Even More This And That

Now there’s a fuss because too much of the Berlin Wall has been destroyed. There’s too little of it left for those who feel sentimental about it to see. Oh my. I remember so vividly the day it went up. The East Germans had been trying to stop the hemorrhaging of talented citizens who fled west once they got into Berlin.
They tried in 1958, and we stopped them. In 1959, and they couldn’t build it. The issue was muted during the American elections in 1960 and then it burst upon us with a vengeance in 1961. The East Germans and Russians finally had an American President they knew could not and would not stop them. In August they built their wall.
It was a prison wall. It was a wall to create segregation. It was reinforced with machine guns and blood. Celebrating it would be like putting a little plaque in each southern restaurant, hospital and bus—saying “Beyond this point no colored were allowed.” Or “You are now in ‘White Only’ territory.”
Like the Jim Crow signs, the wall is nothing to celebrate. Ninety miles of prison wall, dividing neighborhood from neighborhood, family member from family member—let it be as gone as the “White Only” signs.
Build a museum and let people come and look at pictures and see blood spattered casualties who tried to tunnel under, fly over or jump the wall. Put a few pieces of the wall up (like they have in a museum in Grand Rapids) so the next generation can visualize political madness run rampant.
But wipe the ninety miles it ran through the city clean—like the walls of a southern hospital or hamburger stand. The citizens of Berlin are blessed without need for any mixture by having it gone—without a trace.
HAPPY DAYS AT GENERAL MOTORS
One of GMs big strategy for survival is to get their creditors to swap bonds for shares of GMs common stock. This needs to happen for the big car maker to stay out of bankruptcy court. But some news came in last weekend that makes this less and less likely.
Six top executives at GM unloaded about 200,000 of their personally owned shares of General Motors Stock between Friday and Monday. They weren’t doing this because they were cashing in on profits! The stock share prices ran between $1.40 and $1.60.
This was unloading at yard sale prices—and lower. You only do this when you feel the nickel on the dollar you can get now beats nothing a month down the road. It reminds you of Russian Jewish pogrom victims who were given three days to sell all their goods and move out of the area.
With a three day deadline, you take whatever few rubles a greedy Gentile neighbor will give you. Only with GM, it obviously wasn’t a law that was ordering them to get out of GM stocks—for whatever anyone will pay. Apparently it was their own sense of what was ahead for the company.
If you were a creditor, would you take stock certificates in payment for anything?
It is a safe bet that the executives—including two vice-chairmen—were letting us know their opinion of GM’s chances to avoid bankruptcy. One is tempted to say something mean-spirited about rats and sinking ships, but I shall forebear.
I’m not sure I would buy a Pontiac tomorrow either.
MORE GOOD NEWS
Consumer spending is down for the second month in a row. This sent the Dow Jones diving for 180 points today. More and more warnings are coming out about the toxic assets held in vast quantities by a slew of banks. These have not been dealt with. Nobody wants to do the math.
They’re warning us that oil prices might take an upward bound as usage increases a bit along with production cut backs. This, we are told, could delay the recovery. I just saw an online ad today telling me that I should only invest in companies likely to receive huge infusions of government spending—not to trust in Wall Street or any private investments.
Somebody pointed out to President Obama that releasing pictures of GIs torturing Muslim prisoners might very well put pictured Americans in real danger. Someone else pointed out that when we last released photos of GIs tormenting Iraqi prisoners, there was a tremendous PR backlash in the Arab world. Wheels within wheels within wheels.
“Businessweek” tells us that private equity investors are sitting on a one trillion dollar war chest—waiting for the true bottom to be reached—then they’ll pounce on distressed targets. These are the same guys who bought up Chrysler a few years ago and couldn’t make it run.
They basically have refined a business technique developed by Al Capone nearly eighty years ago. You buy up a legitimate company, strip it of real assets and cash; then you sell it to another sucker who inherits lots of debt and a non-functional company.
Funny thing. In nearly every past national crisis, someone, somewhere, in some prominent private or governmental position would call for prayer. (Nobody’s come up with a better idea for this one.) I haven’t anyone but a few preachers doing that this time.
So we potter on—throwing money we don’t have at problems we don’t really understand, sending more troops into areas Alexander The Great wouldn’t enter. There’s an old phrase that comes to mind: “They haven’t got a prayer”.
And they don’t seem to want any.