Reading Between the Lines

“Recession is when a neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. “

–Ronald Reagan

Decided after many weeks of brown-bagging to pay a visit yeterday to my favorite Italian deli near the office and what did my wondering eye see but this welcome sign: “All Sandwiches (on menu) $6″

I hadn’t been haunting the place much lately because the usual $8 or $9 they get for a sandwich had begun feeling more like a luxury than lunch what with gasoline flirting with $4 a gallon locally before the big dropoff of the past few weeks.

Gas may be a more reasonable $2.79 or so around these parts now but groceries remain sky high and nothing seems a bargain anymore, be it made in China or grown at a nearby farm for that matter. I mean even the little mom-and-pop coffee shop down the road from my house has gone and hiked its long-standing charge of $1.85 for a nice big cuppa Green Mountain coffee– better than Starbucks, let me just flat out state by the way– right past two bucks to $2.10!

Now I know $6 for a sandwich served at a table will sound pricey to many. But trust me, it’s a bargain around here and would be considered an absolute steal just 30 or so miles away in the big city of Manhattan. And we’re talking about a scrumptious sandwich here. Cold cuts and cheese imported from Italy placed just so in the perfect amount to be satisfying but not sloppy between hearty slices of Italian bread– with or without seeds, your choice– trucked up to Conncticut daily from the famous bakeries on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. Can’t beat that ever and now I can’t beat the price, either.

The deli’s owner, a bit of a character like so many small businesspersons are, called out to me that it was my “lucky day” as soon as I crossed the threshold, making it sound like maybe just maybe the lower price was good for today only.

He is smart to price by sign. If business is brisk, he can snatch the sign out of the window and wait until the next slow day to hang it back up.

One thing is certain though. That sign would not be there if we weren’t all being pummeled by a stagnant economy.

At least for now, that sign is a sign of the times.



I’d gladly pay more for lunch if it meant our economy was moving again!

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

–F. Scott Fitzgerald

Even if my life depended on it, I couldn’t even guess whether General Motors will actually buy Chrysler. That’s the scenario many in the general business media have floated as a solution to the awesome ills besetting both automotive giants in today’s hard times.

Grasping the kind of high-wire financial acrobatics that would entail is well beyond my ken but I am surely intrigued by what may pan out. The thing is, believe it or not my friends– and you are my friends!– while I may own what some would regard as a “blue” voting record, as a fully red-blooded American I can admit that I’d vastly prefer Chrysler to remain in the hands of a U.S.-based owner this time around…

Yes, we live in a global world and I am a proud citizen of that reality, too, but there is nothing wrong in my book with taking pride in at least a few consumer brand names that bespeak one’s native land. And I don’t see how one can get any more American than the namesake companies of Walter P. Chrysler and the Dodge Brothers– not to mention that little old red-white-and-blue icon known so eloquently as Jeep.



WWII’s “GI cartoonist” Bill Mauldin in his Jeep, Jeanie, named for his wife, near the Po River in Italy, circa 1944

So, for me anyway, who has no stake in the automotive game other than hoping that we as a nation will do what we can (yes, yes, within limits) to keep as many of these big manufacturers going as possible for the sake both of American workers and national security (Side thought: I’ve long wondered what on earth we will do if an old-fashioned “total” war ever broke out again and we had to build trucks, tanks, planes and ships etc. etc. rapidly on a grand scale and with guaranteed quality if there are no factories left here? ), what is most fascinating is what nameplates will be left if the big merger occurs.

Yes, this is something of a parlor game. But what the hell. Maybe we all need at least a little break from worrying about the economy and dissecting the presidential election polls. At least I do!

Anyway, I bet if GM takes over Chrysler, the Chrysler marque will disappear as will the Chrysler car line and the Dodge car line except for their world-class minivan. The Dodge nameplate will be retained as of course– unquestionably so!– will the almighty Jeep badge. In my scenario, Dodge and Jeep dealers will offer all the Jeep models they can peddle and they will offer Dodge minivans and the full existing Dodge truck line, including the Ram pickup and medium-duties and the Sprinter– at least for as long as Daimler will let them keep selling that hot number.

What’s more, unless GM can sell its medium-duty GMC/Chevy line to Navistar or Isuzu– still the two most likely buyers– it will roll the most lucrative of those models into the Dodge line and reserve the Jimmy and Chevy truck badges for the pickups and vans that remain such major sellers. And the General might go so far as to drop the GMC brand altogetherr and just sell Dodge and Chevy trucks.

As for the car side of the General’s ranks, something will have to give and my first bet is the Pontiac will be the next marque to get axed. Some might think the fusty Buick brand– long seen as “the doctor’s car” here –would get ditched first, but Buick is a highly respected brand overseas especially in Asia so I think GM would want to keep it going for that reason alone. Despite its racier image, Pontiac is not distinct enough from Chevrolet to survive any serious downsizing. It would help if it had its own Corvette or pickup truck. Personally, though, I’d rather see the goofy Saturn brand get zapped and Pontiac get all its zingy new European-based models.

That’s just my take on what may be. It comes from a guy who never thought he’d see the day Oldsmobile and Plymouth– not to mention AMC!–would go the way of Nash, Packard and Studebaker among so many other lost marques of America’s golden automotive age that truth be told peaked in the late 20th century.

But we motor on. Not only because we have to, but because we love to!



Just one Chrysler worth remembering!

“The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy.”

