Felix Salmon looks at the response from “the top flack at Goldman Sach” (his words), and basically goes with Taibbi’s assessment.
Matt Taibbi’s response is even clearer: he notes that Goldman does not actually deny anything in their “denial”, and further notes that Goldman refused to respond ot his inquiries.
It appears that the Washington Post is selling access to, for sums in excess of $25,000.00, access to the “powerful few” in DC:
For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post has offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to “those powerful few”: Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and — at first — even the paper’s own reporters and editors.
The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff.”
It appears that WaPo executive editor Marcus Brauchli has circulated a memo saying that members of the news department are prohibited from attending, which is unsurprising, since they got caught.
Normally, I wouldn’t expect journalists to turn down free food.
On Joe Scarborough’s show on MSNBC, Chuck Todd said that the emperor had no clothes, when he said that in the Ricci case that, ““he majority actually, well, to put it bluntly, legislated from the bench.”
I have repeatedly called Chuck Todd, “one of the stupidest muthf%$#ers in the White House press room,” for his sometime absurdly naive acceptance of the beltway conventional wisdom.
This is not one of those times though. He nailed it when he described the conservative majority’s intent in this vote as being judicial activism, even if Joe Scarborough reacted like a cow that had just stepped on its own udder.
I’ll be announcing my next move soon on whitehousewatch.com and also to anyone who e-mails me at froomkin@gmail.com. Please stay in touch.
The folks at the Washington Post are idiots.
Stars and Stripes is reporting that the US Army has barred one of its reporters from embedding with a unit because they found his coverage too aggressive:
Asserting that Stars and Stripes “refused to highlight” good news in Iraq that the U.S. military wanted to emphasize, Army officials have barred a Stripes reporter from embedding with a unit of the 1st Cavalry Division that is attempting to secure the violent city of Mosul.
…
Despite the opportunity to visit areas of the city where Iraqi Army leaders, soldiers, national police and Iraqi police displayed commitment to partnership, Mr. Druzin refused to highlight any of this news,” Major Ramona Bellard, a public affairs officer, wrote in denying Druzin’s embed request.
…
The Army’s denial of Druzin’s embed request appears to violate the Pentagon’s established ground rules regarding embedded reporters, which state: “These ground rules recognize the inherent right of the media to cover combat operations and are in no way intended to prevent release of embarrassing, negative or derogatory information.”
Whoever gave this order, and whatever superiors backed them up on this, are in violation of military regulations, federal laws, military policy, and the basic values of this republic, and Barack Obama should fire them.
There is no allegation of a security breach, just that the reporter was not “cooperative.”
So the New York Times Corporation is unilaterally implementing a 23% wage cut.
I think that the National Labor Relations board may have something to say about this.
Absent bankruptcy, a contract is a contract.
I think there have been a number of reasons that this was rejected.
First, the Times‘ financial problems, are not as a result of the declines in the newspaper industry, but because of the enormous amount of debt that they took on to build, and move into, a swanky new headquarters building in 2007, and to pay (borrowed) cash for it.
When they could not roll over the short term loan, because of the financial crisis, they had to take a loan from Carlos Slim at very high rates. (14% !)
It also did not help that management handled communications abysmally, refusing to talk to its employees about the offer, refusing to send New York execs to the newsroom, and getting the math wrong, and then refusing to adjust the deadline, and making the cuts for rank and file about 50% larger than those of management.
This wasn’t a communication of the needs of the corporation, it was a communication of contempt for Boston by the folks in New York.
It should also be noted that the fact that the Times was not looking at New York for any give backs, and in fact continues to spend profligately, and just 2 weeks ago, the gift that keeps on giving, Thomas Friedman, shot his mouth off about how he never had to talk to an editor about what he is doing or spending:
Thomas Friedman, the Times’ chief foreign affairs columnist, lauded the efforts that Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., has made to keep the newsroom intact, saying, “I just have a great deal of admiration for him.” He told me that since taking his current post, in 1995, he has never been asked by Sulzberger what he was planning to write, or how high his travel expenses would be. “To be able to say what I want to say and go where I want to go—other than a Sulzberger-owned newspaper, you tell me where that exists today.”
