The Problems with Fast Bailouts

I'm not a fan of bailouts, but I'm really not a fan of rushed bailouts. I've never been a real fan of Newt Gingrich, but his article Before D.C. Gets Our Money, It Owes Us Some Answers is spot on. The legislative branch should slow its roll.

A ton of people are writing about this, so I'll keep this short.

• The US Government's Legislative branch is supposed to be a deliberative body. Fast action is not their forte. I'm afraid of any solution they come up with in 7 days.
• This turn towards socialism is disturbing.
• As I've said before, I think that the free market system depends on bad ideas being punished. When the government steps in, many people will not feel the sting as badly as they should.

For some good reading on this topic, check out:
George Will: here and here
Dana Milbank: here and here
William Kristol: here

Problems with Free Market Compensation

WSJ's article Big Pay for Big Bosses Under Fire describes some of the current issues around executive compensation, but it leaves out numbers. Here is a short list of the 2007 compensation totals for the CEOs of some major companies that have been in major distress recently.

Lehman Brothers: $22 Million
Fannie Mae: $12 Million
Freddie Mac: $19.8 Million
Bear Stearns: 28.4 Million in 2006
AIG: $13.9 Million

The head guy from AIG has done something remarkable: He is refusing an eight-figure payout he was guaranteed in his contract.

Check out the New York Times article The Bottom Line for Those at the Top for a nice interactive graphic that allows you to contrast how companies have performed with their CEOs' compensation.

My general problem with executive pay is that it is determined by executive boards that are far from impartial. When Gruto's Ice Cream shop thrives, it's because thousands of people in the greater Percellville Metro Area decide with their money that Gruto provides good value. When Wegman's thrives, it's because thousands of people decide that they provide good value and services for groceries. When a corporate CEO makes $15 Million in a year, it's because a group of a dozen or so people have decided that they can spend a ton of stockholders' money for a CEO.

It's the same with professional athletes in team sports. Having an athlete make tens of millions of dollars a year is crazy, but I don't have a big problem with it until I see someone make that money without performing. If a player makes most of his money in incentives, then I feel much better about it. When a player makes crazy money and is a complete flop, something is wrong with the world. I feel the same way when a CEO makes crazy money while the company goes down the tubes.

Anyway, John McCain has said that any company getting a bailout from the feds should pay their CEO the same salary we pay the President of the US. As long as the CEO gets a free mansion to live in that is walkable to his office as well as free food and travel, I'm fine with something like this. More reasonably, I'd say that a limit of two or three times the President's salary seems reasonable.

Music Monday: Girl Kid's Favorite Music

Neither Mrs. Kid nor I are musicians (though Mrs. Kid used to play the french horn) or artistic in any other way. If we want to pass on any artistic anything to our kids, we have to start with helping them appreciate art. All I know is music, so that's what I can help them with.

Here are some of Girl Kid's favorites. The common theme is that they all have choruses that are easy to understand and are fun to sing along with.

Elton John: Bennie and the Jets


Sierra Leone's Refugee All-Stars: Living Like a Refugee
You have not lived until you have heard a 3 1/2 year-old girl singing "Living like a refugee...It's not easy"


Jack Johnson: Staple It Together


I'm not naive enough to think I can avoid Girl Kid becoming infected by teeny-bopper music, but for now her taste in music is bearable.

Web Stuff Friday: ARRRRGGGHH

Today is Talk Like a Pirate Day. This is a great day to:

• read some pirate jokes
• take a pirate personality test
• take a quiz to figure out your pirate name
  

Shiver me timbers!

A Church's Enlightened View Toward Darwin

The Church of England has issued an apology to Charles Darwin. Good Religion Needs Good Science is a nice essay about the relationship between two of the strongest forces in human society.

The apology is pretty unambiguous:

Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still.

But Rev. Dr. Malcolm Brown makes several other good points in the essay such as describing ways in which Darwin's ideas have been misapplied in the past. Kudos to the Anglicans for confronting this issue so directly.

Nine or Ten Months?

I have been writing about the Presidential race for a while now, so how about if we mix it up a bit?

When I was at a party this weekend, I ended up in a disagreement with a pregnant woman. It is an old argument I have had with several women over the years: Is a woman who gives birth to a baby on her due date pregnant for nine months or ten?

The general rule is that gestation lasts for 40 weeks. Women who think gestation lasts for ten months are assuming that the average month has four weeks. This is fine if you are using a lunar calendar, but the calendar on my wall is Gregorian. The average Gregorian month has about 30.5 days, which is about 4 1/3 weeks. If you count 9 of these months, you get 39 weeks. That means that 40 weeks is nine months and one week.

But wait! The clock starts ticking for the 40 weeks on the first day of a woman's lunar cycle (if you get my drift.) This means that for several days of the time counted in the duration of the pregnancy, it is quite impossible for the woman to be pregnant. Ovulation doesn't generally happen until at least day 10, so we have really lost that extra week and some change.

Here is Babies Online's response to this question.

Let me be completely clear: However long it lasts, pregnancy is not for the weaker gender (that's us guys.) If men had to go through it, our species would have died out eons ago. Pregnancy and the first months following pregnancy are way too tough for any guy to handle it. I just don't buy the argument that pregnancy lasts 10 calendar months. It's 9 months that no man could ever relate to.

Sorry to go all biology-geek on you, but I wanted to get that off my chest. Now that I have, I no longer need to argue with a pregnant woman about this. I can pass the URL for this post to her significant other and leave it at that.

No More Maim and Release

OK, so maybe the Swiss have gone a bit far, but I like some of their ideas. All Swiss animals are equal - but some more so than others describes a new Swiss law that describes how wild and domestic animals are to be treated. I am not a fan of legislating morality, but I like the idea of getting some of these concepts out there in the public discourse.

I have never been comfortable with catch and release fishing (which I call maim and release.) It's hard for me to believe that getting a hook through their cheek and getting pulled out of the water is fun or healthy for them. Hunting and fishing for sustenance are both totally cool by me. Anyone who eats what he kills is OK by me (as long as it was an honorable, legal kill that inflicted as little stress as reasonable), but killing or wounding for fun or a trophy seems sick.

The folks at PETA might go a bit far at times, but they make some points that make sense. We are higher up on the food chain, but that means we should be more civilized in the way we treat other animals.