Investment Banking, the economy and you and me.

I can't start the week without commenting on the events in the news. While Houston Texas, the 4th largest city in the U.S. is significantly without power and spent the week cleaning up from hurricane Ike, the largest investment banking firms in the world (I think) were being bailed out by us, the U.S. taxpayers. I continually ask myself if and how this will propagate down to every day people. Is this a calamitous event that will bring food shortages, massive job losses and an overall decline to our standard of living? It is hard to follow what is going on. There was mention of a plan by the Secretary of Treasury in Saturday's NYTimes and then a lead article about it on Sunday. But it took me all morning and most of the day to realize that another big government bail out was being proposed to Congress by Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson. It is 100 times larger than previous ones, a 700 billion dollar bailout! What alarms me is that the plan comes with giving the Secretary of Treasury sweeping powers. I don't know what those sweeping powers are, but I don't like the sounds of it, what about the concept of balance of powers.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, after inviting people for dinner, Marc and I went for a hike to Sugar Loaf Mountain. There is a winery at the base of the hill (it is all of 1200 ft, so its hardly a mountain) and we stopped in for a glass of wine. I looked around and we were really being decadent. It was a clear, crisp fall day, we were sitting under umbrellas, there were beautiful people with dogs and families. No one had a worried look on their face, least of all the retired Washington lawyer, now proprietor of the vineyard. Marc enjoyed his glass of cabernet, mine was a merlot. I asked Marc if he wanted to buy a bottle of the Cab, he shook his head, no. I mentioned that the Merlot was really great and that I'd like to have a bottle. We waited in line, and discussed whether we were going to get one or two bottles. Then we looked at the chalk board and saw that cases of Cab and Chardonnay were on sale. Before we knew it we were talking about a case. If we were to get a case, we would have to put it up for 3-4 years. Marc agreed and said we'd drink it in September, 2011. He asked about the Cab and I said that I preferred the Merlot. So we walked out of there with a $200 case of wine. On our way to the parking lot, I asked Marc what we usually pay for a case of wine. He said, about $100. That's the McFadden-Allen's being decadent.