THIS MODERN WORLD

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.”

Now that the crops are in from the fields, it’s time to set the clocks back an hour. Which is to say, daylight savings time ends Sunday.

My exceedingly gracious host in Denver was a cartoonist named Kenny Be, who, due to his focus on local issues, doesn’t get anywhere near the attention he deserves (outside of Denver, I mean). Kenny and I had never met, and yet he totally threw his home open to me. Actually I do not overstate the case when I say that he made the entire Denver trip possible — my credentials came through late and housing was not exactly easy to come by at that moment.

Anyway, I just noticed that Jen Sorensen and I make a cameo in one of Kenny’s cartoons, here. And we really did arrive at the Salon party clown-car style — Jen was crammed in to the back of a (small) pickup truck cab, behind the seat in this little space where ordinarily you’d maybe keep your tire jack or something. I believe my line in the cartoon is reported verbatim: “The cartoonists are here!”

Read this, then this.

As noted in the article, the outcome wasn’t hard to predict. But still, wow. Gas prices have been down for, what, a couple of weeks now?