The Voice of Reason Arrives (Finally!)

Today, The New York Times published a well-written and lucid resignation email from Jake DeSantis, Executive Vice President at AIG Financial Products, to AIG’s CEO, Edward Liddy. 
DeSantis’s letter is the cold water of reason that Congress, the White House and the mainstream media should have been pouring on the raging fires of populist anger over [...]

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Ballsy! Barron’s Says Markets Near Bottom

As Thomas Paine wrote, these are the times that try men’s souls.  Not to mention their retirement plans.
Over the weekend, Barron’s (subscription required) drew a line in the sand, arguing that U.S. stock prices may be at or very near their bottom:
“Sure, stocks could slide much further — but they probably won’t.  By most measures, [...]

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Fox News Strategy Room Appearance

I’ll be appearing on FoxNews.com’s Strategy Room next Tuesday, March 10th, from 9:00 – 10:00 a.m.  You can watch the live stream on the web here.

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Bobby Jindal Puts the “Recess” into Recession

Watching Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal rebut President Obama’s speech the other night, I finally understood what Marcel Proust was getting at in his brick-sized Remembrance of Things Past.
From the moment Jindal glided up to the podium and began delivering an oversimplified history lesson on the “redemptive journey” that the President’s speech represented, I had a flashback [...]

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Geithner’s Mother-of-All Interventions

Today Treasury Secretary Geithner prescribed tough medicine for restoring confidence in the financial system.  The stock market responded by vomiting up its recent gains.  One could ask why, but one’s time might be more fruitfully spent tackling easier problems, such as rediscovering the lost art of alchemy or devising the Napoleon Dynamite algorithm that wins [...]

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Bankers’ Bonuses Are a Red Herring

Bloomberg’s David Reilly wrote a very good opinion piece today on the danger of focusing too closely on the investment bankers and their bonuses.
Reilly suggests that the economic crisis is the result of a much larger collective failure by bankers, regulators, legislators, etc. to ensure long-term viability.
He’s right on point.   Blaming the bankers (however well deserved it [...]

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Biden Gets His First Yellow Card

Less than 24 hours.  That’s how long it took for Joe Biden to stick his foot in his gaffe-prone mouth after becoming Vice President.
Today, while swearing in new members of the White House staff, Biden took a jab at Chief Justice Roberts’ incorrect recitation of the presidential oath at yesterday’s inauguration.
The conservative Chief Justice had [...]

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Barack’s Inspection

Like a high school teacher on the first day of class, Obama needs to set a tone for the next four years.  He needs to smack people in the head, manage the unreasonable expectations the electorate (and his own campaign) have placed on him and motivate Americans to take ownership of the solutions to the [...]

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HOW MUCH Is That Gorilla in the Window Gonna Cost?!?

Vincent Rossmeier and Gabriel Winant have a great piece in Salon about the economic havoc George Bush’s presidency will wreak on the U.S. for generations to come.  From GDP to global warming, the red state party’s policies put the country in the red.  A century from now, our great grandchildren will be working just to get the nation out of hock. [...]

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Even the Lawyers Are Getting Killed

Jonathan Glater has a story in today’s NYT Business Section about how large New York law firms are shedding associates and, in some cases, folding.  “It’s bad out there,” says Robin Miller, a principal at New York-based Corrao, Rush Miller & Wiesenthal Legal Search Consultants.
Tell me about it.

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