Only in Texas

Each morning, while I'm going through the news articles for the day, I try to catch a few minutes of the Adam Carolla podcast, which is generally a hilarious rant about whatever happens to be on Adam's mind that day. Periodically, he does a bit called "Germany or Florida?" where he reads the details of a news story and asks where the story takes place: Germany or Florida? His thinking is that generally when crazy shit happens it happens disproportionately in either Germany or Florida. I have a similar bit I like to call "Only in Texas" which highlights the craziness of the Lone Star State. The place has always been a little different but today I came across a story that is truly great. First, a couple previous examples.

• On April 12, the City of Allen Texas approved a $120 million bond to pay for a 18,000 seat high school football stadium. How big is the City of Allen? 77,000 people. And this, during the worst recession since the Great Depression!
• On April 14, a man in Garland, Texas was sentenced to 15 days in prison and five years probation after pleading guilty to stuffing a lead weight into a bass during a fishing tournament last fall. Because there was a $55,000 prize for first place,the man was charged with attempted theft over $20,000.

Granted, those stories might be worth a chuckle or two, but the awesomeness of the following story is off the charts. This morning, a co-worker forwarded me a story about Texas Governor Rick Perry (http://tinyurl.com/3xkz797). It seems the Governor was out for a job with his dog when he happened across a "wily coyote" (his words). What makes this an "Only in Texas" scenario is Governor Perry likes to take his jogs strapped with a laser-sighted .380 Ruger pistol filled with hollow tips (tevlar piercing rounds). I think you can guess what happened next. Said coyote approach him and his dog and Perry 1) allowed time for his laser sight to charge (seriously) and 2) put one round into the coyote which "became mulch" (Perry's words). Words cannot express how great this story is. Laser-sighted pistol? Check. Hollow-tips? Check. Repeated use of words like "holler"? Check. Use of the word "Reckon"? Sadly no. (Quick tangent: Reckon is one of those words you just don't hear enough of these days). The lesson, as always: don't mess with Texas.

Required Reading for April

Given the amount of reading I'm able to do at work, I thought I'd start linking to a few of the better articles I come across each month. Here's what I enjoyed in April (Matt Taibbi's been a busy guy):

• An article in the New Yorker looks at the social science behind terrorism (who knew social science had a use?): http://tinyurl.com/y6knb5t Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi looks at how the banks are ripping off America's cities: http://tinyurl.com/y2hyn7c
• Taibbi asks what's really on trial in the SEC vs. Goldman Sachs (op-ed from The Guardian): http://tinyurl.com/34vwybe
• Taibbi explains why Goldman has been charged with securities fraud using Ben Roethlisberger's "dick waving bathroom stall incident" as an analogy for Goldman's behavior. Gotta love Taibbi: http://tinyurl.com/3xgpo6m

Grilled Squid

Today, the SEC grew a pair and charged the vampire squid (Goldman Sachs) with securities fraud. Here's a good breakdown of what the bank is charged with (http://tinyurl.com/y82p9q8) but I found this analogy to be much more useful: "Imagine you and your friend sell apples. Your friend purposely puts poison in some of the apples, while you continue to sell those apples and tell your customers that these particular apples are the most delicious that you've ever had for sale. Then that same wicked friend of yours buys life insurance contracts on those customers who ate the apples. Your customers die as expected, and your friend makes billions of dollars in profits off of those insurance contracts. Then everyone in the apple industry marvels at how smart you are. And you spend the next two years pretending that you're the Master of the Universe." The only question now is: how much of a fine will Goldman have to pay with taxpayer bailout money?

I'm (Almost) Famous!!

The other day, during my daily lunch time perv-out walk at the mall with the guys from work, we started discussing the show Undercover Boss, which airs on CBS Sunday nights. The discussion originally started when I expressed my opinion that the show is really nothing more than free advertising for the companies featured. If you've seen the show you will have noticed that at the end of each episode the CEO or COO "rewards" a few hardworking employees with a tiny cash bonus or a $5,000 scholarship (not sure what kind of an education that's supposed to buy in the States). These rewards pale in comparison to the financial benefits which accrue to the company after appearing in a week's worth of promotional ads in the lead up to an episode. Trust me, no CEO would agree to take part in the show if it didn't make his company look good, and after 7 episodes the CEO's are batting 1000% in that regard. The question we were curious about was how shares in the companies faired after an appearance on Undercover Boss. So I did what anyone would do: I emailed the author of the Wall Street Journal's "Numbers Guy blog". A few days later, he emailed me back with a link to a full article on the questions I had asked. It turns out appearing on the show was a very good financial decision for the CEOs who participated. How good? Rather than rehash his findings, here's the article: http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2010/04/09/undercover-boss-the-perfect-stock-market-strategy/tab/print/ Quite interesting results. However, they only raised more questions. Like what about opportunities for insider trading? CBS doesn't publicly announce which company will appear in future episodes until the end of each Sunday night episode. However, network execs/producers and company reps will have known for months. SEC, care to take a look at which insiders were snatching up shares after the lineup was finalized? Granted, the SEC is incompetent (Exhibit A being Bernie Madoff) but it would be interesting to know who, aside from regular investors, has profited from the show.