Sippican Cottage
Donate

OK, Everybody; Let’s Play: Find The Bank!

June 12, 2023 11 Comments
One of these descriptions is how a bank is run. The other one is how a pawn shop is run. See if you can identify which is which.

Situation 1: People need to borrow money. They put up collateral against the sum they need, after a gimlet-eyed appraisal by the lender. The borrower pays a non-adjustable rate of interest on the money. There is usually a balloon payment due at the end of the term to repatriate the collateral. If the borrower defaults, the lender keeps the collateral and sells it to others more able to afford it.

The deals are essentially made between the two parties with a handshake. The lender uses his expertise, hard-won in the marketplace, and subject to the immediate loss of capital should he mis-appraise more than a handful of items in a hundred. If the lender dips into the funds he keeps on hand that allow him to supply the liquidity his customers demand, to squander on his own amusement or speculations, or if he tries to capture business that he is not prepared to handle for a short-term bump in his notoriety, or to monkey around with the short-term look of his balance sheet, he will immediately go out of business. Since his business is predicated on good relations with his customers and his neighbors in his local community, the lender strives to keep on genial terms with the public.

The lender relies on other experts from time to time, but generally relies on his own good sense. The borrower is in an equal, or superior, position to the lender in determining the value of the property he uses for collateral, as he is in possession of it already and knows its provenance. In any case, the terms of the loan are entirely straightforward and immutable and agreed upon by both parties with no proxies. The lender does not employ any strong-arm tactics to make the loan, and certainly does not need any when the borrower is in default. He simply takes over possession of the asset in a perfectly straightforward and legal process and sells the asset  if he can.

Situation 2: People need to borrow money, so they put up capriciously appraised collateral, sometimes that they don’t even fully own, and/or submit to a byzantine, arbitrary, personal appraisal of their financial affairs made by a slew of shady and disreputable third parties. Both the lender and the borrower know that the third party appraisals are akin to a farce, but neither really cares about the long-term viability of their transactions. The borrower generally has no intention of following through on the terms of the loan all the way to its end, and will try to foist his obligations or the original collateral off on another party in the interim. The lender likewise has no intention or expectation of the loan being paid off on the terms on which it was made, and may secretly desire the borrower to default on the deliberately convoluted and intricate terms so that the borrower’s obligations can be increased. Sometimes the lenders repatriate collateral from defaulted loans that they don’t even really want, by force, and then just destroy it to appease some kind of lust for destruction or as a warning to others, or more generally as part of a Minotaur-worthy tax evasion scheme.

The lender generally slips the loan into a weird, giant package of other loans, which is then sold to other, unwitting lenders under the guise of a business opportunity. These lenders who would be left with little or no recourse if (and more generally, when) the borrower defaults on his loan.

Other types of loans are made without collateral by these same lenders. They employ a capricious and sometimes draconian sliding scale of interest rates, penalties and fees, deliberately obscured from the borrower to entice them to borrow money at one rate while allowing the lender to collect the loans at a much higher, often usurious rate. If the borrower doesn’t pay, the lender begins a non-stop campaign of threats and harassment against the borrower, often hiring vicious and unscrupulous third parties to collect the debts for them, regularly using a campaign of terror that involves the destruction of the borrower’s reputation in his home, neighborhood, place of business and among a multitude of government agencies, where many unscrupulous bureaucrats are willing participants in the swindle, and often receive payments from both parties in the disputes.

The lenders are not well educated or experienced in the forces of the marketplace, and simply join breeder gangs of like-minded persons, many with bizarre initiation rituals among members of a self-selecting and homogenous elite. They are bullheaded, extravagant, and greedy, often dipping into their funds to speculate wildly in all sorts of shady enterprises, mostly using inside information, and regularly secretly betting against their public positions in the market and against their own customers. They are not afraid of a loss of capital because they are adept at skimming money from insurance scams, looting retirement funds, tax evasion, and other government swindles, counterfeiting, and when all else fails, they terrorize entire communities with the threat of taking everyone with them when they go down.

