THE GREAT IMPEACHMENT MIDWAY LEAVES TOWN

1/31/20

It looks as though the Democrats’ excellent impeachment adventure will come a cropper this afternoon or shortly thereafter.   Yours truly has several thoughts on this whole circus.

What will remain firmly implanted in the voters’ minds, as I mentioned in my 1/9/20 post (PRESIDENT TRUMP CANNOT WIN, BUT THE DEMOCRATS CAN LOSE, IN 2020) is not that Donald Trump is a proverbial bull in a China shop who often seems to have no idea what he is doing; that isn’t news.   What came out of this impeachment fiasco that was not widely known before it was that Joe Biden’s son was on the payroll of a Ukraine natural gas firm and had even less of a sense of what he was doing in that role than does Mr. Trump…and that Joe Biden thought that was just fine and dandy.   (“My son did nothing wrong.”)   Believe me…the Trump people will make sure that l’affaire Biden becomes the most salient outcome of this kangaroo court.

More importantly, though, the outcome of this whole attempt at a show trial was foreordained because it was a political tool from the beginning.   If we are to derive anything from this blabfest, it is that impeachment, and other sorts of related ethical and legal inquiries, are now a tool of politics and nearly purely so.   Whether Mr. Trump did commit an impeachable offense of sufficient import to remove him from office is inconsequential in such an environment.   What matter to both parties is the politics, and the politics here surely favor the GOP, if only because they control the Senate and the Senate gets to make the final determination.

If you have any doubt that this whole monkey trial (apologies to Clarence Darrow) was only about politics, note that yesterday the Democrats and their media sidekicks trotted out yet another woman who claims that Mr. Trump raped her in the ‘90s.   Before everyone gets excited and starts tossing around accusations of misogyny in yet another manifestation of the American practice of substituting emoting for thinking, yours truly is not by any means discounting the severity of these charges.   If indeed Mr. Trump raped this woman, not only should nobody vote for Mr. Trump in 2020, but he should be tried, convicted, and spend just about all of the rest of his life in prison.   (It’s a shame we often have to state something so obvious, but, again, in this politicized world that substitutes whoop-whoop for thought, we have no choice.)   All that having been written, if these charges are not true, and even if they are, one has to question the timing of the charges.   Is it a coincidence that they came out just as it became apparent that Mr. Trump is going to win his impeachment battle in the Senate?   The timing of this latest salvo against Mr. Trump provides evidence for the charge that the Democrats and their fellow travelers in the nation’s media will never stop because THEY JUST CAN’T GET OVER THE FACT THAT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE HAVE SUCH CONTEMPT FOR THE POLITICAL AND MEDIA ESTABLISHMENTS IN THIS COUNTRY THAT THEY CHOSE A CARNIVAL BARKER LIKE MR. TRUMP OVER THE ESTABLISHMENT’S CANDIDATE…AND CANDIDATES.   Is it surprising that Mr. Trump continues to figuratively bite the heads off chickens just to rub it in the face of the Washington crowd that he defeated?   That is what the electorate called for him to do in 2016.

People who, despite the fiction that they represent some state and/or district that they forgot long ago, live and work in Washington and feel entitled to run the country therefrom, never learn.  The American people continue to seethe with anger at the alternating contempt and condescension that emanates from the Imperial City.   The Democrats, and most Republicans, for that matter, can’t understand why the rubes out there in fly-over country don’t realize that they are being given a gift of the manifest wisdom of the Washington types who have deigned to rule over them.  So the Dems and their media henchmen continue their childish hissy-fits, their endless charges of ethical transgressions (many of which are well founded), culminating in this blatant piece of political gamesmanship called an impeachment trial.   But don’t think for a minute it will end there.   These latest rape charges are just the latest figurative toss of, er, stuff at the wall in a desperate attempt to get something to stick.  

The political establishment, and especially the Democratic and media components of that establishment, refuses to accept the fact that they lost the election to the likes of the often crude, usually rude, and rarely in touch with the substance of what he is talking about Donald Trump.   They are incapable of a sober assessment of their attitudes and their actions, an assessment that would, of necessity, involve developing some measure of humility and an appreciation for the thoughts of people one supposes Washington types deem incapable of serious thought.    The Washington crowd’s inability to understand how much they have ticked off the American people has resulted in a nearly ludicrous backlash that involved the people’s responding to their lack of humility by electing a man who is the very antithesis of humility and understanding.   It’s as if the American people were saying “Damn it, listen to us and do a few things that are good for us, not for you”…and were met by Washington’s best impersonation of Marie Antoinette.    And, as this constant caterwauling in the capital shows, the Dems’ ears have grown yet another impermeable coating of tin.

