A Couple of Cartoons

Economic Models Explained

Someone sent this to me and I thought it was amusing enough to publish. Stereotypes are always dangerous.

21 Economic Models Explained.

SOCIALISM
You have 2 cows.
You give one to your neighbor.

COMMUNISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and gives you some milk.

FASCISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and sells you some milk.

NAZISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and shoots you.

BUREAUCRATISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and then throws the milk away.

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income.

SURREALISM
You have two giraffes.
The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
Later, you hire a consultant to analyze why the cow has dropped dead.

ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND VENTURE CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute adebt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows.
The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company.
The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more.
You sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States, leaving you with nine cows.
No balance sheet provided with the release.
The public then buys your bull.

A FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike, organize a riot, and block the roads, because you want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
You then create a clever cow cartoon image called 'Cowkimon' and market it worldwide.

A GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You re-engineer them so they live for 100 ye ars, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows, but you don't know where they are.
You decide to have lunch.

A RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
You count them again and learn you have 2 cows.
You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.

A SWISS CORPORATION
You have 5000 cows.
None of them belong to you.
You charge the owners for storing them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.Y
ou have 300 people milking them.
You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity.
You arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.

AN INDIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You worship them.

A BRITISH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Both are mad.

AN IRAQI CORPORATION
Everyone thinks you have lots of cows.
You tell them that you have none.
No-one believes you, so they bomb the crap out of you and invade your country.
You still have no cows, but at least you are now a Democracy.

AN AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Business seems pretty good.
You close the office and go for a few beers to celebrate.

A NEW ZEALAND CORPORATION
You have two cows.
The one on the left looks very attractive.

Nationalization

At some point, we probably need to let one of the major car makers fail. It is ironic that the Government believes it can run the auto industry and the banking industry. Hard to fathom the level of nationalisation that is going on.

I suppose the Government does such a good job of running itself that it can bring that level of expertise to other industries.

Really enjoyed this cartoon.

I know Obama was dealt a bad hand by both the Democrats and the Republicans. This is not Obama bashing. I want him to succeed, but let's be honest the Government has a history of wasteful spending and poor management. Do we really want this spreading to other parts of our economy. The blind leading the blind.

Painful and not so funny, but unfortunately true

Cigarette price hike and cancer

Mike Lukovich, copyright 2009 Creators Syndicate

Colbert & Beck

I know that everyone is not a fan of Colbert, but he is relentless in his pursuit of certain issues. I tend to agree with him on Glen Beck at the moment, whose behavior is increasingly strange. Click on the link below. His parody of Beck is funny.

http://www.theweek.com/article/index/94932/Video_Stephen_Colbert_tears_into_Glenn_Beck

Another Funny

Funny

Black holes and financial institutions

Tom Toles, copyright 2009 Creators Syndicate

$1 Trillion

When did you become aware of the term $1 Trillion? Five years ago? Ten years ago?

The word trillion comes from the French tri- (three) and -illion (from million). Jehan Adam first coin the word in 1475 as trimillion and this was later adjusted in 1484 by Nicolas Choquet to tryllion.

But how much is a trillion. Let me put it in context. If you take $1,000 bills and build a single stack you get the following results:

A $1 Million stack of $1,000 bills would measure 4 inches high.

A $1 Billion stack would measure 358 feet tall.

A $1 Trillion stack would stand 67.9 Miles high.

Now think about the national debt being $11 Trillion and climbing.

National Debt

We reached a major milestone over the last week: the National Debt now stands at $11 Trillion. With another $1 Trillion about to be added I thought it might be interesting to see who owns the US national debt. You might be surprised. In reverse order:

15. Luxemburg: $87 Billion (B)
14. Depository Institutions - US Banks, Savings Banks, Credit Unions: $107B
13. Russia: $120B
12. UK: $124B
11. Insurance Companies: $126B
10. Brazil: $133B
9. Caribbean Banking Centers: $177B
8. Oil Exporters - Venezuela, Iran, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Lybia, Ecuador: $186B
7. Other Private Investors: $413B
6. Pension Funds: $456B
5. State & Local Government: $550B
4. Japan: $639B
3. China: $740B
2. Mutual Funds: $769B

Drum roll please. And the winner is:

1. The Federal Reserve: $4.8 Trillion (although another $1T is about to be added to this number).

So much for the theory that the Chinese and Japanese own the country. Although at a combined $1.38 Trillion they own 12.5% of the national debt.

I'm Back

Been insanely busy at work over the last few weeks and fell behind on the blog. Will catch up this week. The focus will be on the economy.

