Remorse

As a supplement to Matt Taibbi’s article — described and linked to in the previous post — I thought this paragraph from George Packer in a February article in The New Yorker about Florida’s foreclosure disaster — “The Ponzi State” — was particularly apropos.

Dan knew that his plight was the result of rising unemployment in a bad economy that was shedding the few remaining manufacturing jobs. In Hillsborough County, forty-eight thousand people had no work. And yet, in pondering the cause of his trouble, Dan couldn’t avoid the feeling that the world had singled him out for some terrible payback, that it must have been his fault, that the failure was his alone and he had no right to anyone else’s help. It occurred to me that this was an attitude that no senior figure on Wall Street had adopted.

The Great American Bubble Machine

Matt Taibbi’s controversial report on Goldman Sachs, The Great American Bubble Machine, came online in full today, coincidentally the day Goldman announced second-quarter profits of $3.44 billion. I haven’t read the article yet — I am about to — but I know it’s important reading to understand the economic world in which we live. As Taibbi writes, “It is a history exactly five bubbles long….” [It’s funny, informative, important and deserves your time.]

Here’s the second paragraph to possibly whet your interest.

By now, most of us know the major players. As George Bush’s last Treasury secretary, former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson was the architect of the bailout, a suspiciously self-serving plan to funnel trillions of Your Dollars to a handful of his old friends on Wall Street. Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton’s former Treasury secretary, spent 26 years at Goldman before becoming chairman of Citigroup — which in turn got a $300 billion taxpayer bailout from Paulson. There’s John Thain, the asshole chief of Merrill Lynch who bought an $87,000 area rug for his office as his company was imploding; a former Goldman banker, Thain enjoyed a multibilliondollar handout from Paulson, who used billions in taxpayer funds to help Bank of America rescue Thain’s sorry company. And Robert Steel, the former Goldmanite head of Wachovia, scored himself and his fellow executives $225 million in goldenparachute payments as his bank was selfdestructing. There’s Joshua Bolten, Bush’s chief of staff during the bailout, and Mark Patterson, the current Treasury chief of staff, who was a Goldman lobbyist just a year ago, and Ed Liddy, the former Goldman director whom Paulson put in charge of bailedout insurance giant AIG, which forked over $13 billion to Goldman after Liddy came on board. The heads of the Canadian and Italian national banks are Goldman alums, as is the head of the World Bank, the head of the New York Stock Exchange, the last two heads of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — which, incidentally, is now in charge of overseeing Goldman — not to mention …

Taibbi’s description later of Robert Rubin is laugh-out-loud funny.

Best story of the day

The worst checking error is calling people dead who are not dead. In the words of John Hersh, “It really annoys them.” Sara remembers a reader in a nursing home who read in The New Yorker that he was “the late” reader in the nursing home. He wrote demanding a correction. The New Yorker, in its next issue, of course complied, inadvertently doubling the error, because the reader died over the weekend while the magazine was being printed.

John McPhee in a story about the famed New Yorker fact-checkers. Sara is Sara Lippincott a retired New Yorker editor — and fact-checker 1966-1982. Story (in February 9 & 16, 2009, issue) available to subscribers online.

The photographing of the running of the bulls

The Festival of San Fermin attracts thousands of visitors to Pamplona, Spain every year. The nine-day festival includes a carnival, bullfights and of course, the famous Running of the Bulls. Deeply traditional, it has been held since 1591, and remains a popular, if dangerous and controversial event. This year, dozens of runners and revelers have been injured, and one has been killed – a 27-year-old man who was gored in the neck, heart and lungs on Friday. Animal rights groups continue to level criticism toward the event, in which dozens of bulls run through small, packed streets toward a bullring where they will be killed during later bullfights. Collected here are some of the scenes from this year’s Festival of San Fermin. (32 photos total)

The Big Picture – Boston.com

Bastille Day

July 14th is Bastille Day in France, a national holiday. Even Google gets in on the act (google.fr, that is— image is from 2008).

Google Bastille Day

But above all, Bastille Day, or the Fourteenth of July, is the symbol of the end of the monarchy and the beginning of the Republic. The national holiday is a time when all citizens celebrate their membership to a republican nation. It is because this national holiday is rooted in the history of the birth of the Republic that it has such great significance.

… The people of Paris rose up and decided to march on the Bastille, a state prison that symbolized the absolutism and arbitrariness of the Ancien Regime.

The storming of the Bastille, on July 14, 1789, immediately became a symbol of historical dimensions; it was proof that power no longer resided in the King or in God, but in the people, in accordance with the theories developed by the Philosophes of the 18th century.

On July 16, the King recognized the tricolor cockade: the Revolution had succeeded.

For all citizens of France, the storming of the Bastille symbolizes, liberty, democracy and the struggle against all forms of oppression.

Embassy of France

Best redux line of the day

Jay Leno had this in his monologue the last time we had hearings for a Supreme Court nominee:

Have you watched any of these confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sam Alito? Senators are given thirty minutes to question the guy; thirty minutes exactly. Senator Joe Biden’s question took 23½ minutes. His question took 24 minutes. And Alito is smart. He’s brilliant. Do you know what he said? “I’m sorry, could you repeat the question?”

