Just went to see Hairspray, a top rated show on Broadway. Really fun musical. Haven't laughed so hard in a long time.

Here is some really important news you can use. If you have Mileage Rewards with American Express, you can sign up for Mileage Rewards Plus with them. You pay a fee (between $35-75 depending on which kind of Amex card you have) and in return you can use your mile points toward ANY airline, even if it is not an airline that is part of the program (such as American and United, which are not part of the program). The rewards are off the Amex chart, which can be for fewer miles than the airlines' own chart. For instance, you can purchase a coach ticket for domestic travel worth up to $500 for 35,000 points. For a $600 ticket, you can use more miles or pay the difference in cash. This is not good for business or first class tickets. Also, there are no blackouts or quotas for domestic coach flights (meaning you will get to fly if there is a seat for sale even if all the reward seats are gone). This is good because unrestricted coach tickets usually cost 50,000 miles. The program is not discussed on the Amex website, but they will send you information in the mail if you request it. It is a very quiet unadvertised program, designed for certain types of people and I only know about this because my father told me about it, and I just called Amex to inquire. If you fly a lot or have been frustrated using your American Express miles, this may be the most important thing you read this year on Global Thoughts.

Martha Stewart was just convicted in a situation in which the cover-up was worse than the crime. One thing I didn't know was that she was a director of the New York Stock Exchange; something that argues for stringent treatment under the law considering the charge involved stock trading and cooperating with an investigation. If directors of the NYSE don't uphold the law, how can you trust stock trading for anyone else?

Presidential Race – The question is not whether Kerry will beat Bush but whether Bush will lose the presidency to Kerry. He could, but it is not likely because Bush has an advantage in the electoral college. Also, the country is split but the half that supports Bush is deeper in their commitment to him than the half that supports Kerry. More of Kerry’s support stems from being anti-Bush than pro-Kerry. Kerry cannot win by painting himself as a populist man of the people – he is simply too wealthy and no one will buy it. His best argument has to be that he will be better than Bush on national security, meaning that Bush took the nation to war over nuclear weapons, found none in Iraq, and all along was guilty of coddling the one country that did have nuclear weapons (Pakistan) and was spreading the technology around with all the other do-bad countries such as Libya, Iran and North Korea. I personally don’t have an opinion yet about Kerry, mainly because I am not taking the Democrats seriously yet. What Kerry can accomplish is to bring on Edwards as his VP running mate (the guy supposedly makes a good speech and comes from the South) and give him exposure so that we have something better than Hillary Clinton to look forward to in 2008. A wild card in this race is international terrorism – but that could backfire in favor of Bush just as much as it could hurt him.

Osama Bin Laden – Remember him? The US is replicating what worked for them in Iraq with clusters of ground forces using tactical intelligence and some old-fashioned carrots and sticks with Pakistani villagers who might be sheltering Taliban (although it is the Pakistanis doing the dirty deeds in this case which involve things such as collective punishments: ie: hand these people over or we burn down your village), and Musharraf is cooperating a bit more after having survived two assassination attempts by fundamentalists and surviving the nuclear scandal which totally involved him whitewashing the country’s military who could not have been so ignorant of what Mr. Khan was doing. I think the US and the Pakistanis are closing in on OBL and his chieftains and will get them in the coming quarter. After the Madrid bombings, we need a good turn to deflect the sense that the terrorists got the upper hand influencing the election of a Western country and showing the Spaniards to be spineless appeasers (even if that's not really the case -- probably more a case of backlash against the government for trying to hide the facts before an election and the people resenting it -- but I don't know). Here's some good news, which probably will not be noticed much in the West: A much more impessive country in the Islamic world is Malaysia, whose moderate and young prime minister just unexpectedly won very big in a fair election against fundamentalist opposition. 

Iran – This is a no-brainer. The elections were a fraud but now that everyone knows that the Iranian government lacks legitimacy, its days must be numbered. The evolutionary process in this nation’s development continues. The government must begin to deal with the rest of the world in a more moderate manner in order to show economic benefits or else there will be People Power in Teheran some day. 