It’s enough to induce even reasonable, thinking people to hold their noses and vote for Mr. Trump…again.

THE 2020 DEMOCRATIC FIELD, THE ENTHUSIASMS OF (SOME OF) THE LEFT, AND THE RELENTLESS PURSUIT OF STRAWMEN

1/15/20

At the Democratic debate in Des Moines last night and in the learned, expert commentary that ensued, much was made of a remark that, according to Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Bernie Sanders made, in private, of course, about the electability of a woman presidential candidate.   According to Senator Warren, Senator Sanders said that a woman could not be elected president, even though Senator Sanders is on record as having said, at least as early as 1988, that a woman surely could reach the nation’s highest office.

Believe it or not, a considerable amount of time was spent at the debate on this “issue.”   There surely are people out there who think a woman could not be elected president…and there are also people out there who think the world is flat.   Are there enough of them to make this what could remotely be described as an issue?   For the benefit of those who hold such views, I should point out that these questions are purely rhetorical.  Further, if one were to make a list of people who genuinely think a woman could not be elected president, Bernie Sanders would not be on such a list.   Does anyone really believe that liberal icon Bernie Sanders, who either originates or genuflects to every lunatic lefty idea that comes down the pike, rejects the notion that our society can elect a woman president?

Well, maybe…

Senator Sanders and those in his camp may indeed consider large portions of the American electorate to be veritable troglodytes or, as another Democratic superstar put it, deplorables, the type of people who, lacking Senator Sanders’ degree of enlightenment, cannot possibly vote for a woman for president.   And that might be putting the best light on Senator Sanders’ estimation of the wisdom and/or goodness of the American people.   A young man named Kyle Jurek, who identifies himself as a “field organizer” for Senator Sanders reportedly said earlier this week that substantial portions of the American electorate will need to be “re-educated,” to wit…

“That’s kind of what all Bernie’s whole #*&@ing like, ‘hey, free education for everybody’ because we’re going to have to teach you to not be a #*&@ing Nazi.”

 And how to re-educate those whom Mr. Jurek and his friends consider “Nazis”?  Mr. Jurek goes on to say:

“[The] greatest way to break a f#*&@ing billionaire of their privilege and their idea that they’re superior, go and break rocks for 12 hours a day. You’re now a working-class person, and you’re going to f#*&@ing learn what the means, right?”

Mr. Jurek further educates us:

"There's a reason Josef Stalin had gulags.  And actually, gulags were a lot better than what the CIA has told us that they were. Like, people were actually paid a living wage in gulags, they had conjugal visits in gulags. Gulags were actually meant for, like, reeducation.”

 Yours truly has few doubts that there were indeed conjugal visits in Mr. Stalin’s gulags, but I suspect that these visits were of a different nature than that which Mr. Jurek imagines.  Also, one wonders what the billionaires who regularly contribute to Democrats, even to Mr. Sanders, have to think about these plans Mr. Sanders’ minion has outlined for them and about the not all that shocking silence emanating from the Democratic field regarding these comments.  I digress, but see my concluding paragraph.

Could Mr. Jurek perhaps be more specific regarding who is most in need of such re-education and denazification?    Beyond prescribing ameliorative action should Mr. Sanders not get the nomination, Mr. Jurek tells us of at least one group that is in the sights of him and some of his fellow Sanders supporters.   Mr. Jurek advises us that if Senator Sanders doesn’t get the nomination, or even if the convention goes to a second round (as those of us who are political junkies so fervently hope if only for the sake of entertainment and history)

"Be ready to be in Milwaukee for the DNC convention. We're gonna make 1978 (I think Mr. Jurek means 1968, but history, along with sparing use of obscene gerundives, obviously has never been a strong suit among Mr. Sanders’ more fervently socialistic supporters.)  look like a f#*&@ing Girl Scout f#*&@ing cookout. The cops (Emphasis mine) are gonna be the ones that are getting f#*&@ing beaten in Milwaukee."

