A business associate and I roomed at an extended stay.  I was impressed with the facilities and service.  The hotel had breakfast every day and hors d’oeuvres, beer and wine Monday through Thursday.  I have to admit that one evening I ingested four hamburgers (what a pig) with vegetables (healthy).  This is in addition to lunch and occasional dinners that we were treated by our gracious hosts.

After a couple days in Irvine, I could feel my weight going up.  We decided to hit the exercise equipment forty-five minutes a day.  There was a weight scale, but we decided to skip on the reality check.  The exercise room had a large flat screen.  Most of the days the television set was tuned to CNN.

By now every Naive American knows that a considerable sum of taxpayer moneys, in the order of billions of Dollars has been, and will continue to be handed to bail out AIG (http://www.aig.com).  I am not going to cover in this blog if bailing out AIG is the right thing to do or not.  Will leave it for a separate entry.

The fact is that after the US government handed bail out funds to other financial institutions with few (if any) strings attached, AIG takes some of such funds and hands bonuses to many of their executives.  When the AIG bonus news hit the media, there was an outrage across America.  Apparently the AIG bonuses were authorized by a small clause (a sentence) in the law that was passed a few weeks ago.  CNN asked every single politician involved in generating the bailout law if they had added such phrase.  Believe it or not, not a single politician wanted to admit they had written such clause.  Senator Christopher Dodd (Democrat) of Connecticut was interviewed and he stated on camera that he did not know about the clause that mysteriously was added to the AIG bailout.  A couple days later he admitted that he authorized the clause, but he was not aware of the exact wording. 

We Naive Americans need to think about the actions of Senator Dodd.  First and foremost, he lied.  This is typical of most (if not all) politicians.  Second and most important, why would a politician do such an unethical and immoral thing?  The answer is simple yet disturbing.  The checks and balances in the US make it difficult (not impossible) for politicians to accept bribes.  Our political system allows for lobbyist and political contributions.  Most AIG executives live in mansions in the state of Connecticut.  Do you see the relationship?  Lobbyist for AIG pressed Senator Dodd to include such a ludicrous clause so their customer (AIG) could collect their bonuses not associated with performance, but in return for supporting Dodd’s political aspirations.  What is the saying that comes to mind “You scratch my back, I scratch yours”.  As most Naive Americans may realize by now, our electoral system is flawed.  Money paid by companies (i.e., AIG) to politicians (i.e., Senator Dodd) through lobbyists is what dictates US policy.  This is nothing new.  Has been in place for the past fifty years or so.

Now lets focus on the recipients of the AIG bonuses.  For starters, traditionally in our society, bonuses are given to people based on performance.  If the company is doing very well, then bonuses are in order to provide incentives to motivate hard work above and beyond the expected 40-hour week.  Two things come to mind.  [1] If the a company (i.e., AIG) is doing poorly as a result of bad and irrational decisions made by management, how in the world do they deserve a bonus?  [2] If a company (i.e., IAG) is doing poorly to the point of being in the verge of closing, how could the company get funds to pay bonuses?  The logical and simple answers are: no one deserves a bonus and there is no money for bonuses.  How in the world could lawyers and politicians come up with any valid concept or idea that would justify this absurdity?  Do not forget that the money at stake came from Naive American taxpayers.  I do not know about others, but this Naive American is completely against handing a portion of my taxes as some type of bonus to any company receiving bailout money, no mater what their situation is.

Naive Americans have heard people in Wall Street justifying that high-level executives need huge compensations to do what they do.  This sounds like royalty to me.  Upper management in the Financial System is incompetent and greedy.  They should all be fired and replaced by Naive Americans that are willing with a salary that cannot exceed by law the one paid to the president of the United States of America.  The majority of stockholders must approve any and all bonus to any and all executive.  Disband all board of directors.  Bonuses must always be paid in the form of stock options (not cash).  This proposal should not be taken as a suggestion by all types of companies, but should be made law in the US.  Please keep in mind that if the company is doing well, stock holders are collecting high dividends and would be willing to allow some shares to be purchased as options to compensate the hard work of executives.  If executives perform poorly, then dividends would be down.  The affected stockholders would not be willing to hand options to such individuals.  They would probably consider firing them.  This brings up the elimination of all “golden parachutes”.  If executives are fired for poor performance, then they should collect unemployment like a large percentage (currently about 10%) of Naive Americans are doing today.

Incompetent group of executives in all types of companies believe they belong to some type of class (royalty) that is above the rest of Naive Americans.  The US government should pass legislation in order to eliminate such class.  Please read what has happened to royalty though the ages in different civilizations.  Hopefully the economic and political unrest in our country will not lead to such dramatic and permanent actions.  As unemployment and unrest grows, the US is at a high risk of making dramatic changes not spearheaded by politicians but by Naive Americans.  We are in desperate need of CHANGE.

The USA is in need of simple legislation to get us back on track.  Regrettably this falls in the hands of politicians that are being bribed by companies and entities via lobbyists.

I urge each and every Naive American to put pressure on their representatives to induce peaceful and gradual change.  The same holds true to management in all types of companies.  The US needs to wake up and smell the roses.  We have been living in a dream in the past fifty years.  It is time to wake up, make CHANGES and work together for a new USA.

