Poor, Poor Pitiful Her

Alex Kuczynski, pictured above with her infant and nanny on the lawn of her Southampton house, wrote an essay for the New York Times describing her "adventures in gestational surrogacy."

Her Body, My Baby is the story of how Alex Kuczynski, wife to a billionaire hedge-fund manager two decades her senior, gets a baby. Here, she is shown out on the town with her husband, about two weeks after Maxime Dudley Stevenson was born.

In Her Body, Alex chronicles the various trials and tribulations she endured trying to get pregnant, and her journey into surrogacy, which she apparently regarded as her only option for motherhood.

In her own words, Alex "rented" an "organ." Putting it this way, Alex says, makes her feel better about surrogacy. "That was something I could live with." The organ she "rented" was the womb of Cathy Hilling, a 43-year old substitute teacher from Harlesyville, PA, shown here with her dog on her front porch.

Surrogacy, whether it turns women and babies into commodities, is a fascinating subject, of course. But Alex's astounding views of herself and women are what I write about today. And although she has her defenders, I am not one of them.

Her essay left me dumbfounded. It gave me a stomach-churning, this-can't-be-real feeling. And it only took a quick "Alex Kuczynski" google for my jaw to drop again.

In all of her 8000 words, there is no discussion of adoption; she never explains why it was not an option. But she does describe in piteous detail her infertility, her pain and anguish when she miscarries, and the moment she ultimately realizes pregnancy is not in her cards.

That she miscarried is tragic. I don't make light of it. But just when I'd start to feel sympathy for Alex, she'd launch into some unsettling non-sequitur. "That Thanksgiving," she wrote, "I used the 3-milliliter, 22-gauge needles left over from when I was taking fertility medication to inject juices into the roasting turkey. It was the best turkey I’ve ever made."

And snippets like this one, "I never doubted my ability to be a good mother. I had a charmed, happy childhood; I have a warm, loving, funny mother," filled me with suspicion.

Her word choices were revealing, giving us a glimpse of her perceived self-importance. "If you saw me during this time [IVF treatments]," she writes, "I looked really, really cheerful: my face was a rictus of optimism."

A rictus? Oh dear God. (See also "nullipara" below.)

Her disdain for women, evident in her descriptions of Cathy Hilling and other women, chilled me to the bone. She was patronizing and contemptuous, which made her efforts to appear egalitarian seem comical.

Reading it, I felt sort of prurient, like a rubbernecker mesmerized by a bad traffic accident.

Will I stay pretty? I'm already rich . . . Alex's attention to appearance was a thread that ran throughout her piece. At one point she wonders, worries whether she can pull off a pregnancy at age 37 and hold on to her figure. "Celebrities offered hope, and still do. Halle Berry had her first baby at 41! So did Nicole Kidman, and two weeks later there were pictures of her wearing skinny white jeans. Not only fertile, but fit."

It is difficult to believe anyone so desperate for a biological child would give one whit about the physical consequences of pregnancy. She writes,

Yet I couldn’t argue myself out of my desire. A child with our genes would be a part of us. My husband’s face would be mirrored in our child’s face, proof that our love not only existed, but could be recreated beyond us. Die without having created a life, and die two deaths: the death of yourself, and the death of the immense opportunity that is a child.

Whoa.

On reviewing applications from prospective surrogates:

It felt strangely like getting a letter from the roommate who would be sharing your dorm room freshman year. They described themselves, their lives, their ambitions. Their household incomes were not, on the profiles I saw, more than
$50,000.

Huh?

And lo, a handmaiden came forth: "And her [Cathy's] computer-generated essay indicated, among other things, a certain level of competence. This gleaned morsel of information made me glad: she must live in a house with a computer and know how to use it."

Hallelujah, glory be. Darling, we've found a literate one!

Alex embellishes. "They lived in a renovated mill house on a creek in a suburb of Philadelphia."

Err, Alex, take another look at Cathy's house. Then again, "renovated mill house" does sound lovely and should ease any concerns that you took advantage of Cathy.

Alex purports to be humble.

