The economy is not dead yet! The Commerce Department
reported that the U.S. glowed under the warm light created
by 3.3 percent real economic growth in the second quarter.
This new reading almost doubles the original tally of 1.9
percent- which provided barely enough wattage needed
to read the fine print on mortgage, credit card and auto
loan statements.

According to Marketwatch.com, the jolt to the economy’s vital
signs stemmed from robust exports and hefty inventory
accumulation. (Uncle Sam’s stimulus package- complements of
China and various oil exporting autocracies- helped as well.)

The American economy, once the object of envy and grudging
admiration, has been struggling since the fourth quarter of 2007.
Real economic growth over the past year reads an anemic,
European-style 2.2 percent. This marks a drastic slowdown from
the credit-fueled growth in the second and third quarters of last
year (the website Data360 has a nice graph of recent
GDP activity).

Marketwatch also surveyed practitioners of the dismal science
(a.k.a. economists). It seems that they underestimated the
strength of the U.S. economy in the second quarter, but they
are still very pessimistic about the second half of this year.
They expect growth to skid toward 2 percent for the current
quarter and to practically vanish (0.3 percent is the latest
estimate) as the year comes to a close.

I find that I agree with this dour assessment. The easy
money that created the fire to keep American growth sizzling
is now a pile of smoldering embers. The banks are not through
confessing their misdeeds, consumers are beyond tapped out,
and the housing market is limping toward the valley of shame
(where it will rent a modest dwelling). The recent rise in the
dollar will hit exports in the current quarter and, last but
certainly not least, Uncle Sammy will not be borrowing
money to send his spoiled nieces and nephews to the mall
anytime soon.

©Greg Strid 2008

The market giveth on Friday and taketh away on Monday.
It seems that panic was in vogue today as more bad news
surfaced concerning the lousy state of the nation’s financial
institutions.

The Dow Jones forfeited just over 240 points, and the
broader Standard & Poor’s 500 index sank a hair more than
25 points. The Nasdaq felt the pain as well, shedding almost
50 points. In percentage terms, each index lost approximately
2 percent to start the week on a less than glorious note.

Before the open, the Financial Times ran a story concerning
a South Korean bank regulator’s hesitation toward the Korea
Development Bank’s idea of purchasing Lehman Brothers,
the highly distressed U.S. brokerage company. The regulator
was critical of using state money to buy such a heavily
burdened institution. (He recommended the use of private
funds instead.) This helped send the shares of Lehman Brothers
down by 4 percent.

Then, an hour after gambling began, Marketwatch reported that
Credit Suisse Group analysts took a swipe at American International
Group when they raised the possibility that the struggling
insurance giant could take a cold third quarter earnings bath due to
large write-downs of their deteriorating derivatives portfolio.
AIG shares swooned by 5.5 percent as a result.

Funny how manic this market is these days. Just Friday
investors were rushing out of the gates, sopping up the
soothing remarks of Fed chairman Bernanke, and bidding up
the shares of financial stocks as if happy days were really, truly
here again. With Monday’s unpleasant news, the very same
investors are blue once more.

It seems that until all of the red ink is reported, the share
prices of America’s financial companies will be riding the
headlines up and down. I, for one, counsel patience- and
if you register a nice gain punting on these stocks, cash it
in for a good night’s sleep.

©Greg Strid 2008

According to a recent article in the New York Times, Mayor
Bloomberg announced a bold plan that would seek to
harness the wind power that races through New York City’s
canyons of skyscrapers and over its many bridges and miles
of open water.

His goal, mentioned in the article, is to reduce the city’s
dependence on country’s rickety power grid. The Mayor’s
announcement was made at an alternative energy
conference in Las Vegas just a few days ago. It was sweeping
in scope and light on details. But, how can one lay out the fine
print on such a grand plan that will take at least a decade to
implement? As for possible wind power projects, he mentioned
the possibility of constructing giant wind farms many miles out
in the depths of the Atlantic.

The Times also interviewed Rohit Aggarwala, who is director of
the Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability. According
to Aggarwala, the turbines for the city’s buildings would be
smaller and less noticeable. The Times said the city is asking
for help in this daunting task. A formal, nation-wide request
was made Tuesday asking for proposals to create renewable
power (wind-, solar- and water-based) sources in New York City.

