Spring Break Thus Far.

As I mentioned in my last lengthy post: California is beautiful.

And I mean really beautiful. It's just so damned green it almost glows. And the rolling mountains and hills constantly in the background, the electric blue oceans...not a cloud in the sky. It has truly been astounding to me. I am very very seriously considering moving my life out here because it is just so incredible.

As for the activities, it has been pretty laid back and chill.

Day 1: We woke up and figured it was a good day for a big hearty breakfast, so we went to some brunch type joint and loaded up on high fats, high-glycemic carbs, and proteins. Mmm... Then we went lifting weights for an hour, and then taking a 3-mile run in an area referred to as "The Dish."
Yes. We went for a run there. After that we went to a famous butcher and picked up these black steaks with some sort of tar-black marinade that is so famous it has it's own wikipedia entry, bought a 15 dollar hibachi grill, and sat outside in the sun grilling 1.5 pounds of steak and drinking IPAs. And then we took a walk down to a Cuban restaurant, ordered up some Chimay White on draft, and went to the lounge in the back where we purchased and smoked cigars, drank Chimay, and ultimately sipped Laphraoig until we got so piss drunk we came home and passed the fuck out.

Day 2: I wanted to see more. So we drove down Route 1, which is a mountainous highway on the coast (seriously spectacular...)
...no seriously... that's where the highway is....on a sunny day until we hit the Montana d'Oro state park, which is a series of mountains by the ocean. We took a 4-mile hike up the mountain to the highest peak, froze our asses off because the temperature was definitely 20 degrees cooler up top, and then sauntered our way down to the bluffs, which were themselves incredible. After we had essentially worked our legs to the core, we hopped in the VW, turned up the Top 40 pop, and headed off to San Luis Obispo where I got a fresh seared ahi tuna salad, a local beach ale, a coffee chaser, and hit the road back to SF.

Day 3: Woke up and hit up a diner, where I got the world's least satisfying order of huevos rancheros ever. Then....Napa! We drove up to wine country...Napa, Yountsville, and Sonoma. We couldn't really find a good place to go, so we played it safe and hit up Robert Mondavi's plantation, went through a 3 wine-tasting, basked in the beautiful sunny day with a mountain backdrop, and then decided to stop off at an Outlet center to pick up some clothes, and then headed off towards Sonoma for a few more wine-tastings, and an incredible prix fixe dinner at the General's Daughter.
And now I'm back in Palo Alto watching TV and blogging.

And I assure you, despite the description.....it was all thoroughly hetero.

California...

IS GORGEOUS.

Oh my god, how I hate thee Boston.

San Francisco

First, the textbook chapter on China is now complete...almost 80 pages of Chinese Financial System Goodness. If you ever wanted to know everything about the Chinese Financial System, give me a buzz and I'll gladly send it over to inflict you with it.

Second, I'm heading out to San Francisco for my spring break. Actually, I'll be at Stanford...but Potato Paloalto, right?

Otherwise, I have nothing particularly new to report. I plan to go out to Cali, relax, maybe see wine country, maybe see some ocean, visit Nik and Patrick, leave behind all the stress and bullshit of my life and just disappear 3,000 miles into another world.

Also, since it's SPRIIIIIIINNNNNNGGGGG BREAAAAAAAAK!!!!!!, that means I get to read a book finally. I've chosen two for this trip:

1) In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto (Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants.) by Michael Pollan
--This is Michael Pollan's follow-up to the Omnivore's Dilemma...a book I found thoroughly educational, enjoyable, enlightening, appetizing, and simply lovely. This seems like it's going to be just the same, and I'm truly very excited.

2) The Sportswriter by Richard Ford
--I've heard so many good things about the trilogy of Richard Ford books, namely Independence Day, which won the Pulitzer awhile back (The third one is....Lay of the Land I believe.) In any case, it's supposed to be good. So this is my novel. And if I love it, there's TWO MORE waiting! (Plus, if I don't read it, I will always imagine it's about Ray Barone.)

Since I have the moment I would also like to mention the music I'm newly digging...
--Bird and the Bee's new EP - One Too Many Hearts (Excellent!)
--Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
--Everyday Visuals - Things Will Look Up (still excellent!)

And......bye!

Jeremiah Wright.

So this whole Obama-Wright problem?

I do however, find these media curve surveys to be interesting. Not surprising, of course, yet still saddening all the same. If you haven't seen one of these before, I suggest you do so....

Gaping.

