporate lackeys and timorous sycophants out of the room. This is between you and me.

First of all, this ”corporate America” that’s on a different plane that “Main Street America” is a myth. I have worked in theaters, as a cab driver, in small companies, large corporations and mega-watt global behemoths, and they are all the same. They are people working for a living. And in one and all, it’s the most dysfunctional that run the place. Whatever the gig, we work, we try to enjoy our jobs, and we go home. Guess where our homes are? Main Street.

Secondly, I come from Illinois. So I don’t want to hear a lot of pompous, self-aggrandizing bushwah about middle America, either. We all live here. We are all Americans. None of us are more American than any others. We are all equally American. Let’s move on.

I understand that you need to see people like me, because I sometimes wear a tie and work in an office, as rich, shallow mofos who deserve to be pilloried, in order to keep on feeling that righteous anger of yours. But in my opinion you’d do better to see all of us (except the very rich and unsuccessful putzes who whipped up this soggy mess) as citizens of the same troubled system. Everybody I know is very nervous about their jobs. Nobody I know has a pension. We worry about our stock price, and our families, and our friends, and what the hell is going to happen to us if the big companies that provide so many people with jobs aren’t helped out right now.

We don’t sympathize with the idiots who have gotten us all into such trouble. And we certainly don’t want THEM to benefit from any assistance that is given to these failing auto makers, banks, insurance companies, whatever. We just don’t want the entire ship to sink, taking the lives of all on board, because the captain and his crew are dolts, numbskulls and screw-ups, or because politicians, responding to the anger of their constituents, continue to follow instead of lead.

Take the miscreants out behind the barn! Line them up against the wall! Pepper them with heat-seeking projectiles! But when you’re done with that satisfying exercise, let’s try to save the American auto industry, the banks where we keep our money, and probably the mortgages of all those people who believed they could buy a home with no money down because a greedy guy in a suit told them they could.

Personally, at this point I’m not a big believer in the “free market” approach. It seems to benefit the guys in charge of the marketplace. And that’s not us. And by “us” I mean we, the people. And by the way: MY 401K blows, too.

Thanks for writing, Mike. Say hi to Spokane.

Good morning and welcome to another rollicking week in the world of free enterprise.

I have a question for you this morning. Yesterday I gassed up my car and found that, for the first time in a while, the tab came in at under $25. I have become accustomed to the habit of not looking at the price on the pump when I make my occasional visits, any more than I watch the Dow every day now. There no point in rubbing one’s nose in the gravity of our situation, don’t you think? At any rate, I looked at the pump and it said that the price of a gallon of gasoline was $2.21. 

Wow, I thought. That’s cheap.

And then I wondered. I mean, we’re so conditioned to the price of things spiraling ever-upward that eventually we become totally desensitized to the reality of things. Is $2.21 per gallon really cheap? I just paid $13.34 for some cereal, milk and a banana at Oakland International Airport. Was that cheap? The cab I will take to get from Kennedy Airport to Manhattan will cost me $60. Is THAT cheap? 

In the case of gasoline prices, it’s clear to me that the market is totally jobbed, and we are hosed. When the economy is flush, the “law of supply and demand” that governs “rational markets” hoists the price of gas to heights that are so ridiculous they don’t bear scrutiny. When the economy tanks, whoops, lookie here, the “law of supply and demand” suddenly drives the price of a barrel of oil downward for exactly as long as it will take for us to regenerate our situation. Somewhere, I am convinced, there’s a bunch of guys in a room somewhere (with a hard line to conference rooms around the world) playing canasta and toying with the price of a gallon of gas. 

At any rate, I have a question before I board: When the price of a gallon of oil was below $57 the last time, or hovering near that number, what were we paying for gas at that time. Was it in fact $2.21 or thereabouts? Or was it some other rational number? Like, was it way higher because they were squeezing us around Katrina at that time? Was it lower, because nobody realized at that point just how deeply we could be gouged and still keep our SUV’s? Is there somebody keeping score on this thing?

Word comes from an official at the Bank of America that the decompression that we’re in right now will end in the fourth quarter of 2009.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to wait that long.

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard the prediction, though. I was in a staff meeting last week and a financial type iterated the same supposition. I asked him whether, since he had a handle on the whole prognostication gambit, he could arrange for the turnaround to happen a bit earlier. He said no.

But my question remains. If a consensus of opinion is now building on the issue of resurgence timing, why shouldn’t some of us stake out a bullish position at this juncture. I’m positing that the voices now being heard are from the more conservative members of the sector, who are gently and tentatively sending out feelers, as groundhogs do on their given day, for signs of spring. Is it possible that some of the more bold among us, who have not been shy for the last ten years or so, motivate themselves to do what they do best?

On any given day, there are indeed signs of regeneration in the metrics supplied by the vast river of information extruded from the Internet. I’ll admit to you, today doesn’t look so hot. All the more reason for those who make predictions for a living to step up to the bar and take some control of the situation.

Let me be the first to put my toe in the water. The current systemic breakdown of international corporate capitalism and its associated markets in credit, debt and consumer goods will begin showing signs of improvement by the first quarter of 2009. By early summer, with oil prices quite low, vast segments of the economy will be kick-started into moderate growth. The worst of the mortgage meltdown will be past by that time, and consumer confidence will be beginning to grow. Europe now in free fall, the dollar will be stronger against the Euro and the credit markets will start humming into action again. By early third quarter ‘09, signs of Greed will once again appear on Wall Street, with the expected, simultaneous reduction in Fear.

