25 Random Things - the Facebook Fad

So, this thing has been floating around Facebook for a while. I figured I'd post it here, too.


1.) Despite my feelings earlier in life, I want a lot of kids. I went from wanting MAYBE one to wanting four. I figure if you're gonna do the family thing, you might as well go all in.

2.) I am a huge nerd to this day. I love GOOD science fiction (not crap like "Creature From the Black Lagoon"), and want to write it.

3.) I am a political junkie. I listen to NPR and read HuffPo and other political websites religiously.

4.) My greatest regret in life is not continuing to play music. I miss the sax!

5.) I have few regrets. This is not to say I have made few mistakes; God knows that's not true! BUT, I recognize how those mistakes have helped make me who I am; so, I don't regret them.

6.) My guilty pleasure: crappy reality TV. I'm pretty sure I've lost a few IQ points watching "Real Chance" and the like.

7.) My wife, Lexi, is the greatest blessing I have ever received.

8.) With any luck, I will eventually finish my Doctorate in Human Resource Development. My Doc is almost totally unrelated to either my Master's (Higher Ed Admin.) or my Bachelor's (History). I will be in school approximately... forever.

9.) My father was the greatest person I have ever known.

10.) I admire my wife's family. It doesn't get much better than drunken Rock Band and Scene It!

11.) Chocolate is the key to my good graces.

12.) When I left for college I was convinced that I would either be a professional jazz musician or a psychiatrist. Those delusions lasted most of my freshman year.

13.) Like my wife, I'm terrible at staying in touch. It is a grave character flaw we share. The ironic part is, we love our friends and families deeply.

14.) I am terrible at running for long distances, but (when I'm in shape) I run a mean sprint!

15.) My favorite sports moment of all time: Game 5 of the 1997 NBA finals, Bulls vs. Jazz. Michael Jordan played a huge game despite suffering from a nasty flu. Most memorably, he grabbed a rebound from HIS OWN missed free throw and nailed a 3-point shot to seal the game.

16.) I love Boston. I lived there for a while after graduating from undergrad. It was the coolest place ever.

17.) Public transportation is good. I would gladly give up one of our cars and live in a city with decent public transit.

18.) My biggest pet peeve is greed, in all of its forms. Life is too short to be greedy.

19.) I do not read enough anymore. My New Year's Resolution is to spend more time reading and less time watching TV.

20.) Viva Las Vegas.

21.) I have spent significant amounts of time learning four languages. I remember very little of any of them.

22.) I am proud to have voted twice for Barack Obama.

23.) I think people need to take "the Golden Rule" to heart. If people treated each other with more respect, the world would be a far better place.

24.) My dream car is the Mercedes-Benz SLK200. When I own that car, I'll know I've "made it." If only we can make it run on batteries AND keep the HP up...

25.) I am one lucky S.O.B.

Happy Birthday, Dad

Those who know me know that 2008 was a very difficult year for my family. There were a lot of things that didn't go as planned. Chief among these was the death of my father.

Dad was the very model of a gentleman scholar. He loved nothing more than astronomy or reading, and especially reading about astronomy. Nothing, that is, except his family. He was not a vocal person, in almost any arena of life; nonetheless, we all knew that he loved us deeply.

Dad would have been 67 yesterday. He was taken from us far too soon. He had so much left to give the world, and his family.

I miss him terribly. At the same time, I am indescribably appreciative of the brief time I had to share with him. A better man, this world has never known.

O.K.

Just a little bit of history trivia for the day:

The other night, my wife and I were about to fall asleep. Out of the blue, she asked "What is the origin of O.K.?"

I haven't been able to figure it out, until yesterday.

According to Allen Walker Read, the quintessential American etymologist (not to be confused with entomologist), O.K. finds its origins in a fad of "humorously incorrect spelling" from the 1830s and 1840s. Many newspapers and other repositories of writing used the phrase "oll korrect" in place of "all correct" - quickly shortened to "O.K."

O.K. gained even more widespread usage in 1840 when Martin "Old Kinderhook" Van Buren formed the "OK Club" during his presidential campaign.