Best Places to Live 2009

Money Magazine provides the list of America’s best places to live, leading with Louisville. No not Louisville, Kentucky, silly; Louisville, Colorado. It’s a list of the best small towns.

Some towns nestled along the Rockies are full of pretentious eco-hipsters. Not Louisville. Ice cream shops dot the historic downtown. Families grab burgers at the cozy Waterloo Café. A Friday-night street fair, with a beer garden, live music, and games for the kids, runs all summer. No wonder this down-to-earth town has appeared high on Money’s Best Places list before–and on many others.

The Louis in the Colorado town’s name is pronounced like the Louis in St. Louis.

Among the seven Rocky Mountain states, only Colorado with two and Utah with four have towns in the top 100.

The armed customer IS always right

PORT ANGELES — A 37-year-old woman was arrested after the Clallam County Sheriff’s Department said she threatened several people with a handgun in the Wal-Mart parking lot.
. . .

No one was injured.

Peregrin said Dumdie had argued with customers in the store after they had asked her to stop cursing and yelling at an employee.

He said she was upset with the employee, saying she had sold her the wrong kind of ammunition.

Olympic Peninsula Daily news

Actually, more than dead fish go with the flow

Indeed, so hallowed is the Colorado that the waiting list for private trips is measured in years, plural. And why not? Great white water, that gigantic rift in the Earth that you float through over a period of two or more weeks, the simple thought of retracing Major John Wesley Powell’s exploration of the uncharted Western territories in the late 1800s.

But the Colorado is not the only quality river experience you can find in the National Park System. Some aren’t as rocking and rolling as the Colorado is, some are more, and some are simply nice rides into solitude. With that understood, here’s the Traveler’s 10 best float trips in the national parks, in no particular order.

National Parks Traveler’s Top 10 Rivers to Ride in the National Park System

Worst of Times, Best of Times

My favorite wine writer, Louisville Juice says it’s a good time to experiment:

The wine store owners I’ve talked to have adjusted their inventories, holding fewer trophy wines in inventory and putting more promotional emphasis on $10 – $20 wines. Distributors are bringing them targets of opportunity and promotional help that keeps margins up and traffic flowing.

That’s good, at least in the short term, for…wine drinkers. For now, we’re seeing more, different wines at prices that are nearly irresistible. That makes it a good time to move up from $8 brands to something a little more interesting.

If I understood the gist of the article right (which is doubtful, but let me try), there’s very little need to pay more than $15 or $20 for a bottle of wine these days.

Must have been ASU

Remember the other day I told you my G’pa liked to tell stories. Here’s one I remember him telling — first posted here three years ago today.

The coaches and athletic director were despondent. The big game was approaching and the star player was failing all his classes. If something wasn’t done, and done soon, he wouldn’t be eligible to play. They convinced the dean.

So, the dean approached each of the player’s professors and explained how contributions from alumni depended on how the team did in the big game — and how important this player was to winning. The dean convinced all of the teachers to change the player’s grade.

All but one.

“No,” this professor insisted, “he has to re-take the exam.”

“OK,” said the dean, “if he passes, can he play?”

“Yes,” said the professor.

“Can it be an oral exam?” asked the dean.

“Sure,” said the professor.

“With just one question?”

“Yes,” said the professor, feeling his arm twist.

“Can it be a spelling test?”

“Why not,” said the professor, now just trying to be a team player.

“A one word spelling test?”

“Sure.”

“And if he gets one letter right, he passes, right?”

“OK. OK.”

“And the word will be coffee?”

“Yes, yes, anything.”

They called the player in. Spell coffee they said.

“K-a-u-p-h-y.”

Indy and Cheech and Capain Picard and a Byrd

Today is the birthday

… of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Patrick Stewart is 69.

… of Bob Falfa. That’s Harrison Ford. He’s 67. And yes, Ford, who at one time had been in seven of the ten top grossing films of all time, has an Oscar nomination — for best actor in Witness.

… of Roger McGuinn, an inductee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Byrds. He’s 67.

As Roger McGuinn once said of the Byrds, “It was Dylan meets the Beatles.” The Byrds combined the upbeat, melodic pop of the Beatles with the message-oriented lyrics of Bob Dylan into a wholly original amalgam that would be branded folk-rock. If only for their harmony-rich versions of Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” and Pete Seeger’s “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” drenched in the 12-string jangle of McGuinn’s Rickenbacker guitar, the Byrds would have earned their place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Yet the group continually broke ground during the Sixties, creating revelatory syntheses of sound that were given such hyphenated names as space-rock (“5D [Fifth Dimension]”), psychedelic-rock (“Eight Miles High”) and country-rock (their Sweethearts of the Rodeo album). At a time when rock and roll was exploding in all fronts, the Byrds led the way with an insatiable curiosity about the forms and directions pop music could take. In so doing, they became peers and equals of their mentors, Dylan and the Beatles.

… of Pedro de Pacas. Richard ‘Cheech’ Marin is 63.

A thought to start your week

Put it this way: if the consensus of the economic experts is grim, the consensus of the climate experts is utterly terrifying. At this point, the central forecast of leading climate models — not the worst-case scenario but the most likely outcome — is utter catastrophe, a rise in temperatures that will totally disrupt life as we know it, if we continue along our present path.

Paul Krugman

Have a nice day.