Across the Great Divide

Red Star or Death Star?

If this keeps up, Anti-Strib will need a name change.

Denny Hecker makes the front page with actual news instead of those annoying wallpaper ads for his car dealerships that until recently crawled across the Strib's home page. The troubles of Hecker's diversified financial empire cannot be good news for the slouching-toward-bankruptcy brain trust that owns the newspaper.

Meanwhile, the Star Tribune's comment threads — those not already suspended — have descended deeper into know-nothingism, and favorable reader "votes" tilt strongly toward ill-informed rants. Most in this cohort of readers claim to have canceled their subscriptions long ago. It's doubtful Katherine Kersten columns and Norm Coleman endorsements are going to inspire them to re-up.

They will insist on the myth of the Red Star even when the only thing red about it is the ink it produces for Avista Capital Partners.

If the Strib's core audience is abandoning the comment threads, can their newspaper subscriptions be far behind?

I hope not.

Fun with Voting.

 

MPR has a nice feature up that allows you to play election judge in the Franken-Coleman Senate recount.
It shows 11 disputed ballots and asks for your ruling. Then you can compare your judgment with others. More than 100,000 had weighed in on some of the ballots.

Catching Gramma Riding Dirty.

I just stumbled across this talent show audition video of a Baptist Church's senior hip hop choir.

It started out oh no!, went to hilarious, degraded to excruciating and finally left me feeling sorry for the participants and the ridicule they'd be subjected to because of an apparently clueless but persuasive choir director.

BBC Radio 1's Scott Mills had a similar reaction. The second version is his remix with commentary.

Watch one for a bit to form your own conclusions, before going to the comments for a footnote.

Planning and its Perils.

When I'd give sessions on strategic planning, I used to tell people the reason you do it is so you've already thought through all the issues when nothing goes as planned.

Jim has another take.

Just a few months ago, gas was $4, and the only person who believed $2 gas would ever again be a reality was noted camera-loving screwball Rep. Michele Bachmann (R - MN), though Bachmann's predictions invoked a mechanism different than what has actually happened. Interestingly, our oil consumption is falling off drastically even as we see multi-year lows in the price of consuming oil. Who would have guessed this outcome earlier this year? Who would have based actual plans on such a guess?

*****
On the family planning front, Margaret Talbot asks why so many evangelical teens become pregnant. [via Open Education]

[T]he reactions to [Bristol Palin's pregnancy] have exposed a cultural rift that mirrors America’s dominant political divide. Social liberals in the country’s “blue states” tend to support sex education and are not particularly troubled by the idea that many teen-agers have sex before marriage, but would regard a teen-age daughter’s pregnancy as devastating news. And the social conservatives in “red states” generally advocate abstinence-only education and denounce sex before marriage, but are relatively unruffled if a teen-ager becomes pregnant, as long as she doesn’t choose to have an abortion.

A sociologist who has studied teen sex "argues that religion is a good indicator of attitudes toward sex, but a poor one of sexual behavior, and that this gap is especially wide among teen-agers who identify themselves as evangelical."

The vast majority of white evangelical adolescents—seventy-four per cent—say that they believe in abstaining from sex before marriage. (Only half of mainline Protestants, and a quarter of Jews, say that they believe in abstinence.) Moreover, among the major religious groups, evangelical virgins are the least likely to anticipate that sex will be pleasurable, and the most likely to believe that having sex will cause their partners to lose respect for them.

I haven't read the study or the entire New Yorker article that quotes it, but I wonder why this should be surprising, since to my mind, extreme religion (take your pick) seems largely organized on behalf of men who couldn't get laid on their own merits.

If You Have to Ask...

The Star Tribune has shut down one of its under-performing publications.

What else is there besides Vita•Mn or maybe Buzz•Mn?

Well, there was MARQ magazine.

What's MARQ, you ask?

A bi-monthly magazine distributed free to “exclusive” high net worth individuals in the Twin Cities metro.

Oh.

Mitt Romney: Learn to Love Bankruptcy.

Son of auto exec and venture capitalist Mitt Romney says don't bail out Detroit.

But as Walter Reuther, the former head of the United Automobile Workers, said to my father, “Getting more and more pay for less and less work is a dead-end street.”

The need for collaboration will mean accepting sanity in salaries and perks. At American Motors, my dad cut his pay and that of his executive team, he bought stock in the company, and he went out to factories to talk to workers directly. Get rid of the planes, the executive dining rooms — all the symbols that breed resentment among the hundreds of thousands who will also be sacrificing to keep the companies afloat.

