Thomas Friedman

It's Christmas. The season of giving.

Thomas Friedman is giving me heartburn.

These days it seems like half of Friedman's columns are about how much better China is than America. His latest column is more of the same. He doesn't really talk about all the slave labor the Chinese use to power their economy, nor the pollution problems. As for the underdeveloped countryside? Well it sometimes seems like Friedman doesn't actually know that China has non-urban areas. It also seems like Friedman doesn't understand the concept of a Communist government that spends disproportionate resources on polishing and cleaning up areas where foreigners (and especially foreign journalists) are likely to go in order to present an attractive and appealing image.

He's not wrong that America needs to invest in infrastructure and science, nor in claiming that Kennedy Airport could use some serious refurbishing, but it really seems like Friedman doesn't understand that some of the shabbiness of America is the price of freedom (China doesn't have any limitations on eminent domain usage, for example, which is one of the things that prevents America from redeveloping as easily) and part of it is the price of being an early adopter. It's much cheaper and easier to be a little behind the curve.

It's frustrating, because America is arrogant and has made a lot of mistakes, but Friedman seems to be a utopianist who doesn't understand that sometimes you have to compromise to do the right thing. If dirty train platforms are the price of not arresting people for littering then I am willing to pay that price. Friedman is not. Friedman notes that China has censored the New York Times and other news sites as if it is a phenomenon completely distinct from the gleaming bullet trains and perfect Wi-Fi access. It isn't. The two are tightly related.

It's not just that Thomas Friedman can't see the forest for the trees, it's that he doesn't seem to know that there are forests or trees.

Sentences should mean something

From a New York Times article about Evander Holyfield:

"Nor is it about pride or re-establishing his name, no small feat for someone so far removed from fame, other than for his “Dancing With the Stars” gig, that Google Earth would be hard-pressed to find him."

What does "So far removed from fame that Google Earth would be hard-pressed to find him." Mean. Is Google Earth good at finding famous people? No, of course not. So maybe it's a metaphor. Is Google Earth good at finding famous sites, like landmark buildings or natural wonders? Well yes. Is it bad at finding non-famous things, like your house or your hometown or some random barn in Arkansas? No. It's good at those things too, which is a good deal of its charm. So what, exactly, is the reference to Google Earth intended to do? Why is it there? I literally do not know. This is bad writing at its most blatant and it's in the New York Times and I know its a sports story but an editor should have caught this because it's a meaningless sentence. How would I fix it? Well, I would, perhaps, not accuse someone of being removed from fame when I was writing a BOXING article about him for the NEW YORK TIMES. Non-famous boxers do not get into the New York Times unless they have just beaten a famous boxer and thus become famous themselves. There are over 170 articles about Holyfield's upcoming fight in Google's news aggregator. Holyfield is less famous now than when he got his ear bitten off by Mike Tyson, but he's well remembered by boxing fans and the populace at large. I'd wager more people remember the ear biting than the Dancing appearance.

This sentence is the kind of lazy writing that a decent high school or college is supposed to beat out of you. It doesn't belong in professional writing and it certainly doesn't belong in the New York Times. It's not just that standards have slipped, it's like they barely exist anymore. You want to make a specious claim combined with an incomprehensible reference in the paper of record? Go ahead.

Shameful.

Shocking Discovery: Water Still Wet!

News articles like this one have been popping up all over the place.

The gist of it is that Al Qaeda isn't ready to make nice yet even though we elected Barack Obama who totally has a Muslim name and isn't white and is handsome and funny and erudite and not a boob. What a shocker.

Also the second in command at Al Qaeda used an ethnic slur.

Here's the thing. Al Qaeda is, literally, an evil terrorist organization bent on our destruction. We've laughed at George Bush and the conservatives for tarring all its enemies with that black-and-white designation, but for Al Qaeda it fits. Al Qaeda murders people. Its stated aims are both ludicrous and horrible. It's a bunch of bad bad fellows (and ladies.)

So why is it news that Al Qaeda doesn't like Barack Obama? The right wing may have accused him of palling around with terrorists, but they weren't radical Muslim terrorists, and only the truly insane thought he had anything but animus towards Al Qaeda. Barack Obama has stated that he will make it a priority for the U.S. to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden, leader of Al Qaeda. Of course they aren't going to like him.

What's the news here? The ethnic slur? Al Qaeda is a group of unrepentant murderous terrorists. They murder as a matter of course. Is it really shocking that they use nasty language? Especially considering that in the part of the world from which they hail there's a lot less political correctness than there is in the West. They still won't let women drive in Saudi Arabia, and Al Qaeda hates the Saudi government because it's not fundamentalist ENOUGH.

Now I realize that Al Qaeda is our enemy and any big statement from them needs to be covered as legitimate news, but what I don't get is the tone of a lot of these pieces, implying that it's noteworthy that Al Qaeda would use an ethnic slur and that there was any other possible reaction they might have to Obama. Is the implication that Obama is so wonderful that he might win over Al Qaeda even though he openly talks about his desire to arrest or kill the group's leader? Seems unlikely. Are we offended by the term "House Negro" used by those responsible for the blowing up of buildings and ships and trains? It seems like a fairly minor crime in comparison.

Zawahiri's statement is a very minor news event, especially in a time when major important stories are not in short supply. Al Qaeda still hates America. Obama isn't getting a Christmas card from the world's premier terrorist group, nor will they offer him any suggestions about the type of puppy he should pick out for his daughters. In other news water is still wet and Glenn Beck remains batshit crazy. Nothing to see here.

Difficult conditions

Dear Football announcers and everyone else who writes and/or speaks for a living.

Averse and adverse are not the same word. That one little "D" makes a world of difference.

To offer an analogous example: "Sit" describes an action you might take before you do something that can be described by adding one little "H" to that word. This second word also, conveniently, describes your grasp of the English language if you don't know that averse and adverse are different words.

No, seriously, racism is finally dead.

The National Review Online decided to convene a symposium in order to analyze Barack Obama's victory from their...unique...perspective. The results are, of course, rife with horrendous writing, such as:


For old-line civil-rights leaders like Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton, Rep. John Lewis (D., Ga.), and others, Obama’s triumph will make far harder for them and others to chant about blacks being held down by “Whitey.” The instant rejoinder soon will be, “The whitest thing around here is Barack Obama’s house.”

Which manages to combine poor copy editing with the worst instant rejoinder ever conceived of. This particular example is, however, at least reasonable. Obama's victory is certainly evidence of changing attitudes towards race in the United States. It will make it harder for people to make simplistic claims about African Americans being oppressed.

What if you want bad logic, horrendous overreaches, weird inconsistencies, and the like? Does the National Review have anything to offer in those arenas. Why yes. Yes it does.

the election of the first black president will finally settle the question of whether America is a racist country.

Linda Chavez' claim is startlingly strong, especially when you consider the number of openly made accusations that Obama was Arab and/or Muslim*. But let's see what she means by "Racist country." Maybe she's just saying it shows that explicit institutionalized racism is dead, which is more or less accurate.

Many of us have been arguing for years that — despite a history of slavery, Jim Crow, and, at one time, widespread prejudice — American society is today the most colorblind in the world.

Or she could be making completely unsubstantiated claims based on nothing but what she wishes were true. Conservatives LOVE making statements like "America is the most colorblind society in the world." That statement is utterly without meaning unless you define what makes a society colorblind, and how colorblindness can be measured. How do we know that, for example, Canada is not more colorblind? If it's just about the chief executive being a racial minority then what about Peru, which had Alberto Fujimori as its president for quite some time?

A President Obama could also take on issues that others have avoided: the breakdown in the black family, the latent racism inherent in holding blacks to lower standards than whites, the enervating aspect of perpetual victimhood.

