Tip o’ the hat to Laura at EconomyStory for sending us Sub-prime the Musical. The site consists of a series of podcasts by a college student named Madison Koshy, who created them from research she did on the causes of the credit crisis. Naturally, she then wrote song parodies to illustrate the concepts she had learned. From the About page:

Here is Act I, Scene I, called “How it All Began.”

And here is a song parody, based on “The Brady Bunch” theme, called accompanying song, called “The Credit Crunch.”

You can also follow “Sub-prime the Musical” on Twitter.

From the blog Acute Unemployment Syndrome, a post called Recruiters gone wild. The writer is an unemployed MBA.

For those of you keeping score at home, I have now been on 10 job interviews in the last 9 months. 10 at bats, and 10 strike outs. What’s bothering me, though, is what I’ve observed on my last 3 interviews, all of which have occurred in the last month.

Recruiters seem to be playing some kind of weird head game where they don’t ask any questions and force me, the interviewee, to ask all the questions. So the interview goes something like this:

Recruiter: (Leans back in his chair, takes a sip of coffee, and picks up a short stack of papers from the table) Ok, let me take a look at your resume. (He scans the piece of paper and hums the “Pina Colada” song. He puts the papers on the table after a moment and again leans back in his chair, smugly.) So, do you have any questions for me?

Me: (Our hero looks slightly startled. She looks down at her her pink boucle jacket with the black trim, hoping to find the answer somewhere in the fabric.) Oh, ok. (She hastily looks down at the list of 4 questions she prepared for the END of the interview.) Well, what are the challenges facing your company today, and how would I, as a product manager, work to confront those challenges?

Recruiter: Blah blah, canned corporate crap, blah, yada yada. What else?

Me: Uhhh, can you tell me more about the new XYZ product line? I saw that you mentioned it on Twitter. (Crosses fingers that her intrepid investigatory skills will be rewarded.)

Recruiter: (Does not appear impressed that our hero obviously spent 3 hours this morning preparing for this 15 minute chat). It’s a new product we’re working on for our younger customers. We think it’s going to be huge. What else?

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Another session with the Evil HR Lady finds her engaged in some straight talk with a job seeker in sales who is well-connected but has two DUIs on his record.

Will my high level connections overcome a DUI?

I have a friend pretty high up at a major company (in sales) who had recently talked to me about submitting my resume for employment. I had to gently remind this very good friend of mine that I have 2 DUIs, but both are over 5 years old. I have since cleaned up my act and hardly ever drink at all. I certainly don’t drink and drive! She then took that information and asked her co-workers whether or not I’d have a shot at the position. They for obvious reasons told her that with so many viable candidates with clean records, why would they choose me?

But there’s a twist…One of my other good friend’s fathers happens to be a Senior VP with this very company. He was an ex cabinet member and has worked as a Senior VP for this company for around 6-7 years now. Needless to say, he has influence.

In your opinion, would this Senior VP be able to bypass “the rules” written or unwritten, with a letter of recommendation? Or am I still dead in the water? I doubt you can answer this question with certainty, so again, I am just looking for your opinion. I am qualified for this job otherwise and know I would be risk worth taking. My friend obviously feels the same or she would have never mentioned it in the first place. I am worried that my past in this regard has caught up to me and might prevent me from getting a job I really want.

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Keith Hennessey offers a post in which he pairs one headline about the health care overhaul from this year and one from last and asks you to guess which is which. The article links, which provide you with the correct answers, are in the post itself.

Politico: President Obama takes reform on the road
AP: Obama takes health care pitch to people—again

Bloomberg: Obama Set to Fight ‘Uphill Battle’ on Health Bill
Bloomberg: Obama to Appeal to Public on Health Care as Senate Struggles

AP: Obama’s health care pitch to Democrats: Trust me
AP: Obama makes last-minute appeal to Democrats for health care votes

AP: Obama to appeal for public support on health care
AP: Obama appeals for health care votes

CSM: To pass healthcare reform, Democrats may go it alone
CNN: Democrats May Pass Health Reform without GOP Support

NYT: Obama Takes Health Care Deadline to Democrats
AFP: Deadline looming, Obama urges health care action

Boston Globe: Obama steps up health care pressure
Politico: President Obama steps up health care push

AFP: Obama presents make-or-break health reform plan
NPR: For Obama, Health Care Overhaul Is Make-Or-Break

AP: Top Dems looking to Obama for health care momentum
Reuters: Obama tries to regain momentum in healthcare debate

Reuters: Obama seeks momentum, funds for Senate allies
Reuters: Obama team tries to regain momentum on healthcare

CBS: Obama’s Health Care Push: The Race is On
WaPo: Obama Health Care Push Resumes This Week

AP: Obama turns up the heat for health care overhaul
AP: Obama expands health care push

HuffPo: White House, Dems, Plan For Make-Or-Break Summit
Bloomberg: Obama Sets ‘Make-or-Break’ Deadline on Health Care

Our last post featuring the graphics of Mike Licht of NotionsCapital…

Click on an image to see it full size.

Fun With Photoshop I and II here.