I was looking through Tourfilter to see what upcoming shows are coming through Boston. List after list of stupid indie band names, and washed out acts that don't deserve any real attention (I will not be going to see the Pretenders, Nada Surf, or the B-52's).

As I was scrolling through.....SUDDENLY....I see something called Bjorkestra. My head tilted back slightly and I stared at the name, suspicious. So I googled it, and found a MySpace page. And then I hit play on the little mp3 player.

...and I began gaping uncontrollably at my computer in the library.

It's not sublime or fantastic. But it is definitely an 18-piece (and very skilled) jazz band covering Bjork. And it is definitely interesting. And they are coming to Boston.

I've included a video of Hyperballad for the one (maybe two?) of you who have reached level 5 approval in my books because you listen to Bjork.

Krugman.

I thought Krugman's column today made an interesting point about the creation of an alternate financing system and the economic equivalence of asset backed securities and bank loans in 1930. I had never really considered the point, but he being Paul Krugman super economist (seriously), I take his economic analysis fairly seriously. I've pasted it below in case you were interested.

Contrary to popular belief, the stock market crash of 1929 wasn’t the defining moment of the Great Depression. What turned an ordinary recession into a civilization-threatening slump was the wave of bank runs that swept across America in 1930 and 1931...

Banks exist because they help reconcile the conflicting desires of savers and borrowers. Savers want freedom — access to their money on short notice. Borrowers want commitment: they don’t want to risk facing sudden demands for repayment.

Normally, banks satisfy both desires: depositors have access to their funds whenever they want, yet most of the money placed in a bank’s care is used to make long-term loans. The reason this works is that withdrawals are usually more or less matched by new deposits, so that a bank only needs a modest cash reserve to make good on its promises.

But sometimes — often based on nothing more than a rumor — banks face runs, in which many people try to withdraw their money at the same time. And a bank that faces a run by depositors, lacking the cash to meet their demands, may go bust even if the rumor was false.

Worse yet, bank runs can be contagious. If depositors at one bank lose their money, depositors at other banks are likely to get nervous, too, setting off a chain reaction. And there can be wider economic effects: as the surviving banks try to raise cash by calling in loans, there can be a vicious circle in which bank runs cause a credit crunch, which leads to more business failures, which leads to more financial troubles at banks, and so on.

That, in brief, is what happened in 1930-1931, making the Great Depression the disaster it was. So Congress tried to make sure it would never happen again by creating a system of regulations and guarantees that provided a safety net for the financial system.

And we all lived happily for a while — but not for ever after.

Wall Street chafed at regulations that limited risk, but also limited potential profits. And little by little it wriggled free — partly by persuading politicians to relax the rules, but mainly by creating a “shadow banking system” that relied on complex financial arrangements to bypass regulations designed to ensure that banking was safe.

For example, in the old system, savers had federally insured deposits in tightly regulated savings banks, and banks used that money to make home loans. Over time, however, this was partly replaced by a system in which savers put their money in funds that bought asset-backed commercial paper from special investment vehicles that bought collateralized debt obligations created from securitized mortgages — with nary a regulator in sight.

As the years went by, the shadow banking system took over more and more of the banking business, because the unregulated players in this system seemed to offer better deals than conventional banks. Meanwhile, those who worried about the fact that this brave new world of finance lacked a safety net were dismissed as hopelessly old-fashioned.

In fact, however, we were partying like it was 1929 — and now it’s 1930.

The financial crisis currently under way is basically an updated version of the wave of bank runs that swept the nation three generations ago. People aren’t pulling cash out of banks to put it in their mattresses — but they’re doing the modern equivalent, pulling their money out of the shadow banking system and putting it into Treasury bills. And the result, now as then, is a vicious circle of financial
contraction.

I remember sitting around the dinner table that one night with all those finance professors and the SEC guy as they were lobbing a variety of hypotheticals at him about regulatory postures and outcomes. Two stuck in my mind in particular, both lobbed by the prof I'm working for, the director of the international finance program here at HLS. The first was about how the SEC had taken supervisory jurisdiction over Bear Stearns, and what would happen to the credibility of the SEC if Bear Stearns were to collapse. This was a week before the Bear Stearns implosion. (This is not relevant except to say that the market clearly wasn't expecting such a precipitous implosion at the time...)

The second asked what type of regulatory adjustments the SEC would make if, say, our economy were to suffer a market catastrophe on par with the start of the Great Depression in 1929. Startled at what seemed like an outlandish hypothetical, akin to a 1L asking a Con Law prof about the separation of powers in the face of all out nuclear war, I looked around the table to see if anyone had a professorial half-smile, or look of purely academic interest in their face awaiting an answer to the question. But there wasn't. The question was asked, received, and answered as if the situational presented a perfectly reasonable possibility.