The 90/10 Thought

Spoke at both services again this morning on what it means to be part of a transformational community. Still very much challenged by the question: can the 90 look after the 10?

Simply can't be done unless a transformation takes place at the individual level first.  Three thousand people on the day of Pentecost where changed and one aspect of this change was that none had need.

Not communism or socialism at work where people feel coerced into action, but a voluntary response from individuals whose lives had been radically altered.

So what does this mean for me? 

Wall Street CEO Pay

Can you imagine living on a base pay of only $500,000 per annum? A number of years ago CEO pay was 24 times the pay of the average worker. Last year the multiple had soared to 275 times. Core to this country is the belief that a honest day's work deserves a fair wage.

Is $10,000 per week a fair wage for a CEO? How about $2,000 per day?

While families are losing their homes, workers are losing their jobs, and taxpayers are footing the bill for the enormous errors on Wall Street, it would be nice to see bank executives accustomed to $20 million incomes share in the suffering. That is, if you think making $500,000 is suffering.

The down side is that many of the banking leaders will leave the newly nationalized banking industry and for more lucrative positions elsewhere. Depending on your view this may or may not be a good thing.

I think integrity demands that they stay and clean up the mess they created. Maybe a goodwill gesture of $1 annual pay until the mess is fixed would restore their reputations.

I think Obama is doing the right thing forcing the issue. It is a shame that they couldn't work it out for themselves. Poor things.

Rogonomics

My friend Roger is getting himself into trouble by stating the obvious in too candid a way. Have we become so desperate that we do not care how much money the government borrows? We buy from China. They take our dollars, say 'thank you' and then lend our dollars back to us. If the Chinese economy starts falling apart and they have to start raising cash, I would not be surprised if they started calling in the loans from the US government. Wow, that would be a problem.

Has anyone ever successfully borrowed ever increasing amounts of money and managed to get themselves out of debt? Probably not, so why does everyone think this is a great strategy for the government?

Roger, I don't think you are that far off the mark. Hold your ground.

What is going on?

Am I the only person that thinks there is something wrong with giving the banks billions of dollars and zero accountability? It is the same people criticizing on the hill today that approved the package in the first place. Politicians are incredible. Teflon, as in nothing sticks.

One CEO stated today that despite receiving $25 billion, his bank lent the same amount of money in Q4 2008 as they did in the prior year.  what happened to the $25 billion?

And the answer is.....

An interesting question....

Can the 90% take care of the 10%?

What a wild idea / notion. Somewhere as the 19th century ended and the 20th century began, the church abdicated it's social responsibility to the government. Up until the end of the 19th century the church was the social / welfare program. 

So, with unemployment expected to reach 10%, my question is: can the 90 take care of the 10. Can you imagine how the world would be turned upside down by a church that lives a radical message? It will be hard to deliver with so much of the budget tied to buildings and infrastructure, but what if the church broke free of it's existing paradigm and became the 90 that looked after the 10.

Impossible. Really?

Back home in Indy

Arrived back in Indy on Thursday evening. The journey was complete. The amazing thing is no jet lag at all. Tokyo is an interesting place. Some nice food and great tea. Glad to be back home with Fiona.

So, the January job figures were bad and the big question is, when will it all end. Some are already predicting the worst is over. From a business perspective it just doesn't feel that way. I will be surprised if we see any improvement in 2009.

Liverpool et al

Arrived in Manchester on Jan 31st after a lot of drama in the sky. For the first time I was part of an emergency landing. The crew could smell burning in one of the galleys. This resulted in an emergency landing at JFK (New York). It was weird seeing the runway lined with emergency vehicles. Anyway four hours later, we took off again the same plane having taken another 50 passengers on board.

The story behind the 50 passengers was interesting. Delta, in the process of pushing two planes back from the gates at the same time, managed to push them into each other. One was damaged therefore the 50 additional passengers. Oops. Imagine explaining that to your boss. "I don't know what happened. We didn't notice the other plane". They should really make the 777 a little bit bigger and more noticeable.

Even though we were delayed by 4 hours, we still made it to Old Trafford on Saturday afternoon to see Man Utd record a 1-0 vistory over Everton. The difference in quality between the teams was much greater than the score line suggests. My brother in law, Steve, hooked us up with great tickets for the game. The 'us' is Graham and me (plus Spee). We spent the evening after the game at a 16th Century pub in Manchester. Ate 'toad in the hole. Excellent.

On Sunday, we travelled up to Liverpool by train to see Liverpool play Chelsea. Given that Graham is a life long Liverpool supporter, my nerves were on edge. I knew this game could go either way. This was his first time at Anfield and I was hoping /praying not only for a Liverpool win, but that Torres would score.