Once Fear is replaced by Greed, as you know, we are truly back in business. The tipping point of that metric will occur on July 23rd, 2009. It will be all uphill from there.

Sounds as good as any other prediction you’ve read lately, right? Let’s get behind it!

Just a note to say so long for a couple of days. I’m taking off for Rome this afternoon to speak at a large conference of project managers.  It’s a bit weird, I know. But a few years ago, I wrote a book called Rome, Inc.: The Rise and Fall of the First Multinational Corporation. A very nice gentleman in Rome who is associated with the conference thought it might be an interesting spin for the assembled multitudes now gathering, and asked me if I would like to come and speak. How many times does one have the opportunity to do this kind of thing? I’ll tell you. Not many. So here I go.

The thesis of the book is that Rome was the first corporate entity in history. It began as a mom-and-pop enterprise. Two brothers ran it. They hated each other and one eventually killed the other. Sounds like the garment business, doesn’t it? After that, the new company engaged in an aggressive push for expansion, both through friendly and unfriendly acquisitions, eventually rising to the position of #1 in its chosen marketplace. At that point, it devolved into a CEO-centric organization ill-suited to manage its ill-considered expansion into new venues, and was eventually brought down by its own size and incompetence, and by a group of hostile start-ups that ate its lunch.

There are many lessons that may be learned from Rome by those of us who work for similar organizations, as well as by the larger eco-system of which we are all an increasingly nervous part. The similarities between that corporate organization and ours are interesting, if not disquieting.

But frankly, I’ve had enough disquiet for a while. I think I’ll have some pasta instead. The good news is that due to the incipient collapse of our own global empire, the value of the dollar seems to be a bit better against the euro than it has been for quite some time. So I’ll only have to put two coins in the fountain when I make a wish.

Ciao for now.

A few of today’s headlines:

• Mortgage applications are up 17%.
• New home sales are up 2.7%.
• Existing home sales jumped.
• Americans are saving more.
• Durable goods orders are up.
• A $50 billion bailout for distressed home buyers is near.
• Oil prices are under $70 per barrel, at least for now.
• Amy Winehouse is the hottest Halloween costume.
• Last night I went to a very expensive restaurant downtown and it was so full you couldn’t get a space at the bar.
• I still can’t afford a two-bedroom apartment.
• The dollar is up against the Euro.
• It’s not raining today.

I’m not saying that everything is hunky dory. Nor am I implying that any peachy keenness is at hand. But it’s hard to see the upside of looking only at the bleakest scenarios, even if that is the way to become a popular quote monkey in this environment. It’s possible, if you choose to do so, to look beyond the trees that are burning and see the big, green forest still standing, if that’s the way you want to roll.

I know. It’s counter-intuitive. Stupid, even. But as a working stance, it’s just as credible as any other. In an environment where nobody knows what’s up, down or sideways, where positions are increasingly arbitrary, the act of choosing one’s point of view becomes a statement in itself.  What’s yours?

Just a little note after reading some of the news during the weekend. I’ve made a decision in regards to this election. I haven’t announced my endorsement yet, of course. But I do know one thing very clearly. 

I don’t care about Joe. 

Now, this is not to say I don’t care about ALL Joes. I still like Joe Moscowitz, who runs our Purchasing function. I’m okay about Joe Biden, too. Nothing wrong there, as far as I’m concerned. Good luck to him. And I don’t mind a cup of Joe now and then. But these generic Joes who are assuming such a high profile in the media at this point are really getting on my nerves. 

This goes for Joe Sixpack, first of all. It’s unclear to me whether Joe Sixpack got that name because he always HAS a sixpack that he’s willing to share with friends, which is sort of okay, or that he has recently drunk an entire sixpack or is about to, in which case I’m not quite sure. Either way, I don’t care about his opinions, other than which brand of brewsky he’s hauling around. My policy on this issue has always been rock solid: while some sixpacks appeal to me more than others, I’ll drink anything as long as it’s cold. I guess if Joe Sixpack has a view on this issue, I’ll listen to it. But on subjects like the economy or the War in Iraq, I’m less interested. In fact, I’m not. 

More recently, we’ve had a lot about Joe the Plumber. I thought for a while that this was some person named Joe Plummer, and I’m still sort of unclear about it. If my name was either Joe Plumber or Joe Plummer, I’d be annoyed at this point about all the jokes that were being told at my expense. The fact that the actual Joe the Plumber is bemused and confused by all the attention doesn’t mitigate the profound lack of interest I have in him, those who are covering him, and those who continue to observe him as if he’s some sort of scientific subject worthy of scrutiny. He’s not. I mean, maybe he was for about six minutes, but those minutes are over and if I never see another YouTube video on the guy it will be too soon. 

What’s next? Joe Mama? 

All this Joe stuff is preternaturally weird, as far as I’m concerned. It’s like, we’re on the Titanic, and there’s a huge iceberg in the mist up ahead, and all the guys in the radio room want to do is listen to Jazz on the shortwave from Luxembourg. Why don’t we all pay attention to the boat for a while?