OK, take a crack at it in the comments. Which is the bank, and which is the pawn shop? But remember, no wagering! I’m not running a casino here, which is like the stock market, but with fewer gangsters.

[Note: This post was edited and updated, but legacy comments were preserved]

Glimmers of Light in the Darkness

December 18, 2015 21 Comments

I had to leave the house today. I don’t do that very much. I’m forced to hunt around for all the accouterments that are necessary to pilot a big, empty refrigerator masquerading as a Ford Econoline van. Keys. Yes, need those. Wallet, yeah, sure, let’s take the moths for a ride.

Eyeglasses. Where the hell are they? I only use them for driving, but stubbornly refuse to leave them in the car, knowing I’ll forget they’re there, and I’ll go back in the house where they aren’t and look for them twice as much. Pants. I think I have to wear pants. It’s like a rule or a guideline or zoning law or something.

I went to the Aubuchon Hardware store. I do believe I have paid the mortgage on that place by fixing this or that in my house continuously for five years. There is a lumber yard five miles away from my house, a Home Depot about an hour’s drive, and the Aubuchon. I go to the lumber yard for large oblong things. I go to Aubuchon for doyouhaves and willthisfits and goddamnedthings and owmyhands. If you had a bayonet in my back I wouldn’t go all the way to Home Depot for anything. You really have to wear pants to go to the orange place in the big city of Auburn. They check, or notice, or something.

The Aubuchon has everything you need, in the wrong size. I had a girlfriend like that, but that’s a story for another day. Anyway, the Aubuchon is an old-school hardware store. Because the population of the surrounding area doesn’t merit a big box store, they can survive on their wits and their widgets. Everything they have on the pegboard looks like 1970 to my eye, but honestly, no one in Rumford cares whether their light switches are ivory or white. If you need an outside light, they’ve got the jelly jar kind, and another kind which is, well, it’s the jelly jar kind, too. What’s wrong with the jelly jar kind, Ludwig Mies van der Hovel? Light comes out of it if you bought a bulb before prohibition.

“Prohibition” once referred to a period of time when you couldn’t afford to buy light bulbs and weren’t allowed to buy alcohol, which reminds me vaguely of seventh grade, not the 1930s. Now it refers to a time you can’t afford to buy alcohol and you’re not allowed to buy light bulbs. I could use a 100-watt gin and tonic right now, but I don’t have the ingredients for it. They don’t have limes at the Aubuchon.

Did you know you can buy regular light bulbs at the dollar store? My wife swears the dollar store has an actual name, but I can never remember it. Is it the Buck General? The Ducat Extender? The Tenth-of-a-Sawbuck Helper? Whatever it is called, they have regular incandescent light bulbs on the shelf.

They’re made in Mexico, I think. They supposedly run on 130 volts, but if you screw them into a 110-volt fixture, a transmogrification takes place, and they “save” energy by only giving you about 50 watts instead of the 60 on the label. We put them in all the lamps and wander the house saying, “Who said that,” every time anyone says anything, but anything’s better than the curlicue kind. It’s like living in an Edward Hopper painting.

I didn’t hoard light bulbs. I just had a bunch of them, and incandescent bulbs last for years. I still have like four or five dozen 100-watt bulbs in the cabinet. My grandchildren will use them, I imagine. We ran out of 60 watters, and I unwisely took a flyer on some CFLs, which I detest. There was one CFL in my house when I moved in. It was in my basement. In January, that lightbulb doesn’t come on, period, so I find it amusing to picture it outside, where it is occasionally 20 below zero. Not coming on does save energy, one must admit.

