wrongologist – Page 192 – The Wrongologist

Memorial Day 2016

Thank You Armed Forces

Every year, the Wrongologist reminds blog readers that Memorial Day was called Decoration Day for more than 100 years, ending in 1971. It was established by an order issued by Gen. John Logan, the national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic. This is from Gen. Logan’s order:

The 30th of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land…

Back then, it was our most solemn holiday. It was first observed on May 30, 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery, a tradition we still follow today.

The Civil War claimed more lives than any conflict in US history, requiring the establishment of the country’s first national cemeteries. Drew Gilpin Faust’s book, The Republic of Suffering-Death and the American Civil War (2008) reminds us just how deadly the Civil War was: 620,000 dead soldiers, (2% of the US population at the time), at least 50,000 dead civilians, and an estimated 6 million pounds of human and animal carcasses to deal with on battlefields.

When the Civil War began, neither army had burial details, graves registration units, means to notify next of kin, or provisions for decent burial. They had no systematic way to identify or count the dead, and until 1867, no national cemeteries in which to bury them. In an ironic twist, in 1866, after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the Union Army opened an office in Ford’s Theater to record deaths, house the war records and assist families to find lost loved ones. In 1893, the building collapsed, killing 22.

The mortality rate in the South exceeded that of any country in WWI. In addition, the South lost nearly 2/3rds of its wealth in the War.

Decoration Day became Memorial Day when Congress passed the National Holiday Act of 1971, which made us observe national holidays on Mondays, creating three-day weekends for We, the People. So, along with parades, picnics and mega-sales on the web and in the malls, many think that the holiday celebrates the start of summer.

Instead, please stop and remember the people who died in our wars. Do that irrespective of whether you “believe” in a particular war.

Memorial Day is a time to meditate on the difference between right and wrong wars. Mr. Obama spoke in Japan last Friday, walking a fine line, remembering the atomic weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but not calling WWII and our actions against Japan “wrong”.

Another thing to remember is that our government owes our all-volunteer military policies and policy decisions that are worthy of their sacrifice. But, our government rarely makes decisions that are completely worthy of such sacrifice.

Let’s also give some thought to this quote from Andrew Bacevich:

With its military active in more than 150 countries, the United States today finds itself, if anything, overextended. Our principal security challenges — the risks to the planet posed by climate change, the turmoil enveloping much of the Islamic world and now spilling into the West, China’s emergence as a potential rival to which Americans have mortgaged their prosperity — will not yield to any solution found in the standard Pentagon repertoire. Yet when it comes to conjuring up alternatives, the militarized history to which Americans look for instruction has little to offer.

Ask Trump and Clinton what will be different if they become Commander-In-Chief. Which one will address climate change, the rise of China, or the near-civil war in the Greater Middle East?

Finally, when you think about policies worthy of sacrifice, here is a Memorial Day tune from Warren Zevon: “The Envoy”, from the album of the same name. The song was written in 1981, back when we thought our issues in the Middle East were rare. It was inspired by Philip C. Habib, who was President Reagan’s special envoy in the Lebanon crisis.

That was the start of something that hasn’t achieved much. The US currently has 48 Special Envoys, but you can’t see any peace from where we sit.

OK, the song isn’t “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” or, “Werewolves of London,” but Zevon was one of the best and brightest. Here is “The Envoy”:

These 34 year-old lyrics about the Middle East could be tomorrow’s headlines. Is there a threat to world peace? Oh yeah, us.

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – May 29, 2016

Californians will be pleased to know that when Donald Trump becomes president, he can stop their drought overnight. California just went through the driest four-year period on record.

But Trump isn’t sold. He told supporters in Fresno, CA that the dry spell is bogus. Trump said the state was denying water to Central Valley farmers to prioritize the Delta smelt, a native California fish nearing extinction — or as Trump called it: “a certain kind of three-inch fish.” He told the crowd:

We’re going to solve your water problem. You have a water problem that is so insane. It is so ridiculous where they’re taking the water and shoving it out to sea…

At least we know where Trump stands on the issue:

If I win, believe me, we’re going to start opening up the water so that you can have your farmers survive.