So, judging from the opinions some of his supporters hold regarding the wisdom, goodness, and enlightenment of the American people, maybe Mr. Sanders really does believe, as Ms. Warren asserts, that a woman could not be elected president.    Unlike those on the left, and in the mainstream media, who hold President Trump responsible for every idiotic and/or malicious act or statement emanating from any yahoo in a MAGA hat, yours truly is willing to ascribe the above rantings of Mr. Jurek not to Mr. Sanders but entirely to Mr. Jurek and a relative handful of wild-eyed, and apparently bloodthirsty, lefties who happen to support Mr. Sanders.    I can’t believe that Mr. Sanders, who apparently checks every thought against a template of political correctness, would ever think, let alone say while in the same room with an opponent, what would be heresy not only for the Democratic Party but for just about any clear-thinking person.    The safe assumption is that Senator Warren hurled this canard in her ongoing, unceasing efforts to seize the mantle of victimhood, an extremely popular pursuit in today’s society, especially among politicians.

A more troubling observation can be made by juxtaposing the brouhaha about what Senator Warren contends Senator Sanders said with the utter silence emanating from the Democratic candidates regarding the above quoted rantings of Mr. Jurek, a Sanders political operative.   Somehow, the Democrats can wail and gnash their teeth over the strawman of unsubstantiated claims about Senator Sanders’ wholly out of character supposed misogyny but somehow are not at all  bothered that an agent of one of their frontrunners is speaking favorably of burning cities, killing cops, and putting people, including a large source of the Democratic Party’s funding, in gulags.   That should tell the voters all they need to know about the state of the Democratic Party in 2020.

PRESIDENT TRUMP CANNOT WIN, BUT THE DEMOCRATS CAN LOSE, IN 2020

1/9/20

I promised to get back to politics after a hopefully more regularly occurring excursion into more general, and less depressing, topics, so here is a random selection of thoughts on the presidential race:

·         President Trump is in trouble for 2020 anyway, but if Senator Amy Klobuchar comes out of Iowa with any kind of momentum, the President is in even deeper trouble.   Steve Chapman, a Chicago Tribune columnist who shares some of my libertarian instincts, wrote a column last Sunday arguing that Senator Klobuchar may be just the “normalizing,” for lack of a better term, president the country needs to elect in 2020.   While I’m not prepared to share the argument that Senator Klobuchar would be the president the country needs, I have long thought that she’d be a great candidate.   A, by modern Democratic standards, moderate woman from the upper Midwest, even without a long record of legislative accomplishment (The spinmeisters can always concoct a record of accomplishment, even if out of whole cloth, sufficient to convince the typical American voter.)  would easily defeat President Trump in the general election, or at least it looks like it at this juncture.   Since Senator Klobuchar is from Minnesota, a state that borders Iowa geographically, culturally, and economically, the Hawkeye State would be an ideal place for her to get the boost she will need to move into the top tier of an unimpressive Democratic field.   It goes without saying, though, that if Senator Klobuchar crashes and burns in Iowa, she is through and the crazies, and consequently President Trump, will have achieved yet another victory in the Democratic contest.

·         As mentioned in the last bullet point, at least at this juncture, and without having looked at the numbers in the detailed way that resulted in yours truly’s nailing the 2016 outcome, it looks like President Trump cannot win in 2020.   But the Democrats can lose, primarily through their nearly Orwellian devotion to the latest ephemeral fascinations of the modern American left, along with several other political gaffes that they persist in committing; see the next few bullet points.

·         Regardless of what one thinks of the wisdom of taking out Quds Force mastermind General Qassem Soleimani, Americans love it when our military gets a bad guy.   Despite all the nuance the Democrats are trying to employ in this matter, they still manage to come off, with some help from the GOP spinners, as opposed to the disposal of General Soleimani.   That won’t help the Democrats in November.

·         Unless something of a substance comes out of this one-ringed circus, what the voters will most remember from the impeachment theatrics the Dems seem to be wisely holding in abeyance for now is that Hunter Biden made millions from his father’s political connections and, even more importantly, if not yet saliently,  that his father continues to insist that young Mr. Biden has done nothing wrong.   Joe Biden’s protestations that his son did nothing wrong will be incessantly cited by GOP political mercenaries as yet another example of the Washington political establishment’s, against which Mr. Trump will again be running, operating under not only a sense of entitlement but also a set of moral and ethical rules that are bewildering to the average person.   And Chelsea Clinton’s reportedly having made over $9mm from positions on the boards of Barry Diller’s businesses will be thrown in to reinforce the point.

·         A losing issue for the Republicans, and especially for Mr. Trump, will be their ongoing efforts to destroy Obamacare.   Yours truly gets the sense that Obamacare is not as unpopular as the Republicans seem to think it is, largely because of the large number of people who would not have had health insurance, and a smaller number of people who consequently would be dead or destitute, without Obamacare.   People understand that Obamacare is deeply flawed, but the GOP has yet to come up with an alternative, other than “trust us,” when it comes to, among other things, not leaving those of us with pre-existing conditions to either, literally, no future, at least in this mortal coil, or a future of poverty.   Given that choice, Obamacare looks pretty good; people know enough not to trust politicians regardless of said pols’ party label.

