brian schettler

Somehow I thought it was two weeks away, but I just looked at my calendar and realized it’s next week. To get you ready to vote it’s a good idea to look up some sample ballots. Ones for Stillwater are located here, but I think you should be able to find some for your area by searching for “[your county name here] county election board.” It’s a good idea to know all the judges you’re going to confirm and all of those peskily-worded state questions ahead of time, plus it’s considerate.

Tags: ballot, election, election board, prepatation

I’m probably not going to have very much time in the next two weeks for political analysis, with school and work and everything (somebody has to contribute to GDP and pay taxes to pay for the bailout). The way I see it now, I think Obama will when the election. I hope I’m wrong, but here are some of my thoughts:

1. The financial meltdown. I think when the economy goes bad, people will vote with their wallets. They’re more likely to give “the other guy” a shot at running it for the next four years. But, I think McCain’s strong suit is the economy/tax policy and hopefully people realize that.
2. Obama’s campaign appeals to people’s feelings. Hope and Change are the two big buzzwords from Obama’s campaign, but what does that mean in concrete terms? Even all of his campaign material is done in a “happy warm fuzzies” kind of way. I think younger voters are especially swayed by this kind of marketing. It’s what makes them feel good. The facts and policies matter less.
3. The Republican party has moved away from conservative ideals. There’s no such thing as a small, limited government anymore. There are no free market principles. Like the article linked to a few days ago, I think the Republican party needs a wake up call to gather around the core principles, and a humiliating loss is probably the only way to do it.

I hope I’m wrong, but I guess we’ll see in two weeks. I would be okay with an Obama presidency if we had a Republican majority in Congress, but the idea of a Democratic president and a Democratic super-majority scare me (same thing with Republican president and Republican Congress)…the government works best when divided and all that, you know.

Tags: 2008, election, Government, president

Just thought I’d throw out a link to winkflash. Sarah and I got some photos made of the wedding and used them. We were pleased with the results. We first ordered a small batch with and without their “image enhancement” to compare and we both agreed that with image enhancement looked better. Also, I thought the option to add a white border around the edge of the photo was a nice addition.

Tags: online services, photos, print

An Obama win does have it’s bright side. From here:

Which brings me back to why the Republicans need to get throttled: A humiliated, decimated GOP that rejuvenates and rebuilds around the principles of limited government, free markets, and rugged individualism is really the only chance for voters to possibly get a real choice in federal elections down the road.

Those principles are definitely not in the Republican party today and it pains me.

Tags: 2008, election, Government, politics, republican

I’ll try to post some interesting things around the web I’ve found that do a good job of explaining what’s been going on recently.

• This American Life, The Giant Pool of Money. Very interesting, a few months old. Describes why the banks started to make so many loans to people that probably wouldn’t pay them back.
• Financial Crisis Simplified (a whiteboard presentation). How these mortgages got marketed as a great deal, when really they were not.
• The Subprime Primer. A little old too, but pretty funny. (Some bad language)
• Newt Gingrich is against the bailout. This was before the bailout passed, but he has a great point which looks to be true now that the markets have continued to fall: “Well, after we throw away $300 billion on housing this summer, we’re now going to throw away $700 billion on Wall Street. If this fails after a trillion dollars, what’s the next request?”
• Money as Debt. A 45-minute video describing how the basic role of money and what it represents has changed over the past several hundred years.

Tags: bailout, economy, links, markets, money, resources

Article from 1999 in the NY Times (emphasis mine).

Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

It sucks because Fannie Mae was one of the “Good to Great” companies I’m reading about in Good to Great.

Tags: blame, clinton, economy, Government, subprime

Poking around at Economist.com and I found some interesting charts, like this one that shows how many weeks of pay a company has to give an employee for letting them go. Talk about crazy…in Zimbabwe a company has to give out over EIGHT YEARS worth of compensation to an employee. Why would you even remotely care about doing a good job? You’d probably even want to be work a few months, get fired, then take an 8 year vacation. 

America, New Zealand and Tonga are among the most company-friendly countries, requiring no penalties or compensation to fire a full-time employee of 20 years. By contrast, a business in Zimbabwe must shell out well over eight years’ worth of pay to sack a worker. But companies in Venezuela and Bolivia are even more tied—workers there cannot be fired at all.

Tags: cost, economy, employees, labor, severance

Dave has a plan for the bailout. It’s almost an 8 minute audio clip, but very interesting. He’s saying we can change a law that lets these mortgages become marketable again…the “mark to market” law in Sorbanes Oxley, I believe. The government can insure these mortgages and that lets them become saleable again. It’d be about a 95% savings over the $700B loan plan. Sounds good to me.

Tags: bailout, banks, economy, law, loans, mortgages, sox

The best comment I’ve read today about the oil/bailout stuff today is from badbanana on twitter:

The price of oil has jumped a one-day record amount due to anxieties caused by the financial bailout designed to alleviate anxieties.

Tags: bailout, banks, economy, oil

Hmm, I see according to Michael Hyatt on twitter, that Tennessee (well, Nashville, more specifically) is out of gas. I wonder if this is because of anti-price gouging laws? If you can’t raise the price high enough to deter demand, then you end up with shortages. I couldn’t believe this is happening when I saw it.

Tags: economy, gas, tennessee, twitter