"Hopefully Barack Obama will recognize that racism is no longer a problem and instead focus all his energy on fixing the various things that blacks, and their allies, are doing to keep blacks down despite a totally non-racist society."

Thanks Linda. I'm sure he'll take that under advisement.

Anything else? Oh yeah. From Kay Cole James:

Election days are all pretty much the same for me...[Nov 4th 2008] began with [me] approaching a polling place to volunteer and being ignored by the Republican worker, and being greeted warmly by the Democrat... I am a black conservative.

Okay, that was a bit of editorial manipulation, but it's worth noting that the anecdote about being ignored by the Republican poll worker is never explained. Even if you are generous and assume that the Republican poll worker ignored Coles because most African Americans were hostile to him/her, it is still bad strategy. When you are trying to win someone over you need to be nice to them even when they are rude and dismissive to you. If African Americans see Republicans being curteous and polite to them at the polls they will be more inclined to be open to their message over time. If they are ignored they will feel unwanted, as would anyone. The Republicans talk a big game about being a big tent party; they know they need minority votes to remain competitive as the demographics of the country change and they know that it looks really bad fora bunch of white folks, recently descended from proponents of segregation and white superiority, to be lecturing the black community about what it needs to do, but all too often they are awkward and off-putting around actual black people.

Is there anything like that in the NRO symposium?

You betcha, folks.

Courtesy of Abigail Thernstrom:

The Obama family is also a role model. It’s not a “black” family, but an American family, with two loving parents, and two beautiful children.


So a "black" family is...

There's really no good way out of this. If you want to be supremely generous you could assume that she means that the perception is that black families are dysfunctional and this is a good example of one that's not, or that she means that the Obamas are an inspiration to all Americans, not just black people, but let's be honest. That's not what she means. She means that black families are ugly and dysfunctional and the Obamas have transcended their blackness.

Racism is dead, right?

Republicans routinely say things like this, statements that aren't intended to be racist but come out that way because so many conservatives are blind to their own racism and casual disdain of African Americans. Not all conservatives are racist, but racists in the Republican party can be compared to chocolate chips in a carton of ice cream. Take a big enough scoop and you're bound to get a bunch. And Republicans always want us to give their pundits every benefit of the doubt, to twist meanings and intentions until racist statements can be interpreted as benign. Twist hard enough and any statement can be made innocuous. No negroes in our swimming pools, why? Because our swimming pools are full of urine. We want to protect the negro.

Here's the thing. The conservative movement of today is descended intellectually and politically from the conservative movement of yesterday, which was, for the most part, explicitly racist. The Republican party got control of the South after Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil rights act. Republicans have a contentious relationship with Black America, fewer black politicians than the Democrats, and a very critical message that seems to ignore the influence of racial injustice on the current world order (For example the fact that many black families lack any sort of generational wealth due, in part, to Jim Crow laws and racism.)

Given the situation it is extremely unwise for middle aged white women to be using phrases like "The black family" without extreme caution. Joe Biden, who has a good record on racial issues, was pilloried for calling Barack Obama clean and articulate. While I am against censorship, there's no reason ideas can't be expressed in precise and inoffensive ways.

Unless the ideas, themselves, are offensive.

If the National Review is not subtlely racist then it is doing an excellent impression of a publication that is.


*Muslim is not technically a race, but rather a religion, obviously. One can be a white Muslim or an Arab Christian. But the sorts of people who use "Muslim" as an accusation are also the sorts of people who are likely to accuse Sikhs and Lebanese Christians of being Muslim because of their skin color. The term is used as a stand-in for "Other" in an impulse that may not be racism but is closely related. When these people want to talk about Islam as a religious threat they usually say "Islamofascist," which is a term of questionable provenance, but one that at least explicitly refers to an adherent of an ideology rather than a member of an outsider group.

Republican Amusements: Now Open For Business

One of the undervalued benefits of the Barack Obama win is that conservative writers are funny again. I don't mean intentionally, that's not going to happen any time soon, but in the same way that flat earthers and creationists are funny when they're marginalized. Oh look at the cute little lunatics with their crazy opinions. They can't hurt us anymore, at least for now, and that turns the horrific into the humorous. I know that my orthodox cousin's conservative rantings got a lot funnier around 11:00 pm on Tuesday.

So did Ann Coulter.

Now Ann Coulter fancies herself a comedienne, in the same way that David Duke is an inspirational speaker or Osama Bin Laden is an advocate for global peace, which is to say that if you buy into her insane and incredibly limited worldview you might find some of the things she says to be intentionally funny. To the rest of us she's more of a curiosity, an unpleasantly mannish skinny blond woman who openly advocates the sorts of things that most Republican commentators save for their most intimate acquaintances, or the gay hookers they do meth with.

In Coulter's latest column she not only bizarrely states that Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama was 'sarcastic' but she also claims that Sarah Palin is the future of the Republican party, a true conservative in the sense that she's so afraid of books that she, at over 40 years of age, had yet to open an atlas and see that Africa is a continent, or count all of the countries on the continent of North America. To her the whole world is just one big "Here there be monsters." She spends her frequent taxpayer funded plane trips looking out the window for krakens and sea dragons. It was long thought impossible to underestimate the intelligence of the American public. Looks like that's another piece of conventional wisdom to relegate to the dustbin of history.

This is going to be fun. No longer will the absurd beliefs of America's cooky backward hill people be scary, because we will have a man in the White House who doesn't believe any of it. We get to go from depressing gallows humor to outright mockery and mirth. This is going to be fun.

Ann Coulter thinks that Barack Obama will reveal himself to be a radical Black Muslim bent on destroying Whitey. Tee hee.

The secret of his failure

I finally understand David Brooks.

It's not that he doesn't believe the things he writes, or that he is constantly looking for a way to suck up to the powerful (though he is.) It's that he is basically a functional amnesiac, who doesn't even understand the basic concept of intellectual consistency, and has no reason to want to put it into practice.

"In the past two decades, the United States has become a much more interesting place. Companies like Starbucks, Apple, Crate & Barrel, Microsoft and many others enlivened daily life."

One of the things David Brooks loves to do is insult latte sipping, Crate & Barrel shopping effete liberal elites. In THIS column, however, he claims that the very symbols of effete liberal elitism make the United States more interesting and enliven daily life. There seems to be a conflict here, until you realize that David Brooks has, for all intents and purposes, never read a David Brooks column and doesn't know what David Brooks thinks. His memory is wiped clean every evening when he goes to sleep. Where some of us might look at things like, say, the growth of Starbucks, and see complex difficult to parse trends, David Brooks glances at them, spots one facet, comments on it, and then the next day takes another glance, spots another facet, and comments on that, without ever having to resolve the conflict between his beliefs. Through this method he manages to say a host of conflicting things that all contain a grain of truth but are, fundamentally, wrongheaded because they fail to take into account other facets of the phenomena he's describing (E.G. The fact that chain stores have driven interesting local stores out of business, which homogenizes American life rather than enlivening it, and the fact that there is not a single thing at Crate & Barrel that a sane healthy person would want to purchase.)

Let's continue.

Despite decades of affluence, longstanding issues like health care, education, energy and entitlement debt have not been adequately addressed.

But David Brooks, you support a party that does everything it can NOT to address these issues. Oh right. You don't know that. You're unaware of your own history of advocacy. Sorry. Yeah. These are serious problems. Thank you for discovering them, David Brooks.

Raised in prosperity, favored by genetics, these young meritocrats [who elected Obama] will have to govern in a period when the demands on the nation’s wealth outstrip the supply. They will grapple with the growing burdens of an aging society, rising health care costs and high energy prices. They will have to make up for the trillion-plus dollars the government will spend to avoid a deep recession. They will have to struggle to keep their promises to cut taxes, create an energy revolution, pass an expensive health care plan and all the rest.