That having been written, the Democrats will not be able to exploit this issue if they insist on nominating a candidate who favors gutting Obamacare in favor of “Medicare for All” or some such abominable manifestation of the modern left’s desire to bring every human activity under the control of the political class.   They can’t attack Mr. Trump for wanting to gut Obamacare when they, too, insist on gutting Obamacare.

·         If one need evidence of how polarized, politicized, and hyper-partisan politics have become, consider George McGovern and Ronald Reagan.    In 1972, Mr. McGovern was the crazy, left wing lunatic tree-hugging pal of pot-smoking hippies who supposedly couldn’t get elected because he was so far to the left that people questioned his patriotism despite his admirable service during World War II.   In 1976, and again in 1980, Mr. Reagan was the crazy, right wing lunatic nuclear cowboy who supposedly couldn’t get elected because he was so far to the right that people wondered if he had a few screws loose and would vaporize the world in a fit of pique at the people in Moscow with whom his Republican predecessors were playing footsy only a few years earlier.    Both would, at least rhetorically, in most instances, be mainstream moderates today.      

WHAT DO LEVERAGED LOANS HAVE IN COMMON WITH RICHARD J. DALEY, THE ’68 DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION, FLEXIBLE SOCIAL MORES, GAP YEARS, HARRY TRUMAN, AND WHO KNOWS WHAT ELSE?

1/7/20

Today’s (i.e., 1/7/20’s, page B1) Wall Street Journal contains an article reporting (summarizing, really) the travails of the leveraged-loan market.   In this context, the term leveraged-loans, for those of you who are not that deeply interested in finance, is applied to ostensibly senior, variable rate loans made to less credit-worthy companies.   Though they would generally be made to the same companies, or at least to companies with the same credit ratings, that issue high yield, or junk, bonds, leveraged loans are distinguished from junk bonds in that, first, they are loans, not privately or publicly issued bonds, and, second, the loans are technically senior to the junk bonds of the same issuer.

The article reports, as people who follow such things know, that the leveraged loan market is in a bit of trouble and may be foreshadowing difficulty for the overall markets and economy.   In fact, at the beginning of December of last year, 2.5% of such loans were trading at less than 70% of face value.   At first glance, to the casual observer, 2.5% of such loans showing signs of duress doesn’t sound bad.   But when one considers that these are variable rate, senior loans that are designed to maintain a value of par, or face value, and that the 2.5% number hasn’t been hit since the third quarter of 2016, the troubles afoot in the leveraged loan market are real.

The article reports that most observers attribute this leveraged loan trouble to, of course, declining credit quality.   Without getting too arcane, two primary indicators of declining credit quality in this instance are a lack of covenants in the leveraged loan contracts and expanding leverage, or debt, ratios.   The relevant debt ratios in these instances are calculated by dividing the total debt of the issuer by the issuer’s operating cash flow, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, or EBITDA.   These numbers apparently sounded, when first proposed, much more conservative than they turn out to be.    This appearance of conservatism, or at least not outrageousness (if “outrageousness” is not just a word yours truly has made up), arose because issuers inflated their projections for sales, margins, etc., thus inflating projected EBITDA.   Such creative inflations of EBITDA are called “EBITDA add-backs.”

If you’re still reading, please stay awake; this gets more interesting…

This article elicited several thoughts from yours truly, one of which actually has something to do with the subject matter and others of which are more entertaining, and one of those (the third) has absolutely nothing to do with the subject matter:

First, a long time ago, when yours truly knew everything and was nearly of consequence in the junk bond market, I was one of the guys who developed the now simple concept, referred to above, of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.”   We used this concept to analyze companies, like cable companies, which were all the rage back in the early ‘80s, which had no GAAP earnings but generated plenty of cash.  And this wasn’t just a rationalization for doing deals that shouldn’t have been done; even though these companies were, strictly speaking, unprofitable, their enormous cash flows made them nearly immensely credit-worthy and, at the interest rates we were getting for our shareholders, great deals.  

