Five Surprising Things to Do for Earth Day

Well, it's been 40 years since Gaylord Nelson and his band of earth warriors launched the modern environmental movement.

What have we learned since? Global warming is a threat. We're still polluting the planet. More people means more loss of species, deforestation, desertification, groundwater loss and a host of other environmental maladies.

While the developed world has improved on these issues, emerging economies are really struggling. Yet I don't live in Asia. I live in America, the home of overconsumption and bad environmental stewardship. What can we do? Here are five surprising steps:

Stop Drinking Soft Drinks

You've probably seen the ads promoting how environmentally responsible Coca-Cola the company and product have become. They are promoting recycling, using more hybrid vehicles and using less aluminum in their cans. Yet Coke (and every other soft drink) is not green. It's still brown. Very brown.

One way Coke is green washing is through a collaboration with Ecoist that seeks to reuse misprinted bottles and cans. The new cans use 5% less aluminum, saving 15,000 metric tons of aluminum every year. That's welcome, since the mining, smelting and transportation of aluminum is energy-intensive and creates a lot of pollution. The truth of this breakthrough: the new cans are being used in the UK only.

What about their new “eco-friendly” bottle made in part from molasses and sugar, which they plan to test in their Dasani water line? Bottled water is one of the biggest wastes of resources in the 21st century. Most municipal water supplies in the US are perfectly safe. When you calculate all of the energy needed to make the bottles, package them, transport them and dispose of them, it's never a good deal for the environment.

While we're on the subject of water, let's get back to the process of making soft drinks in general. Making the sugary, carbonated liquid is highly water intensive. It takes 2.47 liters of water to make one liter of Coca-Cola. This depletes local water supplies and pollutes local rivers.

Coke claims to have reduced water consumption by 9% since 2004. Reducing 9% of water usage in only 6 years saved them plenty of money, but it still obscures the fact that they are one of the biggest industrial consumers of water on the planet.

And that doesn't include the fact that it takes billions of gallons to grow the sugar for their beverages. Keep in mind that more than a billion people on the planet don't have access to clean water. Soft drink makers are consuming it to make something that contributes to obesity and diabetes.

In Atlanta, where Coke makes its headquarters, the area has perennial water shortages. The city and state are fighting neighboring states over the rapidly diminishing watersheds that feed the sprawling metropolis.

It's well known that most ground water aquifers are not being replenished. According to the US Geological Survey, more than 30 states have serious drinking water shortages.

It's clear that Coca-Cola and its many competitors are taking myriad steps to clean up their operations, reduce their pollution output and energy use. Yet it will be a long time before they can claim their product is green. Their true colors are unlikely to change anytime soon. If you stop your consumption of these products, it will also be good for your health.

Produce Your Own Food and Soil. Buy Locally!

Even if you live in a city apartment, you can grow some food in a window. Consider a hydroponic system. Most food travels a 1,000 miles or more to get to your table. By supporting locally grown food, you become a "locavore" and support local farming and healthier consumption of food.

Why buy local? You cut down on the tremendous amounts of energy it takes to transport your fruits and vegetables. Ships burn highly polluting bunker fuel. Trucks burn diesel. And fresh food is healthier food.

Making your own soil -- by composting kitchen waste -- gives you fertile compost for your garden. That way you can avoid synthetic fertilizers, many of which come from petrochemicals or natural gas. With the huge amounts of topsoil being lost across the world, you'll be making a difference.

Don't Just Plant a Tree, Plant Edible Landscaping.

Trees are great. They soak up carbon dioxide, anchor the soil and give us oxygen and timeless beauty in return. Yet why not grow trees that produce fruit or nuts? They will reduce your grocery bill and give you fresh fruit that you're able to can or freeze. That's what we did on our small lot.

The same goes with open areas that you want to landscape. Consider native bushes that produce berries. There are many varieties. Pick something suitable for your climatic zone.

Don't Buy a Car, Even a Green One. Walk, Bike and Hike More!

Even if you have a fuel-stingy car, the greenest car is that one that's not driven. Try getting on your bike if you have local errands. That's what I did last summer. I discovered that taking quick trips to the grocery, hardware store, library and ice cream parlor are all much more ennervating by bike.

Our second car has 140,000 miles on it. I'd love to replace it with an electric -- coming on the market later this year. But I'm in no hurry. Rather than consume more resources -- even the electricity used to recharge the car creates pollution -- I will consume more calories. I'll get on my bike more. As for now, I just got that old car an oil/air filter change and pumped up the tires. It will last longer, get better mileage and produce less carbon dioxide.

Stop Getting Suckered into Green Consumption.

Everything from paper towels to gas stations have some green labeling on them. There's so much "greenwashing" that it's impossible to tell which is green and which is not.

You have to consider the life cycle of a product. For example, take the spate of bamboo products on the market now. Are they any greener than other fibers?

There's a lot to admire about bamboo.It grows fast, isn't hard on the environment, is incredibly durable and can be used for hundreds of purposes. Have you ever seen that great Alec Guinness World War II movie "The Bridge over the River Kwai?" British army prisoners build a railroad bridge with the stuff. Lately you've probably seen a lot of bamboo products on the market. The versatile plant has been used in everything from flooring to clothing. I recently bought a bamboo cutting board for my kitchen.

When it comes to clothing, though, a lot of what's advertised in clothing as bamboo isn't. It's rayon. Like most green products, it's not that simple to say that the source material is "natural." After all, petroleum is a natural product and look what it does to the environment after it's processed and burned.

The same shallow thinking can be applied to rayon, which is a generic term for nearly any natural cellulose fiber that's processed to make fabrics.
Rayon undergoes some nasty chemical treatments before it becomes that sweater or jacket. (Think caustic lye in hair-care products). The substances used to break down cellulose are environmentally toxic and are released into the air.
Naturally, manufacturers and retailers don't count on you asking questions about the life-cycle of the product.

Since bamboo has attained a certain cachet among green consumers in recent years, a flood of products claiming to be bamboo have emerged on the market. They go by brand-names such as "eco-Kashmere," "Pure Bamboo" and "Bamboo Baby."

Although green products undergo less scrutiny than food or animal treatment, when advertising claims are misleading blatantly false, it can catch the attention of the newly active Federal Trade Commission.

The FTC recently sent warning letters to 78 retailers to stop the labeling of rayon products as bamboo-based. The merchants included Wal-Mart, Target, Kmart, Costco and Nordstrom's. The agency also sued several companies last year for selling mis-labeled rayon products. Four companies have settled with the FTC and have changed their labeling thus far.

In the interim, if you see a product with a bamboo label, how do you tell if it's the real thing? Actual bamboo should be labeled as "mechanically processed," as opposed to chemically processed rayon. It's also helpful to see if a third-party has certified the claim such as the Forest Stewardship Council. A third party can run tests, inspect the manufacturing and run life cycle analyses to determine how much pollution is created in the processing of the fabric.

