Sunday Morning in the Queen City

Address of T-Birds is 4529 Vine Street.

Sunday 4:00 to 6:00.

Mike Shannon, Editor, Spitball: The Literary Baseball Magazine


Fred: I assumed you know all the details of the CASEY Banquet but then I thought ... maybe not. It'd be great to see you there so here's the scoop:

Sunday March 8 from 4-6:00 pm at T-Birds Pub in St. Bernard. T-Birds is across the street on Vine from St. Clement Catholic grade school and about 2 blocks north of Roger Bacon High School.

Cost is $10. You get a subscription to Spitball ... AND ... a copy of Hallowed Ground, the big & beautiful ballpark art calendar made every year by Bill Goff. The calendar retails for $17 plus $6 shipping, so it's a nice perk.

Doug Feldman will be the guest speaker and will talk about his new book on the 1976 Reds. Charles Alexander will also be there to sign any of his many outstanding books.

Take care, YB, Mike
Ps. Please forward this email to any of your contacts who are baseball fans and tell them, if they wouldn't already know, about the main purpose of the event: to honor the 10 best bb books of the previous year. We will have 150+ bb books all published in 2008 on display as usual.

After reading the above information, you might wonder what this is all about. Well, in 1987 I met Mike Shannon, one of the Founders of SPITBALL, THE LITERARY BASEBALL MAGAZINE. The Wall Street Journal did an article about Mike and his baseball magazine and since he was living in Cincinnati, I looked him up in the phone book to talk with him about his love for baseball. I found out that he also liked to play fast pitch soft ball and that he had a team that played in Northside on Wednesday or Thursday nights. In 1987, I was only 46 and I loved to play fast pitch softball so I joined his team. As a left hander, I played in the outfield in hard ball; however, for fast pitch soft ball, I loved to play catcher. The snap of that ball hitting my glove as the batter whiffed through the third strike was the sweetest sound to my ears. But, that doesn't tell you much about Mike Shannon and SPITBALL. Mike started publishing SPITBALL in the early 1980s and also started giving an award to the best baseball book published each year. He called the award the CASEY AWARD, named after the famous poem Casey at the Bat. So, every year Mike holds a "banquet" to award the best baseball book of the year and to sell subscriptions to his magazine. In the old days, he had the banquet at the Carnegie Art Center in Covington, KY and he served beer, hot dogs and peanuts in the shell, just like at the ball park. I lost contact with Mike over the years; however, baseball would always get us back together. If you love baseball and you love reading books about baseball, then you need to get in your car and come to the SPITBALL BANQUET today at 4pm in St. Bernard, Ohio. The info is at the top. DON'T DRESS UP, THIS IS A FUN TIME AS YOU CAN EVEN WHERE A BASEBALL SHIRT IF YOU GOT ONE. For $10, you get a subscription to SPITBALL, a calendar worth $17 bucks and an opportunity to look at the 150+ baseball books published in 2008. I am going to try and make it myself.

Saturday Is For Art

The art opening last night was a lot of fun. Many friends came to the show. Above are the paintings as they appeared in the show. At this moment, I do not have any photos of people or myself at the show, but perhaps later today I will post some.

Art Show Opening Tonight

Expressing ourselves whether by word or paint is basically putting ourselves out there for the world to see, to judge and to comment. When I worked in the investment and banking industry in the more conservative Midwest, I knew I had to keep my political opinions to myself. I remember as an officer at the banks I worked for that we received once a year a card to sign with our Fair Share printed on it for the United Appeal. If you were smart, you signed your card and accepted the fact that it was a form of "job insurance" and that it was a good idea to keep your head down because this was not the time to be recognized as sticking out. So, while you keep your opinions and your feelings to yourself, you nevertheless have your own opinions about the way society is run and the political polices that affect your life. By 1988, I had been working with bonds and other investment securities for 20 years, my children were older, and I was no longer coaching soccer. I had time to express my ideas and feelings in paint about the conservative society in which I lived. My political art started in 1988 and has continued to the present. Tonight I am participating in an art show with four other artists. My work is both political and social in content. I do not paint just pretty pictures. I am looking forward to seeing my friends and perhaps meeting a few new people. Cincinnati, like any city in America, is changing every day. So, perhaps they are more ready for my political art in 2009 than they were in 1992. I hope so.

Stay tuned.

