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January 31, 2009
The Real Paris
Lots of large international cities have mimes, street people and street theater. But if you live for a long while in DC or Paris, and then you move, you sense something special is missing. You don't know what. One day you're at lunch and you think: "Wait a minute. There's not even one demonstration every day in downtown Louisville?" See at ParisDailyPhoto "Capitalism: The French Nightmare" via The Paris Blog. Eric of ParisDailyPhoto writes:
There were several big demonstrations in France today and the largest one, as always, took place in Paris. It ended up at the Opera house where I took this photo. I thought it was pretty funny to take an anti-capitalist billboard in front of two shiny adverts for Rolex and Commerzbank in the background! FYI, the billboard roughly says: 'Unrestricted capitalism equals people in danger'.
That's what I'm talking about.
ParisDailyPhoto
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (2)
Staffs that work.
See at Lawyers USA the article "Are You Overlooking Your Best Marketing Tool?" by lawyer-editor Sylvia Hsieh. It's about making your employees customer and client-centric. Which is, of course, easier said than done. Unfortunately, even at well-meaning businesses, the claim that "customer focus informs our every thought and action" doesn't last longer than a couple of days. It is quickly relegated to gimmicky feel-good website language at most companies, hotels, stores, shops, fruit stands and brothels on this planet.
The reason: Client service is very hard, and most businesses don't even know it. So they don't build it, they don't work hard at keeping and improving it, and they don't enforce it.
However, the Lawyers USA piece does hold out hope for building disciplined client service cultures at professional firms. It features: (1) some great advice from real pros, like Tom Kane and Ed Poll, (2) a few new but practical ideas, and (3) a creepy law partner who summarily fires associates who don't buy into client service 24/7. Some people. But Ms. Hsieh's article is fine instruction for managing partners, and new lawyers just starting out. Just a few mixed excerpts:
Written policies and training are a starting point.
This message should come across as early as the hiring process.
He [the partner] bluntly tells everyone in the firm the rules are not a gimmick and anyone who doesn't buy into them will be fired.
And he has followed through on that promise, such as when he fired an employee on the spot for refusing to take a phone call from a client over a weekend when both partners were out of town.
Employees at his firm know they will be evaluated based on their customer service skills and are encouraged to evaluate the partners on the same.
Another policy that [the partner interviewed] instituted at his firm to involve staff is that every person who works on a project for a client, including the paralegal and secretary, knows what the client is being billed.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:06 PM | Comments (0)
January 30, 2009
The Midwest: Toughen up, bundle up, tap your brakes.
Is that Exit 44A, or a new footpath to Springfield? You live too long in Southern California, you get too soft; too much time in New York City, you get too tough. A famous Indianapolis-born writer--the brand of eccentric you get only from America's Heartland--once said that.
This week: Detroit, and then Columbus and Dayton for driving. The weather gets worse at every venue. On an IP mission here, and can't figure out the heating system in the rental car. You get annoyed that the car's heat is not working, then you realize that's all the heat there is. Been a long time since you worried about your windshield wiper fluid cache. Speaking of icy southern Ohio, IP missions and frozen markets, Cincinnati's always-excellent Patent Baristas has this one from earlier in the week: "Patent Law: Global Economic Slowdown Edition".
Hull McGuire's recent cut-back on travel expenses was offset by significant upgrades in its Pittsburgh staff. At a rest stop, a new hire surveys a snowy Ohio field. (Photo: Chicago Tribune)
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Nino Does Duke.
But can he do that reverse pretzel thing? Alumni and students alike speak of "The Duke Experience" in reverent and hushed tones. And Justice Scalia, whether you love him or not, has Moxie. So can we get that smooth little genius to do a pole dance in downtown Durham over at the Re-Lax Parlor? When I lived all those years on East Capitol, Scalia and I used to pass each other on The Mall while jogging. He stays in pretty good shape. See Duke Daily Chronicle: "Justice Scalia Pays Visit to School of Law". Excerpt:
Scalia responded with humor to one question concerning the free speech of exotic dancing.
