If Wall Street bankers are so smart, how can they be so dumb when it comes to paying out bonuses?

Don’t these people read newspapers? Don’t they watch Dylan Ratigan on CNBC or Glenn Beck on FOX News, castigating bankers for their greed and ingratitude to the taxpayers who saved their firms? Haven’t they sat through one speech too many by President Obama insisting that they stop giving million dollar and multi-million dollar bonuses? Have they no idea what it means for the average worker to struggle in an economy with 10% unemployment and another 8% underemployed?

And yet Goldman Sachs is on schedule to give out record bonuses this year totaling nearly $20 billion, or half a million dollars on average per employee. Morgan Stanley is not far behind, and the investment bankers and traders at Merrill Lynch (now wholly owned by Bank of America) and Bear Stearns (now wholly owned by JP Morgan Chase) are going to be treated royally as well. What is it about these people who are supposedly so smart in figuring out the markets but dumb as posts when it comes to judging the larger world in which they operate?

Apologies all around for the delay in getting the site up. I was practically bed-ridden for a few days and then generally out of it after that. I'm close to 100% now. I'm just grateful whatever it was that laid me low wasn't swine flu. Anyhow, we now return you to your regularly scheduled blogging.

Here's a little humor for you: here.

Addendum: A new blog worth celebrating has arrived at the New York Review of Books!

During this decade the global economic and financial dynamic that mattered most was the United States - China relationship. China sold cheap manufactured goods to American consumers desperate to maintain their standard of living in the face of a shrinking job market and declining real wages. Americans borrowed money to pay for the essentials of its lifestyle - college education, premium health care, two or more cars, etc. The Chinese were the major lenders to American consumers, financing the purchases of the goods China was selling.

What this dynamic was doing was forestalling the inevitable decline in the American standard of living that began when Deng Hsiao Ping first unleashed China's capitalist spirits. The West looked on this development greedily - 800 million new consumers ready to buy Western products! This was a great misconception, because it assumed somehow that China was going to make its way up the economic ladder by making Westerners richer. In fact the reverse began to happen. Hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurial manufacturers arose in China, with access to labor willing to work for pitiful wages and no benefits, and with no governmental regulation on working conditions or environmental degradation. The result has been an economic catastrophe for the West, which has seen its manufacturing sector whittled down, its trade deficits soar, and its debt levels skyrocket.

I was involved in two pretty interesting conversations with Ruy and Plutarco while in Nicaragua. They spanned about three days, but below you will find the gist of them both. I traveled with a friend who wrote up the conversations in dialogue form, as my Spanish leaves lots to be desired.

Ruy:

On Evangelicos

Ruy: “There are a lot of evangelicos here. You know, the people here have a lot of illiteracy and no education. When the evangelicos come, the people don’t know any better. They take, and take and take and the people just flock to the church and give what little they have to these thieves; puto evangelicos estupidos.

More after the jump.

I fly home tomorrow, so this is the last batch of photos from Nicaragua. Enjoy!

SP -- your comments on Nica's crime situation are spot on. In an earlier incarnation, I covered all of Central America (well, never made it to Belize....) for one of the analytical arms (OK, chose your own body part) of the USG. At the time, Nica in the run-up to the return of Comrade Danny and was a particular favorite of mine. The Nicas are probably the most interesting of the Ladino groups in the region.
The lower crime rate CAN in part be traced to the socialized medical & educational programs the Sandis brought in. Another factor is that Nica expats during Danny's previous time at the trough departed the country as family units (middle class & all that). More important, most settled in Florida -- not the west coast, where local gangbangers were a dominant influence.

For a long time Nicaragua has had the lowest crime rates of any Latin American country. I don't know if that was a function of a semi-socialist/communist history or the simple fact that there just isn't much left to steal in a country when a former president pilfered the state coffers of $100 million. (Yes, that is chump change back home, but here?)

Sadly, crime is on the rise and Conservatives back home, while they love to berate Daniel Ortega, they'd love the privatization of the police function here. From a Nica Times article, October 2-9 issue:

The communications officer for the National Police of Granada, Luis Carrillo, says citizen security is not just the police's responsibility. He says that everyone has to work together to ensure 'citizen security.'

Might I suggest to Officer Carrillo that he import some gun-toting white southerners for his vigilante justice project?

Have I mentioned how uninspired I am when it comes to writing? I think it's the heat. It's downright devastating. Singapore was hot and so was much of the area around the Straits, but this heat? Good grief. I had a hard time finishing my pancakes this morning it was so hot.

I've never been a big fan of the rum. At least until I tried Flor de Cana, the local Nicaraguan brand of rum. It's nice and goes down smooth. I should know, some surfers and I polished off a full bottle a few nights back on the beach at El Popoyo.

