Retired Jersey

Have you ever seen the rafters at Duke University's Cameron Indoor Stadium? Loaded with retired jerseys. Well, yesterday I decided it was time to retire my jersey. I went to the gym to play basketball with some guys from work and a few other regulars that show up. I played one game. Two rebounds, a turnover, one missed shot (badly). The guys are too tall, too young, too fast, too fearless. I was out of my league. Time to hang up the shoes ... the party is over.

The Right Stuff

I was watching a video that I got for Christmas on the history of the NASA manned spaceflight missions. I really especially love the early years ... the 60's. These guys were real risk takers. All of them from the astronauts, who, in these early years, were all test pilots, to the engineers. The average age for the front line personnel was 26 and the managers were in their early 30's. It is little wonder that they were willing to try so many things that would never be done now. At one point, they were launching crews every 6 weeks!

I remember a couple years ago, NASA was going to bail on the Hubble Space Telescope because it would require a risky space walk to fix the device. In the 60's we had guys tethered to the outside of the Apollo spacecraft coming back from each moon flight to retrieve the camera film. We had folks walking on the moon! We had to depend on one engine to start perfectly to keep from stranding folks on the moon.

The culture has grown up. Old guys run the program and everyone wants everything to be risk averse. We all need to go back and listen to the early test pilots. They had the right stuff. Now, it takes 20 years to figure out how to get back to the moon. It has to be risk free.

Confused

I heard today that 10 million more American families could lose their homes to foreclosure because the value of their homes is falling. I am confused. How did we ever get away from downpayments and borrowing on the the rest of the sale price? I know the banks used to check to make sure the house was worth what you paid, but that was to control their risk. Should you default, they could recoup the money by selling the home.

Now, the value of my house has declined ... a lot. So what, I still make my payments and stay in the house and hope that someday it will regain its value. I am just confused as to how the value of the house is related to my ability to pay the mortgage. Did some genius figure out how to scale payments based on the value of the home?

I am just confused.

Congressional Idiocy

These "representatives" in Congress kill me. They are such pompous idiots. A few samples of their intellectual prowess:

They have been screaming at "big business" about using tax dollars for retreats to Phoenix or wherever while the entire democrat group went to Williamsburg, VA for a retreat ... on tax dollars.

They force a big company to not buy a corporate jet because they are using tax dollars. Well, the jet is made in the USA, is serviced in the USA, is piloted in the USA, is inspected in the USA, is landed in the USA with each step of the process involving US citizens who have and need to keep their jobs. So, they have this idea and it may put some jobs in jeopardy (especially at the luxury aircraft company) because the company would use tax dollars to buy this. Tomorrow, they are going to spend billions of tax dollars to put people to work. Why not let the company do that by buying a plane?

The exact same arguement works for the big banks redecorating their offices. Tax money should not be spent to ... hire decorators, millwrights, painters, upholsterers, etc.

These guys even have the nerve to tell folks they misspent the TARP funds when they never put any restrictions on what the funds were to be used for.

Oh - let's not forget they are mad at the Wall street bonuses for last year. Now, they forget that most folks on Wall Street have a low base salary and bonuses are part of their contracts based on the performance of the work they do. Bring in lots of business and you get a big bonus. Now, those making the bonuses spend a lot of that money to buy stuff (ie stimulate the economy). Without the bonuses, they will not spend. Genius. Why are passing the "stimulus" bill again?

The moral of the story is that only Congress knows how to spend money the right way to stimulate the economy.

I bet it won't work.