News: Greedy Corporation Gets Too Greedy, Taken Over by Another Greedy Corporation

The reports I'm hearing make it sound like the collapse of Bear Stearns (NYSE: BSC) is a national tragedy: Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson had to work over the weekend, people! JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) continued its hundred year old tradition of robber baron-dom and bought out Bear Stearns, which was worth ten billion dollars at the start of the year, for about two-hundred thirty million dollars, which happens to be less than the value of Bear Stearn's office tower. And JPMorgan, which is a multi-billion dollar corporation in its own right, made this acquisition through a government grant — your taxpayer dollars at work. That's the real bullshit: "Secretary Henry, why JPMorgan? You could've given me $230 million dollars and I would've spent it on Bear Stearns." I might have taken a couple hundred out of that gift for a new iPod or something.

I have zero sympathy for Bear Stearns' 14,000 now-redundant employees, who were all riding high during the real estate boom, buying junk mortgages (sort of) with money that didn't exist (sort of). Poor traders, losing their six-figure bonuses, and their country club memberships. There's a twinge of regret for Bear's non-trading staff, but I consider them to be enablers who share responsibility for the mortgage crisis.

Steerage

The Times ran this article, "Class Conflict on the Airlines," complete with accompanying sardonic picture and, hey, were you aware that airlines have been trimming the amenities in coach? Airlines save money by throwing out what used to be essentials — according to the article, United stopped handing out their delicious pretzel mix and saved $650,000, while American Airlines saved $600,000 by scuttling the pillows from their flights. Would this be a good time to point out that United took in $19 billion in revenue last year, and American made $22 billion?

Anyone who's ever flown knows the situation is different in first class, because the airline insists on shuffling the cattle through the luxury zone, just so we can see what we're missing. Lie-flat seats, four-course meals, noise-canceling headphones, while people have literally died from sitting in coach for too long. At least Singapore Airlines is doing something about deep vein thrombosis, restoring some legroom to economy class.

No, I'm just kidding. They're distributing brochures laced with magic blood thinners.

Here's where the free market system fails miserably. United says that eight percent of its fliers make up thirty-six percent of their revenue, and they'd lick those guys' balls all the way from Dulles to Düsseldorf if they asked. So applying some math skills, you have to figure that United's leaving ninety-two percent of their customers — and nearly two-thirds of their revenue — in Seats of DEATH, and taking us for cheap tourist fools buying carefully worded lines about "The passenger who is buying a ticket from us based on price sensitivity — we also want to make sure they have a comfortable flight." I'm not calling bullshit right here, but judging from our nation's hack comedians at open-mic night, there's a market for flights with peanuts, and no one cares to meet it.

The airlines epitomize the trouble with letting corporations do whatever the hell they want in the name of making a dollar. There's a diverse market that gets relegated to the "have" extreme and the "have-not" extreme. I might be willing to take a ten dollar flight on a FedEx cargo jet, but at even economy class prices, someone, somewhere should have to meet certain minimum expectations: that I'll get to my destination as efficiently as humanly possible, and that I won't have to spend eight hours in a Seat of DEATH. I don't think that's a lot to ask, but apparently ninety-two percent of you do.

Scab

Dear American Media Conglomerates:

I generally sympathize with the working man, the Americans like myself who perform the tedious, backbreaking labor necessary to keep our great nation supplied with the coal, the industrial machinery, or the non-English speaking domestic help it needs to thrive. I'm disturbed when greedy corporations stepping on these good Christian folk, and thankful for the unions supporting our working-class as they struggle to put food on their dinner tables. But with your screenwriters on strike, and broadcasters threatening to fill the airwaves with absurd new reality show mash-ups like Are You Smarter than a Singing Midget Who Loves New York? I feel like now is a good time to compromise a few principles, step across the Writers' Guild picket line, and offer up my writing talent — just to keep television running smoothly, of course.

And also because I'd fucking kill for the job these thankless little sell-out shits aren't doing. I would write for TV shows or movies gratis... I would write for the vast wasteland detritus — Zoey 101 or The Jimmy Kimmel Show or that super-sterile original programming on the ABC Family Channel — just to see my name in the credits and hear something resembling my words out of the actors' mouths. I would pay Viacom, Disney, Warner Brothers or NBC Universal to write for them. FOR CHRIST'S SAKE, ARE YOU LISTENING, STUDIOS!!!???