In other words they will have to deal with all the stuff that the Republicans let slip by the wayside for the last 8 years (as opposed to Bill Clinton who worked on balancing the budget and took a shot at health care, even though he was unsuccessful.) They will have to deal with the horrible fallout from the disaster that your chosen party visited upon America.

But you've already forgotten the Bush administration and your place among the pundocracy that supported it. You're just looking at how things are now without wondering how we got here, and whether there are any lessons we can learn from the past to help us act more wisely in the future. Because you're David Brooks. And that's what you do.

New York Post Sub-Headline of the Week

(it's only in the print edition, so you'll have to trust me)

"Dry School Musical"

Kyle Smith 1, Zac Efron 0.

What's in a name? 1,155 words of Gibberish

Ordinarily, I like using this blog to mock entities like CNN, or the Times, who have a responsibility to journalism and utterly fail at it. This is just a piece that was conceived as nonsense, and that's exactly what it delivers, but it's a dangerous harbinger of where I think journalism may be headed. It tackles the age-old question: Is Jed Lowrie -- the Red Sox rookie shortstop who got an important RBI single in the playoffs this week -- the most important Jed ever?

A few years ago I made the rather bold and yet admittedly bewildering claim that former Kansas forward and now longtime NBA journeyman Raef LaFrentz was the greatest athlete ever named Raef.

This sentence makes me think of high school English classes, where I was told to build readers' interest by starting my essays in an unexpected manner. This is certainty that. I GUESS I'm intrigued, against my better judgment ...

You would not expect anyone to care enough about this to disagree,

No ... no, I sure wouldn't. But please, carry on.

but it turned out that Mark Zieman, the former editor and now publisher of the Kansas City Star, disagreed vehemently. He pointed to Rafer Johnson, the former decathlete. I explained that LaFrentz was RAEF while Johnson was RAFER -- that's like the difference between raze* and razor**.

Rafe and Rafer do sound different, I get that. There's no need for Posnanski to belabor the point by comparing the words to another pair of words that are also slightly different. And there's REALLY no need to define the second pair of words, common as they both are ...

*Defined as: To completely destroy something.

**Defined as: Overpriced shaving devices, especially the Mach III. Wow, they created more new and expensive blades for the Mach III. You hear politicians talk about standing up to the oil companies ... big deal. When is somebody going to stand up to the razor companies? You know, I was thinking that maybe when razor companies can afford to have commercials with Tiger Woods AND Roger Federer AND Derek Jeter AND Thierry Henry, then maybe they are pulling in a bit too much profit.

Bored yet, folks?

Anyway, when Jed Lowrie got the game-winning knock in Game 4 of the Boston-California series, I immediately decided he had become the most accomplished Jed in American history, surpassing Jed Clampett, who was the only other Jed I could think of.

Um, Jed Clampett wasn't actually part of "American History," you know. The Beverly Hillbillies was not a documentary, but a fictional show using the "fish out of water" motif for comedic purposes. Fictional. Really. And while we're at it, the tooth fairy is actually your mom.

So, being that I only have 204,347 things to do, I decided to look into this Jed situation.

Posnanski sounds oddly passive-aggressive about this, like he's cranky about being forced to look up Jeds.

There has never been an NBA Jed or racing Jed as far as I can tell. For a moment I thought of a pretty famous driver named Jed Narett, but it turns out his name is actually Ned Jarett, which doesn't count.

He left out our 35th President, Jed F. Kennedy, whose leadership helped our nation through the Cuban Missile Crisis, before he was assassinated by Jed Harvey Oswald.

Oh, whoops, I misremembered those names. God, I'm so stupid!

There are a few other Jeds -- including a campus preacher who calls himself Brother Jed and travels around the country abusing people (his real name is George) -- but I would say that Jed Lowrie is now the leading Jed in the clubhouse.

Wait. This is the first thing he's written that actually means something. A preacher who travels around abusing people? How? Physically? Sexually? Do the proper authorities know about this? Is he going to jail? How can Posnanski gloss this over when he wasted several paragraphs on made-up Jeds?!?


From there he goes on to talk about TV shows that people remember as being pretty good that were actually pretty bad. I guess his implication is that The Beverly Hillbillies was one example? I can't imagine someone thinking it was clever in the first place, but who knows.

Anyway, my contention is if everyone is blogging (yeah, I know), and leaving their comments on news stories on web sites, and taught that everything they think is important even when it's clearly wrong ... this is the kind of journalism we'll soon receive. And deserve.

CNN: The worldwide leader in jargon

I am stepping out of character here at the beginning to talk about why articles like the one I deconstruct below are so gosh darn pernicious. It's not just that the article is poorly written. It's not just that it contains a bewildering combination of unsubstantiated statements, oversimplifications, paragraphs packed with jargon that most people won't know, and weird metaphors about salad. It's that articles like this, which doesn't do a good job of explaining anything, leave people with the feeling that this stuff can't be explained. They throw up their hands, panic, or just find someone who seems smart and well informed and follow what he says. This financial crisis is far from simple, but it's not inexplicable. A well-written guide to what's going on is possible, and National Public Radio has done a good job of covering the happenings (in audio format.) But instead of spending the time and money to sit down and hammer out the details CNN, and a lot of other media sources, seem to prefer putting up slapdash articles and video pieces describing a small bit of what's going on, with facts and causality often missing or wrong. It's an approach that fosters panic and confusion. It's irresponsible and lazy. This article is an example of that approach.


David Smick has a beard. He also runs a financial market advisory firm in D.C. Sometimes he writes for CNN. This is his latest column.

-- At this point in the credit crisis, at least one thing is certain: most policymakers lack a clue of what is really at stake.

Bold statement. So what really is at stake?

Those with some knowledge are driving policy looking through the rearview mirror.

It's a nitpick, but do you really look THROUGH a rearview mirror? Don't you look into one? They're not transparent.

Begin with the U.S. Treasury's $700 billion bailout package. This was presented as some magic pill which, if gulped down, would quickly restore financial stability.

Far be it from me to defend the bailout, which is problematic, but I don't remember the term "Magic pill" being bandied about. More like "Extreme but necessary measure so that we don't have complete economic collapse." It was more of a "Take this or you DIE!" situation than "Take one of these and you'll be fine by morning."

The "shock and awe" of the sheer size of the taxpayer-funded bailout would somehow restore confidence.

Shock and awe is in quotation marks here. Nobody ever used that term. Also, once again, a lot of people were talking about how the $700 billion was a relatively small amount given the size of the crisis. I don't recall anyone arguing that this was a giant wave of money that would sweep the crisis away. It was more that the crisis was so huge that to even put a dent in it you needed this unfathomable sum.

The reason I bring this up is that David Smick is clearly building a strawman argument, which he will proceed to tear apart, and he isn't even being subtle about it.

Instead, stock markets collapsed and credit markets remained frozen.

For one week. A week which precedes any of the bailout money actually being spent. It's a bit soon to be calling failure on the thing BEFORE ANY ASSETS HAVE BEEN PURCHASED.

This is because the credit crisis reflects something more fundamental than a serious problem of mortgage defaults. Global investors, now on the sidelines, have declared a buyers' strike against the sophisticated paper assets of securitization that financial institutions use to measure and offload risk.

This is accurate, but is the average CNN reader really going to understand what it means? There has to be a level of sophistication between Tickle Me Elmo metaphors and "Global boycott on sophisticated paper assets of securitization."

In recent years, our banks, borrowing to maximize the leverage of their assets at unheard-of levels, produced mountains of financial paper instruments (called asset-backed securities) with little means of measuring their value. Incredibly, these paper instruments were insured by more dubious paper instruments.