Good for dad. But as this story reminds us, Mitt made money "buying up companies and cashing out within three to five years, often after closing factories or laying off workers to beef up the bottom line."

A typical example of Bain's approach was its experience with another office-supply company called Ampad, which it acquired in 1992. In 1993, the company had $11 million in debt; by 1999, that number had grown to nearly $400 million, and the firm eventually declared bankruptcy. But despite Ampad's failure, Bain made a fortune, raking in more than $100 million while driving the company into the ground and destroying hundreds of jobs in places like New York (where 185 people were thrown out of work in a plant closing near Buffalo) and Indiana (where the firm fired 200 workers from a paper factory).

Maybe Reuther meant to say: “Getting more and more pay for less and less work is a one-way street.”

Hammond on IRS: They Didn't Ask Nicely.

Pass the potatoes.

What?

Please pass the potatoes.

Dum dee dum...

Pretty please!

Too late.

Like the passive aggressive kid at the family dinner table, Pastor Mac Hammond won a victory in court yesterday because the IRS failed to say pretty please with sugar on it.

[Living Word Christian Center] had argued that it didn't have to provide detailed financial information focusing on the compensation of its founder and senior pastor, James (Mac) Hammond, requested by the IRS.

Earlier this year, the IRS petitioned the U.S. District Court to force the church to answer its demand for information. The church argued that the request wasn't made by a "high-ranking official" as required by law, and the magistrate judge agreed.

Next, a U.S. District Court Judge can decide to follow the ruling, or a higher-ranking IRS official can request the information. Both Hammond and his mentor Kenneth Copeland insist they'd cooperate with the IRS... they just haven't.

The case is specific to laws covering religious organizations. That means kids being told by the teacher to sit down in class still can't hold out for an order from the principal. Perps had best listen to the cop with the Taser when he says to freeze.

If you've just bankrupted a company, though, be sure to pick up your check as you're shown the door. And don't forget your bag of sugar.

Invest in a Winner!

I don't usually impart investment advice here, but given the current state of the market, it would be criminal for me not to pass on this opportunity to "expect 650% gains in your portfolio now!"

With all the scorn and even hatred directed at President-elect Obama, isn't it refreshing to see some of the drill now boys are trying to exploit his election?

Bailout, Creative Destruction, Rehab or Hospice.

Standard models for dealing with immense crisis often prove inadequate.

Instead of allowing ourselves only the unsatisfying political choices of bailout or "creative destruction," why not ask the question fresh?

This occurred to me yesterday as I was reading this post and the ensuing discussion. I wrote:

I don’t think bailout and creative destruction are the only options for the car companies. Assisted suicide or hospice might be others.

Then I shuffled off to bed, still mulling other models for working through great troubles.

Rehab, for instance.

Hitting rock bottom may be necessary before an addict can break the powerful patterns of destructive behavior. But after allowing the crash, family or co-workers may also choose to help the addict work through the resulting crisis. We want death of the addict, not of the person.

This morning, I heard animal behaviorist Richard Conniff talk about how elk herd defenses against grizzlies might provide lessons for dealing with financial crisis. Yesterday, I heard an economist suggest a possible approach drawing upon the reorganization of the  Penn Central Railroad — at the time, the largest bankruptcy in history — which involved nationalization followed by deregulation of the rail industry.

And then back at the comment thread, Joe Loveland asked me what a hospice for a failed business might look like policywise.

I was being a zen master there, not a policy wonk, but it would be possible to interpret the metaphor this way.

With hospice care, we recognize the end is inevitable but take steps to ease the passing, both for patient and family. Unlike a bailout, providing this type of aid to workers and communities, for example, would not cause a line of unworthies to form because it would be clear that death of the business corpus — not new life — would still be the ultimate "reward."  Shares (which disproportionately benefit top decision-makers) might be allowed to become worthless, for example, but pensions, medical benefits and job training might be supported to some extent.

Finally, I read this passage, and thought of the Hank Paulsens who are sifting through the rubble. Although it's about decision-making in the atomic age, it captures the dis-ease we feel about the options being presented to us by the financial experts.

[T]he power of the citizen will be eclipsed by that of the state, and those technocrats charged with making decisions for us all will be put in such a position not because they are the most good, but because they are the most highly trained in a certain sphere and the most willing to accomplish the tasks assigned to them without asking questions...
— Alexander Provan, "Menacing Earthworks," paraphrasing Edward Long's The Christian Response to the Atomic Crisis 

We know these new czars are most trained. We can only hope they are most good.

