Occupy My Mind

Gotta join the rest of the blogosphere and opine on the Occupy Wall Street et. al. movement.

Take a bunch of unemployed people, mix in a frustrated electorate, and add a dash of disaffected youth, and you've got the ingredients of the Occupy movement.  I get it, but I don't get it.  Blaming financial institutions for not regulating their actions to a greater extent than the goverment allows, in a capitalistic society, is frankly not a legitimate expectation.  People could have said no to the easy credit that banks offered years ago, but many chose to say yes.  Whose fault is that?

But there are two other things I want to point out.  The first is, as radical movements go, this hardly qualifies as one.  Here's an excerpt from an on-line article written by John Carney of cnbc.com:

"The [Occupy Wall Street] population changes from day to day, and week to week.  Many more people visit during the day, and leave once the park settles down at night.  Some residents are hardcore political activists.  Others are college students.  Some are people who have found themselves in dire economic strits.  The camp has many has many of the features of a village, or even a household.  Various people in the park perform chores—such as cooking, cleaning, and ensuring that disputes are peacefully resolved.  There is what appears to be the inner circle of Occupy Wall Street.  Several people, many working on laptops powered by a portable generator, sit in an area closed off by tables.  Most people—including protesters—are kept out by beefy people whose blue arm bands mark them as members of the security group.  Exactly what this secretive group is doing is not clear.  And so, ironically, there’s a no trespassing policy enforced at Occupy Wall Street."

Sounds like a weak commune to me.  The radical protestesters of the 60s and 70s would laugh at this attempt to affect change.

Which brings me to my other point:  How is it that the some of the same people want to vilify this movement, said not a word about the efforts of organized groups (Tea Party-ers?) to shout down legislators at town hall meetings in the summer of 2009 to complain about Obamacare?  Isn't this the same deal - complaining about government?  The only difference is, that group complained about too much government (of health care), and this group is complaining about not enough government (of the financial industry).

Americans have such short-term attention spans and conviction that I believe we'll soon see the Occupy movement die out.  Unlike the oppressed people of the Arab Spring, not having a job doesn't mean soft Americans will stay outside for the winter.  Still, it's kind of fund to watch, and you never know, social media could manage to keep this thing going for a while.

Best Song Lyrics (Part VIII)

Before I was 10 years old, in the late 60s and early 70s, I heard a lot of music that my older siblings listened to, presumably the best pop/rock there was to offer at the time.  I recall one summer in the early 70s, all they wanted to listen to was Bad, Bad, LeRoy Brown by Jim Croce.

Lyrics meant nothing to me at the time, but it had a good beat and it was fun to sing along to, so I figured this was a cool guy.  It wasn't until I was much older that I figured out what a great library of music he had.  For someone who died in a plane crash at age 30, you might even say it was prolific; he released 6 albums and 11 singles in that time.

And as is the case with the other musicians I mention in this blog, the songs he performed had meaning, or at least told a story.  I recall listening to a greatest hits CD of his (Photographs and Memories) while traveling with my own family, and even the kids singing along to the refrain from You Don't Mess Around With Jim:

You don't tug on Superman's cape
You don't spit into the wind
You don't pull the mask of that old Lone Ranger
And you don't mess around with Jim

Here are some of the lyrics from one of his all-time greats, I Got A Name, about finding your way on life's journey while staying true to yourself:

Like the pine trees lining the winding road
I've got a name, I've got a name
Like the singing bird and the croaking toad
I've got a name, I've got a name
And I carry it with me like my daddy did
But I'm living the dream, that he kept hid
Movin' me down the highway
Rollin' me down the highway
Movin' ahead so life won't pass me by

Like the north wind whistlin' down the sky
I've got a song, I've got a song
Like the whippoorwill and the baby's cry
I've got a song, I've got a song
And I carry it with me and I sing it loud
If it gets me nowhere, I'll go there proud
Movin' me down the highway
Rollin' me down the highway
Movin' ahead so life won't pass me by