In the meantime, not only should you be wary about any green claims without seeing a life-cycle analysis of the product, the best green product is one not consumed. Reuse what you can. Rescue what you need from a thrift store, flea market or garage sale. Recycle profusely.

If we're doing the green lifestyle right, ultimately we become "prosumers" instead of consumers. We are producing our own energy, food and soil and wasting less.

Greenspan Knew Everything, Did Nothing

By John F. Wasik


Just for the record: Alan Greenspan knew about the housing/debt bubble and did nothing to prevent it from bursting.

Not only did he know how the bubble was inflating, but how Wall Street and Americans took advantage of it to buy real estate in a mass frenzy.

On top of that knowledge, he had documented how homeowners were looting their false wealth through home-equity loans – tapping whatever illusory dollars they could after two stock-market crashes in a decade.

The home-equity story is rarely told. Yet it was Greenspan who actually wrote a paper for the Fed in 2006 at the height of the bubble quantifying how much Americans were taking out of their homes to buy boats, cars, vacations and yes, more real estate. I profiled this free-for-all in my book on the housing crash The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome: Turning Around the Unsustainable American Dream.

Greenspan also documented that Americans were becoming dangerously overleveraged – it was a long-term trend -- and were heading over the cliff during the bubble years.

In a paper he co-authored with Fed economist James Kennedy, they noted “since the mid-1980s, mortgage debt has grown more rapidly than home values, resulting in a decline in housing wealth as a share of the value of homes.”

The home price mania convinced millions of homeowners that the bubble years were the prime time to borrow against the over-inflated values of their homes. Home-equity loans accounted for four-fifths of the rise of home mortgage debt since 1990, Greenspan’s paper stated.

It’s often easy to blame consumers in this whole mess. After all, why did they get in over their heads? Nobody was forcing them to leverage up. With the onus of the American Dream and “maestro” Greenspan’s cheerleading to take advantage of cheap credit, Americans were following a script. “You can have that dream home and everything else now – just sign on the dotted line!” Real estate agents, bankers, builders and mortgage brokers all read from the same cue cards. “Get as much house as you can afford! You won’t have to pay it off for a long time. Why wait?”

The massive borrowing, unfortunately, meant Americans were becoming poorer in a real sense. If another recession came, which it did after the bubble exploded, they’d be in no shape to revive the consumer-dominated economy. Hence our anemic economic recovery, allegedly underway.

That’s why Greenspan’s testimony on April 7 before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission sounds like a snake-oil salesman insisting that his products and sales pitches were always legit.
Greenspan’s flaccid response to a question on why he didn’t do anything to stop the financial carnage?

"When you've been in government for 21 years, as I have been, the issue of retrospective and figuring out what you should have done differently is a really futile activity," Greenspan said, "because you can't, in fact, in the real world, do it.”

How about at least admitting that predatory mortgage lending was a huge problem, which the Fed knew for years? How about saying that it was the Fed’s job to police debt securitization and they dropped the ball? And why didn’t the Fed just raise interest rates when it was clear that cheap money was blowing up another bubble?

As for his recent amnesia as to how big the bubble was at the height of the mass delusion, here’s Greenspan from a May 21, 2005, New York Times piece:

"Without calling the overall national issue a bubble, it's pretty clear that it's an unsustainable underlying pattern," Mr. Greenspan told the Economic Club of New York at the Hilton New York hotel in Midtown.

In his typical argot, the Fed chairman would only admit that he saw some “froth” in the mortgage markets, while completely missing the blitzkrieg that would nearly take out the global financial system in 2008 and leave some of the major players like Goldman Sachs, Citi and Bank of America virtual wards of the state while taxpayers bailed them out.

"Even if there are declines in prices," Greenspan said in 2005, "the significant run-up to date has so increased equity in homes that only those who have purchased very recently, purchased before prices actually literally go down, are going to have problems."

As Greenspan morphs into the Neville Chamberlin of finance, let’s move on. Break up the biggest banks and deep-six the “too big to fail” doctrine. Create transparent, regulated markets for derivatives and toxic debt. Let homeowners who were damaged by the bubble write off their mortgages in bankruptcy to equalize the $12 trillion in help from American taxpayers.

What Greenspan knew for certain is that the financial monsters who benefited from his bubble would have his back when he retired to the lecture circuit and write his memoir.

Let history record that when Greenspan fully exits public life, he should be recognized for what he neglected to do and his misdeeds go far beyond sins of omission. Just ask the millions who are trying to claw back into the middle class.

John F. Wasik is an author, columnist and speaker. His Cul-de-Sac Syndrome profiled the housing bust.

It's Now or Never for Health Reform

The Health Care Summit 2/26/10

Now That Health Myths are Busted,
It's Now or Never for Reform

By John F. Wasik

Remember that old Elvis song "It's now or never," a cheesy version of "O Sole Mio?" That should be the Democrats' theme song after the Feb. 25 health-care summit.
Top Democrats made their case for the umpteenth time. The Republicans somewhat agreed with them on the need for expanding markets across state lines and consumer protection, but differed in the way to approach reform.
I watched most of the proceedings, which was neither a debate nor deal making. If both parties eventually decide to do something together, this forum will have laid the groundwork for a compromise.
One thing was crystal clear: Republican leaders wanted to tear up both the House and Senate versions and start over, a move that would surely wreck any progress and set legislation back years. It makes no sense since the basic principles of why reform is needed are in place on both sides.
"The nature of the industry is terrible," noted Senator Jay Rockefeller, who was disappointed there was no public option on the table. "Insurers are looking for reasons to kick you out -- 44 of 50 states deny coverage for pre-existing conditions."
How bad are industry abuses? Insurers can deny coverage, clip benefits and raise rates for any reason. In one state, even being a victim of domestic violence is considered a pre-existing condition.
As long as claims are viewed by the industry as "losses," patients and insurers will have an adversarial relationship. This is immoral. Health care should be a human right that we recognize and protect. No profit should be made on human suffering.
The situation is getting worse by the day, so Democrats need to act quickly before they get sucked into the maw of election-year politics. Some 6 people daily are dying due to lack of insurance. About 14,000 lose their insurance every 24 hours. Nothing in the private sector is going to help these folks. Only if you are desperately poor, a veteran or old will you get any help. The indigent now get better care than working, middle-class Americans who don't have employers offering health care.
At the very least, President Obama and his Democratic colleagues did a good job at myth busting and established a clear path forward:
• There are no free-market solutions in the Democrats' plans. In lieu of a public option that would offer competition, creating insurance exchanges across state lines would create a true national market -- if companies are regulated closely. Democrats and Republicans both agree on this.
• No government entity will take over health care. The feds won't run clinics, scrutinize treatments, deny coverage or run hospitals. The private sector remains in place. Ironically, though, more people get their health care from government agencies now than from for-profit companies.
• Simply offering better health-savings accounts "to create better health consumers" (as the GOP suggests) is dead on arrival. It does nothing to reduce costs and individuals have no bargaining power. This scheme works best for the wealthy as supplemental savings vehicles.
• Creating more "high-risk pools" for the sickest and most vulnerable is also a bad idea. In states where these "insurance ghettos" are offered, the costs are sky-high and the most chronically ill are segregated. You need a broad, national pool to spread out the costs.
• Reining in medical malpractice claims is worth studying, but it's largely a red herring. As Senator Dick Durbin pointed out, one-fifth of 1% of total health care costs involve malpractice costs. That's a drop in the bucket when Medicare itself is expected to be insolvent in just 8 years.
• Health reform costs too much. It will be too costly to do nothing. Medical bills are the reason for 62% of bankruptcies, according to the American Journal of Medicine. Even if a new entitlement program is created, if it's not set up to reduce costs and cover more people, our global competitiveness will continue to decline and more of the federal budget will be spent on health care.