Also accurate (if incredibly non-specific). Also requires enough familiarity with what's been happening and what's going on that if you know what all of this means YOU DON'T NEED THIS COLUMN.


Therefore, the housing crisis was a mere trigger for a collapse of trust in paper, followed by a de-leveraging of the entire global financial system.

"Therefore" implies that you have constructed a logical argument we can follow. You have not. You just have a beard. What you said previously does not necessarily lead to this conclusion without a boatload of outside information. You skipped a few dozen steps.

As a result, we are experiencing the painful downward reappraisal of the value of virtually every asset in the world.

Except for sweet ass beards. That's an asset whose value is never reappraised downwards in the face of a massive worldwide de-leveraging. Am I right? Also, you haven't really explained why the de-leveraging leads to downward reappraisal (Short answer: Less money around means everything is worth less, numerically. Essentially deflation. Longer answer: This might be a part of what's going on, but not even close to the whole story. Some assets are, in fact, increasing in value. There's a lot of other stuff at play.)


So what are these paper instruments, these asset-backed or mortgage-backed securities?

Ooh, ooh, tell me!

I like to use a salad analogy.

My bad metaphor sense is tingling, but give it a shot.

Before the last decade, bankers simply lent in the form of syndicated loans.

Salady!

But with the huge expansion of the global economy in the 1990s, which produced an ocean of new capital, the bankers came up with an idea called securitization.

I like a lemon-vinaigrette dressing.

Instead of making simple loans and holding them until maturity, a bank collected all its loans together, then diced and sliced them up into a big, beautiful tossed salad.

That sounds...a little papery. Smooth transition into the metaphor there.

The idea was to sell (for huge fees) individual servings of diversified financial salad around the world.

Invest Fresh!

The only problem: under an occasional piece of lettuce was a speck of toxic waste in the form of a defaulting subprime mortgage.

Call the FDA! Is it just me or is this metaphor adding absolutely nothing but confusion to this half-assed attempt to explain what happened?

Eat that piece of salad, and you're dead.

Piece of salad? You mean the lettuce? Or the serving? Or the toxic waste? Can we wash it off? Piece of salad? What?

The overall salad looked delicious, but suddenly global investors were no longer ordering salad.

They'll get FAT!

No one knew the location of the toxic waste.

IT'S UNDER THE LETTUCE!

This distrust heightened when global interest rates began to rise.

What distrust? You have yet to use that word, or use any combination of words that would describe that concept.

So what does this salad boycott mean for the future

Fat investors. We've been over this. I like how Smick keeps dropping into and out of the metaphor seemingly at random.

and why have financial markets collapsed so brutally?

Yes. Why?

The markets are telling us the world will face a serious credit crunch in 2009 regardless of how much money government spends to remove the toxic salad from bank balance sheets.

That's a prediction for the future, not an explanation of the collapse. And why can't you just say toxic securities? The salad gambit failed. It failed like a Tickle Me Elmo salesman who overstocked his store based on previous...never mind.

Policymakers have no means of forcing the banks to start lending short of nationalizing the entire financial system. After all, the U.S. banks alone so far during the crisis have lost upwards of $2 trillion from their collective asset base.

"After all" once again implies that the second sentence explains the first, BUT IT DOESN'T. It might provide reason why banks are leery to lend at present, but in what way does it keep policy makers from forcing banks to start lending? Doesn't. They're related situations, but not identical.

Most banks are leveraged by more than 10 to 1. Translation:

Great! You're going to explain what leveraging is!

The U.S. financial system will have a whopping $15 trillion to $20 trillion less credit available next year than was around a year and a half before. The cost of money is rising and the availability shrinking.

You rat bastard! Way to sneak the phrase "Cost of money" in there too. I think you mean the cost of credit (That's what this generally means), but who knows. Maybe you think a dollar now costs $1.25. You are writing for CNN. Anything is possible.
.

True, the banks will still lend -- but the fear is they will do it only to people such as Warren Buffett, who don't need loans. What is uncertain is the amount of lending to borrowers engaged in entrepreneurial risk, the center of business reinvention and job creation.

Way to bring this up NOW. Remember when we were talking about asset evaluation? This is a huge part of it. Dried up credit markets are a huge threat to the short and longterm financial health of a lot of important companies. This is, in part, why the stock market is tanking (Along with good old fashioned panic, partially brought about because nobody knows what's happening, because the media has completely dropped the ball) and why companies are shedding jobs. Even big seemingly solid companies rely on short term loans to smooth out their operations, and without access to these credit markets many face severe liquidity crunches, which could potentially lead to service disruptions etc..etc... All of which will make people even more reluctant to lend, and we're in the midst of a vicious cycle that could do serious damage to parts of the economy that weren't even involved in these shenanigans.

Apart from the economic pain resulting from shrinking credit markets, we are about to see an earthquake in the relationship between government and financial markets.

About to see? WATCH OUT NEW ORLEANS! HURRICANE KATRINA IS GONNA BE A DOOZY! We are in the PROCESS of seeing, and in many cases HAVE ALREADY SEEN.

The great uncertainty is whether government has the power to rescue the financial system in times of crisis. It seems doubtful.

This is what is known as the power of positive thinking. If you're going to scare people you should probably at least do them the favor of explaining what it is you think they should be afraid of.

In the United Kingdom, for example, the collected assets of the major banks are four times the nation's gross domestic product (GDP). A similar situation exists in many Euro zone countries. This means government cannot bail out the system even if it wanted to. Given such massive exposure, government guarantees in a time of crisis become meaningless.

Thanks. Although it's probably WORTH NOTING that not all of those assets are toxic or problematic, and so government might very well have enough money to deal with THOSE assets. The government also, to borrow a phrase, still has a thing called a printing press. Fiat money has many problems, but one of its advantages is that it allow the government to spend as much as it wants. It can be very problematic but it's still meaningful.

Yet because of the interconnected web of global financial relationships, we are all vulnerable to the threat. The collapse of, say, a major European bank would hardly leave American workers immune.


Why is that "Yet" there? That is the most useless "Yet" in the history of mankind. Also, I don't think there are a lot of Americans going "Europe's in trouble, but we seem to be doing just fine over here." Phrases like "Economic death spiral" and "Greatest depression" are being bandied about.


Our policy leaders in Washington are thinking domestically when the solution to the credit crisis will be global. It is not that the world lacks money; it is that the world's money is sitting on the sidelines -- more than $6 trillion in idle global money markets alone.

That's nice. Except that we can't make them lend to us, and also the U.S. government's power in this area is ENTIRELY DOMESTIC. We don't get to go to Belgium and tell them what to do about THEIR banking crisis. Not unless we bring guns. Or at least Jeff Speakman

The challenge will be to reform our financial system quickly to draw that global capital back into more productive uses. The first step should be efforts to make the market for future asset-backed paper more transparent and credible.

Seems sensible. Too bad our government can't do anything to make banks lend. Except, apparently, this.

We need a private/public global bank clearing facility. The bankers don't trust each other. The central banks, working with the private institutions in providing enhanced data, need to begin to refashion the world's financial architecture.

I am not going to unpack this. I will just say that it has disappointingly little to do with delicious salad. Do you think that security salad has radicchio in it? I like that stuff.

And while that is happening, the major governments of the world, including the Chinese, should begin major fiscal efforts to stimulate their weakening economies.

Such as?

Oh wait. We're done.

Quick and stupid

Nothing major here, but in this article Newsweek actually prints the following:

Smolenyak first turned to Google where she figured out that, because kinship rules vary by country and because Washington was childless, there were four possible kings (or queens) among the nearly 8,000 descendants of Washington who are alive today.

What do you call a man who was childless but has nearly 8,000 descendants? Seriously, I have no idea. Obviously what's meant is "Descendants of close relatives" or something more specific, but that doesn't make the error any less stupid. This article probably wasn't rushed to press to meet a strict deadline, since while it's vaguely election related it's not exactly breaking news. Someone had time to sit down and edit it...