When Will Clean Energy Start Feeding Families?

This commentary of mine appeared on Friday in the St. Paul Legal Ledger's Capitol Report.
*****

I’ve just returned from western Colorado, where one manifestation of the quest for domestic energy independence is inescapable.

Oil and gas rigs line the interstate. Acres of new housing have sprung up over the summer. Retail businesses and construction sites sport permanent help wanted signs because they can’t compete with oil-industry wages. The foregrounds of scenic vistas are marred by industrial yards of trucks, stored drill pipe and other equipment. Streets are clogged and county roads are taking a beating from heavy loads. Towns and rural landowners are concerned about spills that imperil their water supply.

And white company pickups are all over town, some of them sporting the bumper sticker: “Oil and gas feeds my family — and yours!”

Although the economic impact in Colorado seems sudden, a mature, well-financed industry had its eye on those resources for decades. But it was only when market forces and government policy finally aligned that the boom began.

Here in Minnesota, we’re counting on riding a different energy-development wave – one that produces energy and good jobs, but is also clean and sustainable. Getting this boom started will require similar alignment, but our economy is not yet organized around conservation and renewables. And there’s no green Exxon Mobil just waiting to swoop in.

This may take a while.

Last week, Gov. Tim Pawlenty introduced a proposed package to encourage expansion of green jobs in Minnesota. His “Green Jobs Investment Initiative” extends tax credits to businesses and investors with an eye toward making more financing available to emerging companies. These features of his plan are similar to measures introduced in the last legislative session, but go the extra step of specifying that half the tax credits will be focused on green jobs.

Incentives such as what the governor proposes will attract investor attention to Minnesota, and they may eventually help seal a deal or two. But tax breaks alone don’t have a great record of bringing in new industry. A successful green-jobs strategy must also heed the forthcoming work of the legislature-commissioned Green Jobs Task Force, which addresses three important aspects of the jobs challenge:

Attracting green jobs. Besides an investment-friendly tax policy, companies thinking about building a Minnesota operation will demand a skilled work force, well-developed infrastructure and good quality of life. Minnesota’s unsuccessful experience trying to lure the U.S. research and development center for Danish company Vestas Wind Systems highlighted another imperative. The state must have a focused marketing strategy that identifies what new green businesses need to get established in Minnesota, and it must aggressively promote our virtues. In February of 2007, I counted at least 18 states that had declared themselves leaders in some aspect of renewable energy. The list of competitors certainly isn’t going to get shorter.

Retaining and expanding green jobs. Minnesota already has a base of existing green jobs in wind, ethanol, biodiesel, mining, forestry and the window manufacturing industry. These companies will be looking for expansion opportunities, and other states will be courting them. A smart strategy will focus on Minnesota’s current strengths and also encourage development of markets within the state for conservation, energy efficiency, sustainable practices and use of renewable energy. To help this transformation, developers and building owners must incorporate green strategies in construction and renovation projects. And consumers, builders, manufacturers and other employers must commit to using green products, materials and processes.

Preparing a green work force. The good news is that many green-collar jobs use blue- and white-collar skills, and there will be both urban and rural job opportunities. As “Greener Pathways: Jobs and Workforce Development in the Clean Energy Economy” says, “The new energy economy will create some brand new industries and many brand new jobs. But even more of it will involve transforming the industries and jobs we already have.”

But new green jobs won’t grow on trees. Green skills have to be embedded in existing education and training programs. And even more should be done to expand access to quality jobs that renew the middle class, according to the “Greener Pathways” report:

To help workers advance from unemployment, disconnection, or dead-end poverty-wage work into family-sustaining green jobs, states need to build and support career pathways. These pathways are not new ones, necessarily, but greener ones in collaboration with employers, workforce agencies, community organizations, labor unions, and community and technical colleges.

Rep. Jeremy Kalin, co-chair of the Green Jobs Task Force, has said: “Right now we all need to work together to identify how we can overcome some challenges in making Minnesota a leader across the board in the green economy. We have to do this together, and we have to be all on the same page.”

And maybe then we’ll start seeing the green bumper stickers.

End of an Error?

Translation error, typo or political commentary?

The Real Reason Coleman's Party is Worried.

This letter to the Star Tribune from a election judge  gets closer to gist of the senate vote recount than all the rehashing of various charges being thrown around in the rest of the paper. [Emphasis mine.]