But it was easy to think of her as carrying my baby. She wasn’t desperate for the money, so our relationship wouldn’t have to feel like a purely commercial enterprise, or a charitable one. The only major factors separating us were the fact that Cathy could have a baby and I could not — and we had that $25,000 at hand.

That Alex is so sensitive to Cathy's point of view is really heartwarming. You know, that Cathy not feel like the $25k she was getting was charity.

Alex encounters a mean sonogram tech:

The technician varied from visit to visit. The previous time, we were lucky: it was the gregarious young woman named Gisele who wrote things like “Hi Mom and Dad!” over the cloudy portraits of the baby or, on one image of the baby’s genitals, “I’m still a boy!” On this day, we got the terse woman who grudgingly wrote “foot” and “face,” if she wrote anything at all.

Then she tore off the sonogram images and handed them to me with one hand; with the other, she reached down to wipe the gel off the stomach of the woman who was bearing my child.

God Alex, that must have been hell for you. How dare the sonogram lady react that way, simply because you, the rich Techno Mom, watch your child twist and turn in an older, poorer woman's womb.

Alex admits narcissism:

When Cathy and I went for doctor’s visits, she gave me the clearest sonogram picture to take home. I would drive back to New York, scan the image and send it out to family members and close friends — except that I would crop Cathy’s and the clinic’s names out of the frame. Even though they knew I wasn’t the pregnant one, I didn’t want them to be confused — who is this Cathy person? Where is Abington, Pa.? And for the forgetful ones: Why is Alexandra having her baby there? But more important, I wanted them to see my profile in the picture, not her name. It was immature, puerile, like a seventh-grade girl blacking out her nemesis’ picture in the yearbook. I wanted her identity to disappear and mine to take its place.

Umm, yeah, that was pretty bad, Alex. But thanks for sharing.

Thank God I'm not the one who's pregnant:

The bigger Cathy was, the more I realized that I was glad — practically euphoric — I was not pregnant. I was in a daze of anticipation, but I was also secretly, curiously, perpetually relieved, unburdened from the sheer physicality of pregnancy. If I could have carried a child to term, I would have. But I carried my 10-pound dog in a BabyBjörn-like harness on hikes, and after an hour my back ached.

Cathy was getting bigger, and the constraints on her grew. I, on the other hand, was happy to exploit my last few months of nonmotherhood by white-water rafting down Level 10 rapids on the Colorado River, racing down a mountain at 60 miles per hour at ski-racing camp, drinking bourbon and going to the Super Bowl.

Bully for you, Alex. Bully for you. Level 10 rapids and a ski-racing camp? Simply fabulous! And dahling, thank God you've got that nanny to save your back.

The sweet and earthy Cathy was endearing:

"His butt is right there," she would tell me. She wasn’t condescending. She wasn’t pushy. I owed her so much, and yet it was she who sent me a birthday present — a ceramic candle holder that glowed with the words “Happy Birthday” when a candle was lighted inside — when she was four months pregnant. And when the baby was born, she was the one who had thought to bring a gift for me to the hospital: a statuette of a mother, father and child holding one another.

Alex, umm, can I call you sister? I am sorority squeeling with you. And I loved your subtle class point: you're Southampton, upper-crust Manhattan, while Cathy is K-mart and Lillian Vernon.

Being pregnant is not Alex's cup of tea:

"I had several friends around my age — 37 and up — who were pregnant with their first children at this time, and I was amazed at how their feet swelled like loaves of bread. They were haggard. They seemed sallow and tired, and they let their hair go gray."

"At the height of her pregnancy, Cathy and I embodied several facets of femininity. She could be seen as the fertile, glowing mother-to-be as well as the hemorrhoidal, flatulent, lumpen pregnant woman. I could be the erotic, perennially sensual nullipara, the childbirth virgin, and yet I was also the dried-up crone with a uterus full of twigs. She got rosy cheeks and huge, shiny stretch marks. I went to Bikram yoga and was embarrassed to tell the receptionist — in front of the pregnant 20-something yogini in short shorts — to pull me out of class in case my baby was about to be born out of another woman’s body."