I might be a convert. The only problem is I seem to fall in love with local blends, like Yeni Raki, that are well nigh impossible to get at home.

Life is rough.

On a side note, yesterday, for the first time in my life I was corrected by a local for calling myself 'an American.'

"I know you are an American," Walter told me. "So am I!"

Soy Tejano, then," I said.

He looked at me with his head cocked to one side. "Huh?"

"Texas," I said.

"Oh, you are a Norteno," he said.

"Sure thing."

He does have a point. Of course, I've heard 'yanquis' and 'gringo' here in Nicaragua more than anywhere else in my life as well.

Had someone told me twenty years ago when I was majoring in Russian, ready to fight the Cold War and all that, that twenty years to the day I would be spending my 39th birthday in a Nicaragua where Daniel Ortega was president and enjoying myself immensely, I would have laughed in their face.

Alas, here I am. 'Tis a strange life and a stranger world. Lots of new photos from the Lago De Nicaragua here.

More photos from Granada, here.

Over a quarter of American homeowners owe more on their mortgage than their home is worth. In some bubbly markets like California, three out of four homeowners are underwater. Should these homeowners deliberately default, rather than continue to pay on a mortgage when it may take 20 years or longer for market values to equal mortgage values?

Eighty-one percent of Americans think no, according to a survey done this summer by the University of Chicago and Northwestern University business schools. Most American homeowners think it is “immoral” to deliberately default on a mortgage when it is possible to make continuing payments. Yet the numbers of American homeowners doing just that is growing. It is estimated that four percent of all defaults on mortgages are “strategic defaults” according to a phrase used by the financial industry: the homeowner can pay the mortgage but makes a strategic decision to suffer foreclosure rather than continue to make payments on a wasting asset.

The vile shit we do in the name of national security is beyond me, sometimes. I’ve visited a lot of countries in which our national security obsessions have led to all sorts of misery, but here in Nicaragua it seems the most futile. What harm did this desperately poor country ever pose to us? A little Cuban influence? Or Russian mercs running around in the hills? As Ruy told me yesterday, “Soy no Sandinista, pero if I have no job, I vote for Ortega.”

That says a lot for a guy who was pressed into the Nicaraguan army to fight the Contras. “Three years I spent in the mountains, fighting that puto Ronald Reagan. Pablito,” he tells me,” I love you Americanos, but Reagan was el grande puto.”

Ruy likes that word, he uses it with a large smile, his little Ortega inspired mustache hanging from his upper lip. He’s got an infectious hand-shake and at close to 50 years old has the energy of a 20 year old.

We drive for an hour and a half from the beach here at Popoyo to Rivas, the only place within a hundred kilometers with an ATM. “Yeah,” I think, “capitalism has come to even Nicaragua.”

More after the jump.

I figured I better post a photo of me working, as opposed to doing nothing, which I seem to be pretty good at!

More photos of sunsets, geology, surfing and landscapes can be found here.

A couple dozen new photos are up.

There is nothing so hideous as waking to the thumping bass and screeches of of foreign music at six in the morning. But after 36 hours of no electricity I can't blame the Nicas (short for Nicaraguan) for wanting to revel in it. That, however, didn't help my headache. Or my first morning in Nicaragua.

My room is terrifying. Ants scurry across the floor. The shower is little more than a PVC pipe pumping out sulfurous swamp water. The sheets are clean, but only in a tentative, hand-washed way. The rafters leak mosquitos. The wash basin is filled with the accumulated grit of years. I don't think it has been cleaned since before the Sandinistas overthrew Somoza. The toilet has no seat. Surf boards and bottles of empty rum are scattered helter-skelter.

I stumbled out of bed, bleary-eyed and coated in sweat out to the veranda and ordered coffee. I lit a cigarette, dragged deeply as the nicotine and tar at the very least woke up my lungs. I surveyed the sights around me.
The wind blows up dust devils in the dirt road. Thatched huts line the beach. Blue skies and bluer water ripple out all the way to Hawaii as tropical clouds jog penitently in the sky. Alfonso argues in the kitchen with his mother. Coconuts cling to branches while the water in the mangrove lagoon behind me splashes softly onto sandy banks. A pair of Magpie Jays roost in the branches while a small heron and sandpiper feed on the banks. A fish kicks out of the water, snagging a wayward dragonfly. A hammock swings in the breeze beckoning me to waste my day in its embrace.

I'm tempted.

More after the jump.

New photos up here.

I left La Fortuna at 615am. Yes, that early. I took the bus from La Fortuna to Penas Blancas, a small frontier town along the Costa Rican-Nicaraguan border. It was a slow bus ride, taking about six hours. I arrived in Penas Blancas about noon.

