Total BS

I recently joined PhillyCarShare, primarily for travel related to work.It really is surprisingly simple, except for the whole figuring out how to use the gas card thing. It took a call to figure out what the pin was. And then another call to figure out why the car wouldn’t start (it won’t start unless the gas card is returned to its holder). But I suppose those problems could’ve been avoided if I had read the manual in more detail. But their customer service was prompt and polite, so no big sweat.I’ve decided to use this as an opportunity to test drive all different sorts of cars. Today I checked out a Toyota Scion xB.Pros:

• It drive fairly smooth and is fairly responsive, especially for a car that’s somewhere in between a station wagon and jeep in size.

Cons:

• It has a weird size and shape that made me constantly misjudge how big/small it was. It’s too big to feel close to the road. But too small to intimidate other drivers. Ultimately, not ideal for city driving.
• It takes forever to accelerate. You can finish whole novels and movies in the time it takes to go 0-60. Although once you get to a high speed, like I mentioned it feels pretty steady.

My verdict: Good for those who need space or like reading or watching movies while driving, but I will never rent one again.

I’m not an economist or an expert by any means. But my award for dumb quote of the day goes to Michael Metz, chief investment strategist at Oppenheimer in New York, who in speaking about the Fed’s 75 point rate cut stated:

“Unfortunately they [the Fed] have no power to reverse what in my opinion is the worst post-war recession”

Now, disregarding whether you’re a bear or bull, and whether you think we will hit or already have it a recession, and how bad you think a potential recession may be, it’s irresponsible statements like the above that have sent people panicking and the market crashing.

I would like to know based on what economic indicators, Metz is basing his above statement on. Admittedly, none of them has looked particularly hot, but besides the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank’s regional manufacturing index huge decline in December, nothing’s been terrible. Unemployment, inflation, consumer confidence - all not good, but not terrible.

Now, I can see things getting worse before getting better. I can see it getting much worse actually. But to claim that we’re in the worst post-war recession, when the numbers don’t justify us being anywhere near the dot com bust or even the early 90’s recession, not to mention the whole stagflation thing wasting the 70’s away, is ludicrous. I can only assume that Metz made a forward looking statement and was misquoted, or is completely incompetent.

Note to self, stay away from Oppenheimer Funds.

Is the subject of an e-mail I received in my inbox today. It seems the marketing department has been busy over the holiday break. Apparently, Wharton has finally decided to update their alumni connection site by adding some social networking features and basic user interaction improvements (details here). This is a cause célèbre, because it means at least one part of Penn has finally decided to enter the 21st century. Who knows what it’ll look like, but I imagine it has to be better than the previous Wharton Connect - which was so useful, I visited once, registered and promptly forgot my user name and password. Luckily, my life has not been impacted too terribly despite those turn of events.

Now if only Penn would do something for their Alumni Connections site so that it could finally graduate from the short bus.