Even if Democrats have to push reform through a reconciliation measure with 51 votes, they should do it. Inaction will cost them much more at the polls in November. It's now or never. People are dying over this.

John F. Wasik is the author of The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome: Turning Around the Unsustainable American Dream (www.culdesacsyndrome.com).

Take the Tea Bagger Pledge!

The Teabagger Socialist-Free Purity Pledge

I, ________________________________, do solemnly swear to uphold the principles of a socialism-free society and heretofore pledge my word that I shall strictly adhere to the following:

I will complain about the destruction of 1st Amendment Rights in this country, while I am duly being allowed to exercise my 1st Amendment Rights.

I will support the right of any and all multi-national corporations to exercise their 1st Amendment rights to spend as much money as they possibly can to undermine my individual rights.

I will complain about the destruction of my 2nd Amendment Rights in this country, while I am duly being allowed to exercise my 2nd Amendment rights by legally but brazenly brandishing unconcealed firearms in public.

I will forswear the time-honored principles of fairness, decency, and respect by screaming unintelligible platitudes regarding tyranny, Nazi-ism, and socialism at public town halls.

Also. I pledge to eliminate all government intervention in my life. I will abstain from the use of and participation in any socialist goods and services including but not limited to the following:
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Social Security
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Medicare/Medicaid
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State Children’s Health Insurance Programs (SCHIP)
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Police, Fire, and Emergency Services
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US Postal Service
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Roads and Highways
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Air Travel (regulated by the socialist FAA)
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The US Railway System
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Public Subways and Metro Systems
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Public Bus and Lightrail Systems
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Rest Areas on Highways
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Sidewalks
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All Government-Funded Local/State Projects (e.g., see Iowa 2009 federal senate appropriations--http://grassley.senate.gov/issues/upload/Master-Approps-73109.pdf). This means every single road that is not a toll road is off limits to my use.
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Public Drinking Water and Sewer Services (goodbye socialist toilet, shower, dishwasher, kitchen sink, outdoor hose!)
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Public and State Universities and Colleges
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Public Primary and Secondary Schools
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Sesame Street
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Publicly Funded Anti-Drug Use Education for Children
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Public Museums
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Libraries
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Public Parks and Beaches
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State and National Parks
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Public Zoos
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Unemployment Insurance
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Municipal Garbage and Recycling Services
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Treatment at Any Hospital or Clinic That Ever Received Funding From Local, State or Federal Government (pretty much all of them)
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Medical Services and Medications That Were Created or Derived From Any Government grant or research Funding (again, pretty much all of them)
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Socialist Byproducts of Government Investment Such as Duct Tape, heart monitors/defibrillators and Velcro (Nazi-NASA Inventions)
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Use of the Internet, email, and networked computers, as the DoD's ARPANET was the basis for subsequent computer networking
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Foodstuffs, Meats, Produce and Crops that were grown with, fed with, raised with or that contain inputs From crops grown with government subsidies.

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If a veteran of the government-run socialist US military, I will forgo my VA benefits and insist on paying for my own medical care.

I will not tour socialist government buildings like the Capitol in Washington, D.C.

I pledge to never take myself, my family, or my children on a tour of the following types of free-admission/taxpayer subsidized socialist locations, including but not limited to:
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Smithsonian Museums such as the Air and Space Museum or Museum of American History
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The socialist Washington, Lincoln, FDR, and Jefferson Monuments
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The government-operated Statue of Liberty
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The Grand Canyon and all national/state/regional/local parks, forests and monuments
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The socialist World War II, Korean and Vietnam Veterans Memorials in every town
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The government-run socialist-propaganda location known as Arlington National Cemetery
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All other public-funded socialist sites, whether it be in my state or in Washington, DC. This also includes Post Offices, fire departments, police departments, public schools, libraries and zoos.

I will urge my Member of Congress and Senators to forgo their government salary and government-provided health care.

If I qualify for any Medicare, Medicaid or VA benefits, I will forgo them as well and will pay for the full, private-sector costs of my care.

If such private-sector health care throws me and my family into bankruptcy, I will not avail myself of the socialist court system to protect my assets.

I will boycott the products of socialist defense contractors such as GE, Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Raytheon, Humana, FedEx, General Motors, Honeywell, and hundreds of others that are paid by our socialist government to produce goods for our socialist army.

I will protest socialist security departments such as the Pentagon, FBI, CIA, NSA, Department of Homeland Security, TSA, Department of Justice and their socialist employees. If I am the victim of a crime, I will forgo the services of all publicly supported police departments.

If I'm thrown out of my job, I will not file for socialist unemployment assistance.

Upon reaching eligible retirement age, I will tear up my socialist Social Security checks. If I'm permanently disabled, I will refuse all benefits from this agency, Medicare, Medicaid or the VA. If I am mentally disabled and financially indigent, I will not accept Medicaid reimbursement for my nursing home care.

I will not participate in the government-subsidized banking system and refuse to obtain a government-guaranteed mortgage, open a FDIC-backed savings or checking account or any account whatsoever with the government-subsidized private institutions such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citicorp, Bank of America, et al that received more than $12 trillion in government bailouts. I will not use credit cards nor obtain lines of credit from any institution receiving TARP funds.

I will not purchase a government-subsidized auto from GM or Chrysler (Fiat) or get an auto loan through GMAC or any other government-subsidized bank.

Most of all, I will not use any government-subsidized product made of petroleum, corn, soybeans or cotton nor any electricity generated by government subsidized coal, nuclear fuel or hydroelectric resources. (to quote that hippie songwriter Paul Simon, "hello darkness my old friend...")

