2008: The Year of Celebrities

It was (sigh) yet another big year for celebrities, from Paris Hilton’s cheeky faceoff with Sen. John McCain to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s huge and growing family, to Madonna’s renewed performance success, Kanye West's declaration that he is the "voice of this generation," former child star Lindsay Lohan's relationship with Samantha Ronson, Tom Cruise’s strange antics, and the emergence of teen idols Miley Cyrus (and her controversial Vanity Fair photos) and the Jonas Brothers.

But topping the list was the irrepressible Britney Spears, who went from failing drug rehab and having her children seized by the court to an apparent comeback late in the year with a number one hit song.

As far as TV and Hollywood were concerned, it was a very weak year indeed. Starting the year with a writer’s strike was a harbinger of what was to come, or rather, not to come. Had it not been for the election, in fact, audience share and ad revenue for many TV networks would have been in the toilet.

As it was, few TV shows of note emerged; at the movie theatres, “Batman: The Dark Knight” won acclaim as actor Heath Ledger, who died before the film was released, seemed poised to win an Oscar for his role as The Joker.

The popular TV show from the past, “Sex in the City” made a comeback as a movie; a new Harry Potter sequel opened; and the indie filmed in India, "Slumdog Millionaire,” impressed critics.

Perhaps the industry’s greatest hit was the (by TV standards) ancient comedy show SNL, where Tina Fey parodied Sarah Palin with such comic precision that when Palin herself visited the show, viewers had difficulty telling them apart.

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Wasting nothing; Saving Less

On one hand, I'm a classic pack-rat. Anyone who has visited my flat will attest that there is one hell of a lot of junk around here. Much of it is of my own making. There are boxes and boxes of writings, published and unpublished, all along the range from good to terrible, from the past 40 years or so of my life.

Lately, as I have realized just how relentless the process of aging actually is, I've started to wonder whether I should destroy much of this stuff. Part of me thinks I should dump it into a pit in the backyard, just like all those ancient bottles I recovered from the 1880s, safely ensconced in ash from the fireplaces that were dumped into the old privy here once modern plumbing was introduced in the Mission in the 1890s.

I could wrap this written trash in plastic bags, which probably would survive a few decades (?) until someone dug them up and determined they were "exotic" remnants of the pre-digital age.

***

Above is our first effort at wax art. We call this one "turtle."

(He will not be saved in our next cleanup.)

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Support Your Writers!

It pains me to report that unless all of us are willing to find a way to pay for what writers write, many valuable voices will soon go silent. I am not so arrogant as to include myself in this category, but the truth is that this blog, from an economic perspective, is an utter failure. More on that in a bit.

Meanwhile, one of my favorite writers, James Surowieki, has published the following essay on the New Yorker site, which you can access for free: News You Can Lose.

The irony of reading this essay online is that you will be contributing to the process by which writers become unable to sustain themselves by their work.

Now back to me. I am no James Surowieki, in fact I am a nobody by comparison, neither famous nor successful. But my posts have always been available for free. The only potential revenue supporting this blog is that via clicks on the Google AdSense links that appear at the top of each post.

Since the last time I met Google's minimum payment level of $100, this blog has received 28,417 visits, but only 120 clicks on the ad units, which means I have earned $41.37. For those keeping track, that amounts to 14% of one cent that accrues to me every time you visit.

Don't read me wrong. I do not mean to guilt-trip anybody. But it might be worth considering how a blogger's wage compares with the minimum wage the next time you visit this or any other blogsite. Why stop by without clicking?

Isn't it a bit like eating in a restaurant without tipping?

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The NASDAQ and S&P Wipeouts

Yesterday we looked at the Dow-Jones. Today, as part of our 2008: Year in Review series, I want to examine the performance of the NASDAQ, which is heavy with tech companies, and the S&P 500.

The NASDAQ, which includes Google and Apple, two of my personal favorites, had its worst year on record, losing an astonishing 40.5% of its value.

This does not necessarily mean it has hit bottom yet, however. I went back to the dot.bomb era to examine the yearly losses for the period 2000-2.

