Paul Newman - the most generous individual of the 20th century

The Obits are the best part of the modern Economist ...

Paul Newman, actor and philanthropist | Paul Newman | The Economist

... In the end, the only self-reinvention that completely pleased him was the grinning man on the label of “Newman’s Own” balsamic dressing. His sauces and snacks, sold for charity from 1982 onwards (“shameless exploitation in pursuit of the common good”), turned him into the most generous individual, relative to his income, in the 20th-century history of the United States....

Now that's one hell of an obit line. Nice work Mr. Newman.

Fascinating explanations of how the bank crisis unfolded

Bankruptcy freezes assets. In world of high velocity transactions that's devastating ... 36 Hours of Alarm and Action as Crisis Spiraled - NYTimes.com.

Great story. I imagine an immense engine where the oil has run out. In a few moments it blows.

I wrote earlier about firewalls. This is one. We ran too close the edge, sacrificing safety for efficiency and speed.

Just like a race car.

A little too far ... blow the engine.

Our core financial system should be a Honda Accord, not a race car.

Kristof's happy thought of the day

Imagine how much more fun this would be if social security had been privatized...

Kristof - Save the Fat Cats - NYTimes.com

....For those of you accustomed to bull markets, who think we’re sure to come out of this quickly, remember this: Japan’s main stock index is still less than one-third of its level of 19 years ago...

Lovely. Of course our market has been basically flatline since about 2000, so maybe there's hope.

Something I didn't know:

....A starting point would be to remove tax subsidies on executive pay .... The Institute for Policy Studies in Washington estimates that U.S. taxpayers every year provide more than $20 billion in tax subsidies for executive pay....

So why didn't I know this? Is it common knowledge? What else don't I know?

The key part of the bailout bill

Sausage, politics, etc.

Stockholm Syndrome - Paul Krugman - Op-Ed Columnist - New York Times Blog

...SEC. 503. EXEMPTION FROM EXCISE TAX FOR CERTAIN WOODEN ARROWS DESIGNED FOR USE BY CHILDREN...

The fault is in us, really.

The best of Sarah Palin -- all the clips, assembled

A gift from Talking Points ....

Talking Points Memo | Queen of Youtube!

... as we get ready for the big event tomorrow night, Palin's historic confrontation with Joe Biden in St. Louis, we thought we'd pull together all of Palin's greatest interview moments in one boffo Sarah-mania clip reel ...

I tried watching it, but it's too sad. I had to stop at the third clip.

All we need now is for the Wall Street Journal's OpEd article praising Palin's victory over Biden to appear before the debate.

That would be perfect.

She can't possibly do worse than she's already done. Biden will be very genteel even as Palin will be gunning hard, so I think it won't be so bad for her.

She's not going to do any more real media encounters though.

Bipartisanship at last …

I personally think bipartisanship is overrated – particularly if it involves today’s GOP. (Maybe tomorrow’s GOP will be different.)

Some people still celebrate it though. Sort of …

Morford: What's your poison, citizen? / New game! Which toxic news story is most insulting? Play now!

… At last! Here is your bipartisanship, America. All the years of acrimony and fiery spittle, finally we have a grand issue around which both parties can rally: George W. Bush is dead! A pariah! Banished from the kingdom forevermore! Undeniably, it took the near-complete implosion of the nation to get us there, but hey, at least we can finally agree on something. Isn't that wonderful? Who wants pie? …

I’m sure TIME and Newsweek will still find a way to give Bush a good sendoff. It will be noted that Iraq is, apparently, a more hopeful place now than it’s been since before Gulf War I -- though the price was terrible and too high, and the future is fragile.

I suspect Bush will leave office with a better approval rating than he has now.

More’s the pity.

Hit and run homicide in Minneapolis and near future prevention

I quoted Garrison Keillor recently on the tragedies of inattention in a powerful vehicle. A train driver caused a lot of harm in Los Angeles, but far more people bicyclist and pedestrians die each year because of a moment's inattention.

