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Security Theater Is Less Fun Than Real Theater

As Denise has mentioned, my children enjoy watching the YouTube video of the Harry Potter Puppet Pals called “The Mysterious Ticking Noise.” If you’re not familiar with it, take a few minutes to watch it now. Actually, go ahead and watch it even if you’ve already contributed to the video’s more than fifty million views; it’s good to laugh. I’ll wait.

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Welcome back.

My speech capable children all have the lines from this video memorized. Even the fourteen month old boy watches it with rapt attention and flails his arms as Snape and Harry butt heads. The two year old asks to watch it regularly. (Her other favorite is the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah, so maybe we’re not total parental failures.) Last night she finished watching “Harra Potta” for the fourth or fifth consecutive time and toddled off happily chortling, “Isa pipe bomb. Boom! Waa hha haa.” Denise turned to me and said, “We’re going to have to watch her around airport security. She’s liable to get us in trouble.”

It was a quiet evening, so I later had time to think about what would happen if my twenty five pound child were to repeat that line around the crackerjack TSA staff at a US airport. Of course my initial reaction as a mostly rational person is that they would either ignore her or think she was cute. Clearly she is only a threat to national security if people stop suddenly to look at the angel-faced pixie and cause the person behind them to also stop suddenly. Oh, and the second person is Ted Kennedy and the sudden stopping causes cardiac arrest. (Too soon for jokes about Kennedy’s health? Meh.) Denise’s comment must have been a little joke.

Then my realist nature took over and I recognized that it is far more likely in the current environment that she and Denise (because let’s face it, I hardly ever travel with the children) would be detained for questioning, have their names added to all kinds of naughty lists, and be traumatized for life. The comedy, as the line goes, is that it’s serious.

A few years ago, Denise and I flew from London to Geneva for a Swiss getaway. We both carried US passports. Upon landing, I prepared for the expected hour-long process of clearing customs and actually getting into the country. To my surprise when we approached the booth for Non-EU & Non-Swiss citizens, we were told to walk right through. The security staff didn’t even examine our passports. I was so shocked by this that I actually said to a customs official, “Are you sure you don’t need to check anything? We’re foreigners only planning to be here a few days.” He just chuckled and waved us past.

Now think for a moment about what happens when you go through security at a US airport. I’m willing to bet that your heart rate accelerates and your breathing shortens even thinking about it. Are you any safer as a result of all that inconvenience and hassle? Certainly there is a need to try to keep bad people from doing bad things with aircraft, but I don’t believe our current travel security system does anything like this. It’s very good at inconveniencing travelers, may conceivably stop really stupid terrorists, and probably requires legitimate evil doers to add an extra fifteen minutes of thinking into their plotting schedule. There is no way it has actually made mass public travel any safer. I suggest, with no proof at all but a very high level of conviction, that if bad people want to bring down a commercial aircraft and were willing to die in the process they could do it with less hassle than one American family goes through on a round trip domestic flight.

That rant is basically a long introduction for this article, which you should read now. It won’t make you feel any better, but it should make you think. Again, I’ll wait because I’m patient like that.

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Come on America, can’t we do any better than this? Oh wait, the fact that millions of people think Sarah Palin is just a gosh darn fantastic choice for Vice President tells me we can’t.

Sad Guys on Trading Floors

Industry specific humor is often less amusing to outsiders than those who live the jokes think it will be, but I'm willing to bet most people will enjoy at least a few of these.

I’m no financial genius, but I’m guessing that the stock market is run by various sizes and colors of men with 60s-era phones attached to their ears.

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“Tantrum Strategy.” Just hold your breath until someone approves a bailout package.

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Jazzhands will not save us now, my friend.

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More funny here.

Which Do You Prefer: Pollyanna or Cassandra?

It's no secret that the global bank for which I work is endangered. Following the failures of Bear and Lehman, the rushed acquisition of Merrill, nationalization of a few European banks, and the radical restructuring of Goldman and Morgan Stanley the world is not a particularly safe place for an over levered financial firm in an industry plagued by excess capacity. If you surveyed those who care about such things, I'm confident my employer would be on most people's top five list of firms at greatest risk of failure.

In what I assume is either an effort to make employees feel better so they don't cancel their $2400 monthly subscription or a thinly veiled attempt to mock the Swiss, Bloomberg today published an article titled, "Zurichers Say UBS 'Won't Go Bankrupt' Like Swissair." Sweet! A major financial news source thinks that our stock price, down a mere 70%, isn't going to zero. What a welcome ray of sunshine in a dark world. Maybe we'll also have jobs and possibly even make a little money a year or two from now.

What astute financial analysts were quoted in the article to support the cheery conclusion that bankruptcy will be avoided? I'm glad you asked. In order of appearance we have a 65-year-old financial consultant standing outside the bank's headquarters, a finance professor, a bratwurst-eating tram driver, and a mailman. I for one feel much better knowing that an under utilized consultant (who has time to stand around outside buildings and talk to reporters in this environment?), an academic from an institution no one has heard of, and two blue collar workers think everything is going to be fine.

Can't wait for the 11 o'clock news when BoBo the Omniscient chimp will provide his global economic commentary.

He Said, She Said

Last week every person on my floor had to attend one of two mandatory diversity training sessions. For three hours. While the financial world was blowing up someone in HR decided the best possible use of our time for half an afternoon was discussing skits about new and exciting topics like same gender attraction, cultural sensitivity, and male/female interaction. Blah, blah, blah seminars are boring etc. We've all had to sit through them and undoubtedly will have to in the future. I could complain for an hour about the uselessness of these events, but that would hardly be entertaining or novel.

The reason for this post is that one of my partners gave the best answer I've ever heard to a diversity question. After a skit illustrating challenges faced by women in an environment that is overwhelmingly male, the seminar facilitator asked what our firm could do to address inequality and the perception of inequality between the genders. The facilitator turned to my partner for his thoughts. He leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers under his chin and paused to consider. There must have been twenty seconds of silence as anticipation rose in the room for his profound answer. Having made up his mind about the best course of action for this thorny problem, he looked up and with the eyes of eighty people on him slowly responded in perfect deadpan, "Well...we could hire robots...."

To say his response was not what the facilitator expected is a fantastic understatement. She looked like someone had kidney punched her as the room burst into laughter. From that point forward she was off her footing and the seminar ended more than half an hour early.

I highly recommend you consider responding similarly at your next opportunity for political incorrectness.