Dec. 28, 2008

Dec. 28, 2008—Did you hear the one about the stockbroker who’s been sleeping like a baby? Every hour, he wakes up and cries. That was before he read that Somali pirates were issuing a new ransom-backed security to buy Citigroup. Moody’s rated it AAA, Henry M. Paulson Jr. deemed the pirates “fundamentally sound,” and Bernard L. Madoff will safeguard the returns. NYT

d'oh...

Dec. 23, 2008 The new edition of Foreign Affairs magazine has a pair of articles about the global financial mess that carry these disturbing headlines: "A Weakening of the West," reads one, and "The Rise of the Chinese Model" the other.Those two pieces frame a serious but little-discussed strategic problem for President-elect Barack Obama. The meltdown in financial markets hasn't simply damaged the American economy. It also has tarnished the U.S. economic model, and threatens to reduce Washington's ability to exert influence around the globe.
The "Anglo-Saxon brand of market-based capitalism" is under a cloud, Roger Altman, former U.S. deputy Treasury secretary and now chairman of Evercore Partners, writes in one of the Foreign Affairs pieces. "The U.S. financial system is seen as having failed." That can't be good for America's moral authority. –WSJ A2

nearing solstice

Dec. 21, 2008—A Jewish financier rips off millions of dollars devoted to memorializing the Holocaust—who could make this stuff up? Dickens, Balzac, Trollope and, for that matter, even Mel Brooks might be appalled. ... Last week ABC asked 16 of the banks that have received handouts from the Treasury Department’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program the same two direct questions: How have you used that money, and how much have you spent on bonuses this year? Most refused to answer. –Frank Rich, NYT WK 10

happy holidays, 2008

CHRIST-MASS Dec. 25

Let us ignore all the slaughter and danger

(Think of the Manger! Remember the Manger!)

Now as our day of rejoicing begins

(Never mind Poland—Abandon the Finns)

Lift up your voices “Long Live Christianity!”

(Cruelty, sadism, blood and insanity)

Noel Coward, Christmas 1939

FEAST OF ST STEPHEN; Dec. 26

his little volume is a series of poems on the saints. Each poem is preceded by a brief biography of the saint it celebrates—which is a very necessary precaution, as few of them ever existed. It does not discuss much poetic power, and such lines as these on St. Stephen—

Did ever man before so fall asleep?

A cruel shower of stones his only bed

For lullaby the curses loud and deep

His covering with blood red

may be said to add another terror to martyrdom. Still it is a thoroughly well intentioned book and eminently suitable for invalids. –Wilde, “The Circle of Saints,” 1882

Dec. 18, 2008

Dec. 18, 2008—“The striking thing about the normal is that there is nothing normal about it: normality is the gentrification of ordinary madness.”—Hanif Kureishi, Something to Tell You, cited in NYRB Nov. 6, 2008, p. 66

Dec. 17, 2008

Dec. 17, 2008—In an extraordinary admission that the SEC was aware of numerous red flags raised about Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, but failed to take them seriously enough, [SEC head] Mr. Cox ordered a review of the agency’s oversight of the .... firm. WSJA1 [after Katrina & Iraq nothing, but when they finally f#$% the investment class they do a review...]

--For two decades, a parade of US officials came to China and lectured Beijing on the necessity of privatizing its banks, said Qu Hongbin, the chief economist for China at HSBC. “So, slowly we did that, and now, all of a sudden, we see everybody else nationalizing their banks.” –NYT A29 [these Asians can be SO sarcastic...]

catching up

Dec. 16, 2008—An American security consultant ... was himself kidnapped last week in northern Mexico after delivering a seminar there on how to avoid that fate... NYT A6

Dec. 16, 2008—The inspector general of the Interior Department has found that agency officials often manipulated scientific facts to limit protections for species at risk... NYT A19

Dec. 14, 2008—An unpublished, 513 page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure. NYT A1

Dec. 13, 2008—The [White House] decision [to aid the auto industry] came after a tense standoff this week in which senior White House officials pleaded with Senate Republicans not to block the measure, including a warning by VP Dick Cheney that they would be remembered as the party of Herbert Hoover if the industry collapsed. NYT A1

Dec.12, 2008—Texas’s governor said US regulation of carbon dioxide emissions will be “economically disastrous” for the state. WSJ A1, A4

Dec. 12, 2008—Several big US firms are reincorporating in Switzerland, helping them avoid expected legislation aimed at companies in tax havens. WSJ A1, B1

Dec. 12, 2008—In vitro fertilization, embryonic stem cell research likened to “in of abortion”—Roman Catholic Church—USA Today, 2A

ides of December

Dec. 15, 2008—An Iraqi TV journalist shouted in Arabic, “This is a farewell kiss, you dog,” as President George W. Bush, throwing his shoes at the US leader Sunday during a news conference. WSJ A1