While I was one of the originators of the concept of EBITDA, I steadfastly rejected, and continue to reject, the cutesy-pie quasi-acronym “EBITDA,” (long E-BIT-DAH) that is used for the sake of brevity by just about everybody who deals with this concept.  EBITDA sounds like something one would hear at either a nursery school or a well-oiled saloon about an hour before closing time.   At any rate, due to the offense this term causes to the ears, yours truly insists on actually saying “earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization” or simply “operating cash flow” when referring to what the world insists on calling “EBITDA.”   Since the latter can be confusing, or at least misconstrued for reasons from which I will spare you, I usually resort to the former, which elongates the classes I teach but which maintains my dignity and that of my students.

Second, the capacity in which I helped develop the now Frankensteinian EBITDA was as a junk bond credit analyst at a major money manager, my first “real” job in the investment world.    Back then, we ran a lean ship, a couple of portfolio managers and a few more credit analysts, the latter including the young but nonetheless quite full of himself yours truly.   All of us, portfolio managers and credit analysts, reported to a very senior guy whose name I can’t use because I haven’t cleared this with him.   (And I haven’t been in contact with him for years, which is unfortunate because he was, and I’m sure still is, a wise and good man from whom I learned a great deal and would have learned a great deal more had I taken the time to consider that I didn’t know everything when I was in my late 20s, but I digress.)    It makes no difference, though, because his name doesn’t matter to, oh, 99% of you and the other 1% know who I’m talking about.  

At any rate, we would have meetings, scheduled or expedient, in which we would clear deals, and our boss would, of course, have the final say.   As these deals got more aggressive in the wild and wooly junk bond days of this era defined by the likes of Michael Milken, Carl Icahn, Saul Steinberg, Nelson Peltz, Frank Keating, Ted Turner, and a guy nobody trusted named Trump, our boss had a practice that he engaged in with greater frequency as the deals got more and more “out there.”   He would look over the red herring (preliminary prospectus), the credit report that I or one of my colleagues had generated, lean back in his chair, look up toward the ceiling, and say “We’ve come a long, long way, haven’t we?”   We hence were known for doing a lot of deals, but not nearly as many as most of our competitors.   The latter is probably why we consistently outperformed our junk bond peers in those heady days.  And I am being too generous here using the first-person plural.   Most of the credit, no pun intended, was due to not only to our aforementioned highly experienced boss but also to our senior portfolio manager, whose name I also can’t use because I haven’t cleared its use with him, but who remains one of the smartest people I’ve ever known, and yours truly has known a lot of outrageously smart people; after all, I went to St. Ignatius (Really, I did, and I graduated…I did.) and spent most of my career working with, for, and around people on the buy and sell sides of the investment world.   At any rate, I wonder what my old boss would have said had I proposed a deal featuring the seemingly now popular “EBITDA add-backs.”   He probably would have proposed that yours truly go a long way…out the door.

Third, when I considered these leveraged loan deals and hence remember the reaction of my boss to the increasingly aggressive deals we proposed in the ‘80s, I start musing about the reactions my dad would have had to some of the suggestions that are now commonplace in today’s “progressive” society, to wit…

“Hey dad, I’m thinking of doing a semester of study abroad.”

Dad:  “Oh, yeah?   I hear you can study a lot of interesting things in Vietnam.”

“Hey dad, I’m thinking of taking a gap year.”

Two possible reactions:

Dad:   “I’ll give you a gap year…in the meat packing plant,” or

“Better make it a gap decade; you’ll need that much time to cover the tuition I’ll no longer be covering since you’ll need to cover all of your living expenses that I’ll no longer be covering.”

“Hey, Dad.  I think God made a mistake and I am really a woman.”

Dad:   “What the %#+*?”  

I will add here that I never, ever heard my dad use the term for which I am substituting  %#+*.   That is why I believed Mayor Richard J. Daley, a man of my dad’s generation, geography, and ethnic background, when he insisted he used the word “faker” when castigating Senator Abraham Ribicoff at the 1968 Democratic convention, but now I’m off on a tangent from a tangent.

“Hey, Dad, do you think you might vote Democratic in the next presidential election?”

Dad:    “Is Harry Truman coming out of retirement (or the grave)?”

“Hey, Dad, do you think you and mom might want to move somewhere warm when (or, more properly, if you ever) retire?”

Dad:    “I’m trying to lead a reasonably decent life so I can avoid living somewhere really warm when I, er, retire.”

My dad, too, was a great and wise man.