SWORN ON A BIBLE AND SIGNED THIS DAY OF ____________ IN THE YEAR 2010

Do you think I would refuse to sign any of this pledge? To quote Sarah Palin, "you betcha!"

The Biggest Giveaway in American History

If you ever hear any Wall Street or megabanking executive crow about the free market, feel free to remind them of the greatest government rescue of private capitalism in the history of mankind. There is no free market when it comes to what was once the largest insurance enterprise in the country and the most profitable investment banks. Their continued existence is due to the overindulgence of compromised regulators and the unknowing generosity of American taxpayers. <

What would you call this? Socialized capitalism? Subsidized banking? I would call it a dismal example of crony capitalism, one that will haunt us for generations. Just ask the AIG executives getting their bonuses. How do you get the Federal Reserve and taxpayers to bail you out, the government take you over after you take the most egregious financial risks ever -- and still get rewarded for epic failure?

Never before has so much money been literally loaned or given away to prop up the largest, most powerful financial firms in the country. It is a gunless crime, but one that must be prosecuted and end the public careers of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Presidential advisor Larry Summers and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke.

Rounding off at $13 trillion, the bailout is almost as much as the US annual gross domestic product. That's almost the sum of all goods and services produced in our country in a year's time. Since we're still the largest single economic force on the planet, that's a profane amount of money.

The personal economic impact is simple and tragic. Money that could've been spent fixing a school, bridge, highway, rail line or pothole in your community will not get there. The paltry $787 economic stimulus package -- approved a year ago by Congress and judged by many economists such as Paul Krugman to be too small to be effective -- mostly was designed to bolster the unemployed, Medicaid programs, education funding and seed (not even completely fund) some public works projects such as high-speed rail and the "smart" electrical grid. If Congress had somehow spent even one-tenth of that $13 trillion on public works, we wouldn't have general unemployment of 10 percent and youth unemployment of more than 20 percent.

Keep in mind that the government has been fudging jobless rates for years to exclude those who have dropped off the unemployment reports because they have given up or are doing part-time or contract work. The real jobless number is between 15 and 30 percent -- the highest rates in inner cities. Could the bailout money have been put to better use in gang prevention, building infrastructure, medical research, college grants and fixing decrepit schools? Is there any question about that?

So where did our most powerful financial regulators go wrong? Were the financial behemoths too big to fail or just too corrupting to be ignored?

If Congress had sought to bail out every American instead of giving away cash to financial brigands, it would've had much more overall societal value since the financial debacle depressed retirement account and home equity values by 20-percent to 50-percent. Imagine now trying to rely upon your home's nest egg for retirement funds. Almost half of US mortgages are under water -- the home is worth less than the mortgaged value. Through no fault of their own, these folks have really become renters, yet are still obligated to pay property taxes, do maintenance and pay interest on their debts. Not so with the luckiest and most favored corporations on the planet, who benefited from the actions of a handful of government officials while Main Street America got the rawest financial deal ever.

Geithner Involved Behind the Scenes

Geithner's complicity in this debacle for the American taxpayer starts with his role as one of the brokers of the bailout as president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank (FRBNY) in 2008. His role is documented by Neil Barofsky in his audit and Jan. 27 testimony. Barofsky is the special inspector general of the TARP (trouble asset relief program), the main bailout legislation authorized by Congress in late 2008. This narrative is a bit difficult to follow because it involves so many transactions and billions of dollars.

The main thrust of the Barofsky findings is that Geithner orchestrated a bailout of not only AIG, the largest US insurance company, but many of its financial partners. What business does a branch of the nation's central bank have propping up an insurer? It's never been quite clear. The Fed is charged with regulating the banking system. Why was it buying toxic derivatives and covering losses for mammoth investment banks like Goldman Sachs, which, at the time, was not really even a regulated entity under the Fed's purview? These are questions for Congress and the Justice Department to seriously ponder as it must seek to recover the ill-gotten gains of the bailout. Note: It certainly didn't hurt that Geithner's chief deputy was a former Goldman executive.

Let's start with Geithner's role in this caper. What's amazing is that Geithner's NY Fed actually created a new program (the curiously titled "Maiden Lane") to bail out AIG and its various counterparties in its decimated credit-default swap portfolio. The initial logic behind the massive rescue of the company and its partners is that it would prevent the ruin of the Western financial system. Bernanke and then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson also signed onto this saga.

If AIG failed then Goldman and European banks like UBS could fail as well, because then they would be sitting on worthless promises (the swaps and debt bundles) based on highly degraded debt (mortgage securities). That was the thinking at the time. It's a matter of speculation whether those institutions would have gone down, but it was fairly certain that the investment community would have engaged in massive short-selling that would have also resulted in credit-rating reductions. Somebody got hornswoggled and it wasn’t Goldman.

If your "paper" is no good, meaning poorly rated by any of the compromised ratings agencies, you can't raise capital, or it costs too much. For an investment bank, that's a coup de grace. Witness what happened to Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers when "the Street" knew they were sitting on billions of worthless paper and default swap promises they couldn't back up with cash. That's one of the most pernicious dangers of an unregulated derivatives market. If they are not monitored by exchanges and backed by real money, they are gangrenous to the financial system. That's a battle for another day. By the way, you can thank Bill Clinton, Phil Gramm, Robert Rubin and Larry Summers for that deft yet disastrous bit of deregulation, circa 1999, which dismembered the strong Glass-Steagall Act of the New Deal.

The Goldman Goldmine

We interrupt our regularly scheduled program to give you this important public service announcement from Goldman Sachs to every level of government: "Thank you, thank you, oh thank you so much!"

As has been reported elsewhere, Goldman did fabulously during the bailout, so well that it actually expressed an institutional sense of guilt by switching its obscene government-subsidized cash bonuses to stock that couldn't be redeemed for five years.

Better yet, Goldman was the undisputed big winner that had been lucky even before the meltdown. The City of New York, cowed by Goldman's threat to walk away from its new headquarters building near Ground Zero in lower Manhattan, doled out $49 million in job-grant, tax exemptions and energy discounts to Goldman. Wait, there's more. On top of that, the firm garnered an additional $66 million in benefits and managed to lower its financing costs by $175 million over 30 years, according to Bloomberg Markets magazine. Was Goldman some struggling little company financially challenged to stay in the Big Apple? The firm made a profit of roughly $11 billion last year.

Goldman, being the generous firm that it is, decided to share some of its wealth by earmarking $500 million "to provide education, capital and other forms of support to small business." How kind of them, considering that various agencies such as the FDIC provided Goldman debt guarantees of nearly $30 billion, a US Treasury cash infusion of $10 billion (Goldman has paid back $11.4 billion), and $13 billion for the bailout of AIG. The AIG cash infusion alone is estimated to have saved Goldman from about $10 billion in losses from toxic debt and default swaps.

