Life lessons from The Korean

When I drove into town today to pick up my Saturday Globe, I found The Korean's wife and mother-in-law out in the parking lot putting up a tent.

I made a lame joke about it being shitty weather for camping. They laughed.

The Korean is a bit of a joker himself. He scans the bar-code on my paper and announces "five hundred and twenty-five dollar please!"

Ha ha... not enough good news in the world for that price, I tell him.

He settles for $5.25.

Have to say the paper was on the thin side today.

Big feature in the Focus section on condo flippers messing up the Toronto real estate market. That might be mildly interesting if you don't already have multiple friends and relatives milking that for all it's worth. You view them with a mix of envy and contempt; envy because at some level you wish you'd jumped into the game when the jumping was good.

Contempt because they're one of the reasons your children will never own property in Toronto.

But their children will.

Interesting, but nothing like the tour de force Cathal Kelly had on view a couple of weeks ago.

"Too drunk to fuck" indeed!

There's a couple of stories that cast well-deserved aspersions on Justin's captaincy of the ship of state. On page B-1 unpaid intern Rachelle Younglai has a story about shrinking paycheques for the working and middle classes.

On page A-4 Bill Curry has a story about how Justin's infrastructure initiatives are being massaged by the very people who will "ultimately own and manage infrastructure assets."

Public money, private profits; that's hardly a news story.

One thing I'd like to see more of in the Globe is coverage of the Supreme Court case that Rocco Galati has been pursuing for years now on behalf of COMER, the Committee for Monetary and Economic Reform. Follow that story and you soon realize there's no reason whatsoever for our infrastructure assets to end up in the pockets of Black Rock or the multitude of like-minded hedgies and finance sharpies.

But that's not a story the Globe is keen to spread around.

Elsewhere, Liz Renzetti uses her A-2 slot to let us know she's still pouty about Hillary's very bad and awfully terrible day six months ago. Apparently it wasn't just Russian interference in America's democratic process that sunk Hillary, although the Ruskies do get several shout-outs in her column.

No, it was even worse than that, if such a thing can be imagined.

There was a "pink elephant" in the room.

That would be sexism, for those too stunned to figure it out.

Well... sure.

Maybe.

I'd hazard a guess that the pink elephants were bigger when Golda became PM in the sixties or Maggie became PM in the seventies, but maybe Liz isn't old enough to remember those days.

Hillary lost because she and her army of consultants and advisers were outworked and outsmarted at every turn by a condo salesman from Manhattan.

Best story by far in today's paper was the profile of Toronto restauranteur Jen Agg. A far more palatable role model for young women than Hillary, if you ask me.

She's kicking the shit out of pink elephants every day, and may God bless her for it.

Anyway, I've come to accept that The Korean isn't responsible for what's in the newspaper he sells me.

His wife and mother-in-law were putting up that tent to protect the plants that all the Korean variety stores have on offer this time of year.

The weather channel is suggesting we'll get snow tonight.

So the flowers are camping tonight, I offer.

Yes! We must be prepared, he says.

Sound advice from The Korean.

Be prepared.

More hedge fund hijinx

Seems those hedge fund guys can't keep away from the short arm of the law.

Just in the last few months we've seen Alberto Micallizzi get stuck with a 3million pound fine over there in England.

On this side of the slough we've seen Clay Capital take a 2 million dollar hit; Black Rock 15 million, and Pentagon 100 million in fines just from the non-regulating regulatory authorities.

Meanwhile, just in the last few months, Sun Capital and Cerberus have settled a claim for 166 million that came out of their screw-over of Mervyn's.

What does this tell us?

It tells us that paying fines and settling lawsuits is just part of the cost of doing business. What's a few million in fines when you walked away with 100 million in some sketchy take-over screw-over?

This is the business in which Mitt Romney excelled.

Buy a viable company. Since companies are people too, that company may very well have a perky credit rating. Load it up with debt, pay yourself multiple special dividends, and then let the entrails twitch their way into bankruptcy court.

What does this pillaging of the economy add to the common good? Absolutely nothing.

That's why we need a 100% tax on non-productive economic activity.

The hedge fund boys do what they do because the law permits them to do it.

We can change that.