Not that I'm looking to screw anybody, but it's like watching professional beer tasters or racecar drivers complain about their jobs, but even more oblivious to the irony. I'd just love to watch some NBC exec march up to Tina Fey and throw her 30 Rock words back in her face, "You got into this business because you're funny, and you're weird, and you're socially retarded. And you also got into it because it pays well," and yes, I'd miss 30 Rock but the idea of Tina Fey working some shitty normal job like the rest of us suckers, like Tina Fey as a claims adjuster or Jon Stewart painting dotted lines down the freeway, is just so comically absurd — somebody ought to write it into a Saturday Night Live sketch, if the writers were actually working.

So I'll be stopping by Rockefeller Center and Viacom's headquarters in Times Square tomorrow, pushing aside the picket lines and that giant inflatable rat (I'll stick a few nails in the damn thing if that makes my proposal any more appealing), and pitching my ideas about a new comedy where a fireman and a pyromaniac share an apartment and date women who are way out of their league. Oh, oh, and I've got this one about obscenely rich, spoiled teenagers in Montana who wear skimpy clothes and have sex with each other. And one about four professional women who run their own shipbuilding yard....

Looking forward to scabbing for you!

Thanks,

Jay Harris

I'm Selling Out

When Google first introduced their AdSense program, those "Ads by Google" boxes you see on some of the more casual websites out there, I briefly considered adding my blog to the online billboard program. AdSense monetizes your web presence by providing relevant, targeted advertising to your readers, which is business-speak for, "It turns your website into the computer equivalent of a Daytona stock car." I have too much respect for my readers to do that (really) so I kept the blog promotion-free.

But I met with my career coach and she suggested that someone like myself, looking to be a creative writer, should have multiple income streams and brought up the idea of "affiliate marketing." And I was still skeptical: how much could you possibly make from commissions off Amazon.com referrals or click-thru ads? Turns out... well, she went to an affiliate marketing seminar and met a guy who works an hour a day putting up links and makes six figures. And when I say six figures, I mean around half a million dollars a year.

So I respect you all, but I don't respect you that much.

Also, I'll respect you a whole lot more if you click on the affiliate links on the right.

Hypochondria

They postponed my doctor's appointment yesterday for half an hour, which I hear is normally not all that bad, except that the nurse-receptionist handed over my time slot to a succession of drug reps, which makes me very uncomfortable. And jealous, cause it's not like as a web developer I'm having Microsoft and Sun and Apple comp me ballgames and vacations. I gotta pay my own way for those exciting Oracle DB and PostgreSQL conferences in lovely Tulsa or wherever the nerds hang out. I can appreciate that Big Pharma's business model requires us (wealthy) people to become ill from time to time, but the thought of my doctor getting free dinners thanks to my sickness makes me nauseous. (They should make a pill for that.) My physical took all of five minutes — either I'm extremely healthy or I'm just not a good candidate for the drug companies — and given the myriad things that could be totally fucked up with my body, I'm a little suspicious.

But then there's always the chance that I'm suspicious in the wrong direction, and I've started to wonder if the medical community isn't just making up new diseases to sell us more drugs. "Restless leg syndrome?" I don't remember that existing last year. It just popped up all of a sudden, like that song by Plain White T's, but thank God that GlaxoSmithKline had a pill waiting and ready to cure it. Lucky them, really, because without restless leg syndrome materializing out of the ether, all that time and money GSK spent on Requip would've been a total waste. I still can't believe they let this stuff out on the market; did you read the list of side effects? Requip may cause gambling or sex addiction (how'd they get a chemical compound to pull that off?), nausea, dizziness, and vomiting. And in bold print: "Requip Tablets may cause you to fall asleep or feel very sleepy during normal activities such as driving." So basically, you can't stop moving your legs, so you'll put everybody on the road in danger of you nodding off behind the wheel.

I'm sure the pharmaceutical companies will only be too happy to sell you morphine and antibiotics after you get mangled in your inevitable accident. (Plus side: no more legs means no more restless leg syndrome!)

Turns out that shaky legs was a problem before Requip, it just had a different name: Wittmaack-Ekbom Syndrome. That's not a very marketable name, so it's a good thing they renamed it something nice and simple and descriptive... otherwise we wouldn't know what to call the disease that we didn't know we had.