mariahdrx: Moms Making Money

From Claire Berlinski in City Journal:

You see, about a month ago, I asked my mother to bail me out. I knew she’d do it. She’s done it before. She sent me money she’s been saving toward my retirement. I resolved to stop spending money on stupid things. (There was really no excuse for that lamp, Mom, I know. Sorry! In my defense, I was sure there was a genie in it.)

With my mom paying my rent, I’ve been able to charge less for what I write and stay in the black. Voilà, I’m selling a cheaper product (for now) than Reuters and AP. That will teach them where to stuff their “good investment decisions” and their “economies of scale.” I fired the guy who does my odd jobs—it was painful, but it had to be done. So, congratulations to me! I’m making it in this tough business climate, with a little help from Mom. America’s back! And if I’m broke again in a year, I’ll hit her up again. (Don’t forget, Mom, that you really have no choice: no matter what you do, I’m still going to be a huge financial drag on you. If I fail, I’ll end up coming home with all my cats. You don’t want me sleeping on your couch, do you? And you sure don’t want to see what my cats would do to that couch. Antique, I believe it is?)

All of this is, alas, a perfectly accurate description of my financial life. The reader may wonder about my mom’s wisdom in going along with this plan. That’s between me and her—she loves me, and it’s her money, not yours. The money that went to GM was yours, however. And I suppose you must love GM as if it’s your profligate kid, because surely you could not be so credulous as to believe these reports about the spectacular success of the bailout.

There was a rush to buy GM shares last Thursday, when the company, which emerged from bankruptcy restructuring last summer, held an IPO. The company has been drowned in taxpayer cash. It’s going to be fine in the short term. No one should be surprised by this. Anyone—and any company—can get back in the black in the short term if someone gives it a ton of money. And who wouldn’t want to invest in a company that everyone knows won’t be allowed to go down? All the merchants in my neighborhood would lend me money, too, if I asked, confident that their loan would be repaid. A “generous American mom” sounds pretty good to them.

Of course, GM is paying back its new loans, though this doesn’t help investors who hold old GM stock; that’s worthless. By the way, I’m also considering stiffing my creditors. The GM example proves that it will result in an immediate improvement of my balance sheet. GM’s production numbers have been increasing, and mine have, too: it’s a lot easier to write when you’ve got peace of mind. Whether anyone will buy the stuff I’m writing, God knows, but my word count is definitely up, and that, apparently, is the number that matters.

Note that GM is still producing those gas-guzzling pickups and SUVs that no one seemed to want before. Great news for me: I’ll just keep writing about the arcana of Turkish constitutional politics. It’s what the market should want. Turkish politics are fascinating. I don’t know what’s wrong with Americans. If they understood what was good for them, they’d want to be better informed about Turkey. (They’d want that Volt electric car, too. I hear it’s much better for the environment.)

Naturally, I’ll pay my mother back. Here’s how: I’m going to have her put a small percentage of all the money she’s given me in an escrow account, which I’ll call a “working capital” account. Then I’ll transfer the rest of my assets to her. (Good news, Mom: you own seven cats and seven litter boxes.) Then I’m going to use the money from that escrow account to pay her back at an interest rate no one but my own mother would give me. As soon as I empty the escrow account, I’ll declare the loans repaid. What do you mean, that makes no sense? That’s just what the U.S. governmentdid for GM, and no one finds that problematic, do they? Never mind that the cash part of the loan has been repaid from TARP, or that this in fact represents only about 15 percent of the total bailout, or that the rest remains tied up in the automotive equivalent of cats and litter boxes. By the way, I’m thinking of bundling all my liabilities into a separate company, just like GM. I’ll call the company “Some other Claire who can deal with the creditors, never heard of that Claire.”

Read the whole thing here.

The Halo franchise's quest to produce a feature-length film has been almost as epic as the games themselves, with Peter Jackson, Neill Blomkamp and Steven Spielberg all making appearances as the real-life drama has unfolded. Even though Bungie and Microsoft are parting ways post-"Reach," finding a way to turn Halo into a success outside of games is something Microsoft wants to see happen, whether it means working with a studio or bringing it to HBO as a TV series.

"There will be a Halo movie. We don't need a movie. But we'd like a movie," Halo franchise development director Frank O'Connor told Harold Goldberg of the New York Videogame Critics Circle. "We'd like the moms of gamers to see the movies because they would love our characters. Maybe we’ll even fund it ourselves."

O'Connor explained that Microsoft is keeping their options open, too.

"We'd love to see Halo as a television series," he said. "Look what HBO did with Band of Brothers or even Rome. Something like that would work because the Halo universe is so vast."

O'Connor was reportedly approached by a high-level network executive the Future of Television East conference in New York last week, and though the exec agreed to bring large amounts of money to the table, he wouldn't be the first to try securing the rights to Master Chief.

In the post-Bungie era, there's going to be a lot of pressure on MS to make sure they do right by Halo, whatever happens. Either a film or a "Sopranos"-sized TV series would be fine by me as long as they make it look good, but I'm sure I'm not alone in wondering where that exec was from.

Would you rather see Halo become a film or a TV series? Do you trust Microsoft to make the right choices? Share your opinions with us in the comment section below.

Tags halo, halo movie, microsoft, microsoft game studios

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mariahdrx

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Moms Making Money

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