Never mind that this is a state, not a federal issue, because Trump will win on the environment too.

In other news, Hill’s email problem gives her a few hurdles:

COW Hillarys Hurdles

So far, we’ve heard what we already knew, she broke a rule that others had broken before her. Of course, to Republicans, breaking an agency rule is proof she’s broken the law. Maybe, but rules ain’t the same as the law. She needs to put this behind her, or face death by a thousand cuts.

We got our first look at Hill’s emails:

Bill & Hill feel the Bern in CA:

COW kids in car

Trump and Bernie wanted to debate. You know who the target was:

COW Trump Bernie

Apparently, we have no antibiotic for the Superbug:

COW Superbug

The GOP plans to make the transgender toilet rule a centerpiece in the campaign:

COW Toilet

Are Underwater Car Loans Sustainable?

The auto industry has had a spectacular run since we bailed them out in 2009. We saved it because the auto industry is crucial to the US economy and jobs. Auto sales have accounted for 21% of total retail sales so far in 2016.

The trickle-down effect is huge, from transporting new cars via truck and rail to financing and insuring them, and collecting the tax revenue they generate for state and local governments, sales of cars generate lots of jobs and money for our economy.

But the seven-year boom may be near its top.

Take underwater car loans: Bill wants to buy a new car. His current car has a trade-in value of $20,000. But he owes $25,000 on it because when he bought it new a few years ago, he financed it for 84 months to keep the monthly payment low. He also asked the dealer to roll the amount for tag, title, and license fees into the loan, along with the $2,000 he was upside down on his trade. So he buys a new $30,000 car that now costs $35,000. He may consider financing this with car title loans near me, or he may have other options he can take.

The car is financed with a 4% interest rate loan. If Bill took a five year loan, he would start accumulating positive equity-where the car’s market value becomes greater than its loan balance-midway in the fourth year. However, there are loans that might be able to help for example those that are similar to Ikano Bank VISA as well as looking loans before they take them out. If he took an eight year loan instead, he would be $9000 underwater at the same time, and won’t start accumulating any positive equity until the end of the seventh year:

Positive Equity

Source: Money Sense

So just how big is the problem of negative equity? Since 2011, the number of vehicles traded in with negative equity has ballooned by 37%, and underwater auto loans now account for a record 31% of all vehicles traded in:

Underwater Car Loans

(Chart by Chad Champion, at Bonner & Partners):

One reason negative equity is rising is that lenders have extended the duration of car loans to keep monthly payments affordable. If a customer has a lower monthly payment, she/he’s likely to owe more than the vehicle is worth for a longer period. Bloomberg reported that the percentage of car loans that are longer than six years was 29% in 2015, up from just 9.6% in 2010.

Growth in loans to subprime borrowers is also driving growth in auto sales. Experian Automotive reported last month that poor credit consumers (subprime) now make up a record 20.8% of the new auto loan market – more than one in five new auto loans are going to subprime borrowers. We remember subprime from the housing fiasco of 2008. Subprime is back, but not yet causing alarm bells to ring.

Subprime borrowers pay higher rates: Average rates for subprime loans were 10.36% in the fourth quarter of 2015 while the poorest subprime borrowers averaged 13.31%. At the same time, new car buyers with excellent credit paid 2.7% interest.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has noticed the problem. In its most recent Semiannual Risk Perspective, the banking regulator warned: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Underwriting practices and weak loan structures in auto lending are most concerning in banks with high concentrations to try Auto Finance Online. Strong auto loan growth alone does not pose systemic risk…Even as banks have increased capital levels, auto loan portfolios represent greater than 25% of capital at about 15% of banks.

The OCC worries that the rapid growth of auto loan balances are not a problem per se, but the “extended durations of loans caused by lengthening maturity schedules” and the rising loan-to-value ratios are a concern. Together, they “create a longer period of time that banks and consumers are in a negative equity position.”

This is what happens when the players in the auto sales game, both the manufacturers and financiers game the system to front-load sales and profits, thus paving the way for an eventual reckoning.