I thank Chance every day that, so far, I've never harmed anyone while driving. A few days ago an inattentive driver in his 30s (was he talking on the phone?) killed a bicyclist on nearby popular riding street. If he's a decent human being his error will haunt him for the rest of his life. I know it would devastate me.

On the other hand, there are the hit and run homicides ..

Bicyclist injuries up sharply in metro area:

Rodney Scroggins was riding his bicycle to work when he was hit by a motorist....

... Jimmy Nisser, 65, of St. Louis Park, was killed when he was struck by a vehicle Sept. 11 while riding on Excelsior Blvd. near 32nd Street...

... there have been 47 hit and run accidents involving bicycles and motor vehicles in Minneapolis this year. Police are still looking for the drivers who hit Nisser and Scroggins....

So about once a week there's a significant, reported, hit and run car-bike "accident" in a modest metro area. Across the nation there must be at least one an hour. I suspect most are never solved.

The only fixes I can see are more sophisticated automotive sensors. Standard proximity radar, IR sensors, visible light sensors -- at tracking people, bicycles and motorbikes -- sensors that track direction and motion and anticipate impact, slowing a car, triggering the car horn to warn both driver and pedestrian of pending impact, alerting the driver with sound and light.

The least intrusive aides would be active windshields that use sensor data to enhance images corresponding to pedestrians and bicycles. The bicyclist dimly seen out of the corner of one's eye is now a bright spot on the windshield surrounded by a 8 foot diameter circle.

Finally, sensors that detect an impact and then send the last available imaging along with the vehicle ID directly to the police. Then, when an accident is reported, finding the killer is a trivial task.

We have the technology to do all of this. We've invested a lot of money to make the inside of the car safer. Now's the time to require technologies to make the outside of the car safer too.

Update: see also.

The real estate crash was expected - but who anticipated the bank crash?

I read Krugman, but even without his help I think it was obvious we were in a real estate bubble at least 4-5 years ago. When we moved 2 years ago we expected we'd lose money in the near term; we'd sold high but bought higher.

There were lots of solid predictions of doom ...

The Media Equation - Daring to Say Loans Made No Sense - NYTimes.com

... Mr. Davidson said that the idiosyncrasy of the instruments, combined with the overlay of technology, allowed the traders to live in denial. They would sit at terminals and use data — historical data that had been gathered before they started giving out money to people with no ability to pay — and decide that the risks were manageable. All of it was unreal, ineffable, tough to know. Except the way it turned out, as Mr. Davidson notes near the end of the story.

“It’s as if the global pool of money thought it was putting trillions of dollars in a savings account, but really, half of it was going into a furnace. The monI didn't figure the entire financial system would collapse, and take our investments down as well. I thought things would be a bit more contained.ey is gone, burned up, never to come back.”

Was the money really destroyed? If you sold a house at the peak, then bought a smaller home and put the difference in a money market fund, didn't you come out ahead?

On the other hand a huge number of homes were built in some parts of the country that will never recover their costs. The physical stock is deteriorating, and they may be bulldozed. Even there, though, the workers spent the money they got. The real losers were the trees, and the opportunity cost of wasted work.

My hobbyist understanding of the economics is that what we end up with is largely a huge transfer of money. We talk about the losers now, but someone is profiting somewhere. So the money will still slosh around somewhere, still looking for the next bubble.

On the other hand, while we expected a near term painful drop in our home value, we didn't expect an equivalent drop in our investment value. We hoped for a softer landing, but we didn't realize how big the Ponzi scheme had become. We didn't realize how vulnerable banks really were; they didn't exactly vaporize in the bubble of 2000. We thought the lessons of Great Depression I and the crises of Japan and Sweden were well understood.

So did those TV shows predict the collapse of the banking sector, or did they miss that too?

Powerline humiliated by Krugman

Powerline is a notorious anti-rational right wing megaphone. Paul Krugman recalls one of their attacks on a column he wrote 3 years ago ...