From La Fortuna down the mountains to Guanacaste the flora was a uniform, high canopy, interspersed with small farms of guayavas, papayas, carrots, onions, peppers and the like. But as I entered the flatlands, high semi-dry grasses proliferated. It was dryer too. Still lush by Texas standards, but the grasses had a golden edge to them and the trees looked windblown. The bus stopped frequently, crawling north between parallel mountain ranges. Cool highland breezes gave way to lowland humidity and stifling heat.

The people changed in the lowlands too. Where they had been more Spanish looking in the highlands and along the Pacific Coast, here their looks took a decisive turn to the indigenous. Lean body frames, thin noses, light eyes and wavy hair were replaced by by thick straight tresses of black hair, coal eyes, short globular frames and flat noses with flaring nostrils.

More after the jump.

My latest Texas Monthly story is up, here. Enjoy!

I'm off to Nicaragua tomorrow and will be out of pocket until Tuesday. My next Texas Monthly story should run this week. My latest Guardian story was supposed to run late last week, but I think the Iran news pushed it back. I fly home from Managua on the 8th of October. So my regular blogging schedule will resume then. I'll keep you all posted.

Lots of photos today. Hopefully I'll get a story done as well.

My favorites?

I'd be lying if I said the one above of the lizard wasn't one of 'em. By the way, all the animals in the subsequent photos are from the wild. None, except the kitty, are in captivity.

This one of the Arenal Volcano is nice.

And this one is for Don Henry Ford, Jr. Horses!

I love Vermillion Flycatchers. And this one of the Broad-billed Mot Mot? Probably the finest bird I've ever seen in the wild. I wish the colors weren't so washed out in the photo.

No photo collection is complete without food, this of a fine anti-pasto overlooking the Lago De Arenal, taken from The Country Store, owned by ex-pats from Arizona.

Cumulonimbus!

Finally, the hot springs at the foot of the volcano, known as Tabacon de los pobres.

Enjoy!

A year ago today I was in Kuala Lumpur. It was day two of what turned out to be the second leg of my year long journey from Singapore to Amsterdam and then home. Day one was spent in the old spice trading town of Malacca. Much has changed in that year, but then again, not so much. I'm in a town tonight that's not to terribly different from a hundred other towns I visited over the last year. Although, I confess, the view of the Arenal Volcano is pretty impressive. As a matter of fact, it's the first active volcano I've ever seen. And a big, beefy strato-volcano it is. Tropical jungle gives way to evergreen forests about half way up. After the evergreens it's pretty much a slush of ash and smoke. I hate to keep speaking in platitudes, but there is something even more impressive seeing it smoke. When a breeze rolls in at night and sends the tropical rains scurrying away the light show is like a giant Fourth of July sparkler several thousand feet up.

I'm feeling a little guilty today. I'd planned, upon waking, to head off to the jungle, do some bird-watching, take some photos and maybe end the day bathing in hot springs. Just your typical work-a-day life. But I got sidetracked and ended up doing a whole lot of nothing except a little Friday Cat Blogging. That just won't do.

More after the jump.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

My first story in Texas Monthly is now up and running.

Enjoy!

And I have some new photos up, here.

If anyone can identify the woodpecker in the attached photo I would be very grateful!

Sorry for the slow posting. I've got two stories that will more than likely run this week, one at The Guardian and the other will be announced upon publication.

I hope to have some photos up tomorrow or the next day as well, although tomorrow is a full travel day as I head up to Arenal and the big volcano there.

The good news is Nicaragua looks increasingly likely, so I'll have some good stuff to post from there.

More soon!

Here's today's photo dump! Access to the internet is sketchy. Hopefully have a post up tomorrow.

New photos here.

From the travel journal:

I feel like a wimp. The waves were huge in Santa Theresa and I didn't surf much. Then again, I am not a big fan of the feel of a cement truck's worth of water crashing atop me. No worries.

Lots of clouds, lots of waves. Not so much sun. But there is coffee and coffee is good. I woke up to the screech of parakeets in the treetops and the whisking of a broom on the porch below me. It's nine in the morning and already the humidity and heat are tearing sweat from my pores. And although the Ticos (Costa Ricans) are Latin Americans, they aren't like the Mexican's at all. I don't know why this surprises me, but it does. Growing up in Texas I usually associate Spanish speakers with Mexicans. The Ticos are much more laid back than the Mexicans. They also don't have much indigenous blood in them, very Spanish looking. I asked someone if there was much of an native population left here. She said, "nope. Not much at all."

The ferry collected me in a small bay beach, a bare-bones fiberglass fishing boat that sits eight. Three young Israeli surfers and a thirty-something couple from England are headed, like me, to Montezuma. The sky cleared for the entire journey. Clouds jogging along Pacific horizons, serrated mountains a pale emerald green in the distance. It's the rainy season and I am grateful for the sun. I did get to chase an iguana the other day!

More after the jump.