And here is the other issue: When we export manufacturing jobs to places such as Mexico (who now manufactures for Ford, Chrysler, GM, VW, Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, and Honda and exports 70% of the cars it manufactures to the US), we lose the purchasing power of all those people who used to have jobs in the US auto industry. So corporate America’s solution is to make credit cheap and easy so that working stiffs can leverage themselves even more in order to buy a new car. Obviously, some loans are needed at certain times in peoples lives, if you are looking at how to get a loan there are many websites that can give you a guide.

To be sure, the car buyers are culpable, but the system relies on foolish people to go deeper into debt in order to fuel the system.

Impressive boom to possible bust ? this show is brought to you by corporate America, with support from the Federal Reserve.

Will We See a Recession Soon?

With Trump vs. Clinton vs. Sanders sucking all of the oxygen out of the news cycle, it is probable that you missed the release by the Federal Reserve on May 18^th of its delinquency and charge-off data for all commercial banks in the first quarter. It isn’t a pretty picture.

Heres a few nuggets:

Delinquencies of commercial and industrial (C&I) loans at all banks, after hitting a low point in Q4 2014 of $11.7 billion, have ballooned. C&I loans are classified delinquent when they are 30 or more days past due.
Between Q4 2014 and Q1 2016, delinquencies have increased by 137% to $27.8 billion. Currently, they are halfway to the all-time peak during the Financial Crisis in Q3 2009 of $53.7 billion. And theyre higher than they were in Q3 2008, when Lehman Brothers melted down.

Below is a chart of delinquencies released by the Board of Governors of the Fed. The shaded areas are times of economic recession. Wolf Richter of Wolf Street added the emphasis in red to point out where we stand in relationship to the 2008 Lehman moment:

C&I Deliq Q1 16

As you can see from the chart, business loan delinquencies are usually a leading indicator of economic trouble. They begin rising at the end of the credit cycle since loans made in the good times start to go bad when the economic situation changes. Then, the obligations of interest payments and loan repayments begin to pose a problem for weaker borrowers whose sales, instead of rising as expected when times were good, may be flat or shrinking while expenses can be rising. Suddenly, there is not enough money to service the loan.

It is however important to also consider Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDLs). Although no one can accurately predict what might happen in the future to an absolute degree of certainty, economists should always consider the possibility that we might see an increase in businesses seeking SBA eidl status in the event of a recession.

That being said, this all started with the oil and gas sector reacting to lower crude oil prices in 2015, but it has moved beyond the oil patch. Total US commercial bankruptcy filings in April, 2016 rose 3% from March, and are up 32% from a year ago, to 3,482, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute.

This is happening at an interesting time.

First, the health of the economy will be a huge deal in the General Election. Both Trump and Clinton have a stake in saying it isn’t as good as it could be. Yet, it is highly unlikely that we will be in a recession in November 2016, because our current economic momentum will carry us for at least another 6 months.

Second, the Fed is now indicating that it believes the economy is strong enough to raise rates for a second time this year, perhaps as soon as June, according to the Feds recent Open Market Committee minutes. That supports the idea that no recession is imminent.

But we still have this pesky loan delinquency data.

Loan delinquencies must be cured within a specified time. If not, they’re taken from the delinquency bucket and dropped into the default bucket. If defaults are not cured within a specified time, the bank deems a portion (or all) of the loan balance uncollectible and writes it off, therefore moving it out of default and into the write-off bucket. This is a factor in many different loan types, such as the usda business loans on the market.

That’s why the delinquency statistics usually do not get very large loans and don’t stay delinquent for a very long period.

Of course, there are other loans that might be impacted by these trends too. For example, it would be interesting to analyze the trajectory for merchant funding options such as a business cash advance loan for businesses in need of a financial boost. Ultimately, only time will tell what the future holds for loans and the financial sector in general.

Regardless, the Fed has painted itself into a corner. They have to raise rates because low rates are destroying many pension funds and they hurt retirees who rely heavily on interest-bearing investments. Pension funds have been modeled on interest rates of between 6%-8%, which have not been seen for at least 10 years.

But, a Fed rate hike would add more risk of more loans becoming delinquent.

And the largest American corporations are awash with the debt that they used to fund buy-backs of their shares. That debt has to be renewed periodically. If rates rose high enough to help pension funds, it could wound quite a few large companies.

