Dana Blankenhorn

Drives Me Crazy

Putting ADHD people together can be like trying to lie magnets together. They resist.

In the case of my son and I it means we bark at one another with the slightest provocation. We're ready to see intent where none exists. We misunderstand. We speak in incomplete sentences. Our expectations for one another are very high, and when they're not met it hurts.

John has had a lot more therapy than I did at 16. He's gotten a lot more help. He's given himself more help, too, joining a church of questioning believers. Yet he has a lot more trouble than I did dealing with people his own age.

I think it's because in John's life he's lacked peers. I mean real peers, people like him. Not just the same age, but similar in temperament, in attitude, in intelligence and love of learning.

That's the lesson of my own life, anyway.

Hoover Mystery Solved

One of the great American historical mysteries was solved last night.

How was Herbert Hoover re-nominated in 1932, when it was obvious he would get pounded?

The answer came during the Republican debate in Florida.

Hoover was just following orders.

When a generation of assumptions comes up against cold hard reality, it seems, there's nothing believers can do but pretend reality does not exist, and proceed according to their assumptions. Thus despite trillions added to the debt, John McCain called the Republicans the party of "fiscal responsibility." Despite an enormous majority saying Iraq isn't worth it, Mitt Romney insisted Hillary Clinton would be mad to run against the war.

It was like watching a debate in Bizarro World and the more it went on the crazier it got. Everyone was friendly toward one another, everyone was spouting the same jargon. It was like they were huddling around a common campfire with only ideology to keep them warm.

Every once in a (great) while Ron Paul would be invited by the moderators to toss some cold water on the party. Get rid of the Federal Reserve. Get out of Iraq. Stop spending on anything. But the fight had gone out of the rest of them. They didn't have the stomach to answer the crazy any more. They had their own crazy to deal with. So they just ignored ol' Ron Paul and went right back to their Fantasy Island.

It's not just the candidates.

Hershey Bars for Rich Kids in Harbour Green

Think of this as Volume 11, Number 4 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

---

This is my Alex Baldwin story.

Not Alec. Alex. The father.

When I knew him, I was a toffee-nosed rat-faced git of 15, and he was running the summer camp program for the Massapequa Schools. The rest of the year he was a gym teacher at McKenna Jr. High.

We were coming back from some camp trip on a yellow school bus. (I think we'd harassed the gays on Fire Island or something.) We were full of brio (or our own youthful bullshit) and talking up doing a fundraiser. We had lots of ideas to raise money -- car washes, product sales, babysitting.

Mr. Baldwin brought up the question of what we were raising the money for. "Are you going to give Hershey Bars to all the rich kids in Harbour Green?" he asked. He wanted us to think of those less fortunate, rather than other privileged people, who he assumed could get their own Hershey Bars.

I thought this hysterical at the time, and I still get a chuckle out of it. But these days the joke's on us.

Getting an Economy Back

The financial collapse which began with the Big Shitpile continues apace. (Get Super Bubble Pop here.)

Today the Google Bubble may have finally popped. We predicted that two months ago, giving you plenty of time to get out of the way. At its present price, Google still sells at 25 times next year's expected earnings. A reasonable level might be 20-25 times expected earnings, a nice premium over the 15x current earnings stocks are worth historically. Apple and other "momentum stocks" joined in the downturn, and that's good -- speculation needs to be driven out before we can go up again.

But instead of praying to the tape, or attacking those who got us here, how about a brief focus on some potential solutions to this mess? Everyone with a functioning brain cell (even Lou Dobbs) knows the present "rebate" proposal is nonsense. This means both parties, and all major politicians, are Clueless at this point.

So how about some ideas:

Obama's Point About Reagan

The atrocious coverage of our political discourse continues.

This was not an episode of Real World: Myrtle Beach. This was not even personal.

There was a single, important point being made by Barack Obama, which Hillary Clinton spent the night trying to muddy.

It was, what kind of leadership do we want in 2009? Do we want a transactive leader, someone who approaches each issue as a separate battle? Or do we want a transformative leader, one who changes how we think and constantly reminds us of the underlying cause?

Bill Clinton was a transactive leader. He had to be. He was a product of his time, and his time was the high point of the Nixon Thesis of Conflict, of High Reaganism. Building on the earlier work of Gary Hart and Michael Dukakis, working through the Democratic Leadership Council, he created an AntiThesis to the Nixon Thesis, and negotiated compromises which pushed things along in what he thought was the right direction.

The Rough Justice of a Crash

Both political parties are rushing to bail-out the losers in the present economic crisis.

• Bail out my friends who insured the Big Shitpile, begs Jim Cramer.
• Bail out the rich, says George W. Bush.
• Bail out the poor, say the Democrats.

Unfortunately there's a sort of rough justice which takes place during these market crashes. I have seen it during every single crash I've ever covered, from the oil crash of 1981 through the dot-bomb of 2001 through today.

We don't want idiots bailed-out. Those of us with cash, or those who stayed on the sidelines, want the chance to pick through the wreckage at our leisure. Analysts claim there are two emotions, fear and greed, which determine where prices will go. There's really only greed and greed.

During a boom everyone wants to be venture capitalists.

During a bust everyone wants to be vulture capitalists.

Myth, Value and the Overton Window

It's in the nature of a crisis that it shifts the terms of political debate, like the tacking of a sailboat.

Debate will then follow the new course until a new crisis for which the previous course has no meaning is reached.

When the ship of state tacks, of course, all hands who've lived on the old course are completely at sea. They can't conceive of a shift in course, and start crying like scalded cats. That's what you're seeing now, in the Washington Village, in the media which covers it, and among the groups nurtured by the followers of the old course.

The old course has become so ingrained in the minds of the lazy that they have created terms to describe the course to make it all sound scientific. One such bit of nonsense is the Overton Window.

Money Is Just Half The Problem

While unregulated financial markets are a big problem, they are not the entire problem with the U.S. economy.

Or the world economy, for that matter.

The problem for the world economy is a shortage of clean energy, a crying shortage of clean energy which has been 30 years in the making. All our incentives have favored hydrocarbons, and alternatives have been given no fair chance.

Whoever finds a way to supply this demand will get very, very rich. So the whole trick of the next few years must be to re-orient our government's financial incentives in favor of this new supply, and against older, unstable supplies.

In The Answer to All Fears I describe the economic process which must be set in motion, but below I'm going to give you the whole key to the thing.