What a great day. We visited the museum at Anfield, which was a history lesson in all things Scottish. Bill Shankly kicked things off, then we walked past tributes to the myriad of stars that made Liverpool great: Billy Liddell, Ian St.John, Kenny Dalgleish, Graham Souness, Alan Hansen,etc. After the museum tour we made our way to the Legends Lounge where Liverpool great Ronnie Moran was hosting a small pre and post match event. Then we headed off into the stands to see the game and we were not disappointed. See, there is a God in heaven.

Not only did Liverpool win, but Torres scored twice. The atmosphere at Anfield during the singing of 'You'll never walk alone' reminded me of the emotional experience you have during the 1st lap at Indy as a wall of sound moves towards you and the hits you full force.

Truly amazing experience. Next up to bat is an Arsenal game with Alistair.

Serious name dropping here, but none of this would have been possible without my brother in law giving us the Man U tickets and George Gillett giving us the Liverpool experience.

Around the world in a week

I always had the notion that one day I would like to fly around the world. Well I am typing this from the airport in Tokyo on the final leg of an around the world trip. It is definitely not for the faint hearted.

I set off last Friday (Jan 30th) and travel from Indy to Manchester via Atlanta. The second leg of this epic journey was on Tuesday (Feb 3rd) as I travelled from Manchester to Tokyo via Paris. I am now heading back to Indy (Feb 5th) from Tokyo via Atlanta. I thought i would have been trashed with tiredness by now, but not the case. I suppose let's see what happens when i get back later today.

It was a great trip though.

Sorry

I have been remiss over the last two weeks and have not posted to the blog. That will change today.

A big front door

Spent the weekend in Houston with Al & Sarah and a bunch of our friends from our time down there. Always enjoy the opportunity to see folks.

Spent time with some church leaders and had a good discussion around the size of the 'front door'. One of the things you recognize in  the gospels is Jesus' ability to draw a crowd. The other interesting point is that at the end of 3 years of unprecedented ministry he only had a 120 dedicated followers. There may have been more, but the results were not startling.

Some times we wear small as a badge of honor. The problem with small is that visitors often feel left out. They struggle with the inside jokes, the quirkiness of the family, the disorganization, the offhand comments that so easily offend, etc.

The concept of the big front door is to create an opportunity for people to connect, to hear, to belong. The big front door represents an environment that is inclusive not exclusive.   

So how do you through open a big front door? Some thoughts....

1. Do not try to be all things to all people? Not everyone will like who you are.

2. Identify who you are and consistently communicate it and live it

3. Get rid of the inside jokes.

4. don't make off hand and potentially offensive comments

5. Make sure people who attend every week are commissioned to welcome new people

6. Make sure that everything that goes on in the service is understood and makes sense to the visitors.

7. Be organized

8. Have a desire to embrace everyone who shows up - celebrate diversity

9. Life is not a formula that can be replicated

10. don't be risk adverse - make the necessary changes to make your group relevant

11. Keep it real - non religious is probably best

12. Open up your homes to the new people - let them see you outside of the services

13. Meet round the table - food and fun go a long way to breaking down the barriers

14. New people centric, not self serving and self indulgent

15. Talk about things that are meaningful to people

There are lots more. Being small is not all bad, but it doesn't have a long term future either. In this environment, people need a real message of hope and change. It is a shame that the church often gets in the way.

Create a bigger front door and once they come, do something meaningful that will drive real and lasting change.

Transformational or Transactional

Thinking about life today and came to the conclusion that I tend to live life at a transactional level. Very task driven. In other words, life is made up of a large number of small, routine tasks that are performed and repeated on a daily basis. Another way of putting this is: going through the motions. 

None of the tasks, in and of themselves, are pointless, but in isolation from serving a purpose or a sense of passion, they are very transactional in nature.

Life is made up of a large number of small actions and you do not need to chase the 'large' action to have a sense of purpose. If there is a clear commitment to a transformational lifestyle, the many small actions that serve that lifestyle are driving lasting change.

Entering 2009, I am challenged about the need for more transformational behavior and thinking that will drive a commitment to lasting change. Our interaction with others folks can be transformational, as can the desire to see change within our own lives.

A transformational lifestyle harnesses the many transactional actions and channels them towards an end goal that leaves our lives, the lives of others and the world in a better place after the action. 

It is a lifestyle that believes all things are possible. A lifestyle that stays focused on the end result. A lifestyle where every action, large or small, serves a greater good.

If nothing else, some food for thought as we enter 2009.

