Author: Jonathan Schwarz

If you do nothing else today, read this outstanding New York Times article about how five Wisconsin school boards somehow invested $200 million in insanely risky international financial instruments created by an German bank based in Dublin.

The investment bank that sold this to the school boards, collecting a fee of $1.2 million in the process, is called Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. For a good time, read the “Statement of Commitment” on their website:

To our clients—individual, institutional, corporate, and municipal, our commitment is to listen and consistently deliver innovative financial solutions. Putting the welfare of clients and community first, we strive to be the advisor of choice in the industry. Pursuit of excellence and a desire to exceed clients’ expectations are the values that empower our Company to achieve this status.

Well, they certainly managed to exceed their clients’ expectations.

When did America become this kind of country? Where little midwestern school boards think it’s a fine idea to use their money allocated for scissors, paste and teacher pensions for speculating in the international bond insurance market? And where all the most prestigious colleges send a third of their graduating classes to Wall Street so they can learn how to fleece these little school boards most effectively?

It’s really depressing. Fortunately, the current financial panic will eventually force the New York Times to eliminate this type of high-quality reporting. So while such catastrophes will continue to occur, at least we won’t have to hear about it.

Studs Terkel, a genuine giant in the field of being human, has died at 96.

Garrison Keillor wrote about a visit to Terkel last July, and speculated that he wanted to make it to the election.

As he left Terkel’s home, Keillor says, Terkel offered this “benediction”:

Every night when the sun goes down

I say a blessing on this town:

“Whether we last the night or no,

Life has always been touch and go.

So stick with your modus operandi.

Ingenuity! Guile! Art! Good luck. Good bye.”

Police first became suspicious when Ashley Todd claimed that a large black man mugged her, raped her, carved a B in her face for Barack, and then ran off shouting, “Now I’m going to apply for a subprime mortage which the federal government will force the bank to give me under the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act!”

Whether bloggers know it or not, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting is the grandfather of most of the progressive blogosphere. FAIR, which was founded in 1986, was the first place to do progressive media criticism in a sustained, systematic way. Their influence has been enormous—so much so that it’s often hard to see, like a movie that changed movies afterwards so much that when you finally see the original, you can’t tell what the big deal was.

So it’s great that FAIR now has a blog of its own. I urge you to visit early and often.

In related news, John Caruso has examined FAIR’s coverage of Ralph Nader’s presidential campaign in 2000, 2004, and 2008. Let’s see how those guys like rational, relentlessly fact-based critique NOW!!!

This is from Alan Greenspan’s testimony today (pdf) in front of the House Oversight Committee:

Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder’s equity (myself especially) are in a state of shocked disbelief.

Hank Paulson then responded that the bailout may be the “beginning of a beautiful friendship” between himself and Greenspan.