Smooth move

Some new friends are leaving Seattle this week to move back to sunnier, warmer, friendlier Florida.  We’re sad to see them go but know that they are returning to family and loving friends who can’t wait to have them back.  That’s good.

They have done a great job of getting rid of nearly all of their stuff through Craigslist, word of mouth, and Goodwill.  Congratulations, Nathan and Beth, not only for meeting the rigorous standards of a Smooth Move, but for doing so with a kid who’s less than a year old.  This is a rare achievement, and you have done it with grace and style.

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And just what is a Smooth Move, you ask…  It is the gold standard for moving one’s household, and in all modesty, Susan and I set that standard the last time we moved.

We knew several months ahead of time that we’d be moving and we did not yet have kids, so we took full advantage of the lead time to go through all of our stuff.  Every evening we would focus on one thing in the house – a bookcase, a drawer or two, a shelf in the garage – and determine what to keep, what to give away, what to toss.  We made it our goal to pack two or three boxes every day if we could.  We clearly marked on each box what it contained, and after the deal on the house closed, we then wrote where each box should go in the new place.

30 friends helped with the actual move.  We invited them to join us for a leisurely breakfast at about 10:00 on a drizzly Seattle Saturday morning.  Three guys were in charge of packing the U-Haul truck; that team was led by a man whose workshop was meticulously organized, and who could load more dishes into a dishwasher than anyone we know.  The rest of the crew was carrying boxes and furniture out of the house to the truck.  Everything was packed, identified, and ready to go.  Susan and I didn’t move any stuff ourselves; we were busy answering questions and directing traffic.

Everything was moved out of the old house and into the new one in about four hours.  At the new house, Susan and I again answered questions and directed traffic.  By late afternoon our clothes were hanging in the closets, the beds were all made, the stereo was hooked up, towels were hung in the bathrooms, and the kitchen was unpacked and operational.  We had a wonderful home-cooked meal with the crew (I remember the stew that my Mom made) and felt like we were mostly settled in the new place that first night.  What a great gift from friends and family.  We presented the crew with commemorative T-shirts we’d made up as one expression of our appreciation for all of the help.

This was a sweet, clean, painless move for us and for those who helped us – they’d even tell you it was fun.  Started out with good food and coffee, then got right to work actually moving stuff.  No sorting.  No wondering.  No running for boxes.  No packing.  This, my friends, is a Smooth Move.  If you have to move, and even moreso if you are helping others to do so, I hope it’s a Smooth Move.  Amen.

Better to stay home

We’d rather be home on Black Friday (day after Thanksgiving, traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year) than at the malls.  In addition to saving our pennies, it’s a chance to play games with the kids, invite some friends to join us for Thanksgiving leftovers, go for a walk, and enjoy a day when we don’t have to be somewhere else.

It’s also a good way to avoid this:

Have a happy Thanksgiving holiday.

Redefining “clueless”

The Big Three – Alan Mulally (Ford), Robert Nardelli (Chrysler) and Richard Wagoner (GM) – all came to Washington, DC on Wednesday to demand that Congress give them a $25 billion “bridge loan” to keep their companies from going bankrupt.  Congress sent them packing, and recommended that they try some different tactics at their next appearance:

1. Know exactly how much they need and how they propose to spend it;
2. Assure Congress and taxpayers that they won’t be begging for another bailout any time soon;
3. Demonstrate an understanding of why Americans prefer ‘imports’ over their products;
4. Leave the corporate jets at home.

The Big Three make it sound like their problems started with the recent financial meltdown.  Please.  Some of us have been paying attention for the last twenty years, even if they haven’t.

Perhaps private financing would be better:  It’s been suggested that Big Oil should bail out the American auto industry.  Those folks are  flush with cash from record profits, and it seems like they would have an interest in keeping the auto industry alive…

Meanwhile, here’s something genuinely refreshing and different:  Elson Floyd just requested a $100,000 cut – about 15% – in his annual salary as president of Washington State University.  There’s someone who understands the symbolic power of his office and the value of leading by example.  Detroit, are you getting this?

