Naked sellers should cover their assets

The SEC made the right move today by limiting naked short-selling.
In fact, I say the agency didn’t go far enough: It should ban naked short-selling on the public market.
Imagine if everyone at the E-Trade office at Market, Sansome and Sutter— full of windows, mind you — started naked short-selling. One or two naked sellers is bad enough — but a whole office full of them exposing their assets?
If someone wants to naked short-sell in the privacy of his or her own home, go for it. But there’s no way the market should support this kind of behavior.

Michael Vick's new sentence

If there was truly justice in this Home of the Free and the Atlanta Braves, disgraced pro quarterback and amateur dog-fight operator Michael Vick would face a probation that included watching the Detroit Lions.
"But, judge …," Vick would say at his sentencing, moments before breaking down in tears.
"I don't want to hear it, Mr. Vick," the judge would say. "And if you can't handle it, you'll have to play for the Lions."
Vick would be sedated and placed on a stretcher headed straight for Ford Field.
Just put a bag on your head, Michael -- like the rest of us who have taken our punishment during the 45-year William Clay Ford Era.

Bike to Work Day

Ever since a cabby forced me to ditch my bike -- or get hit -- on a ride to work seven years ago, Christine has more or less put the kibosh on me pedaling into work again.
The fact that I wrenched my knee, had surgery, the doctor pulled a floating, one-inch piece of bone out of my leg -- and then I actually got hit while riding in Ann Arbor a couple years later -- only adds to her case. She tries to hide it, but I can tell she's nervous even when I ride on the weekends.
* sigh *
So I was thrilled to ride into work today as part of Bike to Work Day. Totally uneventful -- which is good, considering Market Street, from what I hear, can be a real bear for bicyclists. But I've biked down Market a half-dozen times now with no problems.
Someday. Someday. Maybe I can bike to work throughout the workweek.
A biking boy can dream.

Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to hike we go

I'll let Christine tell the story at her California Dreamin' blog.
(I think that's what's called "cross-marketing.")

Weird hair day

Benny's preschool had "Weird Hair Day." I think we found Benny's theme: Early '80s British punk rocker.
Rock on, dude!

Tough week

It started by learning three (than a fourth) coworkers were laid off. Then I got a late-afternoon phone call saying that my friend since the fourth grade, Lawrence Ewell, died suddenly near Philadelphia.
I've been in a daze all week -- probably not a good thing considering the layoffs.
Maybe it's time for me to go back and read Jim Carty's post that I copied below.

On resurrection

This from Jim Carty's "Paper Tiger No More" blog:

As I've written once before, probably the last significant conversation I had with my dad came when I was driving him to chemotherapy a few weeks before he would die of lung cancer. It was one of the very few times I helped out at all in the process of his dying - my mom and bro were both in New Jersey and carried all the serious weight. But we had this morning and afternoon together, and I'm very grateful for it. In the course of the conversation, I asked him if he was afraid of dying.

He said he was not. There was no bravado to it, he just said he was not, so I asked why.

Because, he said, he knew he was going to see his own mom and dad again.

He believed this as surely as you or I believe we will wake up tomorrow. Here was faith. Simple faith. Probably the most plain and fundamental exhibition of it that I've ever seen, or may ever see.

I do not have such faith. I struggle to believe, and with what I believe, including the resurrection story. This struggle has only gotten worse since my dad's death.

(Note as of July 2012 -- Oops, the link has been lost, and Jim Carty is no longer writing the blog. But trust me, it was a very nice piece of writing. :/)