Kudos to Jeff Davis ("Why is it easier to vote here than it is to register a boat?" Nov. 9) for the luxury to be able to afford and register a boat and to haul it around in his SUV. As a Ramsey County Registration election judge over the past five years, I have seen firsthand the challenges in providing the necessary documents to register to vote.

Lack of even the $18 to change an address on a state ID, or the fact that renters do not receive an electric or water bill, make the voucher system a savior for those who wish to partake in their democratic right.

Economic hardship and unstable residency should not prohibit someone from having his or her equal say in the election process. I am proud to live in a state that works hard to assure the right to vote to all eligible citizens.

BETHANY WHITEHEAD, ST. PAUL

I happen to know a young couple who, through no fault of their own, had three different residences between September 1 and election day. If they had shown up in their new precinct to vote, three days after they moved in, they would have nothing to show they were properly there.

They work three jobs between them. After paying rent and a damage deposit at their new place and moving in, they certainly didn't have the time or the $36 to go change their driver's licenses before the election.

I honestly don't know who they might've voted for, but I can imagine who Jeff Davis, Michael Brodkorb and Fritz Knaak were worried about them voting for.

The voter fraud issue is a smokescreen set up by a party that knows the working poor and the elderly are dangerous because they are likely to vote for candidates who stand up for their interests.

Sadly, the number of these voters is going to grow. If Republicans focused on helping them, maybe they wouldn't have to be so concerned about suppressing their votes.

Knaak, Knaak. Who's There? Underminer.

Dear Fritz Knaak:

You said voters should reject any attempt by the Franken campaign to use the courts to determine the outcome of the Minnesota Senatorial election. I assume this meant you have no plans to file any lawsuits if a recount should find Al Franken won.

In each of these cases, we see an unprecedented and alarming trend that could undermine public confidence in the recount – and replace it with armies of lawyers – deployed across the countryside – using the courts, instead of the ballot box, to determine the outcome of a recount.

But then in the next breath, you say certain ballots once rejected should not be looked at again:

Minnesotans should not just be concerned about this potential – they should be almost fearful of the Franken Campaign’s unprecedented efforts to get across to their private data to influence this recount – and equally fearful of the Franken Campaign’s efforts to force rejected and spoiled ballots into a recount for the first time ever in the 150 year history of our state.

By this reasoning, no ballot once counted should be looked at again, either.

But if the ballot was properly rejected once, why wouldn't it be rejected again under even closer scrutiny? Why worry?

I would hope that the Franken campaign would cease and desist of what I view as harassment and intimidation of voters, and to cease and desist in its efforts to seek state-sanctioned harassment of voters and depriving them of their privacy rights.

I see you've been taking your Palin pills.

Now that you've petrified all the voters about Al Franken's lawyers looking in their underwear drawers, maybe you should explain that they still can't look at the votes. But other voter information is public in Minnesota, provided you pay the $46 fee. In some states, you can even go online and find it for free.

See, it's not so scary, after all.

And one more thing. I know Norm Coleman is trying to come across as a cross-the-aisle kind of guy, but when searching for examples of electoral infamy to brand Franken with, you might try something other than the Republican harassment of voters and stopping of the recount in Florida, 2000.

It's not going to help your case. And if you don't want to "undermine public confidence in the recount," maybe you should just chill.

One Championship Lost. Two Brats Won.

This afternoon, I went to my first college football game in a very, very long time.

By college football, I mean college football, not the university/NFL farm team brand.

St. John's University played Carleton College for the MIAC championship at Northfield today, and squeaked out a last-minute victory after a pass play that had resulted in two previous end zone interceptions finally paid off.

The game was a rewarding way to spend a few hours, independent of any fan affiliation. The sun shined, mostly, and the stands blocked the prevailing wind. If you were going to paint blue lightning on your chest and cheer with your shirt off in mid-November Minnesota, it was as good a day as you could expect.

As played by both teams, the offense was more imaginative and wide open than you will see these days almost  anywhere you have to buy a ticket. (Yes, this championship game was free to all comers.) Had they played like this in the late '60s, I might have answered the Carleton football coach differently when he called me to his office and asked why I hadn't come out for the team.

Today, I sat next to the guy who 41 years ago lived next door to me in the dorm we could see up the hill from the stadium. We recalled the day, according to legend, when our generation fielded nine players on LSD, and one destined briefly for the NFL, then Christian ministry.

