Brian Gongol
A $350,000 roof without a single solar panel
A house on the left-field side of Wrigley Field has a big Budweiser sign on top. The owner of the house says that Bud fell behind on rent checks worth about $350,000 a year and decided to cover up the sign until they paid up. A judge decided that the roof owner couldn't do that and ordered the tarps covering the sign to be taken down. This perhaps marks the first time in history when a judge told anyone that they needed to put more advertising on top of their house.
Life as a flight attendant
The one-time high glamour of air travel seems to be in short supply these days. Large volumes of blame go to the short-sightedness of upper management at the airlines (many of whom never seemed to understand that when your customers are perpetually unhappy, then they're not going to be very brand-loyal), and to the union leaders who for a long time sought big benefits packages that the airlines can no longer afford. One would have to imagine both sets of parties would've done things differently if they'd been thinking decades ahead. De-coupling management compensation from long-term performance (with absurd compensation packages) certainly didn't help. Then again, we haven't gotten our flying cars yet, and it looks like commercial space flight will be arriving first.
Pickens suspends water-sale plan
Does Iowa have a flood-recovery plan or not?
The staggering costs of derivatives
Bear Stearns had $9 trillion worth of financial derivatives in its portfolio before it was bailed out earlier this year. By comparison, the entire US economy produces $14 trillion worth of goods and services every year. Meanwhile, the Federal budget deficit is likely to be almost half a trillion dollars this year.
Today is self-exam day
Take a minute or two and conduct some basic self-screenings for cancer. Early detection saves lives.
Clean water shortage becomes Galveston's biggest obstacle
Lehman Brothers files for bankruptcy
Let an immigrant shame you into voting
(Video) The very funny Craig Ferguson makes a strong plea for Americans to vote, noting that it's not about glamour, it's a duty. Related: A little election-relief humor as someone fakes a Obama-Rolling of John McCain.
Cedar Rapids narrows flood-control options down to three
"Now may be the time for a 'margin of safety'"
Now? As though it wasn't smart to invest prudently until just now?
Canadian university blocks Facebook on school computers
Students and staff can still get to the site from their personal machines, but they're concerned about phishing attacks, like a successful one against dozens of users there just last week
Chevrolet reiterates plans to launch electric-hybrid car in 2010
The company had better do something to find a non-gasoline source of power if it wants to survive for another hundred years
Keokuk protests $60 million sewer project mandate
Charlie Munger: "[L]iabilities are always 100% good. It's the assets you have to worry about."
And that's the best way to sum up what's been happening lately in the world of investment and mortgage banking. As noted here in February, this year's "economic stimulus" package was really a bank recapitalization plan. But it appears not to have provided enough capital for the wildly under-capitalized industry. The big question now is whether this will be a cleansing period from which markets will emerge stronger, or just financial Armageddon. It's likely to be somewhere in between. Lots of American businesses and families are in dire credit trouble, and lots of others are financially as solid as Gibraltar. Unfortunately, though, the speed of exchange made possible by computing technology means that small problems can spread like wildfire. Of course, it also lets people earn casual income, too. With so many big, recognizable companies in trouble, we'll have to face a matter that recurs often in capitalism: When to give up on commercial institutions we like. In an ideal world, business operators would learn how better to adapt to changes in order to keep their institutions afloat -- but financial capitalism (ownership by anonymous shareholders) tends to value those institutions less than proprietors' capitalism (ownership by people who identify with the firms they own). Unfortunately, people get hurt when businesses fail. And there's no doubt that a huge amount of money has been lost in the stock market.
Women have only held the right to vote for part of a century
The number of women sent to jail for protesting on behalf of their right to vote until the right was actually secured in 1920 should be enough to shame some of today's non-voters into reconsidering how much they ought to value that right.
10 steps to better etiquette
And if there weren't so many people violating just these basic rules, the list itself would seem insulting. But what's really insulting is how casually so many people dispense with the easy things.
Venezuela kicks out the US ambassador
Related: Kim Jong Il may have had a stroke, and if that leads to a collapse in leadership in North Korea, reunification could be a huge problem. North Korea is so far behind South Korea economically that merging the two would probably be even harder than putting East and West Germany together again.
Cyclists who wore masks want a USOC apology
They resent being reprimanded for trying to protect their lungs in Beijing. Interestingly, it's being reported that lots of Beijing residents want to keep pollution restrictions in place.
Is the "Pickens Plan" for wind energy just a cover to get water rights?
Hurricane remnants flood parts of the Midwest
Notes from the Brian Gongol Show on WHO Radio - September 14, 2008
Reporting from a hurricane...running out of fuel...today's homes on tomorrow's historic home tours