Umm, no comment.

People are mean to Alex:

I wish I could say that everyone’s reaction to Max’s birth was as generous. * * * One announced to a table of people at a dinner party: “My God, Alex. You’ve really gotten away with some stuff in your life. But this takes the cake!” It was as if I had performed some slimy trick and was still able to have my ticket stamped “Mother.” Not only Mother, but Biological Mother.

Those dinner party divas are just bitter. You got to drink bourbon and go white-water rafting, while they got bulging veins, big feet and contractions.

Those mean women will come around, Alex. Once they see your essay in the New York Times, they'll understand. And it won't matter a bit if they don't read a word. The two pictures that ran with it tell your tale just as well.

Oops! Sorry darling. Forgot to include your cover shot!

A Fabulous Gift for Those Still on Your List

What's the mattah? It's Monday and you've still got a shopping list? Oh, relax. Fret not. Put your feet up and grab a cuppa' Joe. Because this holiday gift will erase every woe.

This amazing product is perfect for your family and friends, the homeless guy who rides the bus, even your kid's teacher, the one you've always secretly hated.



Call now. And get you some, too, girlfriends.

Imagine all the places you can wear your new snuggie: grocery store, gynecologist, parent-teacher conference. Your fashion statement will be unforgettable.

While you're at it get me one too, in maroon. I've been looking forever for just the right rapture outfit.

ME, ME and MEME

An amazing thing has happened. Someone has given me a blog award. It's called MEME. Mr. H over at Irregular Periodic Ruminations has been regularly ruminating on my periodic posts since I started in August. When I found out he'd given me this award I was flattered and flabbergasted.

He awarded it last month and it has taken me this long to get over the shock. And I had to figure out the rules, of which there are five: (1) claim the award in a post; (2) link back to Mr. H; (3) pass the MEME award along to five other bloggers and link to them, (4) list five addictions I'll admit to having; and (5) require my five award recipients to link back to me.

Okay. I can do a post. And I am delighted to link to Mr. H. His blog is well-written and entertaining. Naming five more blogs I like? Can do. There are so many good ones to choose from. And coming up with five addictions is no problem. The list is endless.

But, umm, requiring the award winners to link back to me? I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Self-promotion makes me uncomfortable, upsets my stomach. I'd feel like an Horatio Hornblower. Which is not to say that spawning awards are a bad thing. They're not. Neither is self-promotion. In fact I applaud those brave enough to do it. It's just not for me.

Since I cannot follow all of the rules of the award, I'll post it here. But I won't put it on the main page of my blog.

I know, I know. First-time visitors are impressed by awards. And when other bloggers link to me it increases my "traffic." Unquestionably, if five excellent bloggers linked to me it would exponentially increase traffic. And I've been told I'll get more visitors if I dispense clever comments on a multitude of blogs. But umm, it seems like self-promotion. Aaargh. Can't do it.

Call me a blogobitch, maybe "idiot" is more apropos, but I was sort of thinking my blog would stand (or fall) on its own merits. My hope, or delusion perhaps, is that people will read it because someone else recommended it, or another blogger linked to me, unsolicited.

Then again, I'm an unsophisticated blogger, not so savvy. I've heard some bloggers had a month or more of posts in reserve before they published their first one. Wow! Me? I plunged in with no preparation, I had no clue. One day Mr. M drove me crazy and when I'd tried to relax on a patio with a book and a sandwich, I was accosted by birds. So that's what I wrote about in my insanely long first post.

Hell, it took me months to figure out how to post a picture or a video. I only found out a few weeks ago, thanks to Stiletto Mom, how to link to an article.

But I digress. Back to MEME.

First, five blogs I enjoy:

1. The Stiletto Mom. She's funny and she's a good writer.
2. Mom Grind. She's brainy and articulate.
3. Pun Intended. It's offbeat and whacky.
4. Althouse. Wish I could be a law professor.
5. Know Your Teeth. A witty dentist is hard to resist.