For all of its sickening blather about trying to look virtuous and doing "God's work," Goldman is one of the most heavily subsidized firms on Wall Street. While many critics have suggested that the AIG bailout was really a lifeline to Goldman, nobody -- from Geithner to Bernanke -- has come clean about how lavishly the bailout engorged an already profitable Goldman, which actually bet against some of its clients before and during the meltdown.

The only bargain that could be identified in this sordid mess is that the firm got an astounding value for the paltry $31 million it spent in lobbying political parties since 1989. You can't find this deal at Wal-Mart, fellow Americans. Adding to its power base, Goldman also managed to have some swell friends in high places: Both Robert Rubin and Paulson came from Goldman to run the Treasury Dept. during key moments of the fleecing of the American taxpayer.

Better Than Vegas

Now let's get back to Geithner's curious relationship with Goldman. In effect, the NY Fed covered nearly all of the big, bad bets made by AIG and most of the high rollers in the unregulated and unbacked (by any regulated banking reserves) default-swap game. It was the equivalent of the government going to Las Vegas and saying that the worst gamblers would be completely covered without facing any losses -- along with "the house."

Here's what unfolded: the Fed decided to back AIG default swaps and those of their "counterparties," meaning banks all over the world on the other side of the bets. In Las Vegas, if you push all the chips to the middle of the table and lose everything on a bet, that's it. Unless you get more credit and more chips, you're done. The most the house is going to do is pay for your room and comp some meals -- and of course, more drinks.

A tough government negotiator would've said to AIG's counterparties, "you screwed up, but we don't want any trouble with Wall Street seeing what happened here and shorting you guys to hell, so we'll give you 20 cents on the dollar on this worthless stuff you're holding."

But the banks were much tougher players than cream-puff Geithner and told him they'd only accept 100% on what AIG owed them on the failed wagers. Geithner, it seems, didn't call their bluff and didn't press for "haircuts," meaning locking in losses and moving on. His staff recommended that they be paid 48 cents on the dollar, but Geithner wouldn't go for that. He told Congress that he wasn't really involved in all of this, anyway. Here's where Barofsky picks up the narrative:

"…the counterparties were effectively paid full face (par value) for the credit-default swaps, an amount far above their market value at the time…When asked by SIGTARP if the executives felt they had received their marching orders from Geithner, they responded, `yes, absolutely.'"

Goldman knew it was juggling a hornet's nest in its relationship with AIG. Yet is has never been fully disclosed how much it benefited when Geithner and the Fed came to their rescue.

Here's Janet Tavakoli, a Chicago derivatives expert (from a Jan. 28 Huffington Post piece):

"The first bailout of AIG occurred in September 2008 when the FRBNY extended an $85 billion credit line to AIG. By the September 2008 initial bailout, Goldman Sachs had extracted $7.5 billion in collateral from AIG, and other banks that bought Goldman's CDOs also extracted billions from AIG (click here for details). Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein claims he had no idea AIG had trouble producing collateral. I knew AIG was headed for grave trouble more than a year before the September 2008 bailout and raised the issue with both Warren Buffett and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. Goldman Sachs claims to be a superior risk manager, yet asks the public to believe that it was clueless about AIG's distress, even though Goldman itself was a key contributor to it. Then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was CEO of Goldman Sachs at the time it put on these trades with AIG. Lloyd Blankfein was (and remains) CEO of Goldman and was the only Wall Street CEO at one of Paulson's bailout discussions. Stephen Friedman, then Chairman of the NY Fed, also served on Goldman's board."

It would have been prudent -- for American taxpayers at least -- if the Fed had simply loaned some money short term to the bankers at high rates to help them through the credit-default liquidity crisis. But the Fed extended an $85 billion line of credit to AIG. Keep in mind that was in addition to the $40 billion provided to AIG under the Congressional TARP plan. Where did all of this money go? Simply to cover bad bets (a few bonuses) and make everyone at their little table whole! If the integrity of the financial system was preserved by this one act, it's hard to say. There's no doubt as to how taxpayers ultimately fared: They will lose at least $30 billion on the AIG deals alone, according to Barofsky.

Geithner’s role has also troubled Dennis Kucinich, who heads a subpanel of the House Oversight committee. When Kucinich was grilling Geithner last week, this is what he told him:

“There was only one way for Goldman Sachs to get all of the billions they claimed from AIG, and that was if the New York Fed voluntarily agreed to give it to them,” Kucinich said. “If the Fed had fought for taxpayers, Goldman would have had to take some losses and the cost to the people could have been minimized.”

Congress Still a Do-Nothing

Congress has done nothing to regulate credit swaps to date, which were huge gambles made on the housing market that were only backed by empty corporate promises. We let that dirty bomb tick away at our collective peril. The next debacle won't even resemble the Titanic. It will be like every supertanker in the world running aground and bursting open in every major port. It's a global marketplace and everything is connected in the world of money. The next meltdown will take no prisoners.

The bigger question is how Geithner was able to cut these awful deals for the Fed and taxpayers behind closed doors and away from the scrutiny of Congress and the public. This is yet another reason why the Fed should be fully audited and never be permitted to be the main regulator of the banking and credit system. It's too close to the game because it's in the game as referee, player and printing money to cover its bad decisions.

All of this pales in comparison to how the Fed bailed out all of the largest banks and their counterparties by making as many loans as possible, buying toxic debt and allowing bonus-paying goliaths like Goldman to borrow from the Fed's discount money window at almost no cost. There is still no accounting of exactly who received all of the Fed's largesse. Bloomberg News sued the Fed to get this information and won, although the decision is on appeal. The case will probably go to the Supreme Court, where the conservative majority may even rule against the public's right to know. Maybe they'll even have the nerve to call it a "trade secret," one of the often-abused blanket exemptions used in Freedom-of-Information Act denials.

The bottom line, no matter what your political orientation is, the Fed, Treasury and Congress have to be held accountable for the bailout. One way of addressing the deep-seated sickness of the financial system is to adopt Paul Volcker's tough regimen of reforms, regulate all derivatives and impose a permanent tax on speculative trades. Another regulator -- not the Fed -- needs to police systemic risk. The biggest banks need to be broken up and separated from their investment banking/trading divisions. Insurance companies and "non-bank banks" like GE and American Express also need an independent federal regulator.

There's something so morally repugnant about the bailout that it smells like year-old fish. If government officials were truly misled or complicit in a massive deception, let's get a special prosecutor involved. There were certainly many dense levels of conflict of interest with Paulson, and possibly Geithner's staff. Did Goldman dictate the terms of its indirect handout? What did Geithner know? Was the situation really that dire that it took trillions of dollars to fix without directly involving Congressional scrutiny? How is it that the megabanks -- JP Morgan Chase, Citi, Goldman -- got assets and books of business on the cheap and got bigger when they swallowed Merrill, Wachovia and Bear Stearns? We don't need a temporary inspector general on this case. We need a federal prosecutor. Is Patrick Fitzgerald available?

