Are We Selling Ipads or Infinitis?

Hard to tell.  The Infiniti (it's a Japanese SUV) ad shows a guy using voice recognition to speak with the car's computer.  He has forgotten his anniversary and the computer makes amends by  making reservations for two at a fancy restaurant.  While on the move.  Pretty slick.  I'm not sure if an Ipad is that clever, surely my XP running desktop ain't that smart.
   But, we are selling a car in this ad, not super smart smart phones.  If that kind of electronic smarts is commercially available, I don't want it built into my car.  I want it in a portable, fit under the arm package, that I carry into work.  I don't want to leave that clever an electronic assistant out of doors in an unheated company parking space.  I want it with me. 
    And, the Infiniti ad didn't talk about engine displacement, brakes, handling, cargo capacity, fuel economy, fitting skis or bikes or plywood onto the roof,  rear seat amusements for kids, you know, real car stuff.  Does any one still sell cars? 

Farewell to American honor

A Chinese dissident, let's call him Shades,  breaks free of house arrest, makes it to the US embassy for protection.  Pusillanimous US diplomats turn the poor slob back over to the Chinese.   That's probably a death sentence for him and his family.   We need to rewrite our national anthem.  Strike out that line about the home of the brave. 

Motor Tricycle

The Can Am Spyder Roadster.  It's getting heavy ad play on Fox.  It's not a product that I would touch with a ten foot pole.  When I get the urge to sample the breeze on the road, I want a real motorcycle.  On a cycle you can lean into the turns, and with good rubber on a dry road, you can out turn anything else on wheels.  No way are those tricycles going the lean into a turn, corner one too hard and it rolls over.  Which is hard on the head even wearing helmets.   Despite the heavy ad play, I have yet to see one on the road around here.

$2K is cheap for health insurance

The TV newsies have finally caught on.  Under Obamacare, a company is better off paying the $2000 per worker penalty to Uncle rather than paying $12000  to buy that same worker a family health care policy.   This has been obvious to everyone but newsies since they passed Obamacare 2 years ago.   Companies would be able to offer the workers $10000 extra in pay, give Uncle $2000 and come out even.  Workers could arrange to put the extra money into a tax free Health Savings Account and use it to pay for private health care
   I heard one TV newsie speculating that companies would keep offering health care in order to retain valuable employees.  Right.  With 8 to 10 percent unemployment, any company can fill any amount of openings in a couple of days. 

Blowing and raining pretty hard

We have a storm moving thru the Notch.  Lot of rain, and the wind is really howling around the house.

WSJ Op-Ed gets it right

"How Big Banks Threaten our Economy" title of an op-ed by Warren A. Stephans in the Monday WSJ.   Stephans says that a mere FIVE banks hold half of all the bank deposits in the entire country.  Wow.  Should one of those babies fail, an humungous amount of tax payer money would be required to make the depositors whole again.
   There is no reason to have banks that big.  Big banks get into trouble and go broke just as often as ordinary sized banks.  In fact, big banks are more bureaucratic, move slower and are more apt to have empty suits running them.  Smaller banks are leaner, faster, and more careful.  Problem is, when a really big bank goes down, a lot more people get hurt.
   And when you get to something as big as AIG, it's just too big to manage.  AIG was put together by a very capable banker named Hank Greenberg.  Hank was a financial genius and managed to keep AIG running pretty much single handed.  AIG did well until New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer targeted Greenberg in 2005.  Spitzer made a lot of wild accusations in the press, finally filed some charges, which he later dropped.  But Spitzer  panicked the board of AIG into firing Greenberg.  After Greenberg left, AIG spiraled down into catastrophe.  Just before the end, AIG was playing the credit default swap market (pure gambling) hoping for a big win to bail them out.

Newsies love the Veepstakes

Endless TV time talking about who will be Romney's VP.   It's a simple topic, easily understood by journalism school grads.  It doesn't mean much, this election is a showdown on Obama and Obamacare, doesn't much matter who Romney picks for VP.  Romney won't say anything until the right time, because there is no gain in announcing his pick early.  This story doesn't need any research, all you have to do is get one or more talking heads on camera to pontificate. 
   But the newsies think people will watch stories on the Veepstakes, the stories are easy and cheap to do, and so we get a lot of them.