6 Feet

We are following 4 teams in the McIntyre household: Texas Tech, Texas, Ball State and the Colts. The red Raiders lost in the Cotton Bowl on friday and the Colts lost to the Chargers. Hope Texas and BSU do better.

The Colts choked on a 3rd and 2 with 2 minutes to go in the game. The Chargers were out of timeouts and the Colts led by 3.  The longest 2 yards in Colts history resulted in a sack for Manning, followed by a poor punt that sent the game into overtime as the Chargers kicked a game tying field goal.  

The Colts self destructed in overtime with 3 critical penalties that resulted in a winning touchdown for the Chargers. In the space of a few minutes the Colts season came to a crashing halt. 

Mind boggling that the NFL's MVP and one of the league's most potent offenses cannot move the ball 2 yards to kill the game. The margin between success and failure in sports is so small. 6 feet in this case between moving on towards the Super Bowl or going home.

A crazy season made up of inconsistent play and too many tight games was over. We now wait to see if Tony Dungy will be back and if Marvin Harrison retires.

Monday night we will sit down to watch Texas play Ohio State in what we hope will be a convincing win. 

Playoff Weekend

Big game tonight for the Colts against a team that they have struggled with in the past. Everyone seems to have the Chargers as the favorites for this game, which will take some of the pressure off Manning. Earlier this season it came down to a long field goal from Adam Vinatieri.  

The Chargers looked great against a very poor Broncos team last week. However, the Colts have won their last 9.

At this time of year, you are playing for the right to have one more game. Lose and you are out. Your season is over. It is amazing that you can play hard all season; win nine in a row and one poor game and you are done. Now that is pressure.

Looking forward to watching the game this evening. Go Colts.

Cotton Bowl

Just watched a great Texas Tech season come to a disappointing end with a loss in the Cotton Bowl. The difference in the game were turnovers, mistakes and defense. The tech defense just didn't show up. Graham Harrell was 36 of 58 for 364 yards, 4 touchdowns with 2 interceptions. You expect the winning QB to have stats like this. Snead was 18 of 29 for 292 yards, 3 touchdowns and 1 interception. Give up over 200 yards rushing killed Tech.

They finish the season 11 and 2. To be honest, it was a great season for them.

The focus now shifts to Texas on Monday and Ball State on Tuesday. College football has been very exciting this year in our household. Really want Texas to beat up on Ohio State. Too many Big Ten colleagues.

Happy New Year

In Roman mythology, Janus (or Ianus) was the god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings and endings. His most prominent remnants in modern culture are his namesakes: the month of January, which begins the new year, and the janitor, who is a caretaker of doors and halls.

This is always an interesting time of year. A time where we reflect on the past and at the same time look forward to the future. 

2008: In Review

+ Fiona and I started the year as empty nesters and finished the year that way, but we did have a six month period where one of our sons was back at home. Still feel way to young to be empty nesters. 

+ We traveled a lot in 2008 and probably will continue in 2009, but you can never tell.

+ Managed to see a lot friends from around the world in 2008. Definitely a highlight.

+ Enjoyed a great family vacation with the grown up kids.

+ Attended a lot of events in 2008: great concerts; the Colts; Brickyard 400; etc

+ Had a number of visitors in 2008: Fiona's Mom, My Dad, the Blackmores, Matt Wells, the Swindells for Christmas

+ Still part of a good church family here in Indy and still connected with Houston, Inverurie, Ellon and Aberdeen

+ Did a lot more speaking in 2008 than I intended on doing

+ Fiona started to play golf this year

+ Christmas was great this year. We didn't spend a whole lot this year, so the presents were ok. The big plus was having all of the kids here plus Steve, Lorna and their kids. Excellent time.

2009: ???

+ Travel will feature a lot in 2009: dad's 80th birthday, Houston, New York, Asia and UK are already in the calendar for 2009

+ Fiona's twin sister arrives for a week in February

+ Need to think through New Year resolutions that I can live with (i.e. ones I will actually execute on)

+ Navigating the business through another year of uncertainty and turbulence will be challenging

+ A more conservative approach financially is in play for 2009: spend less, save more

+ Some weight loss and better fitness levels are also on the agenda (Fiona will be happy to read this part)

As I look back, I have a lot of things to be thankful for.  While it is important to reflect, we cannot live in the past. With all of the uncertainty that is ahead of us in 2009, I am going into the year with an air of excitement about what is possible. Knowing that the throne is still occupied provides a sense of security that I need to focus on the things in life I can influence or control, but release the things to Him that are outside of my control.

Whatever 2009 holds for you, I pray that you will know His blessings and guidance every step of the way.