AND YET:


His [Paul Emery Washington's] family, which includes three sons and one daughter, are fifth-generation descendents of George's oldest brother, Samuel.
...
Paul Emery Washington's family has known for some time that they are descendants of America's first president

So here's a question for Newsweek. Do you A) Think that somehow George and Samuel Washington had a baby together (WHILE George Washington remained childless) in the 1700's? or B) No longer feel constrained by the English language with regard to things like the definitions of words?

Palin Defeats Truman

Ben's post below was accurate: the two of us do share a dislike for David Brooks, though mine is much keener. Brooks came back with a jolt in his latest column to remind me of why: he gives Sarah Palin accolades for a debate a little prematurely.

Mind you, Times columns go to print (or get "posted" on the "world wide web" if you're one of those young people with iPods or cell phone cameras) shortly after midnight of that day's issue. The Biden-Palin throwdown ended at 10:30 pm, so the column was either (a) premeditated or (b) conceived and written in about fifteen minutes. Neither would surprise me, but I'm going with (a).

There she was, resplendent in black,

'There she is, your ideal ... the dreams of a million girls ... "

Sorry, what? We're picking someone to lead the (barely) most powerful nation in the world? Okay, then.

striding out like a power-walker,

So she walked onto the stage, just like people who walk in walking competitions.

and greeting Joe Biden like an assertive salesman, first-naming him right off the bat.

First-naming is a stupid excuse for a verb. Also, Brooks sees this moment, when Palin asks "May I call you Joe?" as vitally important. Why? Because he's an idiot. But he's just getting started:

Just as the midcentury psychologist Abraham Maslow predicted, Republicans watching the debate had a hierarchy of needs.

WHAT? Brooks' point is that they needed her to appear competent, and also (less importantly) to stem the tide moving towards Obama if she could. These are two needs (more like wishes or preferences, though, if we're being honest) and they're somewhat in a hierarchical order. But this has zero to do with Abraham Maslow. His "hierarchy" was about the relationship of basic human needs with self-esteem and self-actualization. You can't just think of two needs and say, "Ooh, I'll cite Abraham Maslow and people will think I'm smart" -- it doesn't work that way.

Her perpetual smile served as foil to Biden’s senatorial seriousness.

Seriousness? Ewww ...

As the historian Ellen Fitzpatrick pointed out on PBS Thursday night, if, in 1984, Geraldine Ferraro had spoken in the relentlessly folksy tones that Palin used, she would have been hounded out of politics as fundamentally unserious.

Far be it from me to question an honest-to-goodness historian, especially one on PBS, but:

(1) Geraldine Ferraro was kinda hounded out of politics as fundamentally unserious anyway. The Mondale/Ferraro ticket won one state, and Ferraro never became a Senator or Governor, never got any prominence in the national Democratic Party, and is now going on arguably racist rants against Barack Obama. So, what's the point again?

(2) Sarah Palin may yet be hounded out of politics as fundamentally unserious, and if she's not, doggone it, our country shouldn't be cheerin' and braggin' about that.

(3) David Brooks should be hounded out of journalism as fundamentally unserious. Literally, with actual hounds. East Coast elite hounds, too, not the red-blooded Middle America hounds that he loves so dearly.

But that was before casual Fridays, boxers or briefs and T-shirt-clad Silicon Valley executives. Today, Palin can hit those colloquial notes again and again, and it is not automatically disqualifying.

I first read this column in my office on Friday, wearing a button-down shirt with no tie, new-ish Gap jeans, and even boxer shorts. And yet, I'd still like a Vice-President to be familiar with multiple Supreme Court decisions, and/or the Bush doctrine. Call me crazy.

On Thursday night, Palin took her inexperience and made a mansion out of it.

Probably the worst sentence in an absolute wasteland of a column.

From her first “Nice to meet you. May I call you Joe?” she made it abundantly, unstoppably and relentlessly clear that she was not of Washington, did not admire Washington and knew little about Washington.

First-naming Joe Biden did all that? Wow. Also, shit like this drives me crazy. She's not of Washington ... fine. She doesn't admire Washington ... ok. But why are we proud of her for knowing little about Washington? Even if I accepted that "Washington" were some sort of tangible entity that was fundamentally bad, shouldn't she know about it, in order to defeat it? Reading Brooks makes my head hurt.

Like the last debate, this one was surprisingly wonky — a lifetime subscription to Congressional Quarterly.

I love that he says "surprisingly wonky" -- like he expected Biden and Palin to tell knock-knock jokes and brush each other's hair while of course calling each other "Sarah" and "Joe", but instead some sort of candidate evaluation thingy they call a debate broke out. Anyway, I don't think there's anything particularly wonky about two people accusing each other back and forth of raising taxes 38,742 times.

Palin could not match Biden when it came to policy detail, but she never obviously floundered.

Shouldn't we be applauding the guy who knew more policy detail? Isn't that kind of the point of this whole exercise? And it sure seemed to me like she floundered, plenty of times.
But what do I know, I'm just a guy who watched the debate BEFORE reaching my conclusions.

Thanks for the buck, I'll be sure to pass it.

People are demanding that irresponsible borrowers should shoulder the blame for this financial crisis along with the lenders.

These people are wrong. And they make me very angry.

First of all, lenders must take full responsibility for the people they choose to lend money to. The problem here isn't that a bunch of good bets (People who are statistically likely to pay back their mortgages) didn't pan out for unexpected reasons. It's that mortgages were given to people who they shouldn't have been given to, and then those mortgages were bought and sold with dishonest ratings by people who were making longshot bets to pad their current quarter results and obtain higher bonuses. Furthermore, if it were JUST the mortgages we were talking about then the financial crisis would not be nearly as deep and as wide as it is. There's also the matter of credit default swaps, which nobody seems to understand (I think I have a decent handle on them) but which really didn't have anything to do with the mortgages, except that they made sure that if some banks failed due to buying bad mortgage debt then ALL the banks were going to tumble down with them like a house of cards.

Totally on the shoulders of the fat cats.

Getting back to the people who shouldn't have been getting mortgages, not only were they given mortgages if they asked for them, but frequently they were lied to about the terms of the mortgages and upsold on bigger mortgages than they initially wanted. If you went into a car showroom to buy a used Honda and the salesman told you he could work out financing for you on a new Mercedes, and you end up buying the Mercedes, you are responsible for your pain when the car gets repossessed, but you have zero responsibility towards the showroom or the salesman. They told you this was alright. They tried to take advantage of you.

It has always been the responsibility of a lender to vet the people he is lending to. While people shouldn't take on debt they can't afford, it's not because they have a moral responsibility towards the bank (Though they do in an abstract sense) it's because eventually the debt will come due and you'll be screwed. The responsibility for the bank's money rests on the shoulders of the officers of that bank and they abdicated that responsibility. They couldn't have foreseen that lots of people would lie (especially when explicitly encouraged to do so) on applications for what were known as "Liar's loans?" Really? The Wall Street geniuses couldn't see that coming?

We don't all share in the blame for this financial collapse. The blame rests on two groups. The bankers who utterly failed to act responsibly because of a perverse incentive system (I'll include the creators of that incentive system in this group, because they were mostly goddamned bankers) and the government, which not only failed to properly regulate the situation but exacerbated it through terrible housing policy, encouraging Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make bad loans on the theory that it would somehow lead to housing for the poor. It didn't. In fact thanks to the housing bubble it's harder than ever for the poor to find anywhere to live. Pouring money into the housing market perverted it, Wall Street preyed upon this perversion, then created insane insurance schemes to make even more money, and it all eventually blew up in everybody's face like these things always do.

Let's keep the blame where it belongs. On the bad guys. On the irresponsible thieves. On Wall Street.

In The Future Every Writer Will Be Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck is mad that his brilliant Elmo metaphor didn't make the financial crisis clear enough to everyone that it would be solved by now. So, using the magic of his scrambled brains, he's traveled to the future to see what the results of this ignorance will be.

Like, for serious.

Happy 300th Birthday!

Holy crap I'm old!

It's 2076 and we've just invented the time-fax machine.

Congratulations. Though wouldn't time e-mail be a little more useful? Or even just time mail? Do people still use fax machines in 2076? Is this a fax? How am I getting it? If you dial the wrong number on the time fax machine do I pick up the phone and hear that horrible explosion of beeps and boops?

(Actually, "we" didn't invent the time-fax machine,

You liar! Why did you tell me that you did. I have half a mind not to believe that you're actually faxing me from the future.

the State did -- they pretty much control everything now.)

Michael Ian Black and company? Do they rule with an iron fist constructed out of detached hipster irony? No? Oh. Dystopian. Got it. Delicious.

I'm faxing this

Seriously? You're still gonna go with faxing here? Not like projecting a hologram or something? Faxing? Okay. Alright.

back to you in 2008 because that seems to be the year we had the best chance to reverse our course and get back to the vision laid out by our founding fathers

Sweet. Of course, you know, might not have hurt to fax us in, say, 2006 or 2007 and give us a bit of time to prepare for this momentous year. October seems a little late to me. What do I know. Maybe it's really expensive to send a time fax more than 68 years into the past.

-- a vision that didn't include the government being in the insurance business.

Right. Because that was the primary causes belli behind the American revolution. Insurance. Remember the 8th amendment? "The government shall stay out of the insurance business under all circumstances." No wait, that was cruel and unusual punishment. I always get them confused.

I don't have a lot of time (the State only gives us one 30-minute break per day)

How long does it take to send a time fax? Also, I'm sorry, but I keep imagining a world ruled by Michael Ian Black, and it horrifies me.

so let me give you some advice: Stop worrying so much about who runs the country and start worrying about who runs your towns, your states, and your Congress.

Okay. Although, your problem seems to be with centralized government, not some crazy mayor or governor. Also, how is the congress different than who runs the country? Has there been a change in the structure of government. Is it actually a Michael Ian Black tyranny. Does he force you to laugh at his VH1 "I love the 2050's" specials?

I know you're all distracted by the presidential election,

Distracted from what?

but for all the money and time poured into it, the truth is that you're choosing between two roads that will lead you to the same destination.

So not only do you get the sweet time fax machine but you can see into alternate futures as well? Nice. Is there any combinations of possible actions that would end with me having sex with Jessica Biel while Alfred Molina watches? Because I would really like to know if such a combination exists.

Sure, one may be the Autobahn and the other a two-lane highway, but you'll end up at the same place either way.

That seems kind of important actually, how long it will take to get to the place. If it is a good place I want to get there fast. If it is a bad place I'd like to take the scenic route.

Decades of Republicans and Democrats alike have all chipped in to lead you to where you are today.

Inwood?

Believing that one person, from either party, can change that by themselves is a big mistake.

Yeah. If the last 8 years have taught us anything it's that one man cannot make a difference. One man can bring neither glory or disaster.

Presidents are like captains of a large ship: They can map out a course and shout out orders, but without the trust and hard work of the people who actually move the rudders, their commands mean nothing.

Future Glenn Beck you are a master of metaphor. Only, I'm not sure that big ships have actual people moving the rudder at this point. I kind of think most of that stuff is automated. Maybe in the future it's not.

In retrospect, the lack of trust and confidence you now have in your leaders was really the root cause of everything that's happened since.

Do you know David Brooks?

While our founding fathers designed a brilliant system of checks and balances, separation of powers and democratic elections, trust was the one thing they couldn't mandate in the Constitution.

What about love? Could they make us love them?

Looking back now, it's pretty obvious that our trust in government declined at about the same rate as our partisanship increased. People became so concerned about getting their party into power at any cost that the truth didn't even seem to matter anymore.

On the contrary. FAIR AND BALANCED. FAIR AND BALANCED

That's probably one of the reasons why George Washington hated the idea of political parties so much. Here's what he said about them in his 1796 farewell speech:

"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty."

Incredibly prescient! It's almost like George Washington is time faxing us from the past!

I know that George had a habit for using big words, so allow me to translate into 2008 English: Political parties that put their own success over that of the country's will be the death of America.

Sorry Glenn, but your 2008 English translation program must be on the fritz, because what you just said is a vast oversimplification of what George Washington was actually saying. Fortunately for you Washington's statement stands on its own and doesn't need translation.

If you don't believe him yet, just wait a few more years...you're about to see firsthand how right he was.

I hope the answer is "Not very."

After all, if power corrupts, then the kind of absolute power gained by political parties (and feared by Washington) corrupts absolutely.

First of all, "If power corrupts then the kind of absolute power gained by political parties corrupts absolutely" is not a logically sound statement. It's only true if power corrupts in proportion to its absoluteness. Also, umm, the kind of absolute power gained by political parties is not absolute at all. Fortunately we don't need them to have absolute power or be absolutely corrupt to bring ruin on us.

Question: Why the conditional statement? You're from the future. You know what happens.

The best advice I can give you is to stop thinking in terms of left and right and start thinking in terms of right and wrong.

The best advice you can give us is a meaningless platitude? Seriously? Umm can I get a time fax from the future Dear Abbey, because you suck at this whole advice thing.

Demand the best leaders possible, and then demand the best out of them.

Thanks. Is there lead paint in the future or have you eaten it all?

Believe me, when you see what's coming your way, you'll realize how little the donkey and the elephant really ever mattered.

What about the libertarians? The green party? The whigs? Any of them matter? What does matter then, besides the bland "Demand the best of the best" advice?

Oh and while we're on politics, one quick thing that I'm sure you're curious about:

Has there been another world war? How did the whole global warming thing turn out? Who are the major economic and military world powers? Have we reached Mars yet?

Yes, Robert Byrd is still in the Senate. He's 159, but doesn't look a day over 91.

Taking pot shots at Robert Byrd. That's what matters. Not partisan politics. Not who is going to be our next president. Nope. It's all about personal insults against old people. On the plus side, I guess we just learned that life expectancy is much greater (at least for a few) in the future. That's good.

Now, let's talk about the economy.

A'ight

Let me see if I have this right: Money and power made people greedy, so you decided to hand over a bunch of money and power to greedy politicians instead.

No you don't. People are naturally greedy and so they decided to pursue money and power at great risk, failed, were bit in the ass, and we had to surrender money and power to the politicians in a last ditch effort to prevent the rest of us from getting swamped by the tidal wave of bad debt the greedy people created. Also, it wasn't really our decision, 'cause the country's a Republic.

Smart!

Future sarcasm. Nasty.

After using that money to nationalize a bunch of banks, mortgage companies and insurance companies, they moved on to bigger things.

What could be bigger than the insurance companies? The founding fathers specifically warned against the government owning one in the sixth amendment. Oh wait. That's speedy trial. Darn.

The airlines came first -- we just couldn't live without them. Then it was the automakers (Detroit would've died), health care (they said they could manage it better), and eventually, the oil companies (I'm not sure where all of those "windfall profits" have gone).

That's a lot of bang for our 700 billion bucks. Looks like the socialized health care thing worked out well though, since Robert Byrd is over 150 years old and still well enough to be in the senate. Strom Thurmond only made it to 135.

The idea behind it all (an idea that was eventually turned into law with the passage of the Securities Exchange Act of 2011)

How do you turn an idea into a law? Seriously. How? you can base a law on an idea, but you can't take an idea and make it law.

was to "socialize losses" by spreading them out among all taxpayers. The pain, our leaders argued, would be minimal that way.