Iraq – I don’t know if the country needs direct elections or caucuses and if these should happen sooner or later. I don’t know if the Americans are getting out prematurely playing election year politics and whether or not they are going to screw things up in that country. If they do, it will be to Kerry’s benefit going into the election season, so I don’t think they will cut and run. I am concerned that if the US does move prematurely, one result will be that women in Iraq will not get their fair chance of representation and rights in the new Iraq, just as they are being shafted again in Afghanistan. So I will be watching the situation of women’s rights in Iraq as a bellwether to see if that country is moving in the right direction. My sense is that they should have direct elections in all sectors, and that once there is a locally elected government that appears to be legitimate, the agitators from outside Iraq will have to stop making trouble because they will be seen as anti-Arab rather than as anti-West. Also, once it becomes clear that there will be a real elections, the Sunnis will have to move toward getting their fair share and away from acting as spoilers and destabilizers.

Israel/Palestinians – I haven’t yet seen this Wall and I am not likely to see it any time soon. I don’t like the idea of it, because I think it is negatively impacting people’s lives who live alongside it and that it goes against the natural grain of that geography which is that people need to coexist in a narrow and winding space. The wall will in the short term keep terrorists out, but in the long term, the terrorists will find some other way to torment the Israelis and there will be that much more hatred and desperation throughout the territories. In the short term though, the Israelis are creating facts on the ground and Arafat continues to exist. It is convenient for the leadership; miserable for the Real People. Amazingly, Israelis adapt and think of the present situation as better than tolerable. They don’t remember that the country was more pleasant a decade or two ago. I do remember and I can’t fathom how they can tolerate the present. Someday, after Arafat is gone, the world will wonder how several millions of people suffered because of him, how one man managed to hijack the aspirations of at least two countries for so many years, and why no one felt it was in their interest to get rid of him.

The H-1 Visa Program vs. Outsourcing – This program permits skilled labor to enter the US for several years under the sponsorship of employers and to then apply for green cards once they are here. The program is capped at a certain number of people per year. A few years ago, the quota was raised. It has never been met; then this year the quota was lowered and it was met 5 months into the year. My business is impacted because if there are no visas, there are no applications and therefore no evaluations for us to write. (We have other lines of business too, so don’t worry.) The reason I am raising the issue is that this debate usually centers around the argument that each one of these visa holders is taking a job away from an American because they will accept lower salaries. It’s not true – they are not doing the same jobs, and more important – today if we don’t bring them in, the American employer will simply outsource the same job to someone in the foreign country. It is better for us to have the person come into the US, pay taxes, bring his wife and kids and pay rent and eat dinner at Pizza Hut. The alternative is to have that guy stay in India and crunch codes from there. The outsourcing of call centers is having the effect of moving American jobs abroad, but it is also resulting in the sale of American technology and foreign investment and creating higher-class jobs inside the US. We also see that there are limits to what you can outsource in these areas. Calling someone in India to get someone to honor a next-day on-site service contract in Manhattan didn’t work for Dell or its customers and they stopped it. It is only in the past few years that certain jobs can be truly outsourced and it is concerning these jobs that the H1 program should be used to keep inside the US. I have reviewed national security debate papers about this subject and I think the program is a fair trade – some of these people take knowledge they gain in the US and use it against America, some of it is used to develop the country, and some of it is used to benefit the US. It is not a brain drain to the US – many people return to their countries and use the skills they built during their work in the US.

