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Author Archives: Ron Byrnes
‘Financial Crossroads’
The pastor just wrote. Said, “We are at a financial crossroads in this journey of Good Shepherd’s renewal.”
But Good Shepherd has had serious budget issues for ten years so I’m not sure that’s the correct metaphor.
Churches, schools, and other non-profits often get used to perpetual budget crises. And struggle to step back and take a wide-angle view of what to let go of given economic scarcity.
A Wholly Different PLU
PLU is recruiting much more locally; as a result, our student body looks like Pierce County for the first time ever. The Admission Office is also zeroing in on Hawaii and Eastern Washington, specifically Yakima and Toppenish. Consequently, we have a lot more low and middle income students than in the past. I dig the economic and cultural diversity.
This paragraph from a quiet, bookish, first year writer of mine provides a little flavor flav of the changes:
“Growing up, my dad was on the road a lot. He tends to jump around to different jobs. When my sister was born, he was a volunteer firefighter. I think he was driving for “S” when I was born. A few years later he transferred to “H”. Then worked as a paraeducator for X School District. He has been a funeral director, then went back to working as a paraeducator, and now works for X School District as a janitor. As the years went by, he began to feel stable enough financially to be able to stop driving. Which means he got to be home a lot more. This is probably why I feel I could talk to him. When he was home from being on the road he made sure to create a bond. Now that he hasn’t been gone days at a time for a few years, our bond has gotten stronger. My dad has taught me how to put up and fix a fence, and how to care for the goats, cows, and pigs. My favorite things to do with him are going to the livestock auction on Saturday mornings, and when we go to run errands just us two.”
Is This The World’s Least Appreciated Problem?
Molly Seidel—Tough As Nails Millennial
If I had a dollar for every time one of my Baby Boomer peers bashed Millenials as lazy and soft I could afford to retire. In Monaco.
Don’t read this profile of Molly Seidel if you want to continue to wallow in uninformed, negative assumptions about an entire generation of young adults.
For me, Seidel’s story stitches together almost everything I’ve learned about mental health and subjective well-being from my Millennial writers over the last two decades. Put differently, her story is about much, much more than professional running.
Seidel, the second American and eighth overall in yesterday’s Chicago Marathon, qualified for the Paris Olympics next summer. More importantly, she had fun and felt great about her performance.
2:00:35
A decade ago, I would’ve bet everything I own that I would not live long enough to witness a sub two hour marathon. Now, Kelvin Kiptum has me worried that my days are numbered. Very numbered.
How far could you run in 2:00:35? If I trained seriously and had a good day, I’d be 11.2 miles behind Kiptum.
‘There Is No Safe Place To Run To’
From NPR.
“Palestinian Health Ministry Director-General Dr. Medhat Abbas told NPR on Sunday that there is no safe place to run to in Gaza.
His pregnant daughter, who is a doctor herself, was unable to run on foot after she received warning of an incoming Israeli airstrike on a home near hers. He said she called him panicking, unsure what to do. He advised her to lean crouch by a wall. He said these are the conditions residents in Gaza face, and that the hospitals are not prepared with enough hospital beds nor stocked well enough for war.
‘They say we have not started yet, we have not started yet. What’s the meaning of they will start? We don’t know what will happen if they will start,’ he said, referring to Israel’s response thus far. ‘Are they planning for a big massacre in Gaza? I don’t know. But they are only civilians who will pay for that.'”
Cullen Roche on Michael Lewis and Sam Bankman Fried
A concise and cogent explanation of why Lewis’s SBF story is so problematic.
“SBF is not an effective altruist. Michael Lewis has been a literary hero of mine for decades. Liars Poker was a book that both excited me about getting into the financial services industry and also made me deeply question the motives of people in the financial services industry. So I was surprised this week to see Lewis doing a book tour and framing Sam Bankman Fried as a good person who just flew too close to the sun. He even went so far as to distance SBF from Bernie Madoff.
I have a take a deep breath here because this one actually makes me mad. SBF is exactly how most Bernie Madoff’s start. The only difference is that SBF got caught quickly. You see, most financial services ponzi schemes start with good intentions. It’s usually someone with dreams of generating huge returns running a fancy strategy that blows up. It often involves commingling client funds with firm funds. And in an effort to climb out of the hole they exploded they oftentimes make things worse. And before you know it this well-meaning person is in a financial hole so deep that they have almost no choice but to try to continue digging in the hope that no one ever asks for the shovel. In the case of SBF people asked for the shovel quickly. In the case of Bernie Madoff it took 20 years for people to ask for enough shovels to realize that he was digging with his hands.
I’m a little disheartened by the Lewis commentary because he’s trying to diminish the severity of what happened here by claiming that SBF ran a good business on one side and got into hot water in an unrelated hedge fund. Okay, but this is precisely what Madoff did. Madoff Securities was one of the largest and most innovative market makers on Wall Street for many decades. They ran a large and legitimately great business. They were also commingling client funds and running the fraud in accounts on the side. This is almost exactly what SBF was allegedly doing.
This kills me because the lack of compliance is so egregious that it’s inexcusable. I don’t care that Sam or Bernie seemed like good guys. They were negligent about compliance and commingling of funds. According to Lewis, SBF treated everything like a game inside his unregulated casino. But this is exactly why casinos (and financial firms) need to be regulated. SBF isn’t just a guy who flew too close to the sun. He’s as prone to irrationality as the rest of us and that’s why sensible regulations need to exist. There’s no excuse for this sort of thing to be happening in an age where third party firewalls are the easiest first line of defense in finance.”
File this under “Michael Lewis. . .it’s more difficult to stay on top, than to get there.”
Some Lunch Spots Better Than Others
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Meet an Amazing High School Muralist
Maverick Collins for the win. And Nick Rekdal.
Pressing Pause 