Vic Socotra

24 September 2008

Birk's Economics

T. J. Birkenmeier in his study

Secretary Paulson has a plan to get us out of this mess. He pulled an all-nighter over the wee kend, and presented a three-page paper to the Congress. He is looking for about a trillion dollars, give or take a few dozen billion, and wants emergency authority to do with it as he wishes.

What with wars and big numbers, we all seem to have gotten a little blasé about the size of things. I generally support the rescue of some of Wall Street, since this close to retirement another Great Depression doesn’t seem like a good idea.

But the hundred grand I am going to have to make up to get even on the property fuels a simmering resentment about what those assholes did it.

We could hear it up on the Hill, with the self-important Senators and Congressmen posturing as though they did not have personal responsibility to go along with the ritual scape-goating of some of the erstwhile Masters of the Uni verse.

I would be just as happy if the Congress gave Secretary Paulson the authority to string some of them up. Maybe one in ten would be enough to get their attention. But as the to the rest of the wreckage, I assume that we will go ahead and finish off the American Century by devaluing the currency and inviting Uncle Sam into our beds to do to us the only thing the government is really good at.

Since the prospect of that fills me with some dread, I looked with interest at the very responsible alterative plan thought up by T. J. Birkenmeier, a fellow citizen of the Republic, and a creative fellow. I got his advise not because I know him personally- Birk seems like a fine fellow- but because Stretch saw it and passed it to Logger, who in turn sent it on to me.

That is only three degrees of separation from ORCA to me, and only four to you.

Birk is no economist, but he does know something about numbers. He began his career at Ralston Purina in 1967, moving up to become a senior exec in the St. Louis Advertising community. He was marketing director of The St. Louis Sun, prior to founding The ORCA Partnership in 1993.

He was on to something. ORCA stands for Organization, Research, Creativity and Action, and the logo is a killer whale. Like, a real killer of an idea, get it?

Over the years, Birk has witnessed many changes in marketing and the ad business, but the fundamentals are the same. Intellectual prowess is still required to look through the numbers and see and understand the human behavior behind them.

That is how he came to a startling and logical conclusion about what to do. He thinks we should let the Masters of the Universe fail. Hold the trillion dollars to the Secretary's wallet. Let's start with the insurance bail-out.

He is against the $85,000,000,000.00 loan to the American Insurance Group.

He would do it another way. He does the math this way: there are 200,000,000 bona fide U.S. Citizens over the age of eighteen.  Divide that number into $85 billon, which equals a per capita share of $425,000.00.

Then, he says, Secretary Paulson should mail everyone a check.  Not the puny piss-ant stimulus check Mr. Bush mailed some of us a couple months ago- I didn’t qualify, of course, because the bureaucrats think my two-bedroom apartment is too lavish. Birk would have the Secretary send us a check for the full amount we are supposed to give to Wall Street.

Birk is a pragmatic guy, and  does not want to be irresponsible- the amount would be taxed as ordinary income, which would come in at something over 30% before Senator Obama gets a chance to raise the tax rates.

That leaves us all about $297,500.00 in our jeans, or enough to bail ourselves out of our own problems and eliminate the middle-men who sold us down the river and now expect us20to bail them out. Screw them.

I know, it is just one guy blowing off some steam. But I have done my own regression numbers on other very large adventures entered into my really smart guys who turned out to be phenomenally stupid.

An analysis of the Vietnam conflict suggests that for all the blood and treasure, we could have bought every Vietnamese man woman and Child a new Mustang convertible, and wouldn’t that have been more fun?

We could all have gone to the beach.
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I think Birk’s approach has a lot of merit. We are in the process of ruining the currency anyway, so why not have a couple of laughs on the way out?

The only thing wrong with the Birk plan, as far as I can tell, is that it cuts out the middle-man, and doesn’t empower the politicians who desperately want to tell us what to do, and would prefer to spend our money their way.

I agree with Birk. If we are going to trash the country, we may as well pay off our own mortgages and have a fantastic party on the way out.

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