I believe that concerning the wind power, small, less intrusive
devices are the best solution to providing a meaningful source
of renewable energy for New York City. Large wind farms, like
the ones being built with reckless abandon in upstate New York,
require years of legal battles, mountains of permits and they
cost upwards of a million dollars each to construct. Smaller
turbines can be installed at a lower cost and with less hassle.
Although they produce less electricity, many more can be
installed to compensate for this shortfall in power creation.

There are several companies that build efficient, affordable
and ascetically pleasing wind turbines. Aerotecture of Chicago,
AeroVironment of Monrovia, California and Mariah Power,
located in Reno, Nevada all have wind power turbines that
could probably suit the city’s needs right now. Wind power
is taking off in Chicago, and there is no reason that New
York City cannot make up for lost ground.

The best wind-based renewable power solution lies in placing
large numbers of smaller turbines on the city’s hundreds of
skyscrapers and numerous bridges, not in building expensive
boondoggles twenty miles out to sea.

©Greg Strid 2008

I celebrated my birthday on Wednesday with style. Tiby arranged for an action-packed day that began with a shopping trip to Reminiscence (I felt the need for a new coat to ring in the fall season), continued with a powerful day at Chelsea Piers and ended with an evening sail in New York Harbor aboard Shearwater Sailing’s 1929 schooner. It was truly a blast. Please enjoy the photos below.

“Pimp-Lite”

Sporting a luxurious crimson velvet opera coat.

Pins beware!

Enjoying the harbor in style.

There’s a new captain in town. (Or, “Sit down bitches, I’m at the helm now!”)

A shot from the bowsprit- very cool indeed. Thus ends the birthday photo display. Please join us at Fat Cat (75 Christopher Street at the corner of 7th Avenue) tonight at 7pm for an evening of billiards, ping pong and a few casual pints of scotch.

Oh Vladimir, why are you causing such confusion and
panic in the halls of western capitals- especially
Washington D.C.? His show of force against the tiny
nation of Georgia is ruining the vacations of many
presidents and prime ministers. “How rude of him,
what a nasty former spy he is!”, they are saying from
the South of France to the brush fields of Texas.

Mr. Putin is still ruling Russia. His new position as prime
minister was merely a lateral move to circumvent a
constitution that prohibits him from serving more than
two terms as president. (He will undoubtedly amend
this nuisance of a document, which will allow him to
become “Godfather of Russia” for all eternity.)

Yesterday’s New York Times featured an excellent article
called “U.S. Sees Much to Fear in a Hostile Russia”,
written by Peter Baker. He starts out by reporting that
Bashar al-Assad, the swanky bad-boy who heads Syria’s
largest criminal gang (some refer to it as their government),
is on a high-end weapons shopping spree in Russia.

The Syrian president’s arms procurement trip to Russia
highlights the many ways in which Putin’s gang can
cause problems for western nations- especially the U.S.
Russia already sells fancy weapons systems to a host of
countries that are on Washington’s crap list- Venezuala
(another resource rich land ruled by a thug), is one that
is a gold customer and is right in our neighborhood.

Russia can also veto U.N. Security Council resolutions,
and stall progress on halting Iran and North Korea’s
quest for nuclear weapons- actually, the North Korean
crime family already has a starter arsenal. And, to top
off the list of menacing activities, they can disrupt the
flow of oil and gas to Western Europe.

I encourage you to read this piece. With all of the idiotic
shouts and paranoid posturing going on, it is good to take
in a reasoned and fairly comprehensive piece on this subject
before deciding to head off to the bomb shelter. (You may
decide to go after all, but at least you will feel more
comfortable with the decision.)

©Greg Strid 2008

On Tuesday afternoon, August 19th, the world was blessed with the arrival of Anna Rose. She weighed in at 6 pounds, 10 ounces. I would like to thank and congratulate my brother Dennis and sister-in-law Noelle. Anna is quite the stunning specimen. Many newborns appear to have just stepped off the mother ship-prematurely. Anna, however, arrived ready for the fashion runway. She is a Leo and I’m sure the world will hear her roar very soon!

It was a smashing day for a parade. The sun was shining, but it was not too hot or humid. Tiby and I parked ourselves in camping chairs on Montgomery Street to take in Jersey City’s Puerto Rican Day Parade.

