Notes from the Cafe Fiasco

PSA - February 2009

Word came this weekend that my PSA level is 4.6 - up only slightly from the 4.5 of three months ago.  It is, in the words of my urologist, "steady."   This means that the little cancer beasties aren't growing much - they're just sitting there taking it easy.  Unfortunately, it does not mean that they won't try to take over at some point in the future.

So, three more months under the Sword of Damocles.  Be grateful.  Deep breath.  Keep going.

Mutual Delusion

Every month my broker, old friend, Jim O'Donoghue, sends me the friendly Wachovia Securities newsletter "Uncommon Insights".  "Uncommon Insights" is full of colorful features and monthly highlights, but as I look at them I notice that they all have one thing in common: they all assume that I have money.  This actually wasn't the case last year and it certainly isn't the case this year, but Jim and I go through this happy delusion month after month where he assumes that I have money to worry about growing and protecting and I act like I do.

All this is almost as absurd as all the tons of prospectuses that come to me through the mail because the SEC assumes that, as an "investor" in mutual funds I need lots and lots of utterly unintelligible graphs and charts with lots and lots of very small numbers in them - none of which I understand or have any idea how they connect to anything real. Even if that reality is the quickly decreasing numbers at the front of my quarterly reports that tells me how much money I actually have in my investments.

It's all become pretty abstract and I guess it will stay that way until I finally have to reach for the wallet to pay for that loaf of bread sometime after retirement and there's nothing in it. That's the thing about delusions - you always hit the ground or a wall at some point - sometimes you hit pretty hard.  In the meantime, Jim and I will play this game where he assumes that I have money and I act like I do. I didn't know that there would be so much play acting being in the middle class.

Madoff List

The Boston Globe issued a list of clients supposedly bilked by Bernie Madoff. It lists their names and places of residence. Thank God no one from Somerville was listed, but I suppose there's a reason for that.

Compensation

The Obama Administration today leaked a plan to limit the compensation of executives of bailed out companies to only $500,000 per year. That does it! I'm going into Social Work where the real money is!

Or what if we made a rule of only paying them in stock?