Quote of the Week 1: “He was born to be a senator. He never said anything important, and he always said it sonorously.” - Sinclair Lewis, Elmer Gantry

Quote of the Week 2: “Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don’t pretend to understand.” - Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Nine thoughts on week 44.

1) It’s weird, you can go to Harvard, spend hundreds of hours in pursuit of clearer thinking, then run across something that ties it all together. It’s what you’ve been hearing for years. But it comes out of left field, in a different contextual setting and wham…

So what follows here is thanks to Bob Sutton, author of The No Asshole Rule and a brilliant blog called Work Counts.

I’ve been pretty obsessed about the difference between smart people and wise people for years… Perhaps the best description I’ve ever seen of how wise people act comes from the amazing folks at Palo Alto Institute for the Future…

[T]he Institute’s Bob Johansen… explained that - to deal with an uncertain future and still move forward - they advise people to have “strong opinions, which are weakly held…”

Bob explained that weak opinions are problematic because people aren’t inspired to develop the best arguments possible for them, or to put forth the energy required to test them…

It [is] just as important, however, to not be too attached to what you believe because, otherwise, it undermines your ability to “see” and “hear” evidence that clashes with your opinions. This is what psychologists sometimes call the problem of “confirmation bias.”

2) Here’s a shocker about US offshore oil.

It costs $63.71 a barrel just to explore and find oil in US coastal waters. It then costs $6.83 a barrel to bring it to the surface. These are known as “finding” and “lifting” costs.

Combine the costs, and you’ll discover that, no matter who is president, oil is going to have to be at about $71 a barrel for oil companies to break even on US offshore exploration.

That’s a high cost for such benevolence.

And, before you start howling that I am some liberal weenie (from MSNBC) or conservative bully (from FOX News)… in other words a liar… these are official US government statistics that are straight from the Energy Information Administration’s annual January update.

If you’ll remember, the EIA is controlled by the current administration.  It’s had nearly eight years to make these numbers say anything it wants.

So, $70.54 a barrel is the breakeven number for offshore oil… that means to book a 12.5% profit offshore, oil companies need oil at $79.35 a barrel… a 20% offshore profit demands oil at $84.65… that’s with no hurricanes, greedy speculation or OPEC cuts.

The story is worse in the Canadian oil sands… low grade oil that will likely turn out to be one of the world’s all-time great scams… but I’ll save that for a time when I’ve broken my no-new-cynicism pledge.

3) Can you tell me what to make of this?

Gov. Sarah Palin said it in the Sept. 22, New Yorker, about why Alaska taxes oil companies and sends some of that money directly to its citizens (the underline is mine). “And Alaska - we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs.”

4) Do you remember late this summer when I irritably predicted how cheap oil would become by Election Day. Back then I said $70.

It looks like I could be wrong, now that oil is under $65.

What I’d like to see now is someone in Washington, or on Wall Street, admit that the run up from $80 to $147 was the work of hedge fund oil-futures speculators.

Because, when you think about today, and you think about three months ago, what’s really changed?

Pretty much just the stock market… and that generated a lack of confidence that had people pulling money out of hedge funds, assuming those funds had any money left.

They certainly don’t have the cash to bet on oil.

It makes you wonder how many hedge funds are blaming the credit crisis for their failures, when in reality, they were wiped out by their own oil futures speculation and the ensuing margin calls.

5) Also, remember a month ago when I said I’d love to hear someone simply admit that they were wrong about the decisions and deregulation that led to the US’s financial crisis?

Well, I was happy to see that Alan Greenspan did apologize. Of course, in the wake, many people, some of them quite smarmily superior, skewed him.

I don’t get it (though I am sure some of you will instruct me). People want someone to blame… anyone to offer a hint of accountability.

Someone says, “blame me.” But, it’s not enough.

Maybe people were mad because Greenspan said there was nothing wrong with the mechanics of his overall plan… he just didn’t factor in human nature.

I actually think that he was shocked, even rocked, by how similar the actions of his peers - all those well-bred Ivy Leaguers on Wall Street - were to what happens when regular old Joes and Janes see money bags drop out of an armored car along an interstate.

Some people will do the right thing… but many others will see free money, stuff their pockets and run like hell.

What would you do?

6) It’s amazing how the world has changed. Eight years ago, politics was about morality… warring values.

Four years ago it was about religion… two Gods at war: their earthly servants doing their bidding.

Today it’s about money… your money. It’s the poverty of nations - street-level warfare against an invisible hand that threatens to scramble urban, suburban and exurban realities.

I’d trade the current crisis, in an instant, for an election where we argued about non-pocketbook stuff like reproductive rights or someone’s right to whack Bambi with a Howitzer.

7) This not a campaign issue, but it is a perspective issue.

Isn’t it perfectly clear that some people have totally lost perspective when they think a VP candidate - one whose base salary is more than three times as much as Joe the Plumber’s - needs a wardrobe that costs nearly four times what Joe makes a year… a makeup artist that makes more in a month than Joe makes annually… and a hair stylist that makes as much in eight weeks as Joe makes in a year?

This shouldn’t change anyone’s vote… but, I bet it makes some folks think twice about ever again sending those people any more… ideological dollars paying $11,500 a week for makeup artist Amy Stozzi because she earned an Emmy nomination for her work on “So You Think You Can Dance?” Come on!

They’re going to donate the wardrobe to charity… what are they doing about a $600,000-a-year makeup artist… have Stozzi give makeup lessons to people in unemployment lines?

Five predictions…

• Should Sen. John McCain lose on Tuesday, well-mannered people will be shocked by how quickly other less well-bred people throw Sen. McCain, not under the bus, but under the bulldozer. Suddenly the poor, tired old fud’s gambling problem will come to light as part of an ethics investigation. He’ll be pilloried for selling out his beliefs.

• Should McCain lose you can be assured that the “PALIN 2012 - YOU BETCHA!” will be running off the presses by Friday.

• Should McCain win, you’ll spend a week reading stories about how Diebold voting machines were hacked and how, like President Kennedy, Sen. McCain’s mafia connections won the day for him.

• Larry Flint will offer Gov. Palin $10 million to pose in Hustler. The majority of her supporters will be crestfallen when she demurs.

• Plumbing won’t seem like such a hot profession when Joe the Plumber finds out what congressmen make - perks and pension included. WURZELBACHER ‘12 signs are already printed.

Thankfully, much will be revealed on Tuesday.

9) This is as far as I ever get when I try to write a self-help book…

Whatever it is you really want, count movement toward that, and only that, as your measure of success.

My guess is Michael Masterson and MaryEllen Tribby’s new tome - a number one bestseller - does a little better than that at explaining how to make it big in this crazy new-world order.

Have a great weekend.

Make money, not war.

Andy

Source: Strong Opinions,  Weakly Held