Gay Marriage – This seems to be a hot issue these days and I guess Global Thoughts has to have a position. I have been reading and discussing arguments on the issue and have been working toward a position. Obviously there are social, moral and economic imperatives to balance. It is also a bit tough for me at this moment as I am in the first year of my own marriage, trying to some extent to make sense of what marriage is all about. A recent Economist has this issue on its cover (and featured a couple with one of the two people wearing a skullcap, just to put matters over the top). Its editorial position was to support such marriages, noting that until 40 years ago, inter-racial marriages were illegal in some states as untraditional but no one in the mainstream would prohibit it now.  Even those who oppose gay marriages support the concept of civil unions – essentially saying you can have a union that is grounded in legal contract, but we don’t want to call it a marriage because the term marriage has some sort of secondary meaning, perhaps religious. This sticks our secular government into the business of preferring certain religious structures over others. Thus the Economist covers the issue, but doesn’t do so convincingly because it raises several possible definitions of Marriage and rejects each of them. Is it to have a child? Not everyone gets married to do this. Is it more than a legal contract between two people to share property? Presumably, if it is to be something more than a civil union. But what is it? The Economist doesn’t say.

What one must do in this matter is to define Marriage – not an obvious proposition to all. I think that marriage is not easily defined; for many years it was convenient to not have to define it and just support the general idea of it. Sorta like motherhood and apple pie – everyone supports the concept but lots of people hate eating apple pie. Contemporary living in a changing world amid changing roles for people demands a rethink of what the institution of marriage is, and it opens a pandora box that is likely to result in an Everything Goes...Live & Let Live scheme that will equate gay marriage to any other marriage if for no other reason than it has become too sticky to agree as to what Marriage in 2004 really means. Consider that half of them these days result in divorce and that in itself is a good reason to liberalize the definition of whatever it is that most people say they aspire to in their lives. At least we know we are dealing with semantics; it is not really an economic issue because no one is really trying to deny economic benefits to people that set up partnerships that look and feel like marriage relationships (and the courts in various Western countries aren’t allowing governments to deny them these benefits).

Religious people will hate this comment, but the issue of gay marriage really will come down to being viewed as a matter of semantics, because courts will have a hard time distinguishing between civil unions and marriage, and upholding the institution of marriage if it is defined as being a religious institution rather than a social institution. Also, the US Supreme Court recently ruled on a matter of homosexuality and sodomy and reversed earlier cases that had upheld laws criminalizing sodomy. This is Reality in the US in 2004. Sex in the City and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy are popular TV shows, and so is the L -Word, a show featuring lesbians. People are no longer shocked and revolted by the issue of homosexuality – it has been in their face enough that they  cannot deny it even if they don’t accept or like it. In an age where prominent conservative Republicans have their own marriage problems and gay relatives coming out of the closet, it is becoming harder to throw stones when you live in a glass house.

To give you a sense of where I will come out on this, look at my stated position on abortion. I am less swayed by considerations of freedom of choice and the prospect of murder (particularly as viability of a fetus becomes more real earlier and earlier) than I feel that the crux of the decision should be to look at the welfare of the child that will be born as the consequence of the decision not to have an abortion. Will that child be cared for or will it grow up cursing the day it was born? People don’t give enough thought to this part of the equation.

As a sidebar issue, this business of gender roles and institutions is very much a live issue within the Jewish religion. My wife recently attended a weekend symposium attended by over 1,000 people who are members of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance. They are discussing women’s issues in the religion. As women are increasingly educated, they are demanding more of a role within the religion and are rebelling against 2,000 year old laws that relegate women to second class status in situations such as communal prayers and study of Talmudic resources. It is not reasonable to expect that women in 2004 expect to be treated by the religion as they were for the past 2,000 years. But yet these women do not want to go outside the bounds of what the mainstream will accept. The only way this can turn out is that the religious leaders will redefine the mainstream in a manner that is more inclusive to women. The Jewish religion was more flexible 1,000 years ago than it has been during the past century when it was under attack by the Conservative and Reform movements. Now it is under attack from within more liberal Orthodox movements. Islam also finds itself similarly retreating during the past 2 centuries under attack from within – it is easy to withstand criticism from Western liberal newspapers but not from young people inside Saudi Arabia and Iran walking the streets of Jeddah and Teheran demanding change; how women fare in the new Iraq will be an amazing question for a country in which Islam will be the official religion under its new constitution just agreed to. Meanwhile, there are elements of the public around the world that resist some of these changes. A Middle East Big Brother type TV program (people live in a house together) was quashed by popular protest after 1,000 people marched on the Bahraini information ministry and our own Bible-belt fundamentalists are having some red meat thrown at them by having the Federal Communications Commission fining all sorts of shock-radio and TV programs huge fines for indecency. It's a great election year tactic by Republicans for Republicans, but Howard Stern now predicts his show will be off the air within a month. I find his show offensive, but it is rather funny and my brother listens to it regularly and likes it. So do many people. I don't have to turn on the radio and listen to him, but I think it would be ridiculous if the FCC declared him indecent and essentially shut him down. Freedom of speech means that we have to tolerate things we don't want to hear too; it's easy to tolerate only the stuff we like to hear -- you don't need a 200+ year old bill of rights to do that.