I don't know that it's fair to read anything into that moment, but for a split second in mid-bite of froufy doof salmon, I got chills.

Whoa.

OH MY GOD THIS IS AWESOME. JOEY, I HAVE UNCOVERED THE SUPER AWESOME.




(suck it slav boy)

Quote of the Day

"The Dalai [Lama] is a wolf in monk's robes, a devil with a human face but the heart of a beast," Zhang Qiling the head of the Tibetan government.

Indeed.

DA's Visit.

(The picture will be removed on request because you are the most internet paranoid motherfucker I have ever encountered in my entire life, but just to be clear: my blog is unfindable by search engines and the public and you're a horrible loser if you raise a stink about it. jackass.)

I really should suppose I should comment on DA's spring break trip. But I am also currently sitting in the 11th circle of hell (law student), so I will keep it short.

• Picking up DA in this Benz and managing to fit 2 suitcases and 2 bookbags in the car = Awesome.
• Being called "fag" approximately 30 times every 6 hours = slightly less awesome.
• Introducing DA to like 30 new people and making sure that every single person is made aware that he is 30 years old = super awesome.
  
• Legal Seafoods and 3 cups of chowder in a span of 24 hours = So awesome.
• Skiing on an enormous mountain and taking 20 minutes to get to the bottom = sublime. Except for the burning burning pain in my thighs. oh god the pain.
• Being better than Joey and measuring awesome = you guessed it.

Actually, I'm not going to catalog all of the things we did because now that I think about it....we ended up doing a ton of cool stuff from going to a party near Fenway, eating huge meals after a long day of skiing, recording a video of DA playing "Talk Dirty to Me" on Guitar Hero while he was singing the wrong lyrics, listening to him bitch about being tired and old for a 3 hour car drive, and drinking large amounts of beer. It was, of course, one of the most supremely stressed days I've had this year...which he had the privilege of watching me viciously unleash upon my LLM partner. (I admit, it is pretty awesome to scream at an LLM about how much he sucks as a human being, listen calmly to his sob stories about how his life is falling apart, and pause just long enough to take a breath before telling him that his problems are not my problems.) Also, don't let him convince you that "Gaysian" is a good nickname, or that it's even remotely clever.

Cheers dude.

A Month, A Milestone.

So, if I haven't bragged enough about it yet, I am now officially smoke-free for over 1 month. Although I officially quit on February 10 and today is March 12, I figure with the leap day plus one, I can safely call this the one month marker. We'll call it 30 days for purposes of an updated calculation.

• 300 cigarettes unsmoked. That's 25 packs of cigarettes!
  
• 120 dollars saved. That's 60 nights with RS's mother!
  
• And, if myth has merit, I have regained somewhere between 45 to 54 hours of my life back. That's 2 days in a nursing home!
• My lung function is supposed to start improving at this point too. That's an extra 10 decibels on my next "that's what she said!"
  
• Giggity.

I also stopped chewing the gum. I carry it around with me just in case I get overcome with an urge, and I can pop a piece in my mouth. I haven't really been paying attention, but I've probably had less than 5 pieces in the last 14 days...including the last 7 days or so when I haven't used it at all.

On top of that, I am definitely mired in the...

• heaviest drinking...
• most stressed...
• emotionally trainwrecked...
  
• and hedonistic....

...periods of my life. And I haven't smoked a cigarette. That's pretty damn cool.

Monday Night.

I really haven't had much to say recently because I've been cooped up in the library all day, except for my birthday party...so I figured I'd report on today's events.

So I basically had a real Harvard moment last night, and I don't think I was very good at it. I get this random email from my professor's assistant last week asking, "Professor Jackson would like to invite you to dinner after the presentation on Monday with the general counsel of the SEC."

My first reaction was "hell no."

After a moment, I hit back space to delete the words "Hell no" from the reply-email and pondered, "isn't this the sort of thing I'm supposed to be doing here?" So ignore the email, and go back to work while I thought it over. After thinking for awhile, I figured that this was sort of a big class dinner thing. There were only 15 of us, so we were all probably going to the dinner. So I look at the email again, and it's addressed to me, and it says "Hi Jay." Hm.

Eventually, I suck it up and decide to accept. It's time for me to grow a pair and do the things that adults are expected to do.

