WE'RE BAAAAACK!

Marvelous time wandering around the East Coast seeing family, friends and especially grandchildren. Woke up in northern Virginia on the morning of August 31 and the temperature was 52 degrees fahrenheit. 52! In August! I thought Al Gore had died. It was lovely.

Many, MANY years ago we were negotiating a particularly unpleasant piece of financing with a company whose CEO was on the board of my institution. Representing the other side was a high powered and high priced counsel from the firm of Pillsbury Madison & Sutro of San Francisco. The good guys put forward James Marshall Esq. of White & Case. Jimmy was a 6th generation lay-yer from Virginia; 6th removed that is from Chief Justice James Marshall of that court in D.C. From the git-go Jimmy had little time for the head hummer from Pillsbury and made his dislike clear. In the midst of an oration from said head-hummer, I had to leave to take a phone call which I announced shouldn't take more than 5 minutes. 45 minutes later I returned to an ice-cold room at what was, apparently, the exact moment of conclusion of the oration, apologizing at great length for my absence. "That's all right Charlie," said Jimmy, "in your absence, nothing of importance was discussed." Little was accomplished that day.

Jimmy is long gone but it seems that his observation would be appropriate today. In my absence, the ridiculous "cash for clunkers" program has ended, the health debate goes on, political change promised by The Leader is no where in sight and on the financial front nothing of importance has been discussed. Well, that may not be true as all of the financial head hummers from the G-20 are now winging their way home from the BIS in Basel where great matters of state were discussed.

I can remember clearly the Basel II accords which were designed to prevent a reoccurrence of the financial melt-down of the early eighties through new requirements for Tier I capital and alike. I expect we shall over the next few weeks hear more of the same coupled with the regulation of morality in the form of pay limits, bonus limits, gearling limits yada, yada, yada which of course in the long run will do no good whatsoever in the real world. Wonderful theater, however, but as this economy goes nowhere fast, unemployment advances inexorably towards 10% and a new election year just over three months away may well be overtaken by the reality of how The Leader and his congressional mob are going to hold their majorities in the face of a very European-like recovery. Which leads me to wonder why gold broke $1000 today in the face of no inflation and stable interest rates, the dollar tanked in the morning and oil spiked above $71? Who's afraid of what and where does one hide? And yet, the stock market marched on up 56 at the close and the general feeling is overseas economies are on their way up. Back to School sales seem to have been above expectations and credit card losses are declining. Maybe we are out of this thing. And maybe I should go visit the family some more. It's nice to be back, however.