It's Global

Yesterday I had the opportunity to listen to Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, speak to a joint session of Congress. Brown came to talk about the up coming economic conference to take place next month in Europe. The Prime Minister laid the ground work for the need for international cooperation to bring the economies of the world back from the recession that nearly all of the large economies of the world are now experiencing. Even the Prime Minister recognizes that the philosophy of deregulation does not work in an age of global financial dealings. As I have written before, banking and the underwriting of credit in the 21st century is the realm of structured financial debt instruments. And, going forward, if mortgage-backed bonds, manufactured housing-backed bonds, car loan bonds and credit card debt bonds are going to play a viable part in the world wide bond market, then something must be done to raise and restore the creditability of the credit rating agencies (CRAs). Without meaningful credit ratings for structured debt obligations, there can be no world wide bond market. And, without a world wide bond market, the flow of credit from the borrower to the investor can not be completed. Without repeating myself, as I have written about this before, the need to address the problems surrounding the CRAs and their conflict of interest with the bond underwriters of the collateralized mortgage obligations (CMOs), the bond market meltdown and the issue of toxic assets can not be resolved. I hope that participants in the economic conference next month in Europe are serious about their recognition of the importance of world wide cooperation with regard to the implementation of meaningful banking and securities regulations.

Stay tuned.

Rush Limboss: Head of the Republican Party?

The Republican Party may not realize it, but they are moving at a high rate of speed into a dead end. They are moving the few pieces they have left on the chess board into a corner from where there is no where to go. We all know that you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time. Given that economic conditions can make people more aware, this is hardly the time to be negative about our president, his administration of the government's business or the survival of our country. Fair minded people will reject such a negative attitude from one coast to the other. If Rush Limboss is the brain trust of the Republican Party, the Republican Party has their own problems to deal with.

Stay tuned.

Happy Square Root Day: 3/03/09

Today is Square Root Day, so, I am wishing everyone that reads my blog a Happy Square Root Day.

Would it not be great if economics was just about numbers? Unfortunately, it is not. Because we are people living in a complex society in the 21st century, and because there are so many sectors of the economy with so many special interests, that we have what I like to call a politico-economic interpretation of history.

We do not have royalty in the United States. By royalty, I mean we do not have titles like Duke and Earl. We once had two Dukes. One was a center fielder and the other lead a band, but I think you know what I mean. However, in any complex society there are people that fight harder than others to obtain status and privilege. I do not have a problem with that. What I have a problem with is fraud or quite plainly cheating. People that commit fraud like it even better if that fraud is outside the law. For example, the credit default swaps that were sold by the insurance companies were not governed by law or federal securities regulations. When it came time to pay on the credit default swaps, the insurance companies that sold them did not have the reserves to make good on their commitments. That is fraud. That is where some of our bailout money went.

In the months and weeks ahead, Congress will be dealing with the issue of banking and securities regulations. I hope that they realize that no small part of the problems this country faces with regards to the economy, the toxic assets held by the banks, the bond market meltdown and the destruction of trillions of dollars in wealth once held by the middle class, is directly attributable to the philosophy of deregulation that was pushed for by the banking and securities industry. Deregulation does not work any more than shooting fish in a barrel is sport fishing. I wish I had the forum of those guys on the radio to make my case. Anyone that has a sense of fairness in sports or any other thing for that matter, would understand that without regulation and people to enforce that regulation fairly, we will revisit these problems again.

The next Square Root Day is April 4, 2016, 4/04/16. If you are wondering the one after that, it is May 5, 2025 (5/05/25).

Stay tuned.

What is Socialism?

As there are several political balls in the air as we begin the first week of March 2009, I want to talk a little about the word socialism. It seems that this word socialism has crept into the political-economic discussion on TV and radio since President Obama and his administration have taken office. I could be wrong, but I do not recall the word socialism being used when President Bush was asking Congress for the TARP program to help out the banks and the insurance company known as AIG. We all know that words have their own power for good or evil, as anyone that reads just a little history will acknowledge.

What is socialism? Here are three definitions of socialism. Socialism is any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods. Second, socialism is a system of society or group living in which there is no private property, a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state. Third, socialism is a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done.

When you have a dead battery and you get someone to give you a jump start, you do not agree that those jumper cables are going to be attached to your car for the rest of your life. This point I am making may sound stupid, but it is no more stupid than to believe that the “jumper cables” that are being used to get our domestic economy moving forward again are going to remain a permanent fixture of our economy in the United States.

Even the talking heads on TV news programs are beginning to recognize that the philosophy of deregulation, and the weakening of the government agencies that were responsible for the enforcement of the banking and securities regulations that remained, is at the center of the toxic assets, meltdown of the structured asset bond market and the collapse of our banking and investment banking industry.

All of these measures that have been taken by the Federal Government to date, have been done to keep people in their homes (private property) and to save the commercial banking system in the United States. This is hardly a move towards socialism. Socialism would not bother with giving cash to the banks in exchange for preferred stock. Socialism would simply nationalize the banks and be done with it.

The Stimulus Package is designed to get the private sector of our economy moving again by supporting basic necessities such as police, fire and teachers, as well as other state workers that provide basic services to people in each of our 50 states. That spending along with the infrastructure programs will get people back to work and rebuild our country for the 21st century.

Remember the jumper cables story, no one is driving around town or country with jumper cables hanging from their car because they need a jump start. What we do need is better regulations for the securities and banking industry in the 21st century. Hopefully, that will be an important part of what the Obama administration has in mind for our economy.

Stay tuned.