Of all the dysfunctional state governments, California’s may be at the top. California has a $20 billion budget deficit, but the state cannot raise taxes or pass a budget without a 2/3 majority vote in the state legislature. That law was enshrined in the state constitution in 1978 through Proposition 13, which also capped property taxes, reducing them by an average of 57%. Thus, it is nearly impossible to raise additional revenue in the state. From Time magazine:

Lots of anti-tax folks, of course, like it that way. But now there is a push on to repeal the two-thirds majority requirement via the same initiative process that instituted it. The California Democracy Act would change just one word in the constitution in two places. The sentence “All legislative actions on revenue and budget must be determined by a 2/3 vote” would become “All legislative actions on revenue and budget must be determined by a majority vote.”

Here, George Lakoff, a linguist who works with Democrats on framing issues and who is the campaign chair of the initiative campaign, talks about the initiative and the problem of governing California:

George Lakoff speaks about the California Democracy Act (2010-02-19) from Edwin Rutsch on Vimeo.

For a diametrically opposed view of taxes, government, and everything else, check out the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, an organization dedicated to continuing the work of Howard Jarvis, who spearheaded the original initiative, and to protecting Proposition 13 and expanding anti-tax policies.

Evil HR Lady is a blog written by a human resources professional who answers questions about the workplace sent in by readers. Here’s one from someone asking what legal recourse a family member who worked for the same firm for 35 years and was laid off with just four weeks severance might have.

Laid Off

An inlaw of mine is almost 65 years old, and has worked as a project manager at an engineering firm for 35 years. Last month he was laid off… with four weeks of severance. Because he thinks a) since 4 weeks is what’s in the company bylaws and b) that (based on no actual input from the company that I can see) he might get contract work for them one day, he doesn’t want to talk to a lawyer. I say the worst case scenario is he doesn’t get four weeks of severance, and best case can be a whole lot better.

Did I mention that he just came back from a 7 month leave in October to recover from surgery? Evil HR Lady, he has no college degree, did not become an engineer, has health issues, and lives in the economic cesspool that is greater Detroit. Am I being overly pessimistic about his prospects, or just pragmatic? In your opinion do we need to gently bring him around to the idea that he might as well start a legal negotiation, because he’s got a very tiny realistic shot at a professional future, and needs something to live off of? I suspect part of the reason he’s so reluctant to do anything is because it would mean acknowledging how little he was valued by that company, but the situation is what it is, and I say no sense pretending he was treated well, or will be in the future with fantasy contract work. And he says it was a layoff, but he was the only one let go at that time. Others have been let go previously.

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From an article in the Boston Globe last October titled “Panhandlers move from street to Internet.”

Cyberbeg.com, which charges a fee for listing, currently has a notice on its front page that $24,397.60 has been donated to members, followed by a link that exhorts “Start begging now!”

Categories include Saving a Business, Starting a Business, Family Crisis, Medical Bills, Life Saving Surgery, and Mortgage/Rent.

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In a post on the blog New Economic Perspectives, L. Randall Wray, a professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, says that as President of the New York Fed, Timothy Geithner had to have known about an accounting gimmick that allowed Lehman to help hide massive debts in the months leading up to its bankruptcy in 2008. The Lehman collapse was one of the immediate triggers of the financial crisis that led up to the Great Recession.

Furthermore, he believes, banks are similarly hiding additional losses that will cause another financial crisis this year.

Timmy-Gate: Did Geithner Help Hide Lehman’s Fraud?

Just when you thought that nothing could stink more than Timothy Geithner’s handling of the AIG bailout, a new report details how Geithner’s New York Fed allowed Lehman Brothers to use an accounting gimmick to hide debt. The report, which runs to 2200 pages, was released by Anton Valukas, the court-appointed examiner. It actually makes the AIG bailout look tame by comparison. It is now crystal clear why Geithner’s Treasury as well as Bernanke’s Fed refuse to allow any light to shine on the massive cover-up underway.

Recall that the New York Fed arranged for AIG to pay one hundred cents on the dollar on bad debts to its counterparties—benefiting Goldman Sachs and a handful of other favored Wall Street firms. The purported reason is that Geithner so feared any negative repercussions resulting from debt write-downs that he wanted Uncle Sam to make sure that Wall Street banks could not lose on bad bets. Now we find that Geithner’s NYFed supported Lehman’s efforts to conceal the extent of its problems. Not only did the NYFed fail to blow the whistle on flagrant accounting tricks, it also helped to hide Lehman’s illiquid assets on the Fed’s balance sheet to make its position look better. Note that the NY Fed had increased its supervision to the point that it was going over Lehman’s books daily; further, it continued to take trash off the books of Lehman right up to the bitter end, helping to perpetuate the fraud that was designed to maintain the pretense that Lehman was not massively insolvent. (see here)

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One way to catch a glimpse of what ple are searching for is through the suggested queries that Google kicks up when you start typing in its search box. Start any search, and Google anticipates what you are looking for by offering 10 frequently searched-for options.

For example, type in “how to save money…” and the search engine suggests:

• …every month
• …on groceries
• …fast
• …on electric bill
• …in college
• …for a house
• …with coupons
• …on food
• …at the grocery store
• …on a wedding

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