So, I show up last night and it's just me and one other student. And it takes place in here:
...which is a place I have no business being in. I have not the slightest understanding of why I have been invited. I don't really understand finance. I'm sort of a fraud. I don't have a great econ background, I only took securities regulation for 13 days and NEVER learned a thing about the trading markets. I always get confused when I hear the word broker-dealer. I took one single finance class last spring, from which ALL of my knowledge springs. ONE. ONE! Yeah, so I think it's fascinating and I learn more every day...but I am really not someone who can earnestly consider myself even remotely expert. I'm informed, and I'm curious. That's the line. I just understand enough to survive my classes and maybe read half of the business pages. What am I doing here?!?!

As I walk into the room, my heart drops, a brick tears its way through the seat of my pants, and I begin numbly dreading the next two hours of my life. It appears that the financial illuminati of Harvard Law School have all congregated in one room: the former Dean of the law school and former director of Time Warner, an infamous shareholder agitator, a German finance professors, Harvard Business School professor, the directors of all of the corporate and finance departments in the law school, the general counsel of the SEC, former Presidents of the Law Review, and at least 6 former Supreme Court clerks. And there were only about 10 people in the room total, so I could not safely hide in the corner. Suckage. Cocktails at 7. Dinner at 7:30. Discomfort forever.

So I drank wine. And I drank more wine. And I ate the froufy foods. And I sat there, non-contributing as these people zinged back and forth discussing the most complex high finance concepts from subprime to the financial bubbles to IFRS and GAAP to the 1929 crash, and on and on and on. It was fascinating, but I knew I had nothing to contribute, and calmly ate my food. Fork in left hand. Cut romaine leaf in two pieces. Stab lettuce and julienned pepper with left hand. Raise fork. Place knife carefully on top right of plate. Pass fork to right hand. Raise to mouth. Transfer fork back to left hand to pin down slippery piece of endive. Eat super slowly. Smile at finance jokes.

Ultimately, it turned out well enough. I got to witness the dialogue between academia and the government about very important issues. I got to see the inside of the faculty club. I got to be the only minority in the room. I got a free gourmet meal that apparently was 70 dollars a plate. I managed to avoid making a fool of myself, even if I did come off a bit timid. And, I got to walk out the door, and promptly go out drinking with a friend until 3 am on Monday night. I consider it a success.

What a week.

This week has been a total bitch. I'm not going to go into details, but it was entirely too stressful to be a birthday week. I will say, my actual birthday was quite fantastic, with all those nice facebook wall posts from people you never speak to anymore, various gifts received in the mail, musical theatre with law students, and late night drinks and desserts. (I actually ate 3 full desserts on my birthday, none of which were planned.)

I'm currently totally fucking exhausted. I did my birthday celebration last night at a bar down the street, which happened to simultaneously coincide with
1) Duke v. Carolina
2) Celtics Game
3) Saturday Night
4) Harvard's MPRE Post-Party with Free Drink Tickets

As could be surmised, I ended up totally fucking trashed and I'm not entirely clear on what happened last night, except that I have a surprising number of friends who will show up and drink on a Saturday night from all different groups of folks. Warm and fuzzy feeling, as I finally belong here.

...and I woke up so fucking hung over I have not done any work all day...and have decided to go to bed before Midnight for the first time, probably, in 5 years.

DA: I am looking forward to your visit. I am totally not looking for preparing for it tomorrow and Tuesday.

Laziness.

My laziness thus far has made this the worst week of the semester. It includes:

• Writing 2 very large research papers
  
• Writing 1 response paper
• Being on call
  
• Reading 4 articles on Tax
• Organizing the mass subcite on saturday
  
• MPRE this Saturday
• Attending the school Parody performance
  
• Excessive personal turmoil
• My Birthday
• Meeting with my Professor about the project I agreed to do but have not touched in 4 months
• Normal Schoolwork
• No Cigarettes.

Despite the fun, I was in such a huff both nights that I decided that I should just go out drinking excessively, thus losing Monday and Tuesday evening. (Note: I drank to excess Friday and Saturday.)

And that's all. I'll be sure to report back soon as soon as I find another lull that I pretend I have the luxury to indulge.

(DA...what's the deal? Did you pick a place?)

Arab Wal-Mart

If you have a couple of spare moments, I suggest you check out this article about a Wal-Mart that hopened in Dearborn, MI, which has a huge middle eastern population...

It's about a Wal-Mart that is aimed predominantly at middle easterners...and it's a legitimately interesting one and a half minutes well-spent...