In Which we Empty the In-Basket... The Greenshoe Option (and five other quick takes)

(SASKATCHEWAN) - And even madmen manage to convey Unwelcome truths in lonely gibberish.- W. H. Auden

The Greenshoe Option

In the corp finance business, there's a practice common among investment bankers who underwrite initial public offerings (IPOs) of securities, whereby they buy from the issuing company the tranche of bonds or stock and re-offer them to the public, but at the same time retain the option – if the issue is successful – of claiming an additional 15% of the offered security, which they distribute in the after market at an additional profit for their efforts.

Simply stated, as a principle to be used in quotidien life, the Greenshoe Option merely means that when you're on a roll, you go for an extra 15%. On the other hand, if you're not on a successful course, that is if the lemons are not producing the required highball – as they say in Flatbush - forgetaboutit.

Swingin' For The Fence

When I was an undergraduate at UBC, I remember the campus radical, a guy called Stan Persky, one day announced that he was going to run for Chancellor of the University. When they said to him: “Stan, don't be an idiot. The Chancellor isn't an elected office. He's appointed where it will do the most good, in terms of wealthy endowments to the university – usually some distinguished citizen, a corporation president or even a leading church official.”

Thought For Today

After years of toil and loss, I’ve changed, and I realize now that we are the means of our own justice, and that documenting a crime is often just a way to avoid doing anything to actually stop it. So even if the Truth and Reconciliation Commission fiasco was run by survivors themselves and had the power to try and jail the church leaders fiducially responsible for all those native residential school deaths, even then, the essential act would be missing.

For it is time to undo what bred the thing we call European Genocide, and which continues to rip up and poison our land, and rape and traffic children without fear of any penalty or even censure.

We can start by ignoring the expensive distractions staged by the government to make us think that the crimes will be uncovered and stopped by them. Only we can do that, for the simple reason that for every honest cop there are two or three who deal drugs, clobber the homeless, rape women, and protect those who do. And behind every “honest priest” (both moron and oxymoron) there stands a Vatican policy, enshrined in their self-governing “canon law,” which commands every catholic clergyman and bishop to conceal child rape in the church, and silence the victim – a policy mirrored (however amateurishly) in every major Protestant church, as well.

Stopping That Nasty Medicare

I recently received a letter from Pat Boone, that aging songsmith, who even at his peak enjoyed a narrow following. Apparently, his agent has been so unsuccessful lately that the best gig for ol' Pat that he can come up with, apart from Geico ads, is crooning Republican lyrics. This letter warns me to beware of Obama and Senator Bill Nelson (because of my Florida locus). They, the Democrats, are apparently conspiring against me, having jammed through legislation that will clobber my faltering geriatric footsteps, create a huge deficit, imperil my health and lead future generations to flee to Canada or Belgium at the first sign of a cold.

I appreciate Pat Boone's concern, along with that of the Repugs, but my observations are twofold: (1) the Democrats have been ceaselessly bragging about this pitiful piece of legislation, which somehow has survived it's trashing and dilution in congressional committee by the Republicans (on instruction from the insurance lobby), and which triumphantly moves us from #47 worldwide in the healthcare field to perhaps #46, while continuing to be #1 in terms of being most expensive. Meanwhile (2) the Republicans are trying their best to move us back to #48.

It hasn't apparently occurred to any of them – at least nobody has mentioned it - that a viable health care system does not require the existence of insurance companies creaming billions off the top. Take Canada. Please. But of course that would be socialism, about which 350 million Americans are hopelessly paranoid.

Jesus Flavius

A friend has sent me the video of an interview with Biblical scholar Joseph Atwill, in which he (Atwill) says in part:

“'Over the course of my life I had read perhaps six or seven hundred books relating to the historical Jesus and early Christianity, but none of them left me feeling like I really knew anything about how the religion began or its founder.'

“What contributed most to his (Atwill's) skepticism was that at the exact time the followers of Jesus were purportedly organizing themselves into a religion that urged its members to 'turn the other cheek...' another Judean sect was waging a religious war against the Romans and seeking a Messiah who would lead them militarily. 'It seemed implausible to me that two diametrically opposite forms of messianic Judaism would have emerged from Judea at the same time. So the Dead Sea Scrolls became of such interest to me that I began what turned into a decade-long study of them.'

“It was then that Joseph Atwill came across the key that led to his discoveries. 'While reading Josephus’ War of the Jews, and his account of Titus’ destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE,' Atwill recounts, 'I noticed some curious parallels. At first I could make no sense of the parallels between Titus’ campaign and Jesus’ ministry. So I tried to look at the Gospels with fresh eyes, as if I had never seen them before, giving up any preconceived notions about what they meant.' This perspective resulted in the discoveries Atwill presents in Caesar’s Messiah... A Roman imperial family, the Flavians, had created Christianity, (by inventing Jesus) and, even more incredibly, they had placed a literary satire within the Gospels...”

So it came naturally to the Roman Jesus to say: “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's.”

Let's Be Frank

Francis Fukuyama is a brilliant political scientist who began as a neoconservative but has more recently for one thing argued for the demilitarization of the War on Terrorism. “War is the wrong metaphor for the broader struggle, since wars are fought at full intensity and have clear beginnings and endings. Meeting the Jihadist challenge is more of a 'long, twilight struggle' whose core is not a military campaign but a political contest for the hearts and minds of ordinary Muslims around the world.”

Fukuyama endorsed Barack Obama in 2008, and has recently stated: "I’m voting for Barack Obama this November for a very simple reason. In the waning days of his (Bush's) administration, he presided over a collapse of the American financial system and broader economy that will have consequences for years to come. As a general rule, democracies don't work well if voters do not hold political parties accountable for failure. I think it would be a travesty to reward the Republicans for failure on such a grand scale."

While Republicans generally believe that we need only to get rid of Obama and “large government,” and unfetter the forces of uninhibited capitalism, while Democrats appear to believe that all will be well if Obama gets a second term and the Republicans stop obstructing him, Fukuyama believes that neither are right, that we will not move forward under either administration until we have faced honestly the endemic problems that caused the recent near-collapse of the American system, and move honestly to correct them.

There is little sign that such is happening. The Dodd-Frank Bill is at best a regulatory tap on the wrist for the financial quasi-criminals inhabiting Wall Street. The two party system continues to war with itself, like “Spy versus Spy” in Mad Magazine, and place the nation's business on the back burner. And a handful of corporate lobbyists representing a few major industries dictate the introduction and passage of almost all legislation.

Fukuyama believes our system is historically sound, but can only return to that model and then move forward after some internal bleeding and re-engineering. Then perhaps we can proceed to build on our past success.