"I like it," he joked, adding that it does not fall under the protection of the First Amendment. "I draw a line there, I don't think that means communication."
Posted by JD Hull at 11:08 PM | Comments (0)
Amazon: In the Zone.
And how nice for you. Americans do "small" pretty well; we've raised it to an art form in some circles and regions. But certainly we are more attractive when we enter the No Schadenfreude Zone. Amazon, the nation's largest online retailer, is doing quite well, thank you, according to the The Seattle Times late yesterday:
NEW YORK — Amazon.com Inc. said Thursday that its fourth-quarter profit rose 9 percent and easily surpassed analysts' forecasts. Those results, plus an optimistic forecast, sent its shares soaring 13 percent in extended trading.
Amazon had called the holiday season its "best ever," and the earnings report backed up the idea that the online retailer is not being seriously hurt by cutbacks in consumer spending. Amazon said its revenue in the current quarter should be between $4.53 billion and $4.93 billion, while analysts are expecting $4.57 billion. [more]
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 06:40 PM | Comments (0)
January 29, 2009
Hesse's main point.
Ah, but it is hard to find this track of the divine in the midst of this life we lead...
Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf (1927)
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Jim Hassett on alternative fees--Part 4.
Now we know it really won't go away. At his Legal Business Development, Jim Hassett just published Part 4 of his series on alternative fees, where he's done a fine job of summarizing the players, views and "literature" in The Movement. See this week's installment "Why Every Lawyer Needs To Consider Alternative Fees Now".
Posted by JD Hull at 11:39 PM | Comments (0)
Bolivia: The new deal or a race war?
Here's one we missed in The Economist earlier this week: "A Question of Rights". Bolivia's president, Evo Morales, is an Amerindian and socialist who is now in his fourth year. Last week voters passed a referendum he pushed for a new Bolivian constitution that give the majority indigenous population special land, mineral and petroleum rights. The new constitution has further polarized Bolivians along class and racial lines.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 06:19 PM | Comments (0)
So, tell me again, what do we do now?
Service Firms, and The Way-Down Global Economy. Some advice, with great related links, from people who think about this stuff all the time (so you don't have to). They were thinking about it all along. You can hire them, too.
Ed Poll: "Three Lenses for Law Firm Recession Survival" (9/16/08)
Jim Hassett: "The First Thing Lawyers Should Do In A Recession" (1/30/08)
Dennis Kennedy: "Planning for Legal Technology in a Recession" (1/22/08)
Tom Kane: "Time to Get Closer to Clients" (9/25/08)
Bruce MacEwen: "Costs & Revenues: Health Check Time" (9/5/08)
The prescient Larry Bodine: "Get Ready for the Coming Recession" (8/26/07)
Jennifer E. King: "Marketing Your Firm’s Legal Services During an Economic Decline" (2008 LexisNexis white paper)
And finally, Chicago trial-lawyer, thinker and value architect Patrick J. Lamb: Read Anything Pat writes these days.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)
January 28, 2009
The Economy: Mr. Obama goes to Capitol Hill.
In The Hill, see "Praise for Obama, Not Votes".
In the Senate, the new president was peppered with questions about the proposal [economic stimulus package], with GOP senators pressing him to reconsider the package’s $825 billion price tag and to keep the stimulus focused on the housing and financial markets. Obama was also asked to consider helping the housing market with the second half of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 10:15 AM | Comments (0)
The subject that won't die: alternative fees.
