RollingStone.com: Matt Taibbi | Taibblog Thu 2010-09-23 09:37 EDT

Bob Rubin Cuddles

Matt Taibbi

...No man's behavior looks attractive when he's cheating on his wife, but this little tell-all by a woman who had a sort-of fling with former Goldman chief and Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin is more than unusually embarrassing...The most disgusting (and revealing) part of the story is, to me, this part of Iris Mack's narrative... A multi-multi-millionaire giving a homeless guy a dollar on the way to the Ritz...if that isn't the perfect metaphor for the modern ``Third Way'' Democratic Party, I don't know what is...Bob Rubin's main job at Citi was to hang around and be available for his political connections. His job, as I understand it, was a sort of permanent, ongoing bribe...

Bob Rubin cuddle; com; Matt Taibbi; rollingstone; Taibblog.

naked capitalism Tue 2010-08-24 20:02 EDT

Boston Fed's New Excuse for Missing the Housing Bubble: NoneOfUscouddanode

It is truly astonishing to watch how determined the economics orthodoxy is to defend its inexcusable, economy-wrecking performance in the runup to the financial crisis...From the Wall Street Journal Economics blog: Should economists and policy makers have identified the housing market bubble before it burst? The answer is most likely no, says the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, because economic theory was not up to the challenge... Yves: This recitation is truly embarrassing, in that the writers clearly see this abject failure as completely reasonable, as opposed to compelling evidence that the discipline is not qualified to provide policy advice. What could be more damning than admitting that economics was incapable of seeing the blindingly obvious?...

Boston Fed's New Excuse; housing bubble; missing; naked capitalism; NoneOfUscouddanode.

Jesse's Café Américain Mon 2010-08-16 16:09 EDT

Chris Whalen: Nothing Has Changed Because It's The Fraud and Corruption, Stupid

Jesse

...The dirty little secret of the Dodd-Frank legislation is that by failing to curtail the worst abuses of the OTC market in structured assets and derivatives, a financial ghetto that even today remains virtually unregulated, the Congress and the Fed are effectively even encouraging securities firms to act as de facto exchanges and thereby commit financial fraud. Allowing securities firms to originate complex structured securities without requiring SEC registration is a vast loophole that Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) deliberately left open for their campaign contributors on Wall Street. But it must be noted these same firms have a captive, client relationship with the Fed and other regulators as well, thus a love triangle may be the most apt metaphor...a recent key supervisory officer appointment by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY)...choice of Sarah Dahlgren as Head of Supervision...Ms Dahlgren has been at the center of many of the Federal Reserve's most embarrassing failures in the area of bank supervision and in particular with respect to the failure of American International Group (AIG)...

change because; Chris Whalen; corruption; fraud; Jesse's Café Américain; Stupid.

PressThink Thu 2010-06-24 10:18 EDT

Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right: On the Actual Ideology of the American Press

Jay Rosen

That it's easy to describe the ideology of the press is a point on which the left, the right and the profession of journalism converge. I disagree. I think it's tricky. So tricky, I've had to invent my own language for discussing it...political journalists...are skeptical about changing society in any fundamental way...professional journalist...generate authority and respect...flee opprobrium...[by demonstrating] that they are not on anyone's ``team,'' or cheerleading for a known position. This puts a premium on stories that embarrass, disrupt, annoy or counter the preferred narrative...``True believer,'' a term of contempt...narcissistic reactions of both sides prove how mature and professional and detached he is...people with political sense in press treatment will usually be the moderates, mavericks and ``pragmatists,'' a word that in political journalism has almost no content beyond, ``opposite of true believer... ideologically flexible... not a purist.''...journalists try to win the argument not by having better arguments but by standing closer to a reality they get to define as more real than your reality...The Church of the Savvy...The Quest for Innocence...Regression to a Phony Mean...The View from Nowhere...He said, she said journalism...The sphere of deviance...

actual ideological; American press; clowns; jokers; left; PressThink; Right.

Tue 2010-03-09 18:13 EST

Gandhi's Seven Blunders - and then some

Donella Meadows

A few weeks before he was assassinated, Gandhi the Mahatma had a conversation with his grandson Arun. He handed Arun a talisman upon which were engraved "Seven Blunders," out of which, said Gandhi, grows the violence that plagues the world. The blunders were: Wealth without work. Pleasure without conscience. Knowledge without character. Commerce without morality. Science without humanity. Worship without sacrifice. Politics without principles. Gandhi called these disbalances "passive violence," which fuels the active violence of crime, rebellion, and war. He said, "We could work till doomsday to achieve peace and would get nowhere as long as we ignore passive violence in our world." To his grandfather's list of seven blunders Arun later added an eighth: Rights without responsibilities. Gandhi gave the list to Arun in 1947. Almost 50 years later the blunders have been institutionalized, built into our corporations, our governments, our very culture. Not only are we no longer embarrassed by them; we actively practice them. In some of them we even take pride...

blunders; Gandhi s.

Tue 2009-04-21 00:00 EDT

Cold Call

by Landon Thomas Jr.; former Treasury secretary Robert E. Rubin embarrassed over Enron call; 2002-02-11

cold-calling.