It’s a rainy Monday morning, Thanksgiving week.  I’ve had a very, very busy year; a successful year on the one hand, disastrous on the other.  For three years, I lived a daily morning grind where documenting my thoughts and happenings was part of every morning’s start.  I’m hoping to sneak back to this.

For many, Facebook has become what these blogs were to me and many of my virtual friends.  The witty snark, rushing to see who was there and why (my comments are filled with every spammer known to man, so sorry about that).  I keep FB much like I’ve done for many new ventures like Twitter, just to see what the deal is so I have a clue.  FB seems to generate a good bit of negative thoughts and emotions in me, however.  I’m especially disturbed by people seemingly close to me or family who have big happenings in their lives yet omit me from even a random thought or chat.

No claims on any newfound discipline or aspirations for relaunching this site.  I did spend a good bit of money to move it to a new hosting service after it suddenly disappeared, so we’ll see if I do something with it.  I hope so, as I have a good bit of stuff to explore through for the rest of the year.

Hope everyone has a great, gloomy Monday.

I’ll start cryptically.  I’ve never felt as alone as I’ve been the last six weeks.  I’m not talking about loneliness, but of looking around and seeing no one in my corner.  And those closest to me had been oblivious to the situation and their role in it.

I’ll bore you later as to the causes.  I’ll delve briefly into where I traveled.  Alone-ness is not a good place, especially for someone who has spent large gobs of time out and about in hotels and on planes all over the place.  I traveled to a place where I pondered the future alone.  I became resentful for the first time in my life, and it wasn’t fleeting.  I’m assuming several weeks would indicate that, but I’m no expert in this.

You’d think I’d be like this in a time where my life was in ruins, especially in this economy and in this business that I pursue.  Quite the contrary, as I’ve had a new client that has had me driving five hours away every week since December.  In fact, that business success has been a contributor to this, this alone-ness.

This won’t be a megapost of IGGY-worthy length.  I don’t know that I have it in me anymore to pour it all out.  But I think it has to be part of it for me, this cathartic dumping of myself, to myself and those of you who have become and remained friends, whether vocal or silent.

I’m stuck here in an airport, alone in the crowd.

It’s been a very long, tough grind over the last few months.  I’ll dive into it, but just wanted to see if anyone still checks this out at all.

Posting on my blog used to be a morning ritual for me.  From 7:30-9:00 or so, I’d pour my thoughts, my emotions, my inner demons on this site wherever it happened to reside.  It’s been 46 days since I put anything down here, just too busy and too worn out most of the time.

So it is all of the furor of AIG bonuses that has brought me out of hiding.  Oh, you haven’t heard about it?  There are a zillion thoughts on the matter, from Elliot Spitzer’s take at Slate to the NY Times Paying Workers More to Fix Their Own Mess, which brought hoots and howls aplenty.  Here’s a great timeline of the key AIG retention bonus events.

Here’s my take: these AIG bonuses are a red herring on the one hand and the poster child of what’s wrong in our new America on the other hand.

First the red herring part.  Many of us don’t receive bonuses.  For those who do, most bonuses are nominal chunks of change for a job well done, more in the $2-10k range at the end of the year.  A small portion of us are highly compensated.  When I worked in Corporate America, I was one of these people.  I received a six-figure bonus for a couple years, as well as things like stock options.  These weren’t gifts but were detailed parts of my compensation.  I left a job and various benefits like accrued employment time and pension to receive this type of compensation package.

Once, I even signed an agreement where I had a retention package.  It stated that I received an extremely large amount of money if I remained employed through the divestiture of the business unit that I was employed at.  I had been deemed a valued executive who needed to remain through the sale and acquisition of my company regardless of who the buyer turned out to be, as well as regardless of my value to the acquirer.  You can search this site if you’re interested in what happend next.

I say all of that to state that some people make alot of money.  “These people” who got AIG into the most significant financial crisis are indeed the same people who have been rewarded with extremely sizable bonuses.  I’m assuming they met the goals and criteria to receive these bonuses and are now being paid.  It is an easy out to attack these highly paid individuals, to torch them all collectively as inept, as criminal, as evil.  I have never met anyone from AIG and have no knowledge of any individual’s performance.  Demonizing those receiving bonuses is a red herring because it takes our focus away from the real problem.  And as I said, the real problem can be seen quite clearly by these seven-figure bonuses.  Here is the real problem:

The US Government cannot run a contemporary, leading company effectively.  They do not have the business acumen, the management capabilities, the nimbleness, the ability to soberly make very tough decisions regardless of the fallout.