That seems like a horrible argument? Really. They didn't go with "Socialize profits, we'll all be rich and happy!" They went with "Socialize losses?" We elected some stupid leaders.

They were right.

WOOHOO!


At least until the bills came due.

I see what you did there.

See, we didn't actually have any of the money we were promising everyone; we were borrowing it.

It didn't take long before so many of our tax dollars were going toward interest payments that we couldn't fund even the most basic of government programs without massive tax increases on everyone. People now work most of the year just to pay Uncle Sam (or, as we now call him, "Comrade Sam").

Free health care, free air travel, free cars, it seems like we did okay by this deal.

I hear the State censors coming, so let me leave you with a few other quick things:

You wrote a lot in half an hour. And you got it time faxed. Seems like things are running pretty efficiently

• Good call on not worrying about protecting our borders. That works out really well for you in 2019.

Is that more future sarcasm? Glenn Beck you are keeping me on my toes.

You might want to spend a little less time worrying about carbon and a little more time worrying about Iran. We're now in a new mini-Ice Age but, believe me, Iran isn't using their nukes to warm any homes. (PS The International Atomic Energy Agency just revealed to you that Iran appears to be refitting their long-range missiles to carry nuclear payloads. Did you think they were joking or were you just too busy with lipsticks and pigs to notice?)

Holy shit. The melting of the ice caps disrupted ocean currents enough to put us in an ice age in just 68 years? I'm not sure stopping worrying about carbon is really the best plan here, especially since we have like 68 years of peace with the Iranian menace, which is about how long it's been from the start of the Cold War to now. So how about we worry about carbon AND Iran and stop worrying about Paris Hilton and Brangelina? Deal?

• The currency of the future is energy.

That seems hard to carry around in a wallet, but on the plus side I guess all that dollar denominated debt is pretty meaningless. So, that's nice.

Those who have it are thriving and those who don't -- well, let's just leave it at that. Drill for all the oil you can, but you also better start seriously looking for some other options.

Which other options worked out? How about some advice?

In closing, remember this golden rule and you should be fine: Your Constitution will never fail you, but your leaders will. Be wary of anyone who tries to convince you that it's the other way around.

Right. We should definitely be wary of all those guys who are anti-constitution. Oh wait. A little late for that.

Best wishes (you're going to need them),

Worker 2744A

PS It's not all socialist doom and gloom here in the future. We just thawed Ted Williams' cryogenically frozen body and he hit 87 home runs for the North Team!

Wow. Way to slip that "Oh yeah, we can bring back the dead" thing in there. Why wasn't your advice "Get yourself cryogenically frozen, IN THE FUTURE WE CAN BRING YOU BACK!" Also, what happened to Ted Williams' head?

David Brooks Wants His Daddy

The authors of this blog have our differences, but one thing we can both agree on is that David Brooks is awful. He's awful for a lot of reasons, but in his latest column he does something right, and admirable. He openly admits that he's the kind of beta male who, in tough times, looks for someone, ANYONE, to tell him what to do.

In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt inherited an economic crisis. He understood that his first job was to restore confidence, to give people a sense that somebody was in charge, that something was going to be done.

This is meant to parallel the current situation, except that Roosevelt inherited an economic crisis that had been unfolding over a course of years rather than a couple of weeks. Note that Brooks praises Roosevelt not for actually doing anything to solve the crisis, but instead for making people feel better. The way David Brooks wishes someone would make him feel better. Someone with a strong masculine voice that would tell David Brooks that everything is going to be okay, and strong masculine arms that could wrap David Brooks up and make him feel warm, safe, and secure.

This generation of political leaders is confronting a similar situation,

No. Not at all. It's not just that the causes are somewhat different, but it's also been well under a month since all this really started to unfold. Once again, Roosevelt had years to think about his crisis, and ran on a campaign specifically targeted to deal with it.

and, so far, they have failed utterly and catastrophically to project any sense of authority, to give the world any reason to believe that this country is being governed.

David Brooks wants his daddy to make him feel like someone is in charge. David Brooks wants everyone else to know that his daddy is taking care of things. David Brooks isn't that worried that daddy get things right and actually help the crisis, just that he tell everyone he's doing something.

George W. Bush is completely out of juice, having squandered his influence with Republicans as well as Democrats.

Note that his juice was squandered by ramming through legislation that later turned out disastrous to the point where whenever he suggests doing something everyone immediately becomes suspicious of that course of action.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is a smart moneyman, but an inept legislator. He was told time and time again that House Republicans would not support his bill, and his response was to get down on bended knee before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

He proposed to her? That is a rather unexpected negotiating strategy.

House leaders of both parties got wrapped up in their own negotiations, but did it occur to any of them that it might be hard to pass a bill fairly described as a bailout to Wall Street?

Probably. Perhaps they felt pressured by the media to ram something through in order to look authoritative.

Let us recognize above all the 228 [congresspeople] who voted no — the authors of this revolt of the nihilists. They showed the world how much they detest their own leaders and the collected expertise of the Treasury and Fed.

WHY WON'T THEY FOLLOW THEIR MASTERS? What do they think, that they're elected representatives of their districts who are responsible both individually and collectively for doing what's in the best interest of the nation and their constituents? That's not the way David Brooks sees it. Their job is to get down on 'bended knee' and lick the boots of their superiors, just like David Brooks does when his mistress tells him he's been bad. Disobedience is very disrespectful.

They did the momentarily popular thing

I.E. what their constituents wanted

and if the country slides into a deep recession, they will have the time and leisure to watch public opinion shift against them.

As opposed to if they rammed the bill through, it didn't work, and the country went into recession AND the government was broke.

House Republicans led the way and will get most of the blame.

Bad boys and girls.

It has been interesting to watch them on their single-minded mission to destroy the Republican Party.

Because that's what they're doing. Single mindedly trying to destroy the Republican Party. Not sticking up for their constituents or their beliefs or any of that foolishness. They're trying to take down the G.O.P.

Not long ago, they led an anti-immigration crusade that drove away Hispanic support.

To be fair, they were really trying to keep the Hispanic support from getting into the country in the first place.

Then, too, they listened to the loudest and angriest voices in their party, oblivious to the complicated anxieties that lurk in most American minds.

Anxieties like "Will my wife find out that those credit card charges at The Dungeon weren't really just a mixup with Kristoff for one of his sex slavery pieces."

Now they have once again confused talk radio with reality. If this economy slides, they will go down in history as the Smoot-Hawleys of the 21st century.

A) I have a degree in political science with a concentration in American politics, so I vaguely know what the Smooth-Hawley tariff act was, but can you really use this reference with impunity in this day and age? Most Americans can't name the fourth amendment of the constitution, let alone the ninth or the sixteenth. Are we really expecting them to catch this one?

B) The Smoot-Hawley tariff act was an example of overlegislating (Raising tariffs in response to competition from imports) rather than an example of failing to act in crisis. In fact one could argue persuasively that the Smoot-Hawley tariff act is an example of why congress shouldn't always act, and certainly shouldn't act impulsively and without careful consideration.

C) You can't pluralize Smoot-Hawley like that. Smoot-Hawley was not a family name, it was the name of the act sponsored by those two men. You'd have to threaten that the congressmen would look like the Smoots and Hawleys of the 21st century, which wouldn't really work either because there was only one Smoot and one Hawley (for the purposes of this discussion) in the 20th century, but at least it would sort of work. Shouldn't the New York Times be doing a better job of copyediting, especially for a column that presumably has a decent lead time.

With this vote, they’ve taken responsibility for this economy, and they will be held accountable.