If that wasn’t bad enough, South America, Europe, and the Chinese are looking increasingly fragile. Even if the Fed engineers a domestic miracle of sorts, it may not be enough. The financial world can be a minefield when we are trying to hang on to our hard-earned money.

So, prepare to hear both Trump and Hillary tell you they have the answers.

Since their global corporate benefactors now rule the world, they should be able to figure out what to do with it.

Monday Wake-up Call – May 23, 2016

The subject of the day is the continued saber-rattling by our military. Recently, two retiring US Generals made goodbye speeches indicating that Russia is the biggest threat facing America. As Crooked Timber said:

Russia? Really? I guess there ain’t no money in ISIS and Al Qaeda. You don’t need strategic bombers, huge mechanized armies and aircraft carriers to fight them.

Equally disturbing are the concurrent mind games being played in the military strategy establishment. Take the RAND Corporation. RAND has run numerous war games which pit Russia against NATO in the Balkans. Their conclusion is always the same: If Russian tanks and troops rolled into the Balkans tomorrow, outgunned and outnumbered NATO forces would be overrun in under three days. Scary!

RAND argues that NATO has been caught napping by a resurgent and unpredictable Russia, which has begun to boost defense spending after having seized the Crimean peninsula in Ukraine and intervened in support of pro-Moscow separatists in eastern Ukraine. In their report RAND said:

The games’ findings are unambiguous: As currently postured, NATO cannot successfully defend the territory of its most exposed members…

Underlying this, is the insanity of the geopolitical outlook that dominates the national security lobby in Washington. The same day as the RAND report was released, Defense Secretary Ash Carter unveiled plans to add more weapons and armored vehicles to pre-positioned stocks in Eastern Europe. The new $3.4 billion plan (that’s the annual cost folks) adds another brigade to the mix, but the soldiers would be based in the US, rotating in to Europe for a few months at a time. So, that’s politically acceptable, assuming the next president can find the money.

But, Carter’s commander in Europe, Gen. Philip Breedlove, commander of US European Command, released on his blog that there is no:

Substitute for an enduring forward deployed presence that is tangible and real. Virtual presence means actual absence.

Lots of agreement between these boys.

And, in an article in Politico Mark Perry discussed the testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee of a panel of senior Army officers, in which they claimed that the Army is now in danger of being “out-ranged and outgunned” in the next war that the Army is in danger of becoming “too small to secure the nation”. Yikes!

While their testimony made headlines in the major media, Politico reported that a large number of former senior Army officers, rolled their eyes:

That’s news to me…Swarms of unmanned aerial vehicles? Surprisingly lethal tanks? How come this is the first we’ve heard of it?

The unnamed General went on: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

These guys want us to believe the Russians are 10 feet tall. There’s a simpler explanation: The Army is looking for a purpose, and a bigger chunk of the budget. And the best way to get that is to paint the Russians as being able to land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time…What a crock.

All of this is political fodder for Obama’s critics in Congress who complain that the President isn’t taking us into the next war fast enough.

So it’s time we all wake up to this maneuvering behind our backs. Maneuvering that is designed to have us spend waaay more money on defense, because, Putin.

To help you wake up, give a listen to a rarely-heard tune by Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger, “Ye Playboys & Ye Playgirls Ain’t a Gonna Change My World”, recorded live in 1963 at the Newport Folk Festival, when Dlyan was still a folk singer, two years before he would be booed off the main stage at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival:

Put in context of the times: Dylan was being called the “Voice of a Generation”. Seeger adds an endorsement of the fed-up young artist who was already one of the key singers of topical songs in the sixties. For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can listen to the tune here.

Sample Lyrics:

You insane tongues of war talk
Ain’t a-gonna guide my road,
Ain’t a-gonna guide my road,
Ain’t a-gonna guide my road.
You insane tongues of war talk
Ain’t a-gonna guide my road,
Not now or no other time.

Please remember what Voltaire said:

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

THAT has always been the strategy of the military-industrial complex. Arguing over defense budgets, equipment procurement, force strength, is pointless.

Today, the money is just not there to do much more for the military.

The critical debate must be how to fix the economy, which drives the size and strength of our military.

