Author: DOuG pRATt

Interest in Banking

Frontline has this timely report called ‘Age of Easy Money’.

My position is that the Fed needs to add a third mandate to its duty of maximizing employment while keeping inflation in check. It’s my contention that to meet those two goals, the “other inflation” — Wall Street — also needs to be kept in check. Otherwise, you end up with what we have now. Neel Kashkari has exactly the opposite opinion, as heard at this point in the documentary.

There’s an implicit threat in what Kashkari says, as if he’s speaking on behalf of investment bankers — Hurt the rich people on Wall Street, in any way at all, and regular people will suffer.

The Big Bangs of 1973

1973 saw the creation of Disco and the Xerox Alto system. Disco may no longer be a thing, but everything created at Xerox PARC is very much with us today. I am reading this book.

The IEEE, in charge of the WiFi technology you’re probably using right now, and also Ethernet if that’s what you’re using, has this brief history of Xerox PARC.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/xerox-alto

Here’s some Disco. TSOP — The Sound of Philadelphia — by the late Thom Bell.

On Stage and On Film

Barter Theatre in Virginia was featured on last night’s PBS NewsHour.

As explained in the video, Barter Theatre includes actors from New York. My mother was one of them, after completing the program at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

In addition to the plays produced at home base, Barter’s actors traveled, performing plays throughout the region. The troupe of actors my mother was with included Ernest Borgnine, who she called Ernie. Borgnine did double duty as an actor and as the bus driver. Ernie enjoyed it so much, driving his own buses became a lifelong avocation.

CBS Sunday Morning covered the very important work of film restoration and preservation. The amazing results seen today wouldn’t be possible without digital technology.

Failure’s Fallout

Comments on LinkedIn from Silicon Valley Bank ex-employees, reacting to the bank’s failure. They’ve been abruptly and unexpectedly forced into social networking searches for new jobs, and LinkedIn is the best place to do that. So you won’t see more than the very faintest hints of negativity.

https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/svb-employees-react-to-its-fall-6207514/

Planet Money provides its after-the-fact analysis of what happened:

Economist Paul Krugman has this comment:

Just a few years ago, S.V.B. was one of the midsize banks that lobbied successfully for the removal of regulations that might have prevented this disaster, and the tech sector is famously full of libertarians who like to denounce big government right up to the minute they themselves needed government aid.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/14/opinion/silicon-valley-bank-bailout.html

Here’s something that should surprise absolutely no one:

Silicon Valley Bank CEO Greg Becker sold $3.6 million of company stock two weeks before the bank reported massive losses in the run up to the bank’s implosion, according to regulatory filings.

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/14/1163366706/justice-department-opens-probe-into-silicon-valley-bank-after-its-sudden-collaps

Having Fits Over Fritz

The BBC has a surprisingly positive and in-depth article about the controversial Fritz the Cat movie from 1972. It shouldn’t be called Robert Crumb’s Fritz the Cat, because Crumb didn’t license the production himself, and he didn’t want his name associated with it.

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20221101-fritz-the-cat-at-50-the-x-rated-cartoon-that-shocked-the-us

Fritz the Cat is available on a recent Blu-ray release. Bonus commentary is with my old pal, G. Michael Dobbs, author of Made of Pen & Ink: Fleischer Studios, The New York Years, and Mike’s cohort in film and animation history, artist Steve Bissette.

https://www.amazon.com/Fritz-Cat-Skip-Hinnant/dp/B09BF59MQR/

You can watch it here for free, sans the commentary.