You’ll forgive me if I’m foggy on the details, but we basically loaned hundreds of billions of dollars to AIG (or gave it to them, I’m not sure which).  The US Government then gained either ownership or something akin to 79% of the controlling interest in the firm, again I’m not sure which.  From Day 1, our AIG Takeover/Turnaround Leadership Team should have been drilling into the minutiae of AIG, should have sniffed these retention bonuses out early, should have quickly dismissed the need for them.  Really, where would any of these folks go in today’s economy?  If we wanted to sign a retention contract with them that included some sort of bonus, we could have tied it to staying for a longer period of time and meeting specific objectives, both financial and non-financial.  Ditto General Motors, ditto Chrysler, ditto the banks, ditto whomever else we’ve poured funds into.

I’ve quickly become tired of all these characters who so easily point at yes guilty scapegoats yet fail to take ownership and accountability.  Do you think a Senator can actually run General Motors by meeting with their CEO once a month while serving as a Senator from Utah or Florida or Texas?

Here’s a clip from one of my favorite movies, The American President.  It has nothing to do with the topic, but to me it is illustrative of what we desperately need: cutting through the clutter, taking ownership, and being ready to grind it out.

This isn’t about AIG, it’s not about bonuses, it’s not about Frank nor Limbaugh nor Obama nor Liddy. It’s not about Democrats and Republicans, not about winners and losers.  Every ounce of energy focused on these types of things are a collective waste of effort.

It was just six months ago that we gave AIG their first loan.  Six months.  That isn’t very long ago.  I say that to demonstrate that each of these days is precious for the thousand or so men and women in our nations capital, the tens of thousands of government leaders throughout each of our states and municipalities, and the tens of thousands of executives throughout Corporate America trying to figure out what to do next.  Are they our best and brightest?  A good chunk of them are for sure.

Be sure of a couple things.  First, we’re going to have many, many more screw-ups in the coming weeks as we try to right the ship, a ship that is still listing severely and who may not be seaworthy for quite awhile.  This should not come as a surprise to anyone.  We still have no idea what the banks have done with all the money we’ve given them.  There is no big flood of new credit that is jumpstarting things.  On the contrary, credit card limits have been slashed, as have lines of credit.  If each Senator worked full-time at only one company that we’ve loaned at least $500mil to in the last six months, do you really think they’d have the capabilities to turn their assigned company around?  So AIG executives received $1mil+ bonuses based on retention agreements they signed in the early parts of 2008.  Chalk up the $165mil as Lesson #1 for the Federal Government in how to run a company.  The education of our Democratic and Republican leaders in how to run all the companies they’ve loaned money to and bailed out will cost well over $2,000,000,000,000 I’m sure when it’s all said and done.

And that brings me to the worst part of all this, the second thing in my couple things.  That couple trillion dollars isn’t going to change America for the long-term, it isn’t going to do anything like reinvent American manufacturing so that we can suddenly grow ten million manufacturing jobs, it isn’t going to suddenly reinvent our energy demands, it isn’t going to suddenly create sustainable enterprises that will yield a stronger citizenry when our children are coaching soccer.

We as Americans have the capacity to think for ourselves more today than ever before.  If you want to get all worked up and shout to your Congressman, your Senator, and your President, then take the words AIG bonuses out of your rhetoric.  Let’s get rid of the red herrings, the easy targets that make us all feel better that we finally found someone to blame all this on.  If you want to shout, then shout to them that we are all ready to take the tough medicine that is facing us.

My rant has fallen apart a bit, but there you go.  If anyone reads this and wants to chime in, be my guest.

So very, very busy this these last few weeks.  There’s a sense of urgency to the effort, with a clock ticking down right in your face.  In the manufacturing sector (my area of expertise), it is difficult to describe.  I know most people don’t work in this sector, so let me try to provide some insight through a few examples.