And ultimately, our national security.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – May 22, 2016

The 60 Minutes team that‘s working upstairs is pretty good, but it’s doubtful they are all angels. RIP Morley:

COW 60 Mins

Trump had a do-over interview with Megyn Kelly. Nothing happened:

COW Megyn

Trump refuses to show his tax returns, it’s none of our business:

COW None of yer Biz

The debate about which bathrooms to use continued:

COW Uterus Control

Congress shows it isn’t up to dueling with mosquitoes:

COW Zika Funding

TSA is the curse that never ends:

COW TSA 1

The Pant Load Party

Happy Friday! You are busy, and don’t need a long-form note from Wrongo. But, here are a few items you may have missed that accurately describe the Republican Party today:

First, The GOP didn’t follow its own rules during a vote on Thursday. The subject was a measure to ensure protections for the LGBT community in federal contracts, and it failed to pass after “initially passing” during the time allotted for members to vote. Then, the Republican leadership urged their members to change their votes. The leadership kept the vote open as they pressured members to change sides, allowing lawmakers switch their votes without following the “Regular Order” process of walking to the well at the front of the chamber.

By changing their votes, the House GOP inserted a poison pill that overrides Obama’s executive order banning LGBTQ discrimination in federal defense contracts. From The Hill:

Initially, it appeared Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney’s (D-NY) amendment had passed, as 217 “yes” votes piled up over 206 “no” votes when the clock ran out. The measure needed 213 votes to pass. But it eventually failed, 212-213, after a number of Republican lawmakers changed their votes from “yes” to “no” after the clock had expired.

Here is an issue on which the presidential candidates of the two parties seem to agree: Funding infrastructure, or at least, funding roads.

Over the past 50 years, US investment in transportation infrastructure as a share of GDP has shrunk by half. China is outspending us four to one and Europe two to one on transportation infrastructure. We have over 100,000 bridges in this country old enough to qualify for Medicare.

The Economist reported that the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) thinks that additional spending of $1.6 trillion is needed by 2020 to bring the quality of the country’s infrastructure up from “poor” to “good”. The Economist indicated that over the past decade, America’s roads have fallen from seventh to fourteenth in the World Economic Forum’s rankings of the quality of infrastructure.

Part of the problem is that the federal tax on gasoline, which provides most of the funding for federal spending on roads, has been 18.4 cents per gallon since 1993, yet over that period, the price of construction materials and the wages of construction workers have both risen by more than 75%.

And Congress hasn’t helped. They have passed 35 stop-gap funding bills to extend transportation funding. However, most transportation projects are not built in just one year, they are complex, multi-year projects.

Last December, Congress passed the “Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act”, or the FAST Act – which authorized $305 billion over fiscal years 2016 through 2020 for roads, bridges, public transit, and rail. Of that amount only $70 billion represents a new cash infusion for road repairs. Since the total highway need is $740 billion, there is a big funding gap.

Bizarrely, most of the funding for FAST was paid for by raiding the capital of the Federal Reserve. The Congressional Budget Office recently projected that the money in the Highway Trust Fund will run out in six years, and the fund faces a shortfall of $100 billion by 2026.

The funding gap hasn’t escaped the attention of the two presidential candidates. In a rare show of agreement, they are both for infrastructure spending. So, what do they want to do? Unsurprisingly, Trump hasn’t proposed a specific funding level. In his book, “Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again“, Trump says he’s in favor of major public investment in infrastructure repair and expansion.

“If we do what we have to do correctly…we can create the biggest economic boom in this country since the New Deal when our vast infrastructure was first put into place. It’s a no-brainer.”

It’s a “no-brainer” but, with “no amount”.

Hillary Clinton wants to commit $275 billion in public funds over five years, including $25 billion in capital for a new national infrastructure bank to generate another $225 billion in direct loans, loan guarantees and other forms of credit.

Neither candidate is proposing anything that meets the total financing need.

Today, the federal government is responsible only for about 25% of spending on highways and the FAST alternative will be an unreliable future funding source. Federal net investment has been negative since 2011, meaning that Congress is not spending enough to maintain the roads and bridges we have.