--failing to successfully use ACORN voter “fraud” to steal the election, the Right is now using ACORN to torpedo the Employee Free Choice Act. See NYT A15, linking Blagoevich, SEIU President Andy Stern, and “often indicted” [defamatory statement] ACORN

doing the math

Dec. 10, 2008—The Treasury sold four-week notes at a 0% yield for the first time, with investors in effect giving their cash to the government for safe-keeping until 2009. WSJ A1 [make that 41 days, please]

--US students improved their math scores in an international test...WSJA1 [not a moment too soon]

--Rent-a-Womb is where Market Logic Leads. ... Massive inequality, we have learned, isn’t the best way to run an economy after all. And when you think about it, it’s also profoundly ugly... Surrogate motherhood ... is a glass-and-gender minefield. ... If surrogacy ever becomes a widely practiced market transaction, it will probably make pregnancy into just another dirty task for the working class, with wages driven down and wealthy couples hiring the work out because it’s such a hassle to be pregnant.—Thomas Frank, WSJ A12 [again, all glory laud and honor to Market God]

legal issues

Dec. 9, 2008—A Yale man with a law degree from Harvard, he was a litigation powerhouse, a leader at some of the more prominent firms at the New York bar who then started a top-shelf practice of his own. But when the lawyer, Marc S. Dreier, stepped off a flight from Canada on Sunday night, federal authorities arrested him in a $100 million fraud scheme, portraying his recent undertakings as more high-stakes grifting than high-end lawyering. NYT A28—even Harvard can’t fix that Yale training…

--Here’s another sign of the tough economic times: Some clinics are reporting a surge in the number of women applying to donate eggs or serve as surrogate mothers for infertile couples. .. One ad running in campus newspapers promises $25,000 for a donor who is “100% Jewish with … High SAT scores … Attractive, at Healthy Body Weight and Free of Genetic Diseases.” WSJ D1 --so is it still Jewish if it comes from a Jewish egg, but a gentile vagina? or how about a gentile egg and a Jewish vagina?

nunc dimitus

December 8, 2008 -- President-elect Barack Obama is weighing in on behalf of workers staging a sit-in on the factory floor of their former Chicago employer to protest abruptly losing their jobs last week. Obama told a news conference Sunday that Republic Windows and Doors should follow through on its commitments to the 200 workers, who say they won't leave the plant until they are assured they'll receive their severance and vacation pay. "The workers who are asking for the benefits and payments that they have earned, I think they're absolutely right and understand that what's happening to them is reflective of what's happening across this economy," Obama said.

went in dumb come out dumb too

12-5-08—“Half the people in that stadium can ‘t spell LSU,” says political consultant James Carville, an LSU alumnus. ... Only three SEC member schools have endowments larger than $1 billion as of the 2007 fiscal year, while half or more of the schools in other major conferences ... do. ... Nonetheless, in 2006, four SEC schools—Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and LSU—raised $35 million or more in athletic donations... The historical knock on SEC schools among rivals is that their success is predicated on a willingness to stockpile great players by violating NCAA rules on recruiting and athlete benefits. While some of the sanctions have been minor, every SEC school but Vanderbilt has been on probation in the last 25 years. Another charge is that lower academic standards give SEC teams an advantage in recruiting. Just three SEC schools—Vanderbilt, Florida, and Georgia—were cited among the top 80 universities in US News & World Report’s 2009 college rankings, while all 11 members of the Big Ten were in the top 80.—WSJ, W4

gimme gimme shock treatment

12-4-08—Obama’s team is resisting Treasury overtures to get more involved in financial rescue spending. WSJ A1[what a shock]

12-4-08—Vermont ranked as the healthiest US state in the lastest annual rating. Louisiana finished last, after Mississippi. WSJ A1 [what a shock]

12-4-2008—China Suns Investments in West’s Finance Sector --NYT B5 [what a shock]

12-3-08—Chertoff, Shifting Views on Security, Pushes Use of “Soft Power”—WSJ A6 [even HLS graduates can learn...][what a shock]

12-3-08--“Blocking Obama’s Health Plan is Key to the GOP’s Survival,” proclaims the headline of a November blog by Michael F. Cannon, the libertarian Cato Institute’s director of Health Policy Studies. His argument, stitched together from other blog posts, is pretty much the same as Mr. Kristol’s in 1993. Any kind of national medical program would be so powerfully attractive to working-class voters that it would shift the tectonic plates of the nation’s politics. Therefore, such a program must be stopped. –Thomas Frank, WSJ A15 [can Democrats learn?]