If you are a Carl, you cannot take your football more seriously than a Johnnie. It is impossible to approach sport — at least watching from the sidelines — with anything short of irony. Bad calls and importune reversals are merely cause for philosophical reflection.

For example, on one late St. John's drive, the Johnnies were allowed to replay a down after offsetting penalties — pass interference against Carleton in the end zone versus an illegal forward pass as the quarterback threw after crossing the line of scrimmage.

Is this a rules question or a quantum physics problem? Is interference possible against an illegal pass? Can a man be convicted of murdering a dead body?

This sort of discussion is more interesting than just calling for the execution of the referees.

The game highlight, however, came at halftime. Two long lines were snaking toward the lone concessions trailer, where the "best barbequed bratwursts in the Central Time Zone" were being sold by the Carleton baseball team.

As we neared, one player called out: "We only have 30 brats left. I'm sorry we suck."

Within a few spots of the window, the brat count dropped to 15. We began discussing our strategy for getting our order there in time.

A big red head in Carleton sweat pants was just ahead of us. He smiled and said, "You guys go ahead. I'm just getting popcorn." I said, "I'm buying your popcorn."

It allowed my final lean at the tape. My friend and I got the last two brats.

To all the Carleton players on the field, I know the loss hurt, but I'm telling you guys, life is good and you were part of it today.

The Meaning to Me Meant This.

A blog post/column by Dick Cavett got me wondering about the problems translators may have faced when trying to follow a certain vice presidential candidate's unpredictable syntax.

Or should I say: Reading there on the blog to me was kinda got me thinking more than when translators doing important translation of language between people especially their leaders also of cultures are just tryin' to do their best and criticism to them is made without relevance to the challenges which they face. I'm not complainin', but it's not fair. ;)

I handed this sample problem to an online translator, starting with the Wasillish version.

My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars.

Running the translated versions back into English produced statements that were marginally as comprehensible as the original. It's possible that literal software-driven translation may be more easily rendered.

French:

My anxiety was atrocities there in Darfur and pertinence to me with this edition as we speaks about Africa and about some of the countries there which were nice of people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed of governments on the continent, pertinence was the investment of Alaska in Darfur with some of our dollars of permanent funds.

Russian:

My anxiety was evil deeds there in Darfur and relevance to me with that problem as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there which were kind from the people conceding to dictators and corruption of some disorganized governments on continent, relevance was investments of Alaska into Darfur with some of our constant dollars of fund.

German:

My worry has been the Gräueltaten there in Darfur and the relevance to me with this problem as we spoke over Africa and some of the lands there which were friendly from the people who succumb to the dictators, and the bribery of some governments on the continent broke down, was the relevance of Alaska investment in Darfur with some of our lasting fund dollars.

A human interpreter might be tempted to try something like this.

I was concerned about the atrocities in Darfur. Could Alaska help the situation by investing in the country? Given the corrupt dictators and collapsing governments on the continent, it was not an easy question to answer.

The only problem is, we wouldn't know for sure if that was what Gov. Palin meant.

That Ain't Blood, it's Just the Market Correcting.

The best thing government can do now is let the market correct.
— Jason Lewis

It is all a reminder that the biggest threat to a healthy economy is not the socialists of campaign lore. It’s C.E.O.’s. It’s politically powerful crony capitalists who use their influence to create a stagnant corporate welfare state.
— David Brooks

Doctrinaire free marketeers like radio talker Jason Lewis persist in the canard that too much government meddling brought on our economic mess and insist the best thing the government can do anytime is leave the market alone. They would just pull the refs from the game and let the players cheat each other fair and square.

Sort of like the last eight years.

The first five commenters on his piece have pretty well taken it apart. Two samples:

Rather than explain the miserable failure of his party and partisans' policies, Lewis continues to promote an incomprehensible, one-dimensional understanding of the economy. Ineffective and inefficient government is one part of our problem. Corporate cronies in our largest companies privatizing profits and socializing losses is another part. Lewis seeks to reconfirm his pre-existing beliefs by selectively (mis)identifying the problem as government. In an economy where the government regulates the flow of capital in response to the demands of big business it is incredibly dishonest and highly deceptive to speak of "markets," offering resolution to the current problem.

*****
I'm a conservative on fiscal matters, but I disagree with J. Lewis. We need infrastructure improvements and the costs of doing these projects will never be cheaper than over the next few years. I am against new entitlements and creating huge permanent programs, but let's have a large stimulus package that employees some of the construction workers laid off from the housing and commerical building contraction in road and bridge construction. Let's come out the other side of this recession with vastly improved infrastructure, while making the recession shallower and shorter.

