Paddy Landau

A Little About Me

As someone who has taken a long interest in what I call the "human condition", I studied philosophy (the practical kind, not the airy-fairy kind), psychiatry-as-a-hobby, Sigmund Freud, hypnosis, psychology, and the psychology of learning mathematics.

So when I went to university, I chose psychiatry or psychology, right? Nope. Like a darned idiot, I chose an entirely different career, one that didn't match me at all.

Oh well, never mind, it did me well until I retrained and became a hypnotherapist!

Actually, one of my friends used to ask people around a dinner table whether they'd gone into their chosen careers. Interestingly, almost none of them had.

What is it about people? "The humans are crazy", Obelix once said, and I think he hit the nail on the head!

Philosophy

Why has philosophy had such a bad rap? Consider the first Harry Potter book and film, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. This was released in the USA as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, because it was believed that the Americans would respond negatively to the word philosopher.

I think it's because many modern philosophers have abdicated their responsibility, worrying not about people, the planet and everything important, but unimportant stuff — or even nothing at all.

Perhaps the real philosophers, as I did, went into different careers.

Isn't it interesting that the really famous philosophers have been dead for centuries already? Isn't it time for philosophy to retake its rightful place and start to improve human (and animal) life again?

The Zoo

Talking of animals, my wife recently started going crazy about them. She's converted a part of our house into a mini-zoo. A friend remarked, "you'll soon have to start charging people to visit you!"

We now have 16 fish, two lovebirds, a budgie (we used to have another, which laid eggs, but for some reason the budgies destroyed them and then the female died), a lop-eared rabbit, a dog, and two cats (a third one — my favourite — died after a cruel illness).

… Oh yes, and four wonderful children!

(By the way, the yellow budgie on the right is a very wet one! He flew into soapy water and I had to rinse him off.)

Latest update: We now have another rescued budgie!

Snow…

I was brought up in a hot, hot climate, and always wondered what snow was like. Now, I live in a part of the UK that hardly ever has snow even when the rest of the country is blanketed by it. So it was with absolute pleasure that we had a good snowfall earlier this year. Although it's nothing much, I found its beauty quite awesome.

I don't know what it is that makes me feel something tingling inside when I look out the window to see white trees and ground, with snowflakes gently floating down. As I look at the unfamiliar bright white scene of glory, warm and cosy in my house, the soft inviting snowflakes flaking down, the tingle becomes an electric buzz in my entire body.

I love snow!

… and the Credit Crunch

Well, the philosopher in me is starting to talk again!

Why is it that all reasonable economists were warning about the problems with the finances two or three years before the crunch came, and yet politicians and the mass media blithely ignored them? How is it that respected economists were warning about subprime mortgages, excess credit, the Fed's worrisome disregard (for the second time) of the building bubble…

… and no one listened!

Watching the whole mess unfold, for me, was like watching a snowball building, slowly slowly, larger and larger, with everyone in the village below refusing to look up.

When the credit crunch happened, it was like the snowball suddenly landing on the village, and everyone crying, "But we never saw that coming!"

Doh!

As Supertramp wrote in Fool's Overture (I've abbreviated it):

History recalls how great the fall can be …
"Too late!" the prophets cry.
Called the man a fool, striped him of his pride;
Everyone was laughing up until the day he died.

But guess what I believe. When the next bubble builds, excesses start again, and the economists start ringing the warnings…

… The Fed, the mass media, the politicians will all blithely ignore it again, and surprise, surprise, that giant snowball will start building again!

I guess it's these types of problems that led me to become passionate about personal finances and how people just don't know how to manage what they have. So many people get themselves into enormous debt!

The Great Credit Card Experiment

As an experiment, I decided to find out just how much debt I could get into (in theory) before the credit card companies said, "No, Paddy, that's enough"!

Every time I got junk mail advertising a new credit card, I would apply. There were two conditions, though: First, the card had to be free (I wasn't going to pay them for this!). Second, it had to allow my wife a card, too; otherwise I'd spend all day filling out forms! I had to be selective somehow.

I also made a point of being honest about my finances. I didn't lie and claim that I earned more than I really did (actually, I told them I earned less that I really did).

After collecting well over £100,000 worth of credit lines, would you believe that I gave up before the credit card companies did! In all that time, only one credit card was refused to me, but that same company had already given me a credit card anyway!

My wife framed most of the cards and they sit on my wall (all cancelled, of course), testament to how irresponsible people can be…

… And how irresponsible banks are. I have no sympathy whatsoever for their reckless lending. The banks deserve what they get.

(Actually, there are some banks that turned up their noses at the subprime market. They were laughed at then, but guess who's laughing now?)

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