During that market correction, the NASDAQ listings lost a cumulative 71.6% before rebounding into the tremendous period of growth we witnessed from 2003-07.

The only other significant recession in NASDAQ's history, since its founding in 1971, was 1973-4, when it endured a 49.3% retrenchment.

Now, on to the venerable Standard & Poor's 500 stock index. Standard & Poor's introduced its first stock index in 1923. Prior to 1957, its primary daily stock market index was the "S&P 90," a value weighted index based on 90 stocks.

The S&P 500 index in its present form began on March 4, 1957. For a list of the 500 companies, follow this link.

So, how did the S&P perform in 2008? It suffered its worst one-year drop since 1937 at 38.49%.

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The Only Two

Many people may not realize that the Dow Jones Industrial Average is made up of only 30 large companies.

So, I decided to list those 30 and show how their stocks performed in 2008, as part of an effort to try and understand what is happening to our economy.

The worst performers (no surprise here) were GM and CitiBank, both surviving currently courtesy of government bailout funds.

But 26 others companies on the DJIA also had very bad years. The only two companies to finish in the black last year were McDonald's and WalMart.

I will not even venture to suggest what that may say about our capitalist society, because I'm quite sure you are perfectly capable of drawing your own conclusions.

Below is the percentage performance for the 30 current
companies of the DJIA index for 2008, in ascending order (worst to best).

Company Pct change
General Motors Corp (GM.N) -87.1
Citigroup Inc (C.N) -77.2
Alcoa Inc (AA.N) -69.2
Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) -65.9
American Express Co (AXP.N) -64.3
General Electric Co (GE.N) -56.3
The Boeing Co (BA.N) -51.2
Merck & Co Inc (MRK.N) -47.7
Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) -45.4
Intel Corp (INTC.O) -45.0
Du Pont (DD.N) -42.6
Caterpillar Inc (CAT.N) -38.4
3M Company (MMM.N) -31.8
AT&T Inc (T.N) -31.4
United Technologies Corp (UTX.N) -30.0
The Walt Disney Co (DIS.N) -29.7
Hewlett-Packard Co (HPQ.N) -28.1
JPMorgan Chase and Co (JPM.N) -27.8
The Coca-Cola Co (KO.N) -26.2
International Business Machines (IBM.N) -22.2
Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) -22.1
Verizon Communications (VZ.N) -22.1
Chevron Corp (CVX.N) -20.7
Kraft Foods Inc (KFT.N) -17.7
Procter & Gamble Co (PG.N) -15.8
Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N) -14.8
Home Depot Inc (HD.N) -14.6
Johnson and Johnson (JNJ.N) -10.3
McDonald's Corp (MCD.N) + 5.6
Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) +18.0

Back Home Again

As the rains visit Northern California, fresh green grass springs up on our hills.

This is one of the confusing aspects for migrants living in this region.

Is it spring?

No, it is but a winter bloom. If we had enough sheep or goats on Bernal Hill, these sprouts would quickly be stripped.

But we don't, so the rains and dry periods will alternate, green and brown until (unless we have a drought), the rains win out, for an extended period, and our hills, like Bernal, stay green into the warm seasons.

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Where We Live Now

Every mid-year, the U.S. Census Bureau updates its estimate of the country's population, and includes a breakdown by the four major regions.

Here are those figures as of July 1, 2008:

U.S. Total 304,059,724

Northeast 54,924,779
Midwest 66,561,448
South 111,718,549
West 70,854,948

What is most striking about these totals, to me, is that ~60% of the people now reside in the Sunbelt. This shapes not only our politics, but our economy, which is filled with distortions -- housing bubbles, disparities in the price of gasoline as well as retail goods, uneven Internet access, including broadband & wireless, differing tax policies and civil rights laws, varying levels of social welfare services, and huge differences in good old pure income.

Can anyone manage such a large, sprawling country filled with such persistent internal contradictions? That task falls to our new, young, dynamic President.

May you do well, Mr. Obama. Happy New Year!

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