Finally, a few of my sweet spots:

1. Baths (with Vitabath).
2. Books (Fortune's Rocks is high on my favorites list).

3. Chardonnay (specifically, Toasted Head).

4. Chocolate (Godiva cherries are an out-of-body experience).

5. Ironed sheets (nobody beats Sunshine Cleaners for great sheets).

Put a few together and they're even better. There's almost no greater pleasure than a great read in a big tub with a great big glass of wine.

So thanks for asking, Mr. H, and thank you for my first award. Hopefully you're not too upset with me for not following the final instruction. Following the first four was sure fun.

A Subprime Primer by a Subpar Soccer Mom

I get the basic subprime thing: a bunch of really stupid banks gave house loans to a bunch of really stupid people and then all hell broke loose. What I didn't get is why they made those stupid loans, and why it's turned into an all-hells'-breaking-loose 700 billion dollar problem.

After pouring over articles for months on end, my goal was to distill the information, explain in a few short paragraphs why this crisis has burgeoned. But alas, I do not have the talent; the beast has too many moving parts. So be forewarned. I've tried to simplify things, but this post is still very long and very wonky.

How it all began. A lot of smart folks say it started with a glut of foreign investment money. High oil prices allowed other countries to grow in wealth. They saved their money and were looking to grow it. Conventional investments, like treasury notes, weren't paying terribly high returns.
Wall Street wizards realized these hungry investors would snap up U.S. mortgages. So they came up with a plan to turn these mortgages into securities and sell them.

Demystifying tranching and collateralized debt obligations. Here's how it works. A bunch of people take out mortgages. The Wall Street guys bundle them up into one big clump and subdivide the big clump into groups of, oh say, good borrowers, mediocre borrowers, pretty bad, and really bad borrowers. This is called tranching.

Each tranch is assigned a number of shares, sort of like stock. Investors can buy shares in any given tranch. The "shares" are called collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs.

As the borrowers make mortgage payments every month, the interest paid is doled out to the CDO investors in different amounts, depending on which tranch they are in.

The investors in the "good borrowers" tranch (the "super senior" tranch) get their interest paid first and the middle or "mezzanine" tranch guys get paid next. The bottom (bad borrowers) tranch investors get paid last, but they get the highest interest rate since they're in the riskiest position.

Why lending standards got so lax that anyone could get a mortgage. Neighborhood banks who used to eyeball the borrower and make sure he was credit-worthy were replaced by mortgage brokers like Countrywide. Brokers just originated the loans, they didn't hold on to them and carry them on their books. The mortgages were passed on to the Wall Street CDO guys.

But there were not enough CDOs to go around. The returns were so good that investors wanted more. So the Wall Street boys called brokers like Countrywide and said, "Hey, down there. We need more mortgages so we can sell more CDOs. They're flying off the shelves." The brokers said, "We'd love to get you some more, but we're out of bodies. There's no one left who qualifies for a loan."

"Screw it," said the Wall Street wizards, "forget about down payments, verifying income, whatever. Just get us more mortgages so we can sell more CDOs." And so the Main Street guys did. NINJA loans (no income, no job, no assets) and interest-only loans were made. Who cared if the borrowers sucked? It was someone else's problem. It was other people's money.

Why weren't investors worried the borrowers would default? It's true that even migrant workers were getting loans for million dollar houses. And no doubt, many of these CDOs could not be classified as good assets. But these CDOs were paying great returns and the default rate was low.

Default rates were low because house prices were continuing to climb. Never mind that prices were climbing at a rate never before seen in our country's history, and were unsustainable. As long as houses kept going up in value, the default rate was not a problem. If a borrower got into trouble, he could just sell his house for what he paid for it, or maybe more.

For quite a while, CDOs were veritable cash cows. Investors were gobbling them up. Pension funds and other investors limited to "safe" investments wanted in on the action, too. Enter the saviour: the credit default swap (CDS) contract.

A CDS basically worked like this: A company like Bear or AIG would say, "don't worry, CDO investor. We are a strong and reputable company, rated Triple A by Moody's. If some borrowers default and you don't get all of your interest payment, we'll pay the difference. You'll never suffer a loss." In return, the CDO holder paid AIG (or Bear or whoever) an "insurance premium."

