Contractors assemble bleachers while building a basketball arena on the flight deck of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70). Navy Photo.
I am so far behind this morning that it seems hardly worth starting. I had a request from son Eric to drive him to Dulles to catch an early flight west and I could not pass up the opportunity to share a little time with him.
He won a lottery of some sort and got a ticket to the UNC-MSU basketball game to be held onboard USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) in San Diego Harbor. The inaugural Quicken Loans Carrier Classic basketball game will be played tomorrow on Veteran’s Day, Nov. 11.
He is traveling in his blues, since that is the uniform of the day for the game. He looked pretty squared-away when he stepped out of his high-rise in Ballston and threw his bags in the backseat of the Bluesmobile.
He was pretty jazzed.
I assume this stunt is intended to demonstrate the relevance of aircraft carriers in the budget environment that is coming.
Vinson’s gray, 95,000-ton hull is the one from which Scumbag bin Laden was dropped with appropriate ceremony into the Northern Arabian Sea. The game tomorrow will be used to seize the spotlight to showcase the Navy and its awe-inspiring, multi-billion-dollar aircraft carriers to the more than 3 million viewers expected to watch the game on ESPN.
My older boy called to tell me he would be open to doing something, since all the civilians in the government get the day off to honor the vets who have to work on the outside.
President Barack Obama, a passable hoopster himself, will be onboard Vinson for the game.
The role of the Nimitz-class supercarriers in modern warfare has been part of that discussion with critics questioning whether anti-ship weapons have turned them into white elephants that are too expensive to risk losing in a war. In 2015, the Navy plans to add to its fleet the Gerald R. Ford, the lead ship of a new three-ship class of supercarriers. Each is expected to cost about $9 billion.
Critics say the United States now has too many carriers, and the Navy can do the same missions with smaller, more economical vessels.
I think that is horseshit, but I am more than a little uneasy that my son could be onboard one of the behemoths when the Chinese lob a DF-31 nuclear-tipped ballistic missile at it in the South China sea. I am painfully aware that the next time nukes are used, they are liable to be in the maritime context when there is no evidence of what happened left behind.
With 11 carriers, the U.S. Navy has more than the rest of the navies on the planet combined, which is just the way I like it.
I actually did talk to a Swedish investment banker the other day about the situation in Europe, and it is grim. The bit on copper was quite true. I think they are going to have to play the inflation card; perhaps Chancellor Merkel can figure something out to save a currency. Certainly the Tories of old can be satisfied that they did not abandon the Pound, though of course when the house is on fire it is not much consolation that the milk money is on the counter in the kitchen.
There is a dreamy sense of sameness as the financial crisis has rolled from Greece to Spain and now to Italy.
By the way, Italy’s economy is ten times the size of Greece’s, and that has yet to find a permanent solution. Italy is too big to fail and too big to bail out. My pal in Colorado monitors the situation through several financial services. He sent me one account that was chilling this morning. I read it before I headed down to fire up the V-8 on the Bluesmobile and claw our way out to the Dulles access road:
The Summary from Barclays Capital went on to hit thirteen key points about why Italy is going to go down, but I will leave you with some key bullets out of the larger peice:
“Italy is now mathematically beyond point of no return – growth and austerity not enough to offset cost of debt- – ECB remains unwilling to be lender last resort on scale needed- (but) frankly will have hand forced by market given massive systemic risk.”
Barkley’s appears to be calling for a “quantitative easing” by the Central Bank, but the Germans have already been to the hyper-inflation show in the Weimar Republic, and you recall how well that turned out.
I was thinking about my market position on the way back from the airport, that and what to do about the situation in the little Village on the Bay.
The afternoon market close now serves to remind me to call Big Mama each day and monitor how she is doing.
Some surprising things on that front. She does not appear to miss Raven; has been getting up for breakfast, something that did not happen with his irregular sleeping habits, and she has been talking to the other residents as Carla (or someone) seems to be vectoring her to different tables at mealtimes.
Her delusion is profound and opaque; there is something about wanting to see us all clad in white; something about the babies, and the business that must be accomplished; the movie de jour is part of it, as is the menu and the people in the dining room, some of whom are actors, some owners of the facility, and others simply mad.
I intend to take her to an old friend’s house for Thanksgiving dinner, and leave Raven in his roost. Mac says not to take Mom on visits to The Bluffs to see him, and I am inclined to take his advice. This is so expensive that it almost boggles the mind. I doubt if the system is going to be able to take all of us Boomers into the dementia wing. I have no idea what to do about it; there is not enough money on earth to provide care for us.
Got to get organized here; I am not sure why. Not having sovereign debt, or much money, I can’t inflate my way out of this. And there is not an aircraft carrier to spare to sail away on.
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com