And I'm gonna go there free.....
Like the fool I am and I'll always be
I've got a dream, I've got a dream
They can change their minds but they can't change me
I've got a dream, I've got a dream
Oh, I know I could share it if you want me to
If your going my way, I'll go with you
Movin' me down the highway
Rollin' me down the highway
Movin' ahead so life won't pass me by

The Social Media Trifecta

After months, even years, of avoidance and threats, last week I joined the world of Facebook.  I consider this to be the third leg of the social media trifecta:  Blog, Twitter, and Facebook.  (Yes, I'm on LinkedIn as well, but there's no practical social element to that, that's all business.)

On balance, this is a good thing.  Facebook has become a primary means of communication for a lot of people, so if you want to deliver a message, you'd better include that in your communication toolbox.

Unfortunately, social media complicates your life before it simpifies it.  For one, there's going to be a learning curve.  For two, I need to figure out the most efficient and effective use for it, both personally and professionally.  For three, I need to decide whom I want to see it, and whom I don't, if anyone.

Near term, one thing I'll use it for is to point people to this blog.  I got as many Facebook friends in one day as I have Twitter follows.  Goes to show you, adults are using Facebook, but not Twitter.  (I've thought for a long time that that's kind of strange, since Twitter is so much easier to use.)

Would you like to be my Facebook friend?

Seeing Patterns Where None Exist

Although some very bright people may try to convince you otherwise, the investment marketplace follows no predictable patterns. If it did, the so-called experts would tell you exactly what and when to buy and sell, and you’d never have to worry about money again.

To better illustrate the difficulty of predicting market moves, let’s take a closer look at typical investor logic, using the parallels between gamblers and investors who try to time the market. Like many investors, gamblers tend to rely on hunches and perceived patterns to determine their next move.

For example, a person flipping a coin who gets ‘heads’ five times in a row might believe there is an increased probability that the coin would land on ‘tails’ with the next toss. Others may think that ‘heads’ is on a hot streak and believe it is more likely for that to continue. But in fact, the odds of the next toss being ‘heads’ or ‘tails’ is 50/50 – no different than for any coin flip.

Investors tend to take similar approaches to the stock market. Rather than setting a strategy, they are often gambling on a certain streak, typically one they believe is going to continue. For example, in the early 1990s, investors bought billions of dollars in vastly overpriced dot-com stocks, simply betting those stocks would continue to move dramatically higher. Ultimately, that market crashed and investors holding those stocks were saddled with significant losses.

More recently, the real estate market seemed to be on an endless upward cycle; people bought property, and counted on the value endlessly climbing. But in the past few years, that myth was exposed, and the real estate market tumbled along with economy as a whole.

The lesson here for investors is to realize that we have a human tendency is to see patterns where none exist, and to ignore those perceived investing patterns. With this awareness, one can increase the probability of investing success by avoiding the guesswork of active management, and establishing a very low-cost and diversified portfolio that can perform well in many different types of markets.

Squawkeye Nation

Growing up in NW Iowa, I was a football fan of both of Iowa's large universities, Iowa State University and the University of Iowa.  In the 70s they both pretty much sucked at it, although ISU was slightly better.  Since the 80s, however, Iowa has become a nationally successful program while ISU has languished.

Maybe it's because I moved closer to Ames, or maybe it's my contrarian side, but during this time I found myself becoming a bit more of an ISU fan.  I'm still glad for Iowa's football success and all of the attention it has brought to the state, but that success has brought with it a fan base that is not always appealing.

Iowa football fans weren't always like this.  Fans sportingly appreciated the success they had in the 80s, after being dismal for so long.  Unfortunately, over the years that appreciation has largely become an overconfidence, even an arrogance, that their football team is better than they are.

This overconfidence manifests itself every year during the ISU-Iowa football game.  Iowa dominated this series until about 10 years ago, and since then the teams have generally traded victories.  But you wouldn't know that from listening to most Iowa fans.

