December 2008

I don't know about you, but I'm ready to kick 2008 right out the door, everybody is on my ninth nerve, which provides a most opportune time to ask you to vote on the best and worst executive that the world of finance had to offer in 2008. Below you'll find the 2008 hit parade. Please log in your vote via a comment on the best executive and the worst executive of 2008. We'll tally your ... read more

The most famous patient in the history of neuroscience, a victim of "profound amnesia," Henry Gustav Molaison, died this year. Molaison could not remember anything beyond 20 seconds, a real life character straight out of the movie Memento. Severe anterograde amnesia has also afflicted Congress and the homebuilders alike when it comes to what is aggravating the most severe economic downturn ... read more

The White House today put forth a plan to loan the automakers a total of $17.4 bn, after a bruising debate in Congress and Detroit. One of the central arguments Detroit has used to get a taxpayer funded government bailout is this inequity, that the government has provided record bail out sums for Wall Street instead of Main Street. But that argument misses a huge point. The White House's ... read more

When it comes to your tax dollars, Congress should be tight as a miser's fist. But it isn't. Not when it comes to the bailouts of the financials and the banking system. Many banks are getting bailout money when they should not qualify for the funds at all. Especially banks that willy nilly chucked loan money at all sorts of commercial real estate projects now mothballed and moth-eaten, ... read more

Blame the record bailouts on Mister Rogers. Mister Fred Rogers, the children's TV star, who, beginning in 1968, started every show telling us that we were "special" just the way we were. When we weren't.   Blame all of those preening child-rearing experts who encouraged an excruciatingly costly culture of entitlement, a culture of narcissism, of excessive self-righteous ... read more