By contrast, many states have raised local taxes on gasoline: 12 states have raised gas taxes in the last 18 months. Most states tax by the gallon, and have benefited from the falling oil price, which has boosted sales of gasoline by 3% nationally. In fact, states are beginning to spend more than the federal government as a percentage of GDP:

State Spending to GDP Growth

But, state gas taxes have the same problem as the federal gas tax: They are fixed per gallon, so inflation erodes their value over time. And state budgets can’t grow to the sky. In many cases, states are under pressure to balance their budgets.

As a result, state politicians are burning political capital just standing still. That means the presidential candidates and Congress must find a way to finance more federal infrastructure investment.

Perhaps the gas tax is the wrong way to go. Rising vehicle fuel economy means more miles driven on fewer gallons of gas. With the move to electric cars, Highway Trust Fund revenue will be even lower. And fewer people own cars, but everyone benefits from good roads. People buy food trucked on our roads. They buy clothes, furniture, etc. trucked on our roads. They are carried to hospitals in ambulances on those roads.

The solution is a general road tax that everyone pays.

So, be on the lookout for Trump or Clinton’s rhetoric on infrastructure solutions. This is a yuuge problem that is not going away.

The Perfect Rock Albums?

Monday was the 50th anniversary of the release of two of the most important albums in classic rock’s canon, and it shouldn’t slip by unnoticed: Bob Dylan’s “Blonde on Blonde” and the Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds.” Today, both are considered among the first (and finest) concept rock albums.

Its difficult to believe they came out on the same day.

Let’s start with “Pet Sounds”: It wasn’t an immediate sensation in the US, making it to #10 on Billboard’s list, significantly below what was then expected of a Beach Boys album. Capitol Records even rushed out a Greatest Hits package to keep the BBs in the forefront of the public’s mind.

Over time, however, Pet Sounds has come to occupy a place in the upper echelons of Rock’s best-of lists.

The album opens with “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and contains “God Only Knows”, “Sloop John B” and “Caroline, No”, all great Beach Boys tunes.

For the album’s closer, 23-year-old Brian Wilson was thinking of his teenage crush on a cheerleader named Carol Mountain. In 1966, Wilson had discovered that Mountain was married and still living in their home town of Hawthorne, CA not far from his home in Hollywood. Though both were married, Wilson began to call Carol Mountain, who had no inkling of his true feelings until decades later.

Though they didn’t meet in person, Wilson grew depressed that the torch he carried for Mountain had begun to dim. He told that to Tony Asher, who penned a chorus in the form of a dialogue between the two: “Oh, Carol, I know.” Wilson misheard this as “Caroline, No,” giving the song its title.

Here is “Caroline, No”:

For those who read the Wrongologist in email you can view the video here.

Next, Bob Dylan’s “Blonde On Blonde” also released on May 16, 1966. Recorded in Nashville, it was the first double LP in rock music, and it is the final piece of a trilogy of albums released in a creative burst over 15 months in 1965 and 1966, beginning with “Bringing It All Back Home”, then followed by “Highway 61 Revisited”.

Blonde on Blonde spawned two singles that were top-20 hits in the US: “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” and “I Want You“. Two additional songs, “Just Like a Woman” and “Visions of Johanna“, have been named as among Dylan’s greatest compositions and are included in Rolling Stone‘s “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” list.

Side two of four is the strongest, with “I Want You”; “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again”; “Leopard Skin Pill-Box Hat” and “Just like a Woman”. Side Four has one track, an 11 minute “Sad Eyed Lady of The Lowlands”.

“Blonde on Blonde” is part of Wrongo’s ultimate Dylan playlist, along with “Blood on the Tracks”.

The album’s first Nashville session would produce “Visions of Johanna,” which Dylan first debuted in 1965. At seven minutes+, it set the tone for the longer songs that are all over “Blonde on Blonde”.

Here is “Visions of Johanna”:

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can view the video here.

When you think of favorite albums, you must ask: Is it the album you play when you want to hear some Beach Boys or Dylan? When was the last time you played it? When formats shifted from LPs to CDs, was it one of the first dozen or so CDs you went out and got? Did you ever replace the LP with the CD?

Are they albums you started your children’s rock appreciation with?

Your mileage may vary.