The erosion in business has been steep and full of surprises.  Customers commit to an amount they will order on Tuesday, announce they are closing their plant for a period of time, then cancel their orders on the next Tuesday.  Layoffs are planned, announced, processed, then new numbers come in that mean the cuts weren’t steep enough.  Sales declines are 20-40% year over year in some companies.  The costs for that level of decline are often beyond a company’s ability to manage.  The spike in commodity prices in 2008 and subsequent decline at the end of the year has left companies and customers stuck with inventory that is now devalued.

Inventory devaluation is a huge problem for manufacturers, one that the banking crisis isn’t helping.  Banks have loans, lines of credit, and other financial instruments backed by inventory value as part of the collateral.  For example, a company has $1,000,000 of inventory that is based on a price of $1.00/pound on average.  Let’s say that the value of the inventory is now $0.70/pound.  A bank has given a company a line of credit worth 50% of the value of the inventory, so an original line of credit of $500,000.  This inventory is now worth $700,000, so their line of credit has dropped to $350,000.  The complication to this is that business has slowed significantly, so now they need less inventory.  If they cut the amount of inventory, it reduces their line of credit even more.

I haven’t explained it very well I’m sure (hopefully someone can explain it better or point us in a good direction).  I’d like to say that part of the TARP funding for banks is now being used to work with manufacturers to work through issues like this.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be the case.

I wrote a year ago a post, What to Do in a Recession, that was my most trafficked post for 2008.  Part II was written a few months later.  Both are probably worth reading again, just to be sure we’re doing everything we can.  One recommendation I feel even more strongly about today is finding one-three incremental revenue streams.  Some of these may be a combined household idea, some may be individual for one spouse or another.  Some may be for children even, a way to reduce costs like allowances or spending money while simultaneously having children contributing.  This is important regardless of your financial situation currently, I believe.

I’m closing on a quite significant new venture that I’m extremely excited about, one that may take me and our family in an entirely new direction.  It will be a new revenue stream for us, an opportunity for my wife and I to work closely together, and a chance to get in front of a big opportunity.  It could eventually become our primary source of income.  In 2009, it will become a key part of our lives.  Look for a launch post early next week.

The dawn is now here, and my boys and wife are emerging.  Good morning all.

What does this day mean, to me and to America?

I don’t have time to put down my thoughts about the significance of today, but I am compelled to put aside a long night of work ahead of me to document this.  First, some backstory as they call it today.  I grew up in a small town in Mississippi.  I moved from the outskirts of the state capital south when I was ten, an hour’s drive down I-55.  I started 5th grade, and those boys and girls who graduated with me were the first graduating class to be integrated in the 1st grade.  Mississippi was the poorest state in the nation, so we bounced between the formerly black school to white school and back and back every two years.  4th and 5th at the old black Elementary school, 6th and 7th at the old white Jr. High, 8th and 9th at the old black High School, 10th-12th at the old white High School.

We never went to school dances at the school, the whites heading to the Country Club or some other facility, the blacks heading to the Teen Center or some other facility.  We played sports together, went to classes together, then headed home.  I was embraced by the black kids and whites alike, welcomed by both groups yet with few deep friends.  I mainly had a stead girlfriend or a sport.  I cringed when a racial slur was used as my parents never used the language, but it was simply the way things were.

I never had deep friendships, so I can’t say that I was somehow some great friend to my peers.  My life was lived in the midst of these realities, the good, the bad, and the ugly of race in America.  I was above the evils of race in my mind.  I earned life brownie points by spending time with blacks, by treating my classmates well.  I may be too harsh as I gaze back on my past.  It isn’t relevant really, and I don’t look back on it in judgment of who I was and who we were.  We were generally good kids trying to figure out how to grow up in the first integrated generation.  I think we generally did a good job.  I know each of us who were there or somewhere else in the South have a deep understanding of the complexity of race.

And today?  Today, race has been replaced by diversity.  Skin color has been replaced by ethnicity, by religious belief, by sexual preference, by socio-economic group, by blue or red or purple.

Our new president is a man of color, as is his wife and their girls.  The African-American community have embraced him with vivid enthusiasm, and the line that now their children can achieve anything has already become boring to me.  I understand the premise, but I think this day is so much more important than that.

This day is all about diversity.