Case in point was this year's game, which I attended and which ISU won in 3 overtimes.  Iowa fans were absolutely shocked at losing - it never crossed the minds of many of their faithful that losing was even a remote possibility.  Worse still was not accepting that they were outplayed in the game.  (One major exception to this was Head Coach Kirk Ferentz, a class act who said right after the game that ISU deserved to win.)

This Iowa football fan reaction is one I've see far too often with their football fans over the past 2 decades.  They're like the bully who gets beat up and goes home crying, and it has made it easy to decide whom I'll root for when the Hawkeyes play the Cyclones.

C'mon now, Iowa football fans.  Win with grace, but lose with dignity.

9/11/2001

I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing ten years ago on 9/11/2001.

I was sitting in a Boston hotel room waiting to leave for the second day of a conference I was attending.  I was watching the Today show on NBC (live on the east coast) when I saw the report of a plane hitting a World Trade Center tower.  Obviously something bad had happened, but it sounded at the time like it might be a small single engine plane, and who knew maybe the pilot had a heart attack or something.

After a while I turned over to watch CNBC.  They were also showing the smoke coming from the first tower when you saw the explosion in the second tower, and shortly after that, the replay that made it clear it was intentional, an attack was happening.  I forgot about the conference, and stayed in the room to watch.  The frantic reports were rolling in about the Pentagon, then other planes perhaps going down.  I even recall a report about a fire on the National Mall that turned out not to be true.

The rest of the day was just weird, mostly spent trying to figure out what happened, and how I was going to get back to Iowa.  Since I was stranded in a highrise hotel in a major city from which most employees had been sent home, I doubted if I'd even be able to find something to eat. In the end, the hotel had food, and let me stay for as long as I needed.  The conference had been abandoned, but it still took me two days, until Thursday morning, to find a one-way rental car and make the 20+ hour drive home.

One of the things I remember most about that day was the local news coverage that evening.  One of the hijacked planes used in the attacks had taken off from Boston's Logan Airport, where I'd been just a couple of days before.  A lot of local New England people had been on that plane, so it was very sad there, a much smaller version of New York City.  It certainly made what happened seem more personal, and less like an international story.

Tolerating Intolerance

In the past week, I've had a front row seat to witness what I consider to be two separate acts of religious intolerance.  It isn't the religious intolerance one might think of though.  Someone isn't putting down a religion - a religion is putting someone down.

Incident 1 - a pastor at a conservative church is requiring all employees to sign a document to agree to abide by a certain Christian lifestyles.  In other words, he is telling some existing (and all potential) employees they are no longer good enough to work there simply based on how they live their life away from work.  This type of discrimination may be quite legal for a religious organization, but it's also quite intolerant, not to mention unenforcable.

Incident 2 - a Catholic diocesan pastor vetoed a distinguished alumni award that a school was going to give to a well-regarded community volunteer.  The reason - for a short time some years ago, she was on the board of Planned Parenthood.  In other words, he is telling her (and everyone else) that all good deeds are usurped by helping an organization he and the church oppose.  Again, this type of discrimination may be quite acceptable for a religious organization, but it's also quite intolerant, not to mention stupid.

What do these incidents have in common?  That religious 'leaders' preach tolerance, but act differently.  They actually only tolerate those who agree with them.  In both cases, this is not the first time the pastor in question has said or done controversial things that are far more politically based than faith-based.  They are, in a word, hypocrites.

It sounds ironic, but I actually think the world would be a better place if people followed certain so-called Christian principles - if those principles are broadly defined.  Things like loving your neighbor as yourself, doing unto others as they have done to you, and showing compassion to those less fortunate.  What these pastors are doing, however, doesn't jibe with any of those.  They demand that people rigidly adhere to their specific, often politically-motivated agendas.  (By the way, Christianity doesn't own those broadly based principles.)

Basically, their religion screws up their faith.  It makes them tolerate intolerance.  It makes atheists look good.