Who Holds Wall Street Accountable?

If your answer included any of number regulators or congress with its oversight duties or the traditional media with its watchdog of the public duties sorta answer, that would be a wrong answer. There were so many articles today about past and present Wall Street tomfoolery that I almost forgot [...]

Some times being Right doesn’t always make you Feel Good

You may remember back in January that I was not happy and very outspoken about the size of the Obama Stimulus plan. I was not impressed by the content or with the mix between tax cuts and direct government spending. You may recall that the Blue Dogs interminable resistance to do anything that might [...]

Bloggers Under the Bus and Over the Rainbow

I was going to do a nice staid article about the Fed and regulation but frankly it’s a nice sunny, tropical Sunday down here and it just doesn’t seem kind to overwhelm my brain or yours with Barky Frankisms and tales from the crypt of A(ll)yn Greenspan. I scoured my usual sites for inspiration [...]

Our Dysfunctional Government

I used to tell my students down here in New Orleans how smoothly things ran in Minneapolis compared to here until that Interstate Bridge fell into the river. Then I realized we were just the canary in the coal mine.
Still, it’s really hard to describe the degree of dysfunction surrounding all levels of government down [...]

Perspective

One of the first things to go when people get morally outraged is their perspective. Not only do they frequently lose perspective, they also lose sight of bigger issues. A sense of outrage simply overwhelms one’s sense of perspective. The enraged heart overtakes the circumspect mind.
I’ve talked about The Project on Government [...]

On Overlooked Battles and Unsung Heroes

In the midst of so much policy disarray, it is easy to overlook many issues that deserve our attention. I’m beginning to think all the chaos may be angle of hat trick magician relying on slight of hand and misdirection. So, just as I continue to hammer at boring things like bank [...]

Incoherency is not an Asset

I’m not sure what happened to Dr. Paul Krugman that fateful night of dinner at the White House, but I’d like the shrill one back now. Was it something in the food? Was it something in the conversation? Who knows? But in as much a Buddhist can offer a Jewish guy [...]

Revenge of the Beta Males

There’s only a few places in the real world where Beta Males get to whoop it up and extract their revenge on the Alphas that shoved them around during their model-building, star wars loving, well-spent but unhappy youths. Those places would be on Wall Street, what passes for journalism these days, and Washington D.C.. [...]

Speechification Alert

Well, it’s my turn to listen to a Obama Speech. Those speeches usually have the same dizzying effect on me that tennis matches do. Instead of watching balls go back and forth rhythmically while lulling me to sleep, I get to watch the head of the President. Teleprompter Right, 1,2,3 to [...]

The Blame Game

It’s amazing to me that so many people can get so worked up about one mid level bureaucrat in the White House who is a repentant communist and says he accidentally signed a 9-11 truther petition thinking it was just a request for more information on what the White House knew prior to those terrorist [...]