The photos posted below are from my little camera, and the tart comments that accompany each image are from my tiny, yet very active mind. I like to think that I notice what others do not- which cuts both ways, mind you. My lens and thoughts centered on the cheap and irrelevant merchandise for sale, the glad-handing pols dragging themselves along the parade route, and the many military-style law enforcement vehicles that were on display.

Given the way people can behave when in large crowds in the time of an omnipresent Oprah and easy access to Oxycontin, this was an uneventful, and therefore good parade- no drunken riots or acts of random destruction. I hope that you enjoy the photos- especially the one of former Mayor Bret Schundler- it’s a gem.

All parades of note must start with crap peddlers. After all, how can one expect to

celebrate national pride properly without an inflatable Sponge Bob in one hand and

a plastic Ninja sword in the other?

Get your flags! Three bucks a pop, or two for five dollars- made in Taiwan, of course.

Here comes the poh-lice, on stylish Harleys.

Here comes the Mayor- he’s in there somewhere.

Watch out! It’s former Mayor and aspiring B-movie zombie stunt double, Bret

Schundler, out to either press or eat the flesh of the Jersey City electorate.

Giant, yet cuddly looking Corrections “Rescue” (and Assault) vehicle- every parade and children’s party should have one!

Another menacing vehicle, seemingly torn from the pages of a Stephen King novel, representing the stiff arm of the law.

Real people playing musical instruments.

Someone stole the pool from the Holiday Inn.

An old-fashioned car- definitely parade worthy.

Old dude with cool ancient bike and many small flags.

Hot chick on fancy old truck. Well, that ends this crude photo essay. I hope you enjoyed it.

Let me start by saying: “Giant stores suck!” And, giant
hardware stores suck the most.

I was in the cavernous Home Depot located on 23rd
Street recently to buy some clay pots for some of my
houseplants, (The small Ace Hardware store on 14th
Street was sold out of the size pots that I wanted, so
with a sigh, I headed up to 23rd Street.)

They had pots of all shapes, sizes and prices. Fortunately,
I needed no assistance from the semi-comatose sales staff.
I grabbed my booty and headed upstairs to pay.

This is when I exited this world and entered the Twilight
Zone of the mega-store parallel universe.

I waited on a line that consisted of about twenty demoralized
shoppers- they looked like refugees from an extra pointless
and destructive conflict. Ahead of me I saw at least fifteen
registers, only two of which were manned.

There certainly wasn’t a shortage of employees. I counted
at least six who were standing in groups of two chatting
away as if they were in a high school cafeteria. I also noticed
one employee who was stuffing plastic bags underneath the
empty register counters. (She then proceeded to peruse
the pages of Church Supper Magazine- I kid you not, this
magazine does exist.)

As the line continued to grow and my patience proceeded
to whither to barely recognizable levels, an aspiring assistant
to the assistant manager showed up to ask if anyone was
paying with a credit card.

“You’ve got to be kidding!”, I said with well-intentioned
hostility. I was buying less than $10 worth of clay pots, and
this was my last stop of the day- I just wanted out of this
place, but I was still stubborn enough to stick with my credit
card spending rules (I do not charge cups of coffee, sticks
of gum or three f**cking clay pots). Fortunately, a cash-
accepting register opened up two minutes after the credit
card only announcement- and three minutes before my
head would have exploded.

This sad experience speaks to the mind-numbing managerial
style practiced by companies like Home Depot and Wal-Mart.
Their stores contain thousands of items that are scattered across
acres of poorly marked aisles that end up bewildering
customers while providing ample hiding places for poorly
trained and demoralized employees.

I think that it is the top down, highly centralized structure
of these insanely large companies that causes such dismal
experiences for both customers and employees alike. These
stores are designed to be the same so that they are easier
and cheaper to plant from one coast to the other. It also
seems that a sad and dysfunctional relationship exists between
the customer, the store and the employees. The customers
can, if they have the patience, find everything they need
at the lowest prices- supposedly- so they put up with the
dismal service. For the employees, what is the difference
where they work? All of these companies suck royally.

I think that the few bucks that might be saved is insufficient
compensation for the stripping of one’s dignity. But, that
is just my opinion.

©Greg Strid 2008