So, as I was saying, we were finally out of 60s, and we bought curlicues this summer. The first CFL I tried, the very first, I dropped, it shattered, and I freebased mercury for five minutes. How eco. The second one we put in my older son’s table lamp, and the base of the bulb caught fire, real fire with flames and smoke and whatnot. He calmly unplugged the lamp, came down the stairs with the thing still smouldering, and we freebased burning plastic together for five minutes. How eco. We’re all done with CFLs now. My light fixtures now emit Mexican light, which is like American light, except that it’s here surreptitiously and it’s slightly darker. (Insert Donald Trump joke here)

I didn’t go to the Aubuchon to buy lightbulbs. I don’t know why I started talking about lightbulbs in the first place. The Aubuchon is located at the town line where Rumford becomes Mexico, Maine, but I don’t know why I started talking about the actual Mexico, either. All I know is I’ve been going into that Aubuchon for nearly six years, and a couple of years ago, they placed a giant TV high on a pillar facing the cashier’s desk. They had installed the TV in order to make the job slightly more attractive to clerks, and earthshakingly, dumbfoundingly less attractive to me, I guess. It was an abomination, and annoyed me to no end while I was in there, and I saw it as another sign of the coming apocalypse.

And I saw when that Marconi opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it
were the noise of Bobby Goldsboro, one of the four beasts saying, Come and
see.

And I saw, and behold a roaring lion: and that which was projected on it
was a sequel of a movie not yet made; and a statuette was given unto them: and they went forth shooting Greedo first, and then not shooting Greedo first.

And I looked, and behold a white plastic device: and his name that lorded over it was Steve, and a Hell app followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with Angry Birds, and with texting, and with responsive sites, and with the Tweets of the earth.

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was flatscreen, and Good Morning America followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the Aubuchon, to kill with chyrons, and with breaking news, and with NASCAR, and with the all the Bartiromos of the earth.

At any rate, I went into the Aubuchon to buy four foam paint brushes, and to my surprise, the television was banished, and a short, syphilitic-looking Christmas tree was in its place. The world seemed brighter somehow. I couldn’t remember the last time something happened that seemed like it was a step, no matter how small, in the right direction. It was like an omen for me.

I went home to foamy-paint my whathaveyous, and wondered if people would ever come around to my way of thinking on any other subject. Would the gas pumps stop playing Sweet Home Alabama? Would hit men become the bad guys in the movies again? Anything’s possible, I guess.

I have my doubts. I also noticed that both the clerks at the Aubuchon were brand spanking new, because all the others had quit.

[Update: Many thanks to Stephen B. from Anaheim for his generous contribution to our PayPal tipjar. It is very much appreciated]

Damocles Had Nothing To Do With It. It Was Cassandra All The Way For Sippican

December 22, 2014 No Comments

Cassandra,
daughter of the king and queen, in the temple of Apollo, exhausted from
practising, is said to have fallen asleep; whom, when Apollo wished to
embrace her, she did not afford the opportunity of her body. On account
of which thing, when she prophesied true things, she was not believed.

THE GAS TANK OF DAMOCLES (first offered in 2012) 

Let me wax philosophical about my wife’s gas tank.

We drive old vehicles. I don’t like driving old vehicles. The reliability of your transportation is paramount. Old cars break down. Buying a new car is a form of insurance against risk. But real insurance against risk is unavailable, or illegal, for such as us, with one exception — personal avoidance of risk at all costs.

My wife saw a piece of metal hanging below the car that looked as out of place as an honest man in Congress. One of the two straps that held the gas tank from dragging on the road had rusted clean through and broken. The other strap looked as reliable as cell phone service in a tunnel. Something must be done, and immediately.

My family never goes anywhere much now. We cannot hope to weather much bad luck with our own meager resources, and we cannot rely on others, so we keep our heads down. We were lucky that we discovered the problem in our driveway, instead of on the highway. You might think us daft for being grateful for a broken gas tank strap in our driveway, but we were. We were doubly grateful that it wasn’t February, as well. So we offered our hosannahs. Now what to do?

In a fiscal landscape that made any sense, I’d pay a mechanic to repair the car. There’s a fellow down the street –walking distance, what a luxury for us —and he’s honest and could use the money. He’s my neighbor. But I poked around and found out that the repair would cost maybe $750 at a dealer. The mechanic down the street might only command half that, but it’s still too much. I’d have to fix it myself.