Bubble memories - Paul Krugman - Op-Ed Columnist - New York Times Blog

Calculated Risk, in a discussion of home price declines, links to my three-year-old analysis, That Hissing Sound...

... if you google the article, high on the list you find this delightful screed from Powerline, which says that I was just looking for something to complain about amidst the Bush Boom, and concludes:

"[T]here is little reason to fear a catastrophic collapse in home prices.

Krugman will have to come up with something much better, I think, to cause many others to share his pessimism."

A cold dish for Powerline.

Update: Re-reading the article, I recognized it immediately. It's good, but Krugman basically says the bubble is on the coasts, not in "flatland". By which he meant, say, Minnesota. It's true we haven't lost 70% of the value of our home, but last I looked we were down at least 20% from the peak (I don't look too often). So, if anything, he understated the problem. He also didn't imagine that the entire finance sector was going to implode.

Idiots guide to the balance sheet - for finance company

This turns out to be one of the simplest and most enlightening overviews of a publicly traded company balance sheet I've seen: People I agree with, part one - Paul Krugman - Op-Ed Columnist.

It happens to the balance sheet that is keeping America up at night, which makes it all the more memorable. Beyond that, it's a nice reference for non-MBAs who still need to understand the base concepts.

The key takeaway is the difference between liabilities owed to shareholders and to bondholders. Shareholders are a key buffer in a publicly traded company. You can wipe them out and the company can go on. Bondholders can't be wiped out except through bankruptcy; at which point they and customers fight for the scraps.

The original Paulson plan (not the improved but rejected revised plan) might have worked if there was still some Shareholder equity left -- but once they're toast the corporation is dead and the money probably goes to the bondholders.

Delightful Jon Swift column on GD II

Funny, witty, brilliant and scathing. Jon Swift is back and on his game ….

Jon Swift: Can Happy Days Be Here Again?

… Some economists believe that doing nothing could result in another Great Depression, but is that such a bad thing? There is a reason it was called the Great Depression and not, say, the Terrible Depression. According to economist J. Bradford Delong, members of the Hoover Administration, influenced by the theories of Austrian economists like Friedrich von Hayek and Joesph Schumpeter, believed “that in the long run the Great Depression would turn out to have been ‘good medicine’ for the economy.” Unfortunately, Hoover was swept out of office before this theory could be tested and Franklin Roosevelt enacted all kinds of socialistic policies that bedevil us to this day. So perhaps the best thing we could do is do nothing and bring on another Great Depression, but let’s do it right this time. Sure, there would be some temporary pain, and some people might be forced to wait in bread lines and sell apples in the street, but in the long run it would be better for our economy to shake out the weak links. Some Republicans might be reluctant to come out in support of triggering a new Great Depression in an election year so John McCain is going to have to show some leadership, the kind of leadership he showed in scuttling the first bill, to bring Republicans in Congress around. Coming out in favor of a Great Depression would show voters that John McCain really is a new kind of leader and it might just be the Hail Mary pass that wins him the election.

The Onion should ask Jon Swift if they can reprint his columns …

Best of the bad GOP news: David Brooks turns on the loser wing of the GOP

It's been years since I looked a David Brooks column. I don't know why I peaked today. The man is a propagandist for the GOP with a gift for writing, nothing more.

But today he delivers a shocking blow to one part of the party:

Op-Ed Columnist - Revolt of the Nihilists - David Brooks - NYTimes.com:

... Pelosi’s fiery speech at the crucial moment didn’t actually kill this bill..

...House Republicans led the way and will get most of the blame. It has been interesting to watch them on their single-minded mission to destroy the Republican Party.

When the mouthpiece of the party establishment writes this, something is afoot.

Something potentially positive.

We need a healthy GOP. We need a party that represents business, that represents people who dislike change, and that represents the wealthy. If wealthy people don't get "extra votes", they'll destroy democracy (the flip side of the fear that the poor will vote themselves endless benefits -- both have a point).