And you can't ignore it. Thought leaders like Ron Baker, Pat Lamb, Tom Kane and now law firm leaders won't let the topic go way. See, for example, Kane's "Now Is The Time To Consider Alternative Fees". Because of its flexibility in the hands of client-centric lawyers, WAC? still likes the Billable Hour--even though many (if not most) lawyers abuse it out the wazoo. The problem, as we see it, is not the Timesheet, and it never was. Law is now both a trust-based profession and a business. No single system can make that built-in conflict go away. Only individual client-lawyer relationships can. We support any system that aligns as closely as possible the interests of clients and outside counsel. Hourly billing can do that. Alternative fees--value-based, hybrids, whatever you devise--can do it, too. Hey, we're still listening.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 08:30 AM | Comments (1)
John Hoyer Updike (1932-2009)
That something-is-missing in the suburbs was one of his great themes, and no one did that better. Although I liked his Bech character (and alter-ego) the best, the Rabbit books made him famous. None of us growing up in the 1960s and 1970s wanted to end up like Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, the reluctant small town family man who made choices in life that hardened around him quickly. Updike won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction twice, both for "Rabbit" books. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, who for decades has done great work covering other writers, has this article in the New York Times, via the International Herald Tribune.
Posted by JD Hull at 07:30 AM | Comments (0)
January 26, 2009
Energy and the Environment: 'Real science' in DC?
"Obama needs to pass in 2009 the mother of all energy bills." In the yours-in-the-struggle but generally excellent Salon, see "Real Science Comes to Washington", by Joseph Romm, Fellow at the Center for American Progress. Romm is author of Hell and High Water: Global Warming--The Solution and the Politics.
Obama must begin high-level bilateral negotiations with China (or trilateral negotiations that include the European Union) to get a national commitment from the world's biggest carbon dioxide emitter to cap their emissions no later than 2020. Such a deal would presumably be contingent on U.S. action, but would enable a much stronger domestic climate bill.
We simply can't solve the climate problem without Chinese action. And absent Chinese action in the next decade, the developed countries could never sustain the price for carbon dioxide needed to achieve meaningful reductions.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
China Business: What about Dan Harris?
At Dan's China Law Blog, see "Is Your China Business Recession Resistant? What Is?" Excerpt:
My firm has seen increased business of late from companies related to energy and fuel savings, food companies, gaming companies, health care companies, education related companies, and, (no surprise here) collection companies. All of these companies seem to have relatively stable (or even rising) income flows and they are seeking to expand in China or take advantage of China cost savings.
Posted by JD Hull at 10:59 PM | Comments (0)
January 25, 2009
Amsterdam has a bit of everything.
Art, religious art, not-religious art, the Anne Frank House (moving, authentic and not to be missed), religion, not-religion, sex for pay, sex as play, a wonderful absence of jackass Western "moral certitude", happy people, The Sex Museum, a truly international atmosphere, real global business, real lawyers, real tall blonde women who speak English way better than you, Jack. Even "soft" drugs. Whoa. And dang.
After ditching the Americans he was with ("they traveled together through Europe in a self-imposed Yank Bubble to make 100% sure they wouldn't learn anything"), WAC?'s main writer, by then a Tea-Totaler on all chemical fronts, first visited the Betty Boop Coffeeshop on an early September morning in 1992, and really did think the place was just about the coffee. Which it is, mainly, sort of. It's still there. And it's still a good place to hide from Americans. Ask for Ellen. Or a guy named "Space". Boop-boopee-doop.
Special note if you are traveling with your 79-year-old Aunt Nina from Sioux City and need a cup of Joe: "In Amsterdam, coffee shop means a place where cannabis is openly sold and smoked, while only café means a coffee and tea drinking place." --Amsterdam.info
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:09 AM | Comments (0)
January 23, 2009
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Redux: Ernie's Churchyard Find.
Ernie From Glen Burnie. Not his real name--but he's a real person, a D.C. lawyer with a golden resume everyone speaks about in low tones (which he thinks is pathetic). We like to protect him. He made partner a long time ago, still tries cases everywhere, and writes well-received fiction on the side; so he probably doesn't care. Some nights he can be found at The Old Ebbitt, in the smaller bar in the back left, drinking a lot of coffee, so maybe you've already met him. He's rarely alone. Women like him. He doesn't eat much. He talks a lot, in a lyrical yet measured way. Ernie always makes a good point, however he has to make it. See The 7 Habits of Highly Useless Corporate Lawyers.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:21 AM | Comments (0)
January 22, 2009
Cross-cultural mediation: "Don't have a list of do's and don't's."