I do not enjoy fixing my car. I’ve done it, back when I was young and Gerry Ford and Jimmy Carter were desolating the landscape, but I have no natural ability or affinity for it. But I went to Amazon, and found the correct parts, and ordered them, and crawled under the car and fixed it. My older son is old enough to help now, thank goodness. I am somewhat infirm in certain ways, and to lay vaguely upside-down under a car yanking on rusty bolts nearly overcame me. But after two days of effort interspersed with trips to the fainting couch, we had replaced the parts. The repair will outlast the car.

I did not earn money by fixing my own car, of course –just the opposite. The mechanic did not earn money. The people who rely on the mechanic to earn money will not earn money, and so forth. Ultimately, through a process which must be deduced, because it cannot be observed, this lack of commerce will ultimately filter its way through the entire economy to the point where someone will not buy what I make because I didn’t hire the mechanic. It’s the circle of life, except it’s the circle of the death of commerce.

I am barraged daily with references to Helicopter Ben running the Treasury printing presses day and night, and thereby causing inflation. It’s an insane idea. When the velocity of money sniffs zero, there is no inflation. The Fed makes money and gives it to the government, who lends it to itself, and none of it ever makes it into the wild where a car mechanic and his downstream brethren might get ahold of it. For productive people in today’s American economy, the money might as well not exist. The bill for it will exist plenty in the future, of course. But when the velocity of money is zero, the future must be entirely discounted. It’s a meaningless concept, like watching an unplugged clock.

The term velocity referring to the passage of money through the alimentary canal of commerce is very descriptive, and apt to my circumstances. The economy is in exactly the same shape as my wife’s gas tank — filled
with fuel which only makes it sag on its rusty underpinnings further,
making it more difficult to fix, and dangerous to be underneath, but you
must bang around under there anyway because there’s no other choice. 
Nervous Nellies endlessly warn me that if it was all released at once, it would explode, but that eventuality is remote compared to going hungry because we can’t drive to the supermarket until it’s fixed. Above all, the fuel isn’t taking you anywhere because the whole apparatus is busted, and the process to fix it is busted, and if you want it fixed you better do it yourself because nobody outside a building with a seal on it has any money.

It’s hard to work under the gas tank of Damocles.

I Knew It All Along

September 8, 2014 24 Comments

“Charlie I been thinking. I shouldn’t but I do. I get to brooding on a thing and then it gets hold of me and worries me to no end until I think it all the way through. We put one foot in front of the other but we never arrive noplace. How can that be? The train, he runs from point A to point B and that’s that, unless the boiler gives out. There’s a bill on the wall in the depot, and it stakes its reputation about the comings and goings of the world and generally turns yellow before it misses. But we never arrive where we’re going even if we hop the train. It doesn’t seem possible but there it is.

“When we walk along the ties we fall into an easy rhythm, don’t we Charlie? There’s nothing else a man can do. You know I’m right in this, Charlie, it’s plain. You remember when you was just an angelina the ties would break your step and confound you and you’d try every kind of thing to beat them at their own game. You’d walk along the edges of the railbed and get poison ivy real good, or find a bramble, or step in a chuckhole, and pruddy soon you’d find yourself back on the ties and counting the anchor plates for amusement, now wouldn’t you? If we had minders we couldn’t be herded any closer. They cut the railbed through the wilderness and it’s the only way from here to there and a man knows it for a fact if he’s not a fool. But we never arrive at anywhere we need to go, do we, Charlie? The rail is laid for another man’s trip but that’s all there is.

“When I was little they took me to the church, Charlie. It was the plain church with no Romans, but I can’t remember the name. The only sign that it was a church, besides how hard the seat felt, was the cross marked on the wall as plainly as the chalk on the curb outside a kind lady’s house, the kind that talks religion and gives food. But they never gave me nothing. Then a feller that looked like reform school got up and took out his watch and set it on a little desk next to a book he never looked at once and started thundering about this and that. He looked me straight in the face and said in our occupations we spread our nets but God brings the fish. I don’t know why he looked at me like that when he said it but he did. He put that sentence on my mind like a mark on cattle and I never forgot it. I didn’t know what it means but it stayed with me.

