All That Is Necessary…
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Isn’t Marking to Market Supposed to be a Good Thing?
OK, I’m trying to get my head wrapped around this whole market meltdown thing. One of the things that has puzzled me is seeing complaints that some of the various bailouts have been triggered in part by regulations that force companies to mark mortgage-backed securities to market — that is, to account for changes in […]
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Some Perspective (or Maybe, Rose-Colored Glasses)
Today’s Wall Street Journal informs me that Wall Street as we knew it has ceased to exist. That bums me out. I used to make quite a decent living as a corporate gumby on Wall Street, and Wall Street firms have been among my most important clients as a communications consultant. Oh well. I expect […]
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Gay Republicans Make Their Peace With Palin
This article is a response to gay friends who have taken issue, quite civilly, with my support of John McCain for President. (Disclaimer: there is a comment on the article from someone named “Kirk,” who is not me.) While John McCain’s “selection of the Alaska governor has energized the GOP’s socially conservative wing,†it has […]
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Bullish on (Bank of) America
So Merrill Lynch, where I toiled for 12 years, faces the end of nearly a century as a private company. At least it’s not like Lehman, an even-older company that was forced into bankruptcy when nobody would assume its liabilities. One of my earliest memories of working at Merrill Lynch is hearing CEO William A. […]
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McCain Rides the Palin Tide, Part II
For the first time since I’ve been watching it, the electoral-vote.com map is showing a McCain victory, by the narrowest of margins. I put the EV map in my sidebar with the thought that it makes more sense to count the votes the way the election will be decided — 50 state votes rather than […]
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McCain Rides the Palin Tide
For the first time since Obama effectively clinched the Democratic nomination in February, the pay-to-play Intrade prediction market is narrowly predicting a McCain victory.
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Never Forget
Some day soon I need to write more extensively about the name of this blog. It comes from something that English statesman Edmund Burke apparently did not actually say, so I’ve felt free to modernize the language: “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.” Regardless of who […]
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Palin Backlash Watch, Parts III & IV
From Tammy Bruce, former head of the Los Angeles chapter of NOW and “a registered Democrat her entire life until February”: In the shadow of the blatant and truly stunning sexism launched against the Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential campaign, and as a pro-choice feminist, I wasn’t the only one thrilled to hear Republican John McCain […]
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Palin’s Key Appeal is Class, Not Gender
Lisa Schiffren makes the case that Palin is on the ticket not so much to appeal to women as to appeal to working-class, Reagan Democrats: If you were that autoworker or miner — even if you think that Democrats will give you more money, even if you hope that they can solve your pressing health-care […]
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His & Her Candidates
My lovely wife, the self-taught Web Goddess, supports Obama (as does almost everybody we know in our blue-town/blue-state of Maplewood, New Jersey). I support McCain, primarily on the basis of the Iraq war issue. As I’ve discussed before, this makes for some careful-but-substantive conversations as the election drama unfolds. Tempting though it may be sometimes […]
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