As Janet Tavakoli noted to me in an email:

"There should be a thorough fraud audit. That doesn’t mean one is accusing anyone of fraud, only that if fraud exists, the audit will be thorough enough to uncover it. It is prudent to do a thorough inspection of the way our TARP money is being handled. Barofsky’s assertion that he was misled (about the French banks, the “need” to pay 100 cents on the dollar, the need for redactions, and more) by the Fed when he wrote his November 2009 report is the same as admitting that he was not competent to handle his role. Barofsky’s report was a huge disappointment."

What would make little sense is for any banker to apologize. It’s like having a cheetah apologize for eating an antelope. Bankers make money with other people's cash, especially if it's just handed to them without any strings. That's what they do. It's pointless to parade them in front of Congressional committees for tongue lashings without any threat of indictment. I no more expect them to be contrite than I expect athletes to be role models or actors intellectuals. Banks are not in the social responsibility business, but they do owe a tremendous debt to society. They are not doing God's work.

Let's take the $1.7 trillion in writedowns banks took due to the debacle and call it blood money. To put that amount of money in perspective, $1.7 trillion is more than the individual 2009 GDPs of Brazil, India, Canada and Australia. The $13 trillion bailout tab is about as much as the combined GDP of Europe. Either amount would buy a lot of health care, high-speed rail, schools and college scholarships.

Bankers gamed the system and got away with it because the system was corrupted. They should not be able to walk away as if nothing happened. Millions are losing their homes because of their behavior. Millions have taken 20-percent-plus haircuts in their retirement funds.

Tax everyone who got Fed or TARP money, as President Obama has suggested. Have the proceeds deposited into a national trust fund to rebuild this country and restore jobs along with a prohibition against lobbying against meaningful financial reform (fie on the Supreme Court conservative majority).

In concert with curbing financial industry abuses, we need to demand the elimination of the filibuster rule (it's not in the constitution) and pass the Fair Elections Now Act. As long as corporate money has unlimited influence in Congress, public interest legislation is dead in the water.

And let's dispense with the idea that the bailout was designed to save jobs and fix the economy. President Obama needs to be honest about the core mission of the bailout: It was to save Goldman and the rest of the megabanks, which have failed the country and their shareholders. They are too big not to be dismembered.

Then there's the matter of Geithner, who completely compromised the interests of the people and must go. He'll eventually get his reward and he knows it. His outlandish banking favor means that Wall Street will pay it forward and bury him with untold riches somewhere down the road. But it was our money and future he was playing with; it shouldn't be paid forward, it should be paid back.

John F. Wasik is the author of The Audacity of Help (www.audacityofhelp.net) and 12 other books (www.johnwasik.com).

Sources: For Neil Barofsky's 1/26/2010 testimony and audit summary before Congress, see (http://www.sigtarp.gov/reports/testimony/2010/Testimony%20Jan%2027_2010_House%20Committee%20on%20Oversight%20and%20Government%20Reform.pdf).

The excellent piece in Bloomberg Markets "In Goldman We Trust:" http://www.bloomberg.com/news/marketsmag/ spells out Goldman's myriad subsidies.

Also consult Janet Tavakoli's incisive piece in Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-tavakoli/congress-exposes-potentia_b_440361.html

Dr. King's Unfinished Work

Shortly before he was assassinated, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. began what was known as the "Poor People's Campaign." The goal was simple, but the reality daunting: Create jobs for every able-bodied person. That was in 1967.

It's still a noble goal for this century. Provided that we can offer affordable, accessible health care to every American, the next step is jobs. The statistics are not encouraging -- more than 10 percent unemployment, more than 20 percent in inner cities.

Why is getting a decent job a human right? Because it's about dignity and productivity. You can't subscribe to the "pursuit of happiness" without gainful employment. I don't think any of the founding fathers would disagree with that. Working people pay taxes, support schools, build a solid social fabric. It's the American Dream.

How did we get sidetracked from the promise of Dr. King's dream? How did we get stuck in two wars and land on the precipice of economic ruin? Was it cultural hubris or a form of social madness? I would argue that we got drunk on the punchbowl of false prosperity, but it was a hallucinating elixir. The rabbit hole was deep, but we're still climbing out.

Did we genuinely believe that bigger cars, houses and perks would make us better people or give us longer lives?

We believed Wall Street when it told us that they had our best interests at heart. We believed charlatans like Phil Gramm and Robert Rubin when they told us that financial de-regulation would actually liberate markets to create more jobs without adding catastrophic risk. We were listening to the wrong people.

While I'm not going to jump on that dais that says that God is punishing us for our affluenza, it's clear that not sharing prosperity with all walks of life has hurt us. If you want to get a laser-focus on how much the financial sector has damaged our economy, read Kevin Phillip's Bad Money or my Cul-de-Sac Syndrome.

Despite all of that wealth creation on Wall Street (up until the crash at least), it only created a handful of jobs and concentrated capital in only one sector of the economy. How much of the money that traders made on complex derivatives and mortgage securities went to building affordable housing, lightweight/long-term vehicle batteries, fixing infrastructure or just creating jobs where they were most needed? Just take a walk through downtown Detroit, Chicago's West Side, or South Central LA and you have your answer.

And where were the great institutions of our republic when the looting of our economy occurred?
The Federal Reserve, which is mandated by the Humphrey-Hawkins Act to create full employment, was enabling Wall Street, which eventually led to high unemployment. Not one, but three crashes ensued due to the Fed's bargain-basement funding of financial manipulators (dot.com, housing and credit). No matter what the business headlines say now, the $13 trillion bailout will be hurting us for decades.

Yet here we are, with the poverty rate hovering near 13 percent -- about where it was in 1967. Now, due to the recession, the middle class is backsliding into the economic doldrums. Due to inflation, middle-income families made no progress in the first decade of this century. Their retirement funds and home equity were battered.

Despite the economic gloom, I think we need to return to Dr. King for inspiration and guidance. There are some ways to actively turn around our malaise and make a stab at full employment:

• Social Capitalism Holds the Key. This is not giving a handout to anyone. It has nothing to do with welfare and everything to do with entrepreneurism. President Obama's "Green Deal" (see my "Audacity of Help") is the single-best first step. His Department of Energy is now the biggest venture capital entity in the country. Provide the money to researchers and the private sector and let them create the jobs and build social and intellectual capital!