(emphasis mine)
So, once again, Thomas Friedman, the man who is always wrong, drops another steaming redolent load on people who are ordinary enough that they have to work for a living.
I don’t know why the pay his travel expenses, he can create fictitious taxicab drivers who say exactly what he wants them to say while sitting at his home.
Props to Margaret Chadbourn at Bloomberg, who sees a change in policy and recognizes its significance.
Specifically, she notes that the FDIC will be assessing an emergency assesment on banks in order to shore up their insurance fund, and she sees a real change in policy:
U.S. banks will pay an emergency fee based on their assets to rebuild the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s reserves, putting a greater burden on large banks to replenish the fund amid the fastest pace of failures since 1994.
The FDIC voted 4-1 today to impose a fee of 5 cents per $100 of assets, excluding Tier 1 capital, backing away from a proposal of 20 cents per $100 of insured deposits. Local bankers said the fee on deposits could erase more than half their 2009 earnings. The fee will rebuild the fund that started the year at $18.9 billion, the lowest since 1994’s first quarter.
(emphasis mine)
Fees have traditionally been assessed on deposits, not assets, but the problems with bank failures, particularly among the giant banks are dodgy asset problems, so it serves to hit the big banks harder, who are less well capitalized on the basis of deposits.
It adds cost to risk, and it is a significant, and I hope permanent, change.
A New York Times financial reporter describes how he got tied up in the foreclosure crisis.
I guess the article is a good description of the mania that gripped the nation,* but it makes me feel like a peeping Tom, so I let it percolate in my mind for a while.
It’s informative, but it made me feel like I was intruding to read it.
*Well, not so much me, I bought a house in 2004 with a 30 year fixed rate mortgage and 20% down, at only about a 15% greater payment than the half a duplex I was renting, I had to move, and so I bought, even though I though houses were overpriced.
So, two lawyers specializing in IP litigation have proposed changes in copyright and anti-trust law to bolster newspapers.
Unsurprisingly, their proposals would create an explosion of litigation, which would mean that they could buy that yacht that they have their eye on.
What they propose:
But consider this. Just a few years ago, the average profit margin for newspapers was 20 percent — with some raking in twice as much or more.
“Did they use these astronomical profits to invest in the quality of their products or to innovate for the future?” asked Free Press’ Craig Aaron on Thursday. “No. They just bought up more newspapers and TV stations.” (On May 12 Free Press released a National Journalism Strategy that outlines forward-thinking policies to save journalism, and not merely prop up the creaking old guard.)
(emphasis mine)
I am not concerned about the future of news papers, I am concerned about the future of journalism……Scratch that…I am concerned about the present of journalism, because the professionals out there, whether covering George W. Bush, the housing bubble, or just publishing this bit of crap, seems to be in a state of incompetent free fall.
Professional journalism today in the United States is a captive of those that they cover, and so people like me go to foreign and not-for-profit sources to find our news.
The entire thing is interesting. Here is the blog that outed her, here is the Op-Ed in question, along with the correction:
Correction: May 18, 2009
Maureen Dowd’s column on Sunday, about torture, failed to attribute a paragraph about the timeline for prisoner abuse to Josh Marshall’s blog at Talking Points Memo.
Here is
Josh Marshall’s original post, and the pertinent excerpt:
More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.
And her version in the original:
More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.
Difference are bolded.
Her claim is that she heard it from a friend, and she really liked it, so she dropped it in, but that story stinks. The charitable explanation is that she got an email, liked the line, copied it in for a draft, went to get a cup of coffee, and forgot to cite.
The obvious question, is really where does she get her ideas from in the first place, and is this a single transgression, or a part of a pattern?