With a CDS insurance policy in place, ratings companies like Moody's could rate the top tranch, or "super senior" CDOs as triple A, or whatever rating was needed to put them in the "safe" category.

Wow! Who could resist an investment like this? It paid great returns, and it was backed by collateral that was going up in value plus an "insurance" policy. So CDOs were "no brainers," right?

Inherent problem # 1: the CDS contracts were naked bets: The guys who wrote these "insurance" policies were so confident the mortgages wouldn't default that they didn't put enough (maybe any?) money aside to pay out loss claims if the mortgages went south.

When you buy fire insurance on your house, the insurance company is required by law to set a certain amount of your premium aside in reserves. So if you have a fire, the insurance company has the money to pay your claim. Same deal with auto insurance, homeowners insurance, all that stuff.

But for CDS contracts, there was no law requiring these "insurers" to set aside any of the premiums paid by the CDO holders. AIG could write CDS contracts for billions and billions of dollars, even if AIG did not have billions in its bank account to pay potential claims. These credit default swaps weren't "insurance" policies at all. They were naked bets.

To make matters worse, there was no regulation of how many CDS contracts a company could write. As long as Moody's or Standard & Poor kept the "insuring" companies' ratings at an acceptable level, these guys could write all the CDS contracts they wanted to.

Inherent problem #2: the rating system for CDOs was whacked. Remember, pension funds and little towns in Iceland only wanted to buy CDOs rated as "safe" and they relied on rating companies to accurately classify these CDO investments.

But the rating companies have an inherent conflict of interest. They only get paid if the Wall Street guys asking for the rating like what they say.

Suppose, for example, Bear has a big clump of mortgages it wants to securitize. It goes to Moody's and says, "Hey. We want you to rate our top tranch, our senior tranch, triple A." But the top tranch has some crappy loans in it.

If Moody's balks and says, "umm, well, no, we don't think those borrowers are so hot," Bear can just pick up its marbles and walk down the street to another rating company, like Standard & Poor. In other words, Moody's only gets Bear's business if Bear likes Moody's rating.

Why did house prices go so high, so fast? Housing prices went completely out of control at an alarming pace. And everybody in the chain played a part, from the Wall Street and Countrywide guys to the companies like Moody's and Standard & Poor -- who rated so many of these sub-shit loans as "safe."

It was a vicious spiral. When these guys created an enormous pool of "qualified" borrowers, they also created an enormous demand for houses. When a bunch of people want houses, housing prices go up, defaults stay low, more investors pour money into CDOs, more loans are made, and so on and so on.

Why did housing prices stop going up and start going down so fast? Without delving into this too far, quite a few smart folks believe the subprime defaults were initially triggered when the Fed (think Greenspan, then Bernanke) started raising interest rates in the last few years. The Fed Funds rate went from 1% in 2004 to over 5% by January of 2007.

Adjustable rate mortgages started re-setting at high interest rates and the already teetering borrowers could not make the higher payments. Boom. A rash of foreclosures in a neighborhood brings down all the houses in the neighborhood.

Why did the subprime defaults affect so many other parts of the economy? Why is it such a big deal? When the subprime mortgages started defaulting, a blood bath was born. The guys who wrote the credit default swap contracts couldn't pay the losses from the defaults. CDOs plunged in value. This caused a cascading effect.

Investment banks sold CDOs but they owned CDOs too. And they wrote credit swap default contracts for each other. When Bear had hedge fund meltdowns and was forced to write down billions in CDO losses, people were afraid Bear couldn't make good on its credit default swap contracts. So they panicked and made a run on Bear, pulling their money out as fast as they could.

Indeed, when Bear went down, the solvency of other investment banks was immediately questioned. No one knew if their counterparties (the guys who wrote the CDS contracts and were supposed to cover their losses) were any good.