I am sending you this letter in hopes you clarify how your stimulus package(s) are going to help Naive Americans that are or have worked in Wall Street and are loosing or already have lost their jobs.  I am also interested in finding out what your administration is doing or going to do to prevent the issues that caused the US economic meltdown not to repeat.

As I have stated on previous blogs, I am a computer scientist not associated in any way with Wall Street.  I have read several articles on Wall Street and watched several segments on the subject on national TV.

The financial system in the US is completely corrupt.  Greed had been the motivation for most people involved in the financial industry, which I will refer to in general as Wall Street.

The Oxford on-line dictionary defines Greed as follows:

Noun intense and selfish desire for food, wealth, or power.

All is well with being greedy as long as it does not compromise moral and ethical principles.  Given that you are a lawyer by trade, I assume that you are familiar with the base principle of morality (which has nothing to do with any religion):

Do not do to others what you do not want others to do to you.

Based on the news, it appears that some (very few in the opinion of most Naive Americans) Wall Street executives are under scrutiny by the US legal system to determine if they have committed crimes.  The issue with this is that many Naive Americans have become very good snake oil sales people (deceiving others) and like to walk on a thin gray line between what is criminal and what is not.  No matter what people in Wall Street say or how are they represented, they all knew what was going on and they did nothing to correct or stop earlier in the game.

As you well know, most of the economical issues the USA is currently experiencing were precipitated (not started) by a law passed towards the end of the Clinton administration (way before the 8 years of George W. Bush while you were a politician in the state of Illinois and the few months of your administration).  It appears that greed, lack of responsibility, lack of morals, etc, etc, etc was not only something found in Wall Street but it was (and still is) spread all over our society.

This Naive American fully understands that it is important to recognize the past, but it is a complete waste of time and resources to just complaint and not CHANGE.  Sounds familiar Mr. President?  We need legislation to be passed to address the issues that led a small set of Naive Americans to take advantage of the majority without any legal consequences.  We also need to make sure that checks and balances are in place in Wall Street so greedy Naive Americans are not able to repeat what they have done.

A few weeks ago I was watching the news on national TV.  A Wall Street analyst stated that executives in his business live a different reality.  They need to be greedy and get paid millions of Dollars a year.  I can assure you that you can fire all Wall Street executives and in less that 24-hours such positions would be filled by better qualified Naive Americans which would be eager to work for a reasonable salary (no more that $400,000 Dollars per year) and get stock options from stock holders to motivate them to excel in their jobs.  In America we do not believe in blue blood or monarchies.

Regarding the stimulus package, how is it going to help Naive Americans that used to work in Wall Street?  Building roads, making buildings green, getting healthcare and unemployment benefits are not going to the problem.  The caps on Dollar amounts and periods for unemployment benefits might be fine for Naive Americans that had very low incomes, but not for middle and upper middle class workers from Wall Street.  Most Naive Americans are part of the middle class (which sadly is shrinking and could / will bring serious problems down the line).  Middle class Naive Americans need well-paid jobs that produce goods and services that may be consumed in and outside the US.  Well-paid jobs that demand skills and know how have gradually been outsourced.  Manufacturing has been affected by globalization.

In conclusion, pouring money that will never be recovered into the economy is just going to postpone and / or stretch the symptoms.  If the stimulus is coming from taxes, loans, or printing currency, things will just get worse.  The USA needs massive and deep CHANGES in our economy and society in order to get us back on track and leave our children and generations to come a better place to live in.

Yours truly;

The Naive American

PS:           Mr. President, please read the About section in the www.naiveamerican.org site to get a better flavor of what has and is happening with the USA.  Then prove me wrong by inducing the proper CHANGES!!!

Do you have FAITH that things will change?

Many Naive Americans very frequently hope that somehow, out of the blue, things will work out. A different expression often used in the same context is to “have faith.” These ways of thinking are quite common in the USA.

From a random on-line dictionary selected from http://www.onelook.com:

HOPE: To have a wish to get or do something or for something to happen or be true, especially something that seems possible or likely.

FAITH: Complete trust or confidence.

I am not going to address the above listed words in the context of religion because it is completely subjective and unfounded.

Naive Americans wish for many things every day. When we were children we probably wished that a particular teacher wouldn’t make it to school because we did not complete our homework. Perhaps we wished we were sick for a day or two in order to miss school and stay home in bed watching TV. Perhaps we wished to call the attention of a specific girl or boy and become good friends. Perhaps we wished that as the holiday season approached, we would receive certain presents. The list goes on and on.

As we get older our wishing behavior continues. We might get up in the morning and wish for lighter traffic. Here in the Twin Cities we might wish for a snow day, especially on a Friday so we can get a three-day weekend. Perhaps we wish that our boss will call us into their office and congratulate us with a promotion or (better yet) with raise. I don’t know about you, but I wish the Vikings would win the Super Bowl. I might hope to win the Powerball lottery and tell my boss the cliché line: “Take this job and shove it”. And finally my favorite one, I hope that our president elect will bring change to America.

Lets spend a few moments reflecting on the few examples we mentioned.

