Where My Mind has Wandered

What is Podcasting?

Podcasting is not synonymous with online audio. Is not. Is not. Is not. People inevitably fail to grasp the subscription component of a podcast. It should not surprise me that everyone thinks they are the same thing, but it surprises and bothers me. More than it should.

I also find it interesting that vodcast and vidcast have not had their meaning mangled in a similar way. In marketing communications situations you hear everyone talking about podcasts (and not really meaning podcasts) but they glaze over whenever the term vodcast comes up, or any other -cast for that matter. All audio is a podcast and all video is a YouTube video, even if it isn't put on YouTube.

People seem to get blogging but forget about Twitter, that just blows their mind completely. More vacant stares. 

If you do not know what a podcast really is you can read the entry in Wikipedia or you can listen to Ask a  Ninja's take on the subject. Please.

"Jawbone" Pledge Continues to Dog lil' Bush

In meetings this week in Saudi Arabia -- with leaders including Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal, and King Abdullah -- President Bush failed to win an increase Saudi oil production. The failure, his second this year, once again raised references in news coverage to statements he made during the 2000 campaign about the need to "jawbone" oil producing nations to persuade them to increase production.

Today's ubiquitous AP story contains this reference:

When Bush first ran for president in 2000, he criticized the Clinton administration for high fuel prices and said the president must "jawbone" oil producing nations and persuade them to drop rates. At that time, oil was nearing $28 a barrel — less than a quarter what it is now.

I have not been able to find an actual quote from the 2000 campaign, but a quick search does show many references in coverage over the past several years. In a September 2004 article, entitled "Bush's Top Ten Flip-Flops", CBSNews.com Chief Political Writer David Paul Kuhn places the statement in the first Republican debate in December 1999.

Mr. Bush was critical of Al Gore in the 2000 campaign for being part of “the administration that's been in charge” while the “price of gasoline has gone steadily upward.” In December 1999, in the first Republican primary debate, Mr. Bush said President Clinton “must jawbone OPEC members to lower prices.”

An AP writer cited the "jawbone" quote in 2006 in article covering the Bush Administrations efforts to reach out to countries rich in oil and gas but accused of authoritarian rule and human rights violations. An AP writer used the line again in an April 2005 story covering a pending meeting between Bush and then Crown-Prince Abdullah at his Crawford, Texas ranch.

In April 2004 John Kerry raised the comment and suggested it represented a failure on Bush's part to keep a campaign promise. Not that Kerry thought it wasn't possible; he instead suggested that Bush was soft on the issue much the way Bush claimed Clinton was. Commenting on a meeting between Bush and Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan in which it was reported the two discussed increasing production to drive down prices prior to the election (something Bandar denied), Kerry said:

"I'm here today to say if there was no deal, if there was no agreement, then stand up today and jawbone OPEC to lower the price. They could up that production tomorrow. We need to have them answer why they won't do that."

Bush's self-confidence in his persuasive abilities was evident throughout the 2000 campaign. New York times political reporter Katharine Q. Seelye's coverage of Bush in 2000 included some more often-quoted statements:

''I would work with our friends in OPEC to convince them to open up the spigot, to increase the supply... Use the capital that my administration will earn, with the Kuwaitis or the Saudis, and convince them to open up the spigot... Ours is a nation that helped Kuwait and the Saudis, and you'd think we'd have the capital necessary to convince them to increase the crude supplies."

According to Seelye, these quotes came from June 28, 2000 news conference after a meeting with participants in a private welfare-to-work program. Bush's self-confidence was obviously over-confidence, he has had no success in his efforts to combat high oil prices with an increase in global oil production. As mush as President Carter's time in office is marked by long gas lines, Bush's tenure will be tied with an increase in oil prices from the $28 a barrel price he criticized the Clinton administration for the the $128 a barrel price today.

Productivity, Speculation, and Monetary Policy

One of the theories behind U.S. monetary policy is that if we make money easier to get (low taxes and low interest rates) people will invest in activity that drives productivity. Business will expand, new business will open, more jobs and economic growth will follow. The problem with this theory is that it is not absolute. Investment does flow into productivity, but investment also flows into speculation. The technology and real estate bubbles are perfect examples. Speculation drives false productivity, where the value of assets rose based upon perceived value versus actual productivity.

While Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke were driving down interest rates to avoid inflation HGTV was airing The Big Flip eight times a week. Funny how the word "flip" showed up in both the tech and housing bubbles. Here is how HGTV promotes the show:

Our renovators, Paul Peic and Kye Husbands, are taking on the challenge of fixing and flipping as many houses as they can in just 12 months. Or lose their minds and shirts trying. Paul and Kye are experienced entrepreneurs who will try anything once, but neither one of them has ever flipped houses before. They say it's not a problem. They're convinced they have what it takes not only to be successful... but really, really rich. The investment, the sweat equity and any ups or downs are all theirs. Can it be done? They think so.

HGTV's peers were all in the game, with competing shows including Flip this House and Flip that House. There is a big difference between a VC that can afford to spend $500 million on 10 start-ups in hopes that one ends up worth $5 billion and people putting all of their savings into real estate and tech stocks. Most venture capital firms aren't investing with their own money. Investing is what a VC does for a living, and the good VCs bring assets to the companies they invest in that make those companies better.

The investor who overextends to invest in properties in Southern Florida is working in a completely different environment. Let's say he put $1.5 million down to buy 20 properties for an average price of $500,000. That gives him $10 million in mortgage liability and $100,000 a month in mortgage payments. He is investing his own money. No one property is going to "make it big" and suddenly be worth $50 million to offset losses elsewhere. And if he can't cover the mortgage payments he has to start selling off property, regardless of the market conditions. The is a real scenario. I rented a house from someone in exactly this situation. The day after we went home from our vacation in Disney World the bank foreclosed on all of his properties.

This kind of speculation happened across the country in both larger and smaller scales. I don't have an answer; the solution is not obvious. I'm all for lowering taxes and trimming government spend. And I am not against low interest rates. I do think that when you use terms like "irrational exuberance" and "froth" to describe market conditions perhaps driving down interest rates, on its own, isn't the best course of action. Once again, I'm not in a position to say where those interest rates should be, but our policy makers need to much smarter at avoiding and/or managing bubbles. 

Exhale. Relax. Feel better. Travis Childers wins in Mississippi.

I am an independent, but there is no doubt I loathe the current administration. It disgusts me. The Republican Party needs a good drubbing in the Presidential election if it is going to reform itself and start caring more about good government and fiscal responsibility and less about stuffing friendly pockets with pork and fat contracts, gaming K-Street, and getting jobs for graduates of Regent University.

That is why I take great comfort in the victory of Travis Childers in Mississippi's 1st Congressional district. Running as a pro-life Democrat in a district that elected and returned Trent Lott to the U.S. Senate for 18 years, Childers overcame a textbook attack ad campaign by his opponent Republican Greg Davis. The ads associated the conservative Childers with Nancy Pelosi, Pastor Jeremiah Wright, 9/11, and Barak Obama's comment about bitter voters in Pennsylvania. That Childers won a conservative district despite the usual bag of dirty tricks suggests that the drubbing I am hoping for might just be in the cards.

Will anyone be sympathetic to Rumsfeld's re-write?

The Rumsfeld memoir is around the corner, and I have to wonder who will stand by him as he attempts to re-write the history of his tenure in an attempt to clear his well-muddied name. Perhaps some of his neo-con ideological partners, like Richard Perle or Paul Wolfowitz.

The problem for Rumsfeld is that he will need to find scapegoats. Had he made fewer enemies he might be able to pull if off, but the list of people standing ready to contradict Rumsfeld is long. Some have already fired shots across his bow, including Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of U.S. Forces in Iraq from 2003 and 2004. TIME published a lengthy excerpt from Sanchez's recently published memoir that takes direct aim at Rumsfeld and previews his attempts, while he was still Secretary of Defense, to provide some cover for himself for mistakes made in Iraq.

Sanchez feelings of betrayal, and efforts to distance himself, are evident in this passage:

"In the meantime, hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars were unnecessarily spent, and worse yet, too many of our most precious military resource, our American soldiers, were unnecessarily wounded, maimed, and killed as a result. In my mind, this action by the Bush administration amounts to gross incompetence and dereliction of duty."

Not exactly subtle language. This should be fun.