The Matrix runs on Windows…

Auto industry bailout? I think not.

More executives of multi-billion dollar enterprises coming to Congress for ‘emergency’ loans to help stave off bankruptcy?  Again?  Don’t let the door hit you on your way out.

I have friends who worked for Alan Mulally (President and CEO of Ford Motor Company) during his years with Boeing, and they spoke highly of his accessibility and integrity.  Ford was lucky to get a man with Mulally’s skill and experience to try and salvage what’s left of the automotive giant.  Come to think of it, Ford’s luck was probably helped by a $50 million annual compensation package and use of the corporate jet to fly back and forth to the old hometown of Seattle.  Heck, I’d consider moving to Dearborn, MI for that.

It’s time to get out your handkerchiefs, my friends.  Ford somehow managed to lose more than $8.5 billion in the first half of 2008.  In October the stock price closed at a 52-week low of $1.80 a share, down from its all-time high of nearly $64 a share in 2000; it dropped more than 75% in the last year alone.  Now Ford and GM and Chrysler want a $25 billion loan from Congress to help them through a tough spot.  How did Detroit get to this point?

I remember the oil embargo in the 1970s, and how many of us took to walking and bikes and buses.  We thought twice before driving somewhere because gas was harder to get.  And we saw that in addition to shelling out money for fuel, maintenance, and insurance, we were also adding to pollution and congestion. Millions of us read the handwriting on the wall and modified our behavior.  Detroit, on the other hand, chose to ignore predictions and warnings about foreign oil, fuel efficiency, environmental concerns, and the growing interest in imported cars.  They insisted on cranking out big tanks and thumbed their noses at fuel economy.  In the early 1990s Detroit’s pigheadedness kicked into high gear with the introduction of  gas-guzzling SUVs and trucks.  Between 1990 and 2000, advertising for SUVs increased from $172.5 million to $1.5 billion to convince millions of us that Detroit was giving us the cars we wanted and needed.  Consumers lined up at car dealerships to do as they were t(s)old.

Meanwhile, imports were no longer the cheap and tinny contraptions that had first arrived on American shores.  They offered comfort, economy, and dependability.  Legions of us gladly traded in our 8-cylinder Fords and Dodges and Chevys for 4-banger Datsuns and Mazdas and Toyotas.  Detroit was getting its butt kicked by the imports, but the SUVs and giant trucks kept rolling off the production lines.  David Halbersham’s book The Reckoning compares the development of the American and Japanese auto industries.  It describes Detroit’s astonishing arrogance in repeatedly choosing bigger and more profitable (in the short term) over smaller and more economical.  All the while, Japanese imports gave eager customers what we wanted and took away market share from the big boys.  And they did it all in plain sight.

Detroit’s ’strategies’ finally caught up with them:  the American auto manufacturers drove their own industry into the ground.  And now they want John & Joan Taxpayer to bail them out?

These guys loved the free-market system as long as it was good to them.  They fought safety standards, fuel efficiency requirements and pollution controls, and poured cash into lobbying and acquisitions.  Not a whole lot went into retooling, and God only knows what alternative technologies were purchased and shelved.  But changing global markets, environmental concerns, volatile oil prices, and the recent financial collapse now reveal Detroit’s shortsightedness.  The Honda Insight was first introduced in the US in 1999; the Chevy Volt isn’t scheduled to begin production until the third quarter of 2010.

Hello??  GM, what have you been doing for the last ten years?  Oh, that’s right – you’ve been busy making Suburbans, Tahoes, Trailblazers, Yukons, Avalanches, Sierras, and the like.  And you think the public should help you stay in business?  Reward you for stifling innovation?  Support your waste of precious resources at the expense of the environment?

I don’t think so.

Looks to me like a lot of the air has escaped from that ‘big is better’ balloon.  We have been very, very, very badly served by corporations that grow “too big to fail.”  The only winners in that scenario are the few at the top with golden parachutes; they’ve ensured their own soft and comfortable landing while they let the rest of the plane – and everyone else in it – go down in flames.