We need a party that represents "traditional values" -- like integrity, honest accounting, accountability, contracts, and military ethos -- including responsibility to enemy combatants.

Clearly today's GOP does none of these. They don't even represent the long term interests of the wealthy, because they're destroying the foundations of future security and wealth.

Could there be a group of internal GOP reformers who, at this point, want the party to crash and burn? They may know that only a devastating loss will build the foundations for political recovery and renaissance.

If that group exists, it will be interesting to see if Brooks begins to channel their agenda.

The silver lining of financial collapse: my industry looks better

Those of us who work in Health Care IT are often asked why we can't use IT the way the finance sector uses IT.

The implication is that we're ... well ... dumb.

Which may be true.

True or note, it may be a while before anyone uses the financial sector as a good example. John Halamka says it best (emphases mine):

Life as a Healthcare CIO: The Wall Street Crisis

During the decade I've been CIO, IT operating budgets have been 2% of my organization's total budget, which is typical for the healthcare industry.

During the same period, IT budgets for the financial services industry have averaged 10% or higher.

Since 1998, I've often been told that Healthcare IT needs to take a lesson from the financial folks about doing IT right...

... Given the recent challenges of Lehman, Merrill, AIG, Washington Mutual, and others, you wonder just how effective the IT systems of these companies have been.

Of course they had great transactional systems, disaster recovery, infrastructure, and data warehouses.

However, did they have the business intelligence tools and dashboards that could alerted decision makers about the looming collapse of the industry?

Did the financial services industry have controls, risk analysis, or a memory of previous crisis - the Depression, the Japanese banking crisis, Enron/Worldcom? Was it greed, irrational expectations or too much data and not enough information that brought down these great institutions?

I'm sure many books will be written about the causes and those who are to blame.

One thing is for certain, In 2008, no one is going to tell me that healthcare IT should run as well as Lehman Brothers. I've even talked to folks in the industry who are rewriting their websites and resumes to remove historical references to their overwhelming historical successes in financial services IT..

Everyone thinks their professional domain has the greatest IT challenges.

In my case, I know that's true. [1]

[1] The hardest thing about Healthcare IT? It's embedded in a strange fusion of a market economy, soviet style central planning, and the antimatter triangle of provider, consumer and payor.

The GOP killed the bailout bill

Just in case you make the mistake of following the low quality mainstream media instead of classy blogs...

Talking Points Memo | Look at the Numbers

...There's a lot of talk out there from commentators who you'd think would know better claiming that this was basically a bipartisan failure -- that both parties, Republicans and Democrats, failed to carry their members for this bill.

But look at the numbers. 60% of Democrats in the House voted for this bill. 33% of Republicans. Face it, that's not even close...

The GOP killed the bill. That isn't making their business donors very happy. In fact I'd wager their donors are livid today ...

Melamine sickened infants: 53,000 and counting

This weekend's NYT Magazine reports 53,000 infants have been poisoned by fraudulent milk products.

The number, of course, will rise.

Not surprisingly the story was suppressed by the Chinese federal government lest the bad news tarnish the Olympic glow.

In the old days we'd feel a bit of pride about our superior government, but those days are gone. The Bush administration does the same sort of thing. Back to The Jungle reviews a book written after the pet food poisoning last year. The Bush-devastated FDA earns plenty of scorn.

I suspect, because it's only human, that many Chinese citizens thought Americans were making an unseemly fuss about dog food problems. I know several American right wingnuts expressed similar feelings early in the story.

53,000 children. This could have been avoided.

It will happen here if we don't get the GOP out of power.

In the meantime, I think we'll reduce the powdered milk that goes into my son's "peanut butter snack".

Update 9/30/08: Great NYT Editorial on the 1858 New York "swill milk" fraud by Bee Wilson, author of “Swindled: The Dark History of Food Fraud From Poisoned Candy to Counterfeit Coffee." Same framework, same horrors. I don't even want to bother thinking about how libertarians answer these things.