Fourth (and the only comment that is genuinely germane to leveraged loans), I suspect that much of the credit difficulty that leveraged loans are displaying arises from their popularity during a time when investors were seeking higher yields with at least a feint to the notion of safety along with protection in what most of those investors perceived to be a rising interest rate environment.   Investors thus eschewed subordinate, fixed rate junk bonds in favor of senior, variable rate loans.   But the relative lack of appetite for junk bonds resulted in capital structures in which supposedly senior debt lacked the support further down the capitalization that gives seniority its value.   Senior paper is only truly senior when it is undergirded by generous helpings of subordinated paper.    Or at least that’s the way the old timers used to think.   But what do we know?

ACTUALLY, WOULD THESE WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX, MAN UP, AND LEVERAGE THEIR AWESOMENESS TO LITERALLY, OR AT LEAST BASICALLY, DIE AN OLD SCHOOL DEATH?

1/2/20

Around this time of year, Lake Superior State University releases a list of trite expressions and/ or words of the waning year and wishes several to be banished from the English language.   As something of a wordsmith who admires this effort but lacks the academic pedigree and the desire to hang out in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan in the winter months necessary to join in this worthy pursuit, yours truly has decided to issue my own list of trite expressions that simply won’t go away after infecting the language for years.   A commentary follows each expression where necessary and/or additive:

·         Taking the victim of an accident or a crime to “the hospital.”    Is there only one hospital?

·         “Literally”   “Literally” literally means “literally,” not “intensively.”   This is literally the most incorrectly used adverb in the English language.

·         “Actually”   “Actually” is actually necessary in only a fraction of the instances in which it is used.  Unfortunately, though, it has become the three-syllable adverbial manifestation of “like,” “you know” or simply “duh” or “uh.”  While “literally” is the most incorrectly used adverb in the English language, “actually” is the most lazily used.

·         “Awesome”   Once, only God was truly awesome.  Is there nothing that is not awesome any more?   Didn’t think so.

·         “Disrupt”   Not everything needs to be disrupted; hence, not all disruption is meritorious.   And “disruption” is not a synonym for “progress.”  This one seems to be mercifully dying.

·         “Punching above one’s weight”   Unless we are talking about the late, great Sugar Ray Robinson, this expression should be knocked out.

·         “Old school”   This was a terrific expression when I made it up many years ago, but it lost its zest after about the, oh, ten thousandth or so time it was used.   Yours truly’s ongoing efforts to find an adjective that captures his essence have hence literally been disrupted by my revulsion at the notion of resorting to triteness of expression.

·         “The (insert the name of an industry or business activity here) space”  In the investment world, we used to refer to the “XXXXX industry;” now our younger and clearly more enlightened counterparts refer to the “XXXXX space.”   Three syllable words must be difficult for many of the wizards of Wall Street.

·         The trifecta of verbal indolence:

o   “Not on my watch”

o   “The last time I checked…”

o   “Can you say….?”

Fortunately, it looks like all three have been taken to the hospital, hopefully too late.

·         “Think outside the box”   Anybody who actually thinks outside the box would not use the expression “think outside the box.”

·         “Leverage,” as in “leverage” resources.   As a finance guy, I understand “leverage” to be a three- syllable word for debt, used by many of my fellow finance guys who want to justify their (except in the case of yours truly) astronomical pay packages by displaying an extensive vocabulary that in turn demonstrates their wisdom.   As a normal person, I understand the world “leverage” to mean something someone gains by standing a certain distance from something one would like to move with a properly angled lever.  But in neither capacity have I ever understood “leverage” to mean “employ” or “employ effectively.”

·         “Man up”   People who use the expression “man up” usually are displaying their own need to generate and manifest more testosterone, albeit usually not literally.

• “We’re going to move this process into decision making mode.”   People, usually corporate types, who employ such verbal gobbledygook need to get off their hindquarters and get something done.   But, being corporate types, they will avoid such action because actually doing something, rather than talking about doing something, has the potential to get them into trouble.
• “Bend the cost curve”   This one, like a few of the aforementioned, seems to be dying a well-deserved death.   However, one still hears this verbal demonstration of the danger of learning just a little (very little) economics and developing an irresistible urge to display said limited knowledge.   Endless discussion of the yield curve and positing a seemingly impenetrable wall dividing growth and value stocks are manifestations of the same malady.

Two concluding points:

·         Somewhere up there, Sisters Monica, Cabrini, et. al., are either proud of yours truly for learning the grammatical lessons they sought to impart or sharpening up the old rulers to display their dismay at his having failed to digest the lessons on tolerance they likewise imparted.   I’m betting on, or at least hoping for, the former.

·         I will get back to politics, economics, finance, and the like.  I promise.   But this was a post that I have actually been planning to write for years…literally.