So there you go. Bust it out at parties, amaze and astound your friends! Or just keep it to yourself and hope someone asks you.

Private Debt

Federal Reserve Board numbers on consumer credit debt:

**Though it is not explicit, I believe these figures are contemporaneous; i.e., the 1992 figures are in 1992 dollars.

1992 - $0.81 Trillion
2000 - $1.72 Trillion
2008 - $2.57 Trillion

These totals include credit cards, auto loans, and other non-mortgage private debt. I'm still hunting down mortgage debt numbers.

U.S. Debt

Just a little more on debt, as promised.

**All figures in A.D. 2000 dollars.


Our public debt, courtesy of the U.S. Treasury:

Jan. 22, 1993 - $5.14 TRILLION (4.18 TRILLION in 1993 dollars)
Jan. 22, 2001 - $5.73 TRILLION
Jan. 21, 2009 - $8.71 TRILLION (10.63 TRILLION in 2008 dollars)

Our Gross National Product, courtesy of the Bureau for Economic Analysis:

1992 - $7.34 TRILLION
2000 - $9.89 TRILLION (34% growth since 1992)
2008 - $11.70 TRILLION (18% growth since 2000)

Please note: the figures from Quarter IV of 2008 are not yet in. I arrived at a total for 2008 by averaging the first three quarters and adding that "average quarter" to the total. It is very likely that the resulting GDP figure for 2008 is too high, since Q IV is widely expected to show a sharp decline.

Public Debt as a percentage of GDP:

1993 - 70.0%
2001 - 57.9%
2009 - 74.4%

... And this only covers public debt. I shudder to think about what private debt numbers are going to look like.

Credit and Economics

Full disclosure: I am not an economist.

I do dabble in economic theory, but I am not trained as an economist. Despite this lack of training (or perhaps because of it), I have noticed something about our current economic crisis that no one seems to be discussing.

We've got too much debt.

Both as a nation and as families, we carry far too much debt. Over the last half-century, our access to and use of debt has accounted for far more growth in our Gross Domestic Product than actual wealth.* Put bluntly and simply, Americans have collectively been buying everything on credit cards for decades, while our actual wealth has barely kept up with inflation.

Nowhere was this more evident than in the housing market. Housing costs soared throughout the last twenty years, as finance gurus found more and more ways to expand the public's access to credit. While I am an advocate for people owning their own homes, things eventually got to a point known clinically as "silly."

When people with practically no income and no savings can buy a $200,000 home at 0% down, things are not going to go well. The traditional down payment of 20% did two incredibly important things:

1. It ensured that people buying homes had a significant stake in making the mortgage payment. If they failed to do so, after all, they would lose the thousands of dollars they had invested in their homes.

2. It kept housing prices grounded. Simple math: if a house costs $200,000, you need $40,000 to get started with it. If you don't have $40,000, you don't buy the house. If no one has $40,000, the price of the house falls until someone can afford the down payment.

Our current method of buying not only houses but practically everything on easy credit makes our economy into little more than a speculative crap shoot. Nothing is actually worth the price asked. No one is sure what actual values are, because easy credit has bent the whole system out of whack.

This is why I fundamentally disagree with the "bailout." I understand that trillions of dollars are tied up in the financial markets, and that losses will be devastating; but it will be worse if we prolong this correction. The markets are broken. The government should let them fail, and work to pick up the pieces.

Let the markets become grounded in actual wealth again.

I promise, it will work out far better in the long run than propping up a broken system.

More to come, as I pull more hard figures about debt and consumption.


*By actual wealth, I mean real income from employment or profit from business.

The Very Long Night of Mr. Obama

By now, the lives of our new president and his family have undoubtedly begun to resemble an all-out war. After three full days of leading the free world, dealing not only with current crises but also cleaning up past messes, President Obama is certainly getting "the full monty."

Please join me in sparing a few moments to wish President Obama, his saint of a wife and precious daughters the very best as they cope with these tectonic shifts in their lives.