Returning to the marriage subject, let’s finish with something I can define and target that involves something more than semantics – your wallet.  I am more upset at the fact that the marriage penalty still exists in the US tax code – if two people file tax returns separately as single people, they pay significantly less tax than they do if they are married. The penalty is about $5,000 on a taxable income of $150,000. If the country wants to promote marriage as being good for society, it should not penalize married couples for being married. Considering that Republicans are in control of both the Congress and the presidency, it is an outrage that this state of affairs continues and I would prefer to hear less of their venting about gay marriages and more about the hypocrisy in our tax code about Marriage.

Economics – It is apparent that the Dollar will continue to be weak against the Euro. I don’t know if the Chinese are going to devalue their currency but it is becoming increasingly bandied about that a devaluation of perhaps 13% will occur later this year. The Japanese recovery owes itself to a good central banker who is employing smart monetary policies but the rest of the government does not pass real reforms. Are the tax cuts irresponsible? Maybe, but we shouldn’t be against deficits just for deficit sake. The percentage of GDP which is deficit is much lower than it was 20 years ago, and the Japanese have helped pull themselves out of recession by deficit spending. The Republicans are entitled to redefine what constitutes good economic policy if they have decided that they have learned new tricks over the past 20 years. I think that so far the Democrats have actually done a better job of dealing with the budget over the past 20 years; the Bush administration has done nothing to reduce the size of government, and it may be that they are going to create a horrible deficit legacy for the next generation. I just don’t know right now what the result will be. I do believe that real estate prices in the US are nuts and recommend that some people should just rent and not purchase. I recently bid for an apartment in Manhattan and bid over $100,000 above the listed price; my bid failed by almost $100,000. There was a 2 hour open house on Sunday from noon to 2pm; by 12:05 there had already been 25 people inside. You had until Wednesday 5pm to put in your best and final offer along with your financial statements showing proof of ability to purchase. It was obvious that the listed price was low to induce a bidding war, but this was ridiculous because how much over a listed price would anyone want to bid without feeling like a sucker? When the broker called to tell me I lost, I asked if I was on a short list to be called in case the deal fell through. I was told “Don’t even think about it.” The problem is that in this market, the price that was paid was on the market; but who wants to purchase something at market price when the market could go down 10-20% and you’d be out $100,000-200,000 and being stuck paying on an overblown mortgage. Warren Buffett just came out saying that the stock market and bonds are overvalued; when he speaks, markets listen, so I am sticking with my all-cash position for now. And when I read that workers are spending 2 hours of their salary just to pay for the gasoline to run their cars for the commute, I know that something is wrong because the American economy needs gasoline to be cheap in order to run and right now gas is too high.

Bush will be remembered for having done 2 important things in the economic sphere: both Americans and America refinanced its debt (home mortgages and the national debt) at substantially lower interest rates than before. These lock-ins will last for years into the future, and the rest of the world is paying for it -- the Japanese, Chinese, Europeans and everyone else who buys American paper.

Some good things are happening -- teenage pregnancies are down (boys more so than girls are calling for abstinence), and people are starting to shop and eat healthier. Over a period of time, if people get the message that they should modify their behavior in order to maintain health, they do. Wealthier people change first, and then other social classes follow, studies show.