“I think he meant to tell me that if you got fish in your net then God almighty himself put them there. And I guess that means if you haven’t got no fish that you don’t deserve any. I know upon reflection that was a hard thing to say to the face of boy that hadn’t seen breakfast. Having fish God gave you with his own hand seems to come mighty easy to those with nothing but ink from a bill of sale for the net on their bony fingers, don’t it?

“I’ve been turning it over and over in my mind, Charlie, and I think I had it all backwards. We live in a world where you never arrive no matter how many steps you take. Your destination is never posted in the depot and if you say you’ll go along to another then you find you’re in the wrong place every time, and have to start over again and again.

“I been looking at the nets and the fisherman and I’ve seen the fish on the plate through the window when I’m standing on the sidewalk, Charlie. I don’t know anything except that the fish is never on my plate, Charlie. And I’m beginning to think that the loud feller with the stern face was telling me the opposite of the truth, and doing it on purpose. That’s why he made it hurt. That’s why he left a mark. To keep me rubbing it over and over like a tender spot but not looking at it for fear of it. Like when your tooth is gone you put your tongue in the spot it where it belongs over and over but you never want to see it in the mirror because no man wants to know he’s ugly.

“I’m beginning to see that we’re walking in a world where fish on your plate is a sign that the Devil himself knitted your net. No one has nothing they deserve, Charlie. If you got it, you got it in some underhanded way. Money is the mark of the Devil in this world. What do you think of that, Charlie?”

“I never went to church so I knew it all along.”

Wonder Boys

September 4, 2014 3 Comments

You can’t spend what you ain’t got; you can’t lose some little girl that you ain’t never had

I don’t read books like other people do.

I didn’t listen to music like other people did, either. When I was a little kid, I did, I guess. But pretty soon I was casting a longing eye at things that came out of the radio instead of simply listening to them. When you play music for money, songs are just oxen pulling your plough, or in my case, ground beef on the plate. Farmers don’t fall in love with pigs.

Had money in the bank; I got busted, people, ain’t that bad?

I read all the time when I was little. All. The. Time. A whisker came out of my chin and I entered the world of men. I no longer read books for entertainment. I didn’t read books for amusement. I read books looking for fellow travelers.

Had a sweet little home, it got burned down; people, ain’t that bad? My own fault, people: ain’t that bad?

There is dynamism in life always. It’s not generally where you think it might be. I believe that most forms of culture and commerce have a trajectory. They are born, mature, and die. I have been subjected to the death throes of so many modes of commerce and art forms that I’ve become jaded. I don’t know why everything that has ever presented itself to me as an avenue from poverty and obscurity has been croaking its death rattle by the time it got around to me, or why it has always chosen me from among all the other fools to hug while it pitched itself headlong into the grave, but I’m not dumb enough not to notice the pattern.

“Wonder Boy.” “That man,” he said, “has offered me unsolicited advice every day for six years, all of it bad.”

Oh, what battalions and legions of Wonder Boys, what phlanxes of Wonder Boys I’ve encountered over the years. The schiltrons of Wonder Boys with the pointy ends of their ideas always facing out. Listen to me: I won’t charge at the machine guns anymore while you cower in the trench lobbing only advice that wanly hits the ground around me.

Well you know you can’t spend what you ain’t got: you can’t lose some blues you ain’t never had

Why don’t you just… ? Why don’t you just… ? Why don’t you just… ? Why don’t you just… ? Why don’t you just… ? Why don’t you just… ? Why don’t you just… ? Why don’t you just… ? Why don’t you just… ? Why don’t you just… ? Why don’t you just… ? Why don’t you just… ? Why don’t you just… ?

I don’t know. Why don’t I just… ?  Because I’m Spengler’s little brother, that’s why.

Tag: a boot stomping on a human face forever

Picture of sippicancottage

sippicancottage

A Man Who Has Nothing In Particular To Recommend Him Discusses All Sorts of Subjects at Random as Though He Knew Everything.

Find Stuff:
Archives
Recent Comments
Recent Posts
Tags