I lived in and around the Twin Cities for decades and, with time, the amount of traffic has gotten worse. If I leave home shortly before 07:00 AM, after my car pooling duties are met, I am able to get to work no later than 07:30 AM during the warm months and about 07:45 AM in the cold months. Darkness and snow tend to slow down commuters. If, for some reason I leave home fifteen minutes later, the same route takes about one hour. I can hope and wish for the best, become an aggressive driver (which I am not) or make sure I leave on time.

Our professional football team, the Vikings have never won a Supper Bowl. I can wish and hope they will do it this year. What is in my power to affect the outcome? Many naive sports fans argue that attending all the games (at least the local ones) will help the players feel their “energy” and improve their game. This is certainly a subjective response. The way the players perform on the field is a direct function of the dedication and training they have as individuals and as a team. The coach may have some effect because he is an observer able to provide a different view. One way or another, it appears that the best prepared team with the best attitude wins. My hopping and wishing are quite irrelevant.

Regarding president-elect Obama, in the past few weeks he has been busy putting together his team / staff for when he takes office next month. Obama was elected because Naive Americans heard his promises for change. Given that things on different fronts have been deteriorating in the US since the early 1950′s the American people are hoping and wishing for change. What the Naive American is wishing and hoping for is that a small group of politicians will come up with plans which would improve the state of affairs in all (at least in most) fronts and the changes will not require pain and work by the country as a whole.

Instead of hoping and wishing someone will solve America’s issues, every Naive American has to change in a way that improves what we do at home, at work, and with strangers, regardless if we are a member of the night cleaning crew in an office building, a third shift union auto worker (I would assume that third shifts are no longer labored), an engineer designing software for medical applications, or the CEO of a company that believes he deserves millions of dollars and flies on the company jet.

Please note that the last paragraph has nothing to do with religion or faith. It just has to do with work, morals and ethics.

I was lucky enough to attend a very competitive all-male, private, Catholic school.  In kindergarten nuns were our only teachers.  Brothers taught us in the middle school years and towards high school we had several priests in the mix.  I still remember my favorite high school teachers.  At the time he was a “brother,” held a Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics and taught physics.  In time, he was ordained as a priest in the Catholic Church.

I don’t remember all of the religious curriculum in my younger years, but what I still recall are the seemingly hours we spent kneeling down on the hard floor of my classroom praying with a rosary.  What a way to waste learning time.

During high school things were quite different.  Although religion was still a mandatory course, it was covered only two or three hours a week.  The theme of the religion classes shifted from pure Catholic indoctrination to Christian.  Later we moved to other world religions.  I still recall many discussions regarding the existence of god and reasons for other religions; some of them with more or less followers than Catholicism.

Time passes, I marry and my wife and we have two boys.  The time came to choose the type of primary education.  My wife and I tried the public school system on the East Coast and in the Mid West.  We decided to move our children to a private Catholic, Military school.  We were pleased with the discipline and reinforcement of moral and ethical values taught at home.

So far this looks like blue sky and smells like apple pie.  As an individual, the Naive American needs to pose  itself the question:  Do you recall choosing location, time and parents to which you were born?  In other words, did you choose your parents?  The obvious answer is:  NO.

By not being able to choose a location in the world in which to be born, the religion surrounding us would most likely be different.  In the US, most people profess some type of Christian-based religion.  If we would have been born in the same exact place just a few centuries earlier, we would most certainly be professing a different religion.  Likely, one based on multiple gods (e.g., Native Americans).  Given the current diversity in our country, the family next door might have completely different beliefs.  President elect Barack Obama appears to have professed at least two different religions.

Another aspect to consider about any ancient or modern religion is that they completely subjective.  They all share different ways to define a god that has created us and, in the future in this world, or after death, would reward us.  This simple way of interpreting religion provides the Naive American with a justification to do no wrong.

If things are going well then god must like us and be on our side.  If things are going poorly, then the lord works in mysterious ways.  It appears that Karl Marx had a great analogy labeling religion as opium for the masses.

At this point, things are not going well in the USA.  We are engaged in two different wars to make sure our needs to consume weapons and oil are met.  During and after the Second World War, the Naive American worked hard in manufacturing.  We were producing goods that were very desirable in our country and all over the world.  World population was less than half of what it is today.  Today, most design and manufacturing jobs have been outsourced.  Our population, and that of the world, have grown considerably since then.  How is prosperity going to be achieved and secured in the near and long term future?

Religion appears to be an inexpensive and readily available mechanism to deliver morality and ethics to individuals.  This was the thought of my parents and my own thoughts.  In college, I took two semesters of “Morality and Ethics”.  I learned that they are based on a single principle that has nothing to do with religion.  As a matter of fact, modern religions are based on this simple principle:   ”Do unto others as you want others to do to you”.

If the Naive American starts living by this simple principle, things might change for the better for each of us in the USA and in the rest of the world.  The rule needs to be applied to every single act and decision we make at home, at work and while interacting with all individuals.  At such point, happiness and prosperity will follow.  Religion, and all its baggage will (hopefully) disappear.  And a true separation between religion and state may actually become a reality.