Suppose Lehmans had been looking to Bear to pay up if its CDOs went bad. If Bear is not a good counterparty, Lehmans would be left holding the bag with no insurance to cover its losses. This, in turn, leaves Lehmans broke and it can't make good on the CDS contracts it wrote for other banks. Now those banks are in trouble too.

Who owed who what? And who was good for it? No one knew. And still no one knows. Banks are curled up in the fetal position.

The market for CDOs disappeared, turning "liquid" investments into worthless bricks. As Former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill so aptly put it, “It’s like you have 8 bottles of water and just one of them has arsenic in it. It becomes impossible to sell any of the other bottles because no one knows which one contains the poison.”

What's going on with the "bailout" plan? It seems to keep changing. Consider our government's initial approach. 700 billion dollars, handed over with no strings attached, tells us how bad things are.

At first blush, it looks like Treasury Secretary Paulson keeps vacillating about about how to spend the money. First he said the government would buy these shitty CDOs from the Wall Street banks, but then he insisted certain banks take billions in cash instead.

Personally, I don't think Paulson ever intended to take the "we'll buy the bad mortgages" path; more likely it was a ruse used to calm everyone down. If I were a betting girl, I'd bet his conversation with Bush went something like this:

Paulson: Mr. President, there's about to be a run on all the banks. We're talking a Mad Max scenario.

Bush: Holy shit, Hank. What should we do?

Paulson: give me a number, a REALLY big number. Some ginormous amount of money with no stipulations on it. The markets, the world must be confident we'll spend it however and wherever we need to, so we can stop the banks from falling like dominos.

Bush: What's a big number, Hank? I didn't take geometry.

Paulson: Ummm. 700 billion? That sounds pretty frigging big.

Bush: Okay. And you'll use that money to buy the crappy CDOs, right?

Paulson: Er, well, Mr. President, that's what we'll say we're doing. But what we'll actually do is throw money at banks. We can't buy the bad CDOs because then we'd have to value them. Once we did that, all the banks would have to revalue their own CDOs and restate their balance sheets. The revised balance sheets would show the banks are umm, insolvent. And then the runs would start. We're talking financial Armaggeddon. Better these CDOs go unvalued for as long as possible.

Bush: Oh, right, Hank. I see what you mean. We can't have all of our banks in the red and trigger a run.

And so it went, most likely.

Is the crisis limited to housing? No. People were using their houses like piggy banks, pulling equity out to pay their credit cards. There's no more equity. In fact a lot of people are upside down, owing more than their houses are worth. Consumers have hit a credit wall and can buy no more. Credit card defaults are on the rise, even as credit card companies raise interest rates and reduce credit limits. Retail businesses are getting slaughtered in the process.

Another shoe likely to drop? CDOs backed by commercial mortgages. Scores of commercial borrowers, the guys who build hotels, shopping malls, office buildings and the like, got the same exotic mortgages the subprime folks did: interest-only, ARM, or teaser-rate loans.

With unemployment soaring and consumer spending screeching to a halt, retail stores are closing, killing malls and other retail developments. As a result, many commercial borrowers are expected to default. This could bring on another wave of bad CDOs and another calamitous cascade.

How bad could it get? Who knows? State and city services, things like maintaining roads and highways, schools, salaries for teachers, firefighters, garbage men, police officers are all dependent on property taxes. If residential and commercial property values take a nose dive, what then?

I'm not optimistic. It looks like we've just touched the tip of the iceberg. At my house, we're watching reruns of the Waltons, learning how to live "depression" style. Who needs cable when you've got charades and jig-saw puzzles. Hell, who needs TV at all when there's CBS Radio Mystery Theater?

And I'm eating lots of crow, saying a lot of mea culpas. My husband was such an old fogey, I used to think, such a miser. Always on me to turn out the lights, turn up the air, turn down the heat, buy on the cheap. Lucky for me, he withstood my don't-worry-be-happy, let's-spend tendencies, and steadfastly refused to take out a big mortgage.

Miserly is the new smart, frugality has sex appeal. My husband, a handsome Albert Einstein, is romantic, too. After he saw last month's electric bill, he left me a voicemail, congratulating me on our low kilowatt usage. It was sweet.