Since I don’t like her stuff, I’m not going to comb through it to check….It’s too painful.
The Times of London has a very good account of what took down AIG, and it predates Joseph Cassano, the head of its Financial Products Unit, and it makes it clear that the insurance giant was on shaky ground, with the active participation of its founder Hank Greenberg, for at least a decade previous.
It also notes how Brooksley Born, who was purged by Fed Chairman Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan and Treasury Secretary Robert “Why am I not Under Indictment for Insider Trading” Rubin, knew about the problem, and that it was systemic, and tried to do something about it.
It’s a good read, and highly recommended.
The New York Times has a rundown of his ties, and the behavior that this has engendered:
Timothy F. Geithner, who as president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank oversaw many of the nation’s most powerful financial institutions, stunned the group with the audacity of his answer. He proposed asking Congress to give the president broad power to guarantee all the debt in the banking system, according to two participants, including Michele Davis, then an assistant Treasury secretary.
The proposal quickly died amid protests that it was politically untenable because it could put taxpayers on the hook for trillions of dollars.
“People thought, ‘Wow, that’s kind of out there,’ ” said John C. Dugan, the comptroller of the currency, who heard about the idea afterward. Mr. Geithner says, “I don’t remember a serious discussion on that proposal then.”
But in the 10 months since then, the government has in many ways embraced his blue-sky prescription. Step by step, through an array of new programs, the Federal Reserve and Treasury have assumed an unprecedented role in the banking system, using unprecedented amounts of taxpayer money, to try to save the nation’s financiers from their own mistakes.
And more often than not, Mr. Geithner has been a leading architect of those bailouts, the activist at the head of the pack. He was the federal regulator most willing to “push the envelope,” said H. Rodgin Cohen, a prominent Wall Street lawyer who spoke frequently with Mr. Geithner.
There is no failure in Wall Street that Geithner does not think should be subsidized by the taxpayer, or as Yves Smith says, “Geithner is a creature of the financial establishment.”
What is important here is that this was page 1 on the New York Times, which is a recognition by the main stream media that this is a problem, and they used his calendar while President of the New York Fed, showing private meetings and lunches with Wall Street executives, as a part of this.
The use of the calendar is very competent shoe leather journalism, and as Ms. Smith notes, it is exceedingly rare to see it used in a story.
If you scroll down toward the bottom of the story, you discover that the bill drafted to give the Treasury the authority to take over large institutions was drafted by Wall Street lobbyists, literally.
The draft bill sent to Congress sent contained metadata that showed it was from a law firm that represents lobbyists.
Seriously, if the problem is that the banking industry and its ethos are dysfunctional, and I believe this to be the case, you could not find a worse steward of this crisis.
And the MSM is beginning to notice,
I’ve included some graph pr0n to show just what the innumerate folks in the 4th estate have been doing.
We have a rather good article by Diana Olick, who explains that the bump in house prices reported yesterday were a mirage.
Basically, at different times of the years, different people look for different homes, and these different people buy different sorts of houses:
All that said, the Realtors, in a twist, decided to give the month-to-month home price changes today, because it offered, as chief economist Lawrence Yun suggested, hope of a possible “green chute.” Existing home prices rose 4 percent from February to March, according to the Realtors. Now, if you were listening before, you would say, ok, that’s because the families are getting into the spring game. But Mr. Yun points out that the usual bump up in spring prices is about 1 percent, so the 4 percent monthly bump up should be a good sign. I’m not going to argue with that, because it makes sense to me
But still, we get crap like, “New home sales down, but show sign of revival“,and “Drop in new U.S. home inventories offers hope“, which ignore basic facts.
New home inventories are down because developers cannot compete against foreclosures and short sales, which are nearly half the market, and the fact that the numbers dropping, but “exceeding” forecasts generally ignores the fact that the forecasters have gotten the entire housing market wrong.
As Barry Righoltz notes, the real number is that new home sales fell 41% YoY in February 2009, though the margin of error is ±7.9%, it’s indisputably a drop.