The analogy I draw is the first time I sat at Nassau Presbyterian Church and looked up at a woman in the pulpit.  The Reverend Cynthia Jarvis was the Associate Pastor, and the Presbyterian Church (USA) ordained female ministers and elders.  This was so foreign to me, as I’d grown up as a Southern Baptist where this would never happen.  I don’t know enough about theology to answer the question of which is right.  All I know is that Cindy spoke to me in a different way, with a different perspective and a unique voice that was different simply because of her life as a woman.  Her eyes, her ears, her mind, her heart, it was all the same yet somehow different.  It is the same with our new leader.

As a candidate, Barack Obama chanted “hope” again and again.  As President, he ushers in a new era of diversity as the key to our future success.  For too long, we have used diversity, race, and other differences as an excuse to bring up a group of people to some minimum standard of what an American is.  Educate our black children to the minimum standard of your white children.  Let our men earn as much as your men.  We have spent too much time struggling with our differences.  We failed to realize that diversity is our great strength.  It is the great differentiator of our nation compared to others.

President Barack Obama understands intimately what diversity means, the challenges of being a diverse nation, yet the great potential that our differences bring to us.  The Muslim mom, the Hindi editor, the Buddhist diva, the Republic of Georgian coach, the Korean neighbor.  A generation ago, these people never would have been in my lives, in my peer group, people I would know, respect, and care for.

It is easy to lay race at the feet of the former Confederacy.  Race was a great evil, no doubt, but it clouds the issue at the heart of our struggle to break through into an evolved nation.  The millstone that has been around our neck is our culture of lifting ourselves above those strange-looking, strange-sounding, evil-believing others in our midst.

Tired of hearing about hope?  Here’s my hope:  that today marks the first day of a new age where each of us understands to our core that we are equal to our neighbor whomever he or she is, regardless of their beliefs, their bone structure, their hair, their skin color, their dialect, their homeland, their parents.  Let today be the first day of an America that leads the world with getting it, a land where each person changes each day as they better understand their neighbor.

I thank you, Mr. Obama.  You have your work cut out for you, battling this America of polarity amidst a meltdown extraordinairre.  Let’s make Wednesday a step forward for ineraction with an understanding built not on hope but on candor, on transparency, and on being unafraid of going through the difficult times necessary to build a greater land.  I’m ready for that step.

I must say I miss rushing to my blog, checking out all my comments, working daily on a post.  Alot has happened to me over these last few weeks.

First off, I’ve fallen even more deeply in love with my wife.  That is hard for me to fathom as I’ve always loved her deeply.  It’s just that I’ve focused more on her with each day, and she’s come alive again and again.  It’s hard to explain, but I’d suggest just stepping back and really focusing on your spouse or significant other in a new way.  Give more of yourself, put more of your own life on hold, start to look at them from a different point of view.  Tactically, touch them with new hands, with new sniffs, with fresh eyes.  I don’t know if any of that makes sense, to be honest.

Next, I’ve gotten much more productive over the last couple months.  I’m still not at 110%, but I’m liking it all much more.  I think a big reason for this has been my experience launching the new soccer club.  I was consumed with something that ate a ton of my time, but I was able to see some great value from it.  It was purposeful, to take my discretionary time and do some good with it.  I think I’m doing good with it, and I think I’ve been changed for the good.

I am very thankful to the Wife, Fuel, Carmen, the good Doctor, Otis, Iggy, BadBlood, Al, and many, many others for emailing me, popping up on Facebook, or stumbling here from time to time.  I’ve pushed through using this site as a crutch, as a place to vent, as a place to capture the turmoil that is me.  I’m hoping the best days are ahead for me.  And for you, too.

Oh, and one quick addition.  I didn’t pack any drawers, so heading to buy new boxers.

To me!!

I remember visiting blogs that never updated, always checking my links and bookmarks hoping to find some new nugget from a favorite site.  That’s what this site has become currently for me.  I’ll get back on the wagon soon, but I’ve had a combination of being swamped along with being distant from the site.  Being consumed daily with jotting down some struggle or wisdom has evolved into being not sure what to say.  It will come, but thanks for your patience.  I’m outside Charleston this week, working pretty hard day and night.

I was visiting my mother’s art studio over the holidays when she showed me the brilliant work of Jerry and Terry Lynn.  These twins share a canvas as they create rural scenes of African American.  They’ve both been very kind to her, and I look forward to learning more about them and see their gifted work.