God, NO! Congress taking responsibility for something and being held ACCOUNTABLE? Won't somebody think of the children? THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

I’ve spoken with several House Republicans over the past few days and most admirably believe in free-market principles.

Principles? Among House Republicans? I think we may have a Jayson Blair situation here.

What’s sad is that they still think it’s 1984.

I don't think David Brooks consciously intended to reference Orwell's classic (Though I do think he is waiting for Big Brother to arrive with the fervent hope of an Evangelical waiting for Jesus, except with more erections.) but if not, why choose 1984 specifically, instead of 1983 or 1985? You have to be carefully randomly throwing that year around, just like you can't say "I hate September 11th, because I lost my wallet on that day in 1997." Someone's already called dibs on 1984.

They still think the biggest threat comes from socialism and Walter Mondale liberalism. They seem not to have noticed how global capital flows have transformed our political economy.

Whoops. Neither did anybody else.

We’re living in an age when a vast excess of capital sloshes around the world fueling cycles of bubble and bust.

It's a tsunami of money. And just like a tsunami it can only be described in passive terms because there's no group of people actually in control of this thing!

When the capital floods into a sector or economy, it washes away sober business practices, and habits of discipline and self-denial.

I love the passive language here. This tsunami of cash washes away sober business practices while bankers desperately cling to them, trying to prevent themselves from taking stupid greedy risks. But they can't. The tsunami of money MADE them do it.

Then the money managers panic and it sloshes out, punishing the just and unjust alike.

Not to burst your 'bubble' Mr. Brooks, but ummm...hasn't that been the opposite of the case? Haven't the unjust and irresponsible lost a crapload of money while those who refrained from betting heavily on unsubstantiated securities have stayed in business and in some cases even profited from the situation?

What we need in this situation is authority.

Someone to take control with a firm voice, strong words, and lots of paddlings for naughty boys like David Brooks. Seriously, though, is there a situation where David Brooks doesn't call for the consolidation of power and for someone to tell everyone what to do? Can you imagine one?

Not heavy-handed government regulation,

This is where Brooks remembers that he's supposed to be a principled Republican instead of a worm who wants somebody to order him around.

but the steady and powerful hand of some public institutions that can guard against the corrupting influences of sloppy money and then prevent destructive contagions when the credit dries up.

Heady stuff. Definitely the kind of thing you'd want to organize during a few short weeks of panic and confusion. Because making such decisions based on fear never ever goes wrong.

The Congressional plan was nobody’s darling, but it was an effort to assert some authority

Remember, asserting authority in response to economic crisis ALWAYS ENDS WELL

It was an effort to alter the psychology of the markets. People don’t trust the banks; the bankers don’t trust each other. It was an effort to address the crisis of authority in Washington.

Authority is the official word of the day.

At least it might have stabilized the situation so fundamental reforms of the world’s financial architecture could be undertaken later.

We'll get to the actual change later, now is not the time for trying to fix stuff, it's time to spend $700 billion to buy some peace of mind.

But the 228 House members who voted no have exacerbated the global psychological free fall, and now we have a crisis of political authority on top of the crisis of financial authority.

Two authorities in one sentence. I imagine David Brooks writing that sentence down, quietly high-fiving himself in his cubicle, and then furiously masturbating to the thought of a jackboot stepping softly on his scrotum.

The only thing now is to try again — to rescue the rescue. There’s no time to find a brand-new package, so the Congressional plan should go up for another vote on Thursday, this time with additions that would change its political prospects.

If at first you don't succeed, stuff the bill full of pork until everyone compromises their principles.

If that doesn’t happen, the world could be in for some tough economic times (the Europeans, apparently, have not even begun to acknowledge their toxic debt) — but also tough political times.

The American century was created by American leadership, which is scarcer than credit just about now.

And authority costs $25o an hour or $6oo for a three hour block.

David Brooks needs his credit, people.

When Fiction Meets Reality

This one's a little bit dated -- sorry -- but last week Maureen Dowd chose to address the question on every American's mind: OMG, if a fictional Democratic president from a popular TV show could have a conversation with the non-fictional Democratic nominee for president, what would they talk about?

She even enlisted Aaron Sorkin to write it. Which is actually kind of funny, that a woman who considers herself a trailblazer for female op-ed columnists, and who wrote this book, got her ex-boyfriend to write her column.

Helpfully, in the middle of this column, Dowd/Sorkin points out (twice!) that Bartlet's solutions don't really apply, because he's a fictional president:

...

BARTLET A huge number of Americans thought I thought I was superior to them.

OBAMA And?

BARTLET I was.

OBAMA I mean, how did you overcome that?

BARTLET I won’t lie to you, being fictional was a big advantage.

...

OBAMA How did you do it?

BARTLET Well, I say I’m sorry a lot.

OBAMA I don’t mean your marriage, sir. I mean how did you get America on your side?

BARTLET There again, I didn’t have to be president of America, I just had to be president of the people who watched “The West Wing.”

...

So if a fictional character arc can't give us advice for real life, then, um, what's the point of this conversation? Dowd's entire raison d'etre is publishing fluff to keep her readers' attention. At first, this struck me as juvenile. But then I realized that this blog has only two readers (the contributors) and I started to wonder: what would Dowd and Sorkin's conversation about this column have looked like IF POPEYE THE SAILOR WERE INVOLVED? Huh? Huh?

(AARON SORKIN walks furiously down a hall in his studio. POPEYE THE SAILOR MAN is walking furiously on his left. MAUREEN DOWD, the popular columnist, catches up to them and walks furiously on Sorkin's right.)

DOWD We need to talk about the column I asked you about.

SORKIN Right, the column you asked me about.

DOWD You forgot to write it, didn't you?

SORKIN No I didn't.

DOWD Great!

SORKIN Except there's just one thing --

DOWD What?

SORKIN That column?

DOWD Yes?

SORKIN I forgot to write it.

DOWD (exasperated) Oh, Jesus. Popeye, what should I do?

POPEYE Well, I'd eat me spinach and go save me Olive. But I yam just a fictional character, and that's all that I yam.

SORKIN Look, we'll just write something with Bartlet talking to Obama.

DOWD Bartlet?

SORKIN Yes. Talking to Obama.

DOWD Obama?

SORKIN Obama.

DOWD Talking to Bartlet?

SORKIN Yes. Popeye, what do you think?

POPEYE I can't stands it no more.

Accessorizing

First of all, sorry for my inactivity lately. My day job (nice try, but I'm not tellin') and my night job (crying over the failures of a wretched baseball team) have taken up time this week.

But I came to realize what's truly important last night while watching the Presidential debate on my couch. I was watching it, oddly enough, with Ann Hazelbaker, a middle aged woman from a swing state who lost her son in Iraq. And towards the end of the debate, she handed me a bracelet and said "Don't let Jimmy's sacrifice be in vain. I want you to keep your blog regularly updated with fresh content."

I still have that bracelet, almost twelve hours later. And I promise, Ann, I won't make one more mother keep refreshing this page.

Sometimes dumb is obvious

"We shouldn't second guess Israel's security efforts because we cannot ever afford to send the message that we would allow a second holocaust."

I guess Sarah Palin doesn't use the 'slippery slope' argument so much as the 'cliff right above a black hole' argument. Just so I'm clear, if we were to, say, suggest that assassinating members of Hamas on public roads using missiles is maybe not the best idea, we would in fact be saying "Go ahead, kill all the Jews, we won't do nothin'?"

At what point do we start asking whether Sarah Palin is ACTUALLY George Bush in drag? Sure they look different, and Palin has a faux midwestern accent as opposed to Bush's faux Texas accent, but as Palin herself suggested, lipstick only goes so far. A pitbull remains a pitbull and an ignorant absolutist remains an ignorant absolutist no matter how cute the glasses or pretty the face.