• Reform the Federal Reserve. You can't have a central bank that is constantly making the wrong decisions, is a pathetic watchdog and is the bailout king for errant bankers. Open up and audit the Fed's books. If they're going to be the source of cheap money, make sure it flows to people creating jobs and not speculators.

• Tax Speculation. President Obama has a proposal to tax banks. I think it's unfair and it reeks of some kind of punishment. Believe me, you can dole out plenty of lashes for what the banks did to this economy and it will never be sufficient. You can tax them all you want and it still won't replace the jobs that were lost. Tax speculation instead. Any transaction that closes in less than a year should be penalized.

• Bring Back New Deal Protections. The trading operations and mainstream banking backed by federal insurance should not be in one company. Split up the banks so that speculative trading and investment banking desks are completely separate entities from the lending/credit arms.

• Make The Green Deal Bigger and Permanent. The mother of all stimulus plans is money flowing from the government into the private sector for decades -- not a year or two. We need a new energy, telecom, transportation and building infrastructure. Let's tax pollution, gambling, drugs (non-medicinal) and alcohol to build what we need to provide jobs everywhere.

• Kill the Filibuster. The archaic Senate rule that kills any legislation not garnering 60 votes has to go. It's the death knell for any progressive reforms and is championed by a scant 10 percent of the US population. The filibuster is not in the constitution. Let's get rid of it and move on.

So let's revisit Dr. King's prophetic and pragmatic words:

"America is at a crossroads of history, and it is critically important for us, as a nation and a society, to chose a new path and move upon it with resolution and courage. It is impossible to underestimate the crisis we face in America. The stability of civilization, the potential of free government, and the simple honor of men are at stake."

It's time to reinvent ourselves. Instead of the me-centered Jeffersonian concept of individual prosperity, it's time for a collective prosperity. The time has never been more right for Dr. King's admonition and moving ahead.


John F. Wasik is an activist and author of The Audacity of Help: Obama's Economic Plan and the Remaking of America).

Jim Sulski, RIP

Jim Sulski and His Beautiful History of the Future


My friend and former colleague Jim Sulski passed away at the young age of 52 after a long, valiant struggle with cancer. My sympathies to his family, friends, students and colleagues. He fought bravely against cancer for years, a disease that took my mother’s life and afflicts my wife. I’m hoping that this humble remembrance will serve as a celebration of his life, one that touched so many and will continue to endure in our hearts and memories.


Jim and our little cadre of ink-stained wretches worked and hung out in the early 1980s on the South Side of Chicago. At the time, South Chicago was still home to The Daily Calumet, a down-on-it-luck 100-year-old paper that served the moribund community of acrid, hulking steel mills. Jim served as the education reporter while I had the business-labor beat.

Our world headquarters leaned precariously in one direction over the decrepit vaulted sidewalks that raised humanity above the mud flats of the Calumet River basin. The first floor was a reception area, manned by Louise, a tough yet accommodating Polish-speaking woman who also served as our walk-in circulation clerk. The second floor had long been abandoned and the third floor should have been condemned, along with the rest of the building. One day our publisher had this brilliant idea to save money on replacing the 100-year-old windows by bolting Plexiglas panels over the window wells. This effectively sealed us in; had there been a fire our choice of departing this world would have been immolation or asphyxiation. In the rear of the floor was a darkroom and morgue of unbound newspapers.

As the desks were nearly as old as the building, they barely supported paper and typewriters. In those days we hammered away on IBM selectrics. Copy was then fed into scanners at the printing plant in Lansing. There wasn’t a computer terminal in sight. Our publisher’s second flash of intellectual ecstasy was to buy desks from the defunct Wisconsin Steel. They were sturdy, gray Steelcase desks. You could’ve dropped I-beams on them and they would’ve held up. To add a little color to the rapidly composting building, he decided to have them painted in cartoon colors.

Jim’s desk was the color of the Beatle’s Yellow Submarine, which suited him fine, since he adored the Beatles and usually ended up belting out Fab Four songs in a circle with his fellow imbibers at the end of a long day of deadlines, beer and chasing the local wildlife in Cal City. I had no idea what color my desk was. Like little boys in third grade, our editor had to separate us, since we couldn’t be in close proximity due to the heavy traffic of paper airplanes, spitballs or other projectiles. We both suffered from serious cases of arrested development, yet it was the prison-like nature of the Daily Cal newsroom – a dying paper in an enfeebled community -- that compelled us to seek distractions.

With Jim, there was always this sense of the unexpected. He was constantly throwing curveballs at you and was a great prankster. Since he didn't have an unkind word about anyone, he was always a joy to be around.

One endless evening 30 years ago, when we were closing some bar in Calumet City, he introduced me to a young lady who claimed to be a belly dancer who worked in the infamous Golden Shell restaurant on the East Side (infamous for being a hang-out of the mass murderer Richard Speck). What he didn't tell me at that late hour was that he told the damsel that I had promised to write a story about her for our paper, The Daily Calumet. Come Monday morning, she was ready for the interview. Fortunately, Bob Bong, my editor at the time, didn't sense any overt compromise and thought it would be a good story, so we did it -- with pictures. After the story ran, that was the end of my relationship with supple Rita.

“She was just 17, and you knooow what I mean,” was how we bridged night and day before we headed off for breakfast or the purgative penance of The White Castle. We were like comrades in a DH Lawrence novel; there was much brotherly love.

If there was a time between the moment I left home after college and the day of my marriage when I felt most alive --pulsating with possibility and the nearly self-destructive exuberance for experience -- this was it. I didn’t seem to fear anything. None of us did. We just sallied forth into the world of decay, adventure and bottomless pitchers of beer. If the world was falling apart around us or we were really in some kind of purgatory, we were oblivious to it in a decade of dashed expectations.

While his personality seemed to be like Teflon as far as trouble was concerned, I had a knack for pissing people off (still do). I was kicked out of offices, threatened by ward bosses and labor leaders. I was constantly watching my back and looking under my car. I was genuinely concerned for my health and well being after being told many times I was "going to get my lunch."

Not so with Jim. He grew up in South Chicago and had more friends than there were sidewalks. He knew everyone and everyone knew him. I came from the South Suburbs; this was his home and he always felt good about being a Bowen High School graduate who transcended the working’s man’s dilemma. He genuinely enjoyed people who came into his circle and was always challenging those who weren’t. After he came out of the hospital following a serious car accident that left his face scarred, he grew a beard and finished his bachelor’s degree. He later picked up his master’s in communication at the University of Illinois-Chicago, the same place I got my two diplomas (and same master’s).