Progressives who believe that government can be a positive force should acknowledge that we could find common cause with some conservatives here.

The game itself has been fixed to benefit the crony capitalists, and this should disturb progressives and fiscal conservatives alike. We should not just fall in line with bailouts because Obama and the Democrats are now stuck with the problem and must decisively act like they know how to fix this. Dumping money into institutions is just another form of trickle down economics. The money will evaporate before it reaches the people on the ground.

As Brooks says,

But the larger principle is over the nature of America’s political system. Is this country going to slide into progressive corporatism, a merger of corporate and federal power that will inevitably stifle competition, empower corporate and federal bureaucrats and protect entrenched interests? Or is the U.S. going to stick with its historic model: Helping workers weather the storms of a dynamic economy, but preserving the dynamism that is the core of the country’s success.

No CEOs Will Benefit from These Sales.

The Book Arts Fest is at Minnesota Center for Book Arts this weekend (Saturday, 10am to 5pm and Sunday, noon to 4pm). One exhibiting artist is Jody Williams, whose whimsical miniatures are on this page.

Other members of the Twin Cities Centers For Art partnership also have something going on this weekend.

Check out the Textile Center's Holiday Show and Sale, in conjunction with the Weavers Guild Fiber Fair beginning Friday. Stop by Northern Clay Center on Sunday for the opening of their Holiday Show and Sale. You can make your own gifts at Highpoint Center for Printmaking at their "A Block in a Weekend" workshop this Saturday and Sunday.

"That Wall Street has gone down because of this is justice."

Twenty years ago, with Liar's Poker, Michael Lewis exposed Wall Street's underbelly as never before.

I had no great agenda, apart from telling what I took to be a remarkable tale, but if you got a few drinks in me and then asked what effect I thought my book would have on the world, I might have said something like, “I hope that college students trying to figure out what to do with their lives will read it and decide that it’s silly to phony it up and abandon their passions to become financiers.” I hoped that some bright kid at, say, Ohio State University who really wanted to be an oceanographer would read my book, spurn the offer from Morgan Stanley, and set out to sea.
         
Somehow that message failed to come across. Six months after Liar’s Poker was published, I was knee-deep in letters from students at Ohio State who wanted to know if I had any other secrets to share about Wall Street. They’d read my book as a how-to manual.

Lewis's cutthroat tales didn't discredit the industry, and those kids went on to jobs in investment banking. Now Lewis is looking at the carnage and the reasons it got much, much worse — from the perspective of a few hedge fund managers who saw through Wall Street's subprime "doomsday machine."

Eisman knew subprime lenders could be scumbags. What he underestimated was the total unabashed complicity of the upper class of American capitalism. For instance, he knew that the big Wall Street investment banks took huge piles of loans that in and of themselves might be rated BBB, threw them into a trust, carved the trust into tranches, and wound up with 60 percent of the new total being rated AAA.

But he couldn’t figure out exactly how the rating agencies justified turning BBB loans into AAA-rated bonds. “I didn’t understand how they were turning all this garbage into gold,” he says. He brought some of the bond people from Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, and UBS over for a visit. “We always asked the same question,” says Eisman. “Where are the rating agencies in all of this? And I’d always get the same reaction. It was a smirk.” He called Standard & Poor’s and asked what would happen to default rates if real estate prices fell. The man at S&P couldn’t say; its model for home prices had no ability to accept a negative number. “They were just assuming home prices would keep going up,” Eisman says.

[...]

“Look,” he said. “I’m short. I don’t want the country to go into a depression. I just want it to fucking deleverage.” He had tried a thousand times in a thousand ways to explain how screwed up the business was, and no one wanted to hear it. “That Wall Street has gone down because of this is justice,” he says. “They fucked people. They built a castle to rip people off. Not once in all these years have I come across a person inside a big Wall Street firm who was having a crisis of conscience.”

It's a long article about an arcane subject, but it's essential reading if you really want to understand why the mortgage meltdown isn't about cleaning ladies who bought over-priced condos.

[h/t the Mississippifarian]

32 Suspect Ballots for Franken? Nope.

You've probably heard the howls about those 32 absentee ballots for Al Franken that rode around in a car for days. Well, only 18 were for Franken, all absentee ballots get transported in cars, and none spent the night there.

David Brauer has the true story.

Meanwhile, even a conservative paper that endorsed Norm Coleman is getting sick of the sniping.