Milton Friedman, Nobel-prize winning American economist (1912-2006)

Perhaps deciding he has been upstaged enough by Treasury Secretray Hank “King Henry” Paulson, Fed Chief Ben Bernanke threw some heat of his own this morning, telling the House Budget Committee he’d support another fiscal-stimulus package to cut the risk of a “protracted” slowdown, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Keep them fastballs coming!

“With the economy likely to be weak for several quarters, and with some risk of a protracted slowdown, consideration of a fiscal package by the Congress at this juncture seems appropriate,” Bernanke said in prepared remarks. The Journal report said that he offered many caveats: “Any stimulus should be ‘well-targeted,’ he said, and focused on ways to ‘help improve access to credit by consumers, homebuyers, businesses, and other borrowers.’”

While his remarks today were focused on what Congress could do to help get the economy back in gear, the newspaper noted that Bernanke’s comments last week suggested the Fed is open to more rate cuts: “We will not stand down until we have achieved our goals of repairing and reforming our financial system and restoring prosperity,” said the Fed chief.

That sounds good to me. Bring it on Ben, bring it on Henry! You are both late to the party in my view, but if you keep pouring it on now, maybe just maybe things will pick up before they get any worse.

And geez, I can’t help but wonder whatever happened to the good old days of limited “hands-off” government a la Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman for that matter? Oh well, yeah, of course, now I remember– the laissez-faire approach to regulating the financial markets that political philospophy engendered in large part is what got us into the mess that the economic regulators are finally trying to fix!

Water under the bridge, perhaps, best I not be so negative is what some would say. But it is incredibly expensive water and we will all have to drink it for years to come.

I just thank my lucky stars that by the mere accident of birth on the one hand I am just removed enough from retirement that my 401k may actually recover before that day of reckoning arrives, and on other the other, that the fiscal bacchanalia of the last 20-odd years won’t be forgotten soon enough to ever be allowed to occur again in my lifetime.

That’s me being optimistic. Because for the sake of my mental health, I can’t afford to be anything else!



For some of us, the glass is never half full.

“Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you’re going to do now and do it.”

–William Crapo “Billy” Durant (1861-1947), founder of General Motors

Time was when the saying “As goes General Motors, so goes the nation” held much sway. The days when that one corporation–or any one corporation for that metter– could have such inlfuence on our country’s well-being may be long gone but that doesn ‘t mean the disappearance of GM would not have a horrible impact on our fragile economy. What’s more, it would greatly injure the national pysche- which in the end drives our economy more than anything else.

I know they are only words but I was at least cheered to just read that an official GM spokesman told ABCnews.com this morning that filing for banruptcy was “not an option” for America’s biggest automakers and one of its most iconic– and global– corporate entities.

“Clearly, we face unprecedented challenges related to uncertainty in the financial markets globally and weakening economic fundamentals in many key markets, but bankruptcy protection is not an option,” GM spokesman Mike Meyerand told ABCNews.com. “GM considering bankruptcy would not be in the interests of our employees, stockholders, suppliers or customers,” he added.

Amen to that! A bankrupt GM would not only hurt all those stakeholders Meyerand mentioned, it would be a black eye on American capitalism that would take this nation years– if ever– from which to recover.

No doubt believing that old adage that the best defesne is a good offense, Meyersand was reacting as positively as he could in the face of the news that shares of the automaker had plunged to $4.76 Thursday– from nearly $7 the day before– after Standard & Poor’s said it was reviewing the automaker’s credit rating for a possible downgrade.

Meyerand also told ABCnews.com that GM would raise capital through the sale of facilities housing GM plants that closed earlier this year and through the possible sale of its Hummer brand.

I am NOT saying the federal government should bail out GM. What I am saying is that we should all applaud the General for having what (in lieu of more vulgar metaphors) old New Englanders call “the Moxie” to stand up and unequivocally state they are– tough times be damned– not going anwyhere but up.

That’s an attitude we’d all do well to adopt right about now– and for the foreseeable future… and then some.

Those were the days…. when trucks had style, if not long miles!

The House collectively held its nose on Friday and passed into law— and the history books– the beyond gigantic “bailout” or “rescue” bill that is supposed to eventually help get our economy humming again. That is why I favored its passage and I do fervently hope that it lives up to its fairest billing.

But if, like me, you’d like to get some kind of grasp on what this mega-package will really mean to our economy– and our national pride– but don’t have the time, inclination or, ahem, the money, to go back to college and take all those business courses you skipped to make room for a double minor in History and Political Science, you may find this “Name that Economy” piece by Jacob Weisberg posted at www.salon.com educational and/ or entertaining.

“The system that’s emerging from this crisis has less to do with the eternal liberal project of finding a humane Third Way between socialism and capitalism than it does with containing the fallout from private risk-taking,” Weisberg rightly observes.

He goes onto present and argue against various monikers for the new breed of capitalism now emerging out of our financial meltdown and the resulting governmental response before settling on “Life-Jacket Capitalism.”

Weisberg contends the life-jacket metaphor fits because, “Market misjudgments have produced systemic risk with growing intensity and alarming frequency, requiring rescues in 1988 (the savings-and-loan crisis), 1994 (the Mexican collapse), 1997 (the Asian meltdown), 1998 (the Long Term Capital Management debacle), and 2008 (the subprime catastrophe).”

Whether Weisberg’s being tongue in cheek or not, I am not so sure he has in mind the right adjective. For what it’s worth, and it ain’t much, my money is on “Federalized Capitalism.”

Dull, I know. But such a label would at least serve to remind the next bunch of Wall Streeters who get too far out of line that they are playing with everyone’s economy– and, in the end, every American’s money.