We briefly parted ways after the Daily Cal, which was acquired and shut down not too long after he left. (The last great journalist the Cal incubated was John Kass, who eventually inherited Mike Royko’s slot at the Tribune). Although I was at the Daily Cal scarcely two years, there was so much compressed into that time that it has taken me 30 years to decompress from it. I saw thousands of millworkers become unemployed, fall into despair and fight losing battles to get their jobs back. I rode in the back of a bus as they lobbied Washington. I snuck into a meeting with then-mayor Jane Byrne, who like so many other politicians, had lied to them with promises of reopening their ramshackle mill, Wisconsin Steel. I was variously accepted and rejected by local steelworker union and political bosses, sworn at, threatened and stressed out to the point of exhaustion. I seriously doubted whether I would make it to 30; my doctor told me I had an ulcer and couldn’t subsist on pizza and beer. My hair started turning gray.

Jim, of course, was affected by the economic violence around him yet didn’t look fazed by any of it. I knew he genuinely cared for people – these were his neighbors and buddies after all – yet I sensed that he would move on in a profound way. He wasn’t going to stay in South Chicago and rot. I’m not quite sure what kind of relationship he had with his estranged father, although I’m reasonably sure he didn’t want to end up like him. He never talked about him. I sensed this immense void in his life that he attempted to fill with his intense friendships, marriages and vocation -- none of which he was ever ambivalent about.

After seeing the cops shoot some unemployed guy on a commuter train who had taken a woman hostage, in 1981, I had enough. I was off to pursue a quiet career in business writing and ended up at American Metal Market, a staid trade paper covering the steel and metalworking industries. I lasted six months. It was a bad fit and I was indifferent about being a trade journalist.

Jim and I reconnected shortly thereafter and he talked me into coming to a new venture called Keycom Electronic Publishing. At the time, personal computers were the sole province of guys with pocket protectors. They were hard to find. Cellphones were the size of bricks. Fax machines still ruled and the Internet was still the captive domain of researchers and the defense department. Nobody had any inkling of what the Worldwide Web would become.

At the time, newspapers and the print media had this well-defined paranoia of AT&T. They thought the phone companies would take over the world of telecommunications and be able to deliver information to everyone’s home for practically nothing. They heard the jeremiads of the consultants and business gurus who prophesized the end of media as we knew it. TV and radio news would go away under this scenario.

Ma Bell would rule with an iron scepter! That mantra catapulted every newspaper group to enter into the online realm. Everyone from Knight-Ridder to the Chicago Sun-Times was in survival mode with this odd new technology that they hoped would deliver them from the telephonic-induced Armageddon. The punishing inflationary years of the late 1970s forced major industrial restructurings well into the next decade as recession devastated manufacturing jobs, which continued to migrate overseas or to Mexico. Nearly every large old-line business would never be the same. The media business, however, was going electronic, a transition that is still underway.

Jim was on top of this trend and riding the Malibu-like wave of electronic publishing. He beckoned me to join this pioneering company that had imported an English system called teletext that could be broadcast on television or delivered on a computer. At some point in the future, this primitive ASCII-type system could morph into videotext, a truly interactive information medium. Imagine typing in a request for information and getting exactly what you asked for! That was a big deal in the early 80s, long before the Googles and Yahoos. Seeded by a management team from The Sun-Times and Centel Telephone, we were a mutt of company. The newspaper guys were hard-drinking, carousing and people-focused while the phone guys were into suits and bureaucracy.

We had a loose newsroom consisting of young journalists led by Mort Smith, an ex-BBC and Channel 4 editor and Peter Winter, a gregarious New Zealander. The chemistry was always volatile since we were producing a product for which the market hadn’t yet been established. Almost no one at the time got their news by computer and only a relative handful even owned personal computers, which certainly weren’t the modern telecommunications appliances they are today. Keycom marketed a clunky keyboard with mint-sized keys and microwave-sized converter that hooked up to your television set. The pong-like graphics improved over time, yet they were arguably worse than the most primitive handheld video game today.

The challenge was all in those pioneering days, which typically ended at the local watering hole “El Torito” with swaggering manager Ben Smylie plunking down his corporate Amex card on the bar and the rest of the staff enjoying the company’s generosity and endless flow of margaritas.

For Jim, I and the rest of the staff, this was an extension of our rambling newspaper days. We were now producing a news product that changed almost every minute. It seems archaic now, but we would rewrite news wires – often from paper feeds – feed it through a technically demanding Atex system originally designed for newspapers – then through another computer interface to be “broadcast.” The whole process was cumbersome, labor-intensive and prone to breakdowns, such as when a string of my solicitous emails to other staffers started backing up. Sensing my immediate and profound embarrassment, Jim quickly applied his technical expertise to fix the problem before I became a laughing stock of the newsroom. Email in those days was a fairly closed system among a handful of people, but more like instant messaging than the massive network system we have today.

At least some of those emails led to more than romance. A beautiful, blue-eyed graphic artist by the name of Kathleen Rose Conlon caught my eye when she joined the company to do an online narrative cartoon entitled “Escape from Titan.” Having just come over with her family from the civil-war-torn streets of West Belfast, this was a breakthrough job for Kathleen, whose family had known Smylie (and had offered her a job at a party). I was smitten by the (then) 18-year-old and five years later we married. Both of our daughters, Sarah, 13, and Julia, 9, have Kathleen’s blue eyes and her indomitable temperament. Had Jim not talked me into joining Keycom, I doubt if I would have ever met the love of my life, whom is still the center of my universe after more than a quarter century. Jim married his first wife Sheila, just before we got married, moved to Beverly and had three great children.

Toward the end of our Keycom tenure, Jim managed to talk me into disciplining our unfettered comedic talents (more his than mine). We enrolled in the Player’s Workshop of Second City, a training camp for improvisational actors, many of whom went onto the big Second City company and beyond. For me, Jim helped me attain what I later found to be an essential life skill – talking in front of a crowd of people. I’ve always been pretty much an introvert; Jim managed to pull out of me a more creative approach to the world. I know he had this effect on others as well.
We relished our year-long training and both graduated. Our “ceremony” consisted of performing skits on the famed Second City stage in Old Town. While I’ve used my improvisational training in nearly every speech I’ve given from coast to coast, Jim took his far-more advanced skills to a different stage.

A few years after Keycom, Jim started teaching (while also doing freelance writing) at Columbia College, eventually ending up as a great newspaper advisor to the Chronicle, the award-winning student paper. I know he influenced a lot of young journalists there and was loved by his colleagues. Jim and I became estranged after his first marriage broke up and he remarried, but I kept following his career and his health crises. Without reservation, I mourned the loss of his company during his last years. He was a lighthearted fellow traveler in an insane world. I truly missed him and loved him for what he was.


I know that this all-too-brief summary fails utterly at capturing the essence of a life that covered a half century. I can only surmise that the impact he had on me was as powerful on other people. He leaves much behind, and all of it screams frenetically to live every day, shout a Beatles song at the top of your lungs, don’t ever think that your day ends when you leave work. Keep on drinking that elixir of mortality.