We like to talk a lot about the virtues of small businesses, and how essential they are to the health of our economy.  Yeah?  Then why are we pumping gigantic amounts of money into gigantic businesses?  It’s time to breathe more life – and not just hot air – into small and nimble ventures, and let big and bloated businesses die – or at least go bankrupt.  There’s a lot more to say on that topic…

So I find myself disagreeing with President-elect Obama, who wants to rescue the auto industry.  I could go along with a bailout, but only if it met certain conditions.

* * * * * * * * * *

Hey listen, Mr Mulally, I’ve got another call…

Yeah, hello.  John Taxpayer here.  How can I help you?
Oh…  Hold on for a moment.

Mr Mulally?  The answer is NO.  I gotta go.  AIG’s on the other line – they want another $40 billion…

Already in the air

“President-elect Obama.”  Man, that sounds good.  It already inspires confidence and rekindles (dare I say it?) hope that a new day is around the corner.  I’m not expecting President-elect Obama and his team to come up with easy solutions to the disasters created by the Bush administration and soon to be dumped onto President-elect Obama’s administration.  The era of simplistic answers to complex problems is over.

But I’m already sensing the presence of something long absent from the national scene:  leadership.  President-elect Obama’s first press conference was a welcome glimpse of things to come.  For one thing, it will be good to have a president who can string together complete sentences all by himself.  When he spoke on Friday, I thought President-elect Obama set a friendly, respectful, and business-like tone that was upbeat without denying facts, even when there was more bad news about the economy.  That’s change I can believe in.

Here’s something else that will be welcome and different:  competence.  I’m reassured to know that President-elect Obama seeks the advice of a diverse collection of highly-capable, experienced, and smart people.  Check out the lineup on his transition economic advisory board:

• David Bonior, a Michigan Congressman from 1977 to 2003;
• Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway;
• Roel Campos, former SEC commissioner (appointed by President Bush);
• William Daley, chairman of the Midwest for JP Morgan Chase, and Commerce Department secretary from 1997 to July 2000;
• William Donaldson, former SEC chairman from 2003 to June 2005;
• Roger Ferguson, president and CEO of TIAA-CREF, and former vice chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve;
• Jennifer Granholm, Michigan governor;
• Anne Mulcahy, chairman and CEO of Xerox;
• Richard Parsons, chairman of the board at Time Warner Inc;
• Penny Pritzker, CEO of Classic Residence by Hyatt;
• Robert Reich, University of California professor and Labor secretary from 1993 to 1997;
• Robert Rubin, chairman and director of the Executive Committee of Citigroup, Treasury secretary from 1995 to 1999;
• Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO of Google, Inc;
• Larry Summers, former president of Harvard University, managing director of DE Shaw, and Treasury secretary from 1999 to 2000;
• Laura Tyson, professor at Haas School of Business, University of California, served as chairman of the National Economic Council in 1995 and 1996, chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors from 1993 to 1995;
• Antonio Villaraigosa, mayor of Los Angeles;
• Paul Volcker, chairman of the US Federal Reserve from August 1979 to August 1987.

Good to know that President-elect Obama has already sought out and is listening to people who represent more than just the banking industry.  (Dick Cheney still refuses to disclose the names of the energy executives who advised his notoriously secretive energy task force.)  Let’s hope that President-elect Obama pulls together the very best people he can find, and not just cronies who want to promote themselves and line their own pockets.  We’ve had enough of that in recent years to last lifetimes.

As a taxpayer and [somewhat] responsible citizen, I look forward to having a president more interested in ideas and history and best practices than in ideology.  I welcome the prospect of a president asking us to do more for the nation than merely ‘go shopping.’  I am eager to follow the lead of a president who can inspire us to think and to dream and to sacrifice, and who can be honest and humble enough to tell us when we’re missing the mark.  And I long for a president who can help millions of us to be proud once again that we are Americans.

Congratulations, America!

Wow – what a thrill!