At the award-winning podcast series sponsored by the International Institute for Conflict Prevention & Resolution (CPR), hear General Electric in-house lawyer Mike McIlwrath interview mediator and author Jenny Beer, who over 25 years ago co-authored the cross-discipline guide, The Mediator's Handbook. The topic: "Setting up the Cross-Cultural Mediation". Negotiators, Beer says, "need a mindset--not a list.” This is program 56 in CPR's International Dispute Negotiation series. The January 9 interview with Beers is here, and follows a longer interview McIlwrath conducted of Beer in September 2008. Based in Florence, Italy, McIlwrath is Senior Counsel, Litigation for GE Infrastructure-Oil & Gas.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 03:04 AM | Comments (1)
January 21, 2009
It may be one for the ages: the inauguration address.
To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West — know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.
The text as delivered is here. But forget about the reaction of the crowd, and the sound of Obama's voice, if you saw or heard it. Forget about Justice Roberts' muffed lines just before it happened. It should be read, whether you voted for the 44th President or, like me, you did not. Ted Sorensen writes in UK's The Guardian that he was moved by the speech and the event--and that is indeed praise. If you're an American lawyer and don't know who the 80-year-old Sorensen is, stop eating and watching television for five minutes, and find out. Finally, consider at Legal History Blog the notion that The District of Columbia is "the window through which the world looks into our house".
(Photo: Paul Schutzer)
Posted by JD Hull at 11:52 PM | Comments (0)
January 19, 2009
American Signage: Bed-Stuy, Seattle and Johnstown PA
New York Times: "‘Not Much of a Block,’ but It’s Named for a King". The Seattle Times: "Dream Remains Alive on Seattle's Street Named for King". The Tribune-Democrat: "Johnstown Bridge Renamed in Honor of Martin Luther King Jr.".
NYT: Martin Luther King Jr. Place, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn
Posted by JD Hull at 11:16 PM | Comments (0)
Popular election of state judges in America: are we done yet?
For watchers of American state judiciary systems, on Tuesday, March 3, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co. (No. 08-22). See summary and list of amicus briefs in West Virginia Business Litigation.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:07 AM | Comments (2)
January 18, 2009
Andrew Newell Wyeth (1917–2009)
"Weatherside", 1965
Posted by JD Hull at 09:37 PM | Comments (0)
January 17, 2009
Last to rave and to be re-born.
The Phoenix represents to many the life cycle: birth, growth, death and re-birth because from the ashes life arises anew often strengthened through reinvention. But this happens not just from reinvention of oneself but through innovation. And innovation helps to propel us forward.
--SCL
We got a Phoenix for you right here. This past week, billing hours, and defending the insensitive, the unreconstructed and the un-defendable, WAC? nearly missed telling you about Blawg Review #194. The host this week: she always makes too much sense. So we do not always agree with Susan Cartier Liebel--is that a great multicultural handle or what?--but we always read her anyway at her Build A Solo Practice, LLC. Reason: we check in with her just in case we are wrong-headed, backward or archaic about life and the law generally, which is likely. If we ever decide to evolve, and become sensitive new age gentlemen, which is not likely, we'd hire her in in a heartbeat. Currently, we do not need a "coach"--but we do need sensibly-priced Jameson Irish hooch. Directions?
Phoenix Park Hotel, 520 North Capitol Street, N.W. Washington, D.C, within lunging distance of Kelly's Irish Times, in case you get un-evolved and can't walk home, or wish to meet Róisín, Tara or Brigit.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 02:36 PM | Comments (3)
January 16, 2009
Beavis, can you spare a dime?
Breaking: Twenty-somethings, reality collide. MSNBC: "Generation Y job-seekers hit hard". Excerpt:
Younger workers are finding out the hard way that they have to hustle to land their dream job, says Debra Condren, business psychologist and author of “Ambition Is Not A Dirty Word.”
“These young adults don’t know how to jump in and be aggressive,” she says.
Query: If they're not proactive and aggressive, would you want these workers at your shop even in "good times"?
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 04:13 AM | Comments (3)