The 4.7% month to month increase against an ±18.3% margin of error (!) means nothing. (link to the Census Bureau Data)
BTW, the top graph, the one that even the most mathematically inept person in journalism could use to figure this out, is in the Census Bureau report.
And then we have this report on durable goods orders, which again claims that, “Orders for U.S. Durable Goods Fall Less Than Forecast,” using a different set of data from the Census Bureau, but using a similarly clueless group of economists to show that it “beat expectations”
http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/7573/headsmashkeyboard112129.gifOnly, as you can see from the graph, new orders are down 27% year over year, (graph courtesy of Bonddad) but we still have to see that, “Prosperity is just around the corner.”
Gah!!!!!
Hell, maybe the best journalist in America, or at least the best interviewer. Jon Stewart really gets it.
Jon Stewart interviews Jim Cramer of CNBC (I saw it last night on TV):
They will continue normal operations for the moment.
My assessment is that this is not another sign of the death of newspapers, but rather what happens when a bunch of finance types decide to buy something with no money down…..and then the balloon payment comes due during a liquidity crunch.
It appears that the lawsuits filed against the Federal Reserve by various news orgs, and the constant complaints in Congress about the opacity of the organization have led to getBen Bernanke to begins ‘Thorough Review’ of the information that it provides to the public.
The translation of this is, “I need to kill this, so I’ll do a study, and after a few years, no one will remember.
So now, the least watched channel in the history of cable has decided to follow Bloomberg’s lead and sue the Federal Reserve for more information on who is getting their bailout money.
Truth be told, I think that I published this just for the picture.
It’s about time, and I approve of the idea of criminal investigations of wrongdoing by Bush and His Evil Minions™, but because there is no impeachment, the leadership in the House of Representatives and the Senate of both parties are accessories to the crime.
Because of this, we are never going to see a meaningful investigation of what happened in the Bush White House.
Even his opponents are hip deep in the muck that he created.
The only way that this gets to trial is through the mechanism of the International Criminal Court, but the US is never going to sign that treaty, and that is the only duly constituted party out there that has even the remotest possibility of discovering the truth and delivering justice.
Well it appears that the Iraqi shoe throwing journalist has been tortured in prison, with an arm and ribs broken, and the Lebanese television channel NTV has offered him a job retroactively, “from the moment the first shoe was thrown”.
Not surprisingly, he has become a folk hero across the Arab world (see here andhere)
What is a surprise is George W. Bush is so completely clueless:
‘I’m not insulted. I don’t hold it against the government,’ Bush told ABC News in an exclusive interview. ‘The guy wanted to get on TV and he did. I don’t know what his beef is, but whatever it is, I’m sure someone will hear it.’
(emphasis mine)
Doesn’t know what his beef is? After invading and occupying his country, and killing at least 100,000 of his countrymen, forcing about 2 million into exile, and internally displacing another 2 million, in a country of 30 million, you don’t know what his beef is? (link)
Well, it looks like he may be getting some American style torture soon, because it’s been reported that Muntader al-Zaidi has been transferred to the Camp Cropper prison, which is US run.
So, Bush sneaks into Baghdad for another round of grandstanding, and he holds a press conference, and things go pear shaped:
A man identified as an Iraqi journalist threw shoes at — but missed — President Bush during a news conference Sunday evening in Baghdad, where Bush was making a farewell visit.
President Bush, left, ducks a thrown shoe as Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki tries to protect him Sunday.Bush ducked, and the shoes, flung one at a time, sailed past his head during the news conference with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in his palace in the heavily fortified Green Zone.
The shoe-thrower — identified as Muntadhar al-Zaidi, an Iraqi journalist with Egypt-based al-Baghdadia television network — could be heard yelling in Arabic: “This is a farewell … you dog!”
While pinned on the ground by security personnel, he screamed: “You killed the Iraqis!”
Roll tape:
