Archives For opinions

like a rock

April 11, 2008 — Leave a comment

i used to listen to the ipod on the way to work in the morning but i need to keep track of the traffic so i’ve taken to listening to the radio. this has subjected me to all manner of commercials but the ones that got me thinking are the jewellery stores. and that got me thinking about diamonds.

call me cheap, but i find the thought of paying the equivalent of three months’ salary on a rock more than a little ridiculous. actually the whole concept is kind of ridiculous, especially when you consider that most couples that get caught up in the hype are just starting off their lives together and of all the things they could spend that amount of money on is an over-inflated rock. pause for a moment and ponder on this –  40% of the world’s diamond production is controlled by de beers and approximately 50% of all rough diamonds in the world are processed though dtc ( a de beers subsidiary). so either through production or distribution de beers controls most of the diamonds that make to the retail environment, no matter who you’re buying from.

let’s take a brief look at the history of de beers. the company was founded in 1888 by cecil rhodes and if there was ever a man that turned a profit on the backs of others it was cecil john rhodes. he was an ardent believer in colonialism and before the ayran nation was but a glint in adolf’s eyes purported the superiority of the anglo-saxon race. he made his fortune by controlling south africa’s natural resources through his implementation of african forced labor. currently de beers owns 70% of the diamond mines in africa either outright or with partnerships with various african governments.

a few years ago i was in an airport reading a copy of wired about a company that manufactured synthetic diamonds and how freaked out the industry was by it. the basic premise is that a company in florida can produce what looks like a $10 – $15k yellow diamond for a few hundred dollars that’s good enough to pass muster with a diamond dealer in antwerp. the very concept has the diamond industry in a tizzy, so much so that the dtc has developed a special screen machine. interestingly there is a company called lifegem, that creates high quality diamonds from the carbon of your loved ones. now there’s a thought, when you that family heirloom on her finger it could actually be family. i find that concept a lot less distasteful.

remember items only have value based on demand and availability.

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hello… is this thing on…

April 10, 2008 — Leave a comment

three months, almost to the day since i last posted here. how things have changed, there was once a time where i’d posted twice, sometimes three times a day. i suppose that’s life, when you reveal that much for that long, there will come a time when you really don’t have that much to say any more. 

i think i do still have a contribution to make. there are a lot of things that have been on my mind lately –  there is an election cycle in progress, my experiences with my new job, developments on the home front and of course the elephant in the room – the state of the global economy.

there have been a couple of milestones in the interim, the beginning of the month of march marked my fourth anniversary in the us and the end of the march marked our first anniversary as homeowners. as the subprime mortgage and equity markets continue to implode i watch in fascination. i understand chasing the dream, but to what ends?

when we decided that we were going to buy a house we worked out how much we were paying in rent and utilities, what size home would keep our utility bills in the same relative bracket and what we could afford if one or both of us  were unemployed for a  prolonged period. and there was one other major stipulation, no exotic loans. we wanted a standard 30 year mortgage, with a fixed interest rate.

even without a degree in economics or an accounting background, the details of these loans were insane and based on an assumption that the value of your house was guaranteed to go up. isn’t the concept of value based on demand and availability? basically this collapse was inevitable and like any good pyramid scheme only the people at the top got paid. i’d posted before about the similarities between the housing crisis and the s&l crisis and the inability of the middle class to provide a bailout. i stand by that statement, but based on the bear sterns bailout, i think we’re going to be forced to pay for it, whether we like it or not.

we approached the mortgage company with our info and asked for the magic number. with the number in hand we then started looking in earnest at houses. to most people it appeared as though we found a house in less than a month, but we’d been looking on and off for about six months with my usual degree of obsessive compulsiveness. in the two weeks before we found the house we’re in now, i think we looked at least 10 houses with a variety of flaws; too far, zero lot lines, too many koi ponds – long story, rotting floors, smoky. and at first blush, vic wasn’t sold on the house. it was only when we got a chance to go in that she was sold and it’s a good thing we acted as quickly as we did, we discovered at the closing that someone else put a cash offer about the same time as the fax with our offer was coming in.

our house was a realtor flip and going over the closing documents, by the time the realtors paid their cost and what the owed to the bank the made less than $10k. i don’t know if i’m not looking at the big picture but that seems a really small profit margin and with the markets being what they are now, how much smaller are the margins? how many flips do you have to sell to break even? or does the commission on selling the house help? looking at the nashville market, there has been a slowdown but now as drastic as the rest of the country, however it looks like the majority of houses still being sold are older homes and remodels.

the foreclosures and abandonments are reminiscent of trinidad in the late 80s after the ‘money is no problem’ era ended. in 88-89 just before my grandmother moved to trinidad we started looking for a house and with the market being what it was the banks were more than happy to provide their foreclosure lists. we saw a lot of house that still had furniture in them as people just walked away from mortgages they could no longer afford. all the precursors to the recession then are visible here, now and what’s worse is that in this case it’s going to be global. the mortgage crisis is going to continue to ripple out, food and transportation costs are already rising while wages remain stagnant, the value of a dollar decreases every time the federal reserve tries to shore up the economy. greed put us in this situation and it’s going to be interesting to see how we get out of it.

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the end of television as we know it

December 24, 2007 — Leave a comment

it’s the day before christmas and there is still no end in sight to the writers strike. although some of the talk shows are heading back without their writers, the next year of television looks to be bleak with reality tv and mid-season replacements. 

for those just joining us, the Writers’ Guild of America is on strike following a breakdown in contract negotiations with the media companies over royalty payments for digital distribution. basically, in their current contracts the writers get paid for writing the shows and then a predetermined percentage for syndication and dvd sales. the writers want a cut of the digital pie, ie shows that sold on amazon’s unbox, aol, itunes, walmart, xbox marketplace, mobile phone viewing and services like comcast’s on demand, the media companies are claiming that there’s no way to determine the value of the online/digital model and that they’re not making money from that particular business model, but as this youtube video by some of the writers of the daily show point out there seems to be a disconnect somewhere. the last writers’ strike happened in during March and August 1988 and cost the movie and television industry approximately $500 million and was over reduced residuals and overseas re-airs.

with no resolution in sight, most of the shows that have gone on hiatus over the holidays are not likely to be back before late 2008, possibly 2009 and there isn’t  likely to be any new scripted television before 2009. new shows are pitched during the middle of the year at the dog & pony show called the upfronts, where the networks show advertisers and affiliates, how well their shows have done during sweeps and present what their ideas are for the coming year, but unless the writers’ strike is resolved quickly there isn’t going to be time to write and shoot pilots before the upfronts. with tons of money on the line most people are wondering why the media companies don’t just settle with the writers and get on with the business of television, the answer interestingly lies with the Screen Actors’ Guild, whose contracts are up for negotiation in June 2008 and are likely to be requesting the same concessions as the writers’ guild thus cutting into the ‘dwindling profit margins’ of the media companies. 

according to this list, there are only a few scripted series with episodes left to air and most of the soap operas are likely to run out of new episodes by the end of January which may sound the death knell for the genre with reality programming, game shows and daytime chat filling the void. with the exception of talk shows, prime time programming is likely to follow the same path, it’s going to be interesting to see how viewers respond, particularly during the sweeps.

don’t forget to read mark’s take on Babel, here.

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you got to be ready

November 8, 2007 — Leave a comment

many eons ago i did economics, that by no means makes me a financial expert, but looking at the economy here, has me more than a little worried. and i’m fascinated, especially working in a retail environment, how people continue to spend money.

there are fundamental problems with the US economy and when the curtain is pulled back the middle class are going to paying for it yet again. people here seem to be suffering from short term memory loss, less than 25 years ago the S&L bailout cost taxpayers $125 billion and now we have ARM (adjustable rate mortgage) and NINJA (No Income, No Job, No Assets) loans which have already started defaulting and more than likely in the next 12 months are going to require a massive bailout. 

for those of you haven’t been playing the home game, mortgage brokers betting on an ever expanding housing bubble started to loan money to people who weren’t actually qualified and then in turn selling this mortgages to other companies, who in turn used those as investment vehicles. if it sounds like a glorified pyramid or ponzi scheme, then you’re right, only the first set of people actually made the money at this point, everyone else is screwing the pooch. this is just limited to individual investors at this point, but large multinational and international banks that bought a lot of what is soon to be worthless paper. 

what i’m wondering is how is the middle class going to afford this bailout, a lot of people got caught up in the hype and in just as much trouble as their flexible interest rates start to rise, the US$ continues to lose traction, the cost of fuel and food continues to rise and wages remain stagnant. my other questions is who benefits from the bailout? the people who are going to lose the houses the shouldn’t have qualified to buy in the first place or the companies that brokered these loans? and isn’t that taking from the not as well off to give to the worse off or in some cases the very well off?  

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the cable guys return

October 14, 2007 — Leave a comment

when i last lived in trinidad i wrote a column, for a now defunct paper, called the cable guys. in it, my good friend and editor, mark lyndersay  and myself wrote commentary on television. fast forward to now, with more than a little encouragement, the column returns but without a master and completely digital. as i understand it, we both post our weekly reviews on our respective blogs and the provide links to the other and everyone wins. for those of you that have been playing the home game all along this blog will now contain a new category; television. for those just joining us, welcome.  

in the process of trying to get this column written, i’ve come to the realisation that i don’t watch that much television. this season i’m watching an all-time high of eight prime time series with regularity; csi– vegas, miami and ny, heroes, chuck, bones, pushing daisies and bionic woman. however, i’m not sure how much longer the bionic woman is going to last for me, the writing continues to deteriorate and i’ve done the hot chick reluctant hero thing before with alias.  

this week i’d like to talk about one of the new shows i’ve started watching this season; pushing daisies. i love it, sadly i don’t think it’s going to last. it’s well written, it’s funny, it looks fabulous, and pretty much all of those things doom it to failure in this reality tv saturated market.  pushing daisies is from the mind of bryan fuller who brought such brilliant gems as dead like me and wonderfalls, both of which feature fantastic writing, rather quirky story-lines, death and dark-haired heroines. interestingly, a pattern emerges. i loved all those shows and as sure as day follows night, they went away. dead like me lasted two seasons but i believe that’s only because it was on showtime. wonderfalls didn’t even last a full season on fox and only through the outcry of what little fans there were did the whole season become available on dvd. 

looking at imdb, there are only six episodes produced thus far and as much as i’d love to see this series continues, i have my doubts.   the state of network television is sad, it’s all about the recycling. take for example grey’s anatomy, the most watched show last season (i’m basing this on something i read about grey’s being the most expensive media buy on network television) is a slightly new take on the hospital drama. is there a rule that there must always be one on tv? er has started it’s 13th season and before that it was st. elsewhere and before that trapper john, mdand before that… you get the idea. some of the diseases and locations might have changed but they follow the same formula. i’ll admit to having watched all of the above series, maybe that’s what grey’s held no interest for me.   

i’m enjoying pushing daisies while it lasts with no hope for its future. it is honestly too well written and too beautiful for the reality tv swilling public to appreciate and me and the couple thousand people that have grown to love it don’t make up a large enough demographic for advertisers to make it viable. 

catch pushing daisies while you can on wednesdays, 8/7c on abc.  

find the other half of the cable guys here.

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the whole general mishmash

July 25, 2007 — Leave a comment

it’s been a while since i posted and there have been a lot of things on my mind and hopefully i can manage to get them out in some cognoscent order here.  in the last week, i enjoyed a child like glee as a number of things that i desired, fortuitously came together. on sunday i got my wii and friday night i got my iphone (for free, sometimes working retail pays off in interesting ways) and then the final harry potter book. which in itself was a conundrum, do i read, then activate my phone or activate my phone and then read. i chose the latter and less than 15 minutes after i got home my phone was activated and i was on my way with The Deathly Hollows. i really enjoyed the book and i think it was a tremendous ending to a fantastic series and i will be the first to admit that i got teary at the end. as for the iphone it’s beautiful piece of hardware, of all the features, i love the phone the most, it works better than any phone i’ve ever had. on to other things besides my retail obsessions.   

we took a road trip in early july, just after the holiday to des moines to see friends and i was making the blog rounds on the 4th i came across a re-posting about ‘Why I love America’ and while i didn’t agree with some of the reasons, i had no real objections until i came across this paragraph:  

“I love that America was one of the very first nations in the world to put an end to slavery. The story of slavery in America was no different than anywhere else except that we stopped a lot sooner. That needs to be mentioned whenever the topic comes up.”  

this was so inaccurate and untrue i felt the need to post a comment and that’s where i began my slide down the rabbit hole. i learned three valuable lessons:
1. there’s a class of people that believe that factual information is untrue when it doesn’t agree with their point of view, 
2. the same class of people have a scary sense of entitlement as evidenced by this quote
    “… the US MUST act on what is in our countries interest at the time. The carribean is in our back yard, so it is fair game.”
3. the reason the country is in such a mess is the inability to have open discourse without rhetoric.

then there is this administrative order, which allows the administration to ‘block bank accounts and any other financial assets that might be found in this country belonging to people, companies or groups that the United States deems are working to threaten stability in Iraq.’ 

i don’t know about anyone else, but with the major betrayals of trust and power abuses from this administration, you begin to wonder if you’re paranoid enough.

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there is hope after all

July 4, 2007 — Leave a comment

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN-eGOtBGbg

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loving you

June 25, 2007 — Leave a comment

it’s been rather remiss of me to let the 40th anniversary of loving vs virginia go by without a comment. 
on june 12, 1967, the us supreme court declared virginia’s anti-miscegenation statute, the racial integrity act of 1924, unconstitutional, thereby ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the united states. interestingly various statutes remained unenforced in some states until as recently as 2000, with alabama being the last to rescind theirs. i’m including below the statement released by mildred loving on the 40th anniversary of the announcement

Loving for All 
By Mildred Loving* 
 
Prepared for Delivery on June 12, 2007, 
The 40th Anniversary of the Loving vs. Virginia Announcement 
 
When my late husband, Richard, and I got married in Washington, DC in 1958, it wasn’t 
to make a political statement or start a fight.  We were in love, and we wanted to be 
married.   
 
We didn’t get married in Washington because we wanted to marry there.  We did it there 
because the government wouldn’t allow us to marry back home in Virginia where we 
grew up, where we met, where we fell in love, and where we wanted to be together and 
build our family.  You see, I am a woman of color and Richard was white, and at that 
time people believed it was okay to keep us from marrying because of their ideas of who 
should marry whom. 
 
When Richard and I came back to our home in Virginia, happily married, we had no 
intention of battling over the law.  We made a commitment to each other in our love and 
lives, and now had the legal commitment, called marriage, to match.  Isn’t that what 
marriage is? 
 
Not long after our wedding, we were awakened in the middle of the night  in our own 
bedroom by deputy sheriffs and actually arrested for the “crime” of marrying the wrong 
kind of person.  Our marriage certificate was hanging on the wall above the bed. 
 
The state prosecuted Richard and me, and after we were found guilty, the judge declared: 
“”Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed 
them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there 
would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he 
did not intend for the races to mix.”  He sentenced us to a year in prison, but offered to 
suspend the sentence if we left our home in Virginia for 25 years exile. 
 
We left, and got a lawyer.  Richard and I had to fight, but still were not fighting for a 
cause.  We were fighting for our love. 
 
Though it turned out we had to fight, happily Richard and I didn’t have to fight alone.  
Thanks to groups like the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund, and 
so many good people around the country willing to speak up, we took our case for the 
freedom to marry all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.  And on June 12, 1967, the 
Supreme Court ruled unanimously that, “The freedom to marry has long been recognized 
as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free 
men,” a “basic civil right.”  

My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and 
right.  The majority believed that what the judge said, that it was God’s plan to keep 
people apart, and that government should discriminate against people in love.  But I have 
lived long enough now to see big changes.  The older generation’s fears and prejudices 
have given way, and today’s young people realize that if someone loves someone they 
have a right to marry. 
 
Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that 
I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to 
have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the 
“wrong kind of person” for me to marry.  I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no 
matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to 
marry.  Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over 
others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights. 
 
I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court 
case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so 
many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life.  I support the 
freedom to marry for all.  That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.

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heart of stone

September 2, 2005 — Leave a comment

i`m sorry there are people in New Orleans suffering, i`m sorry there are stupid people doing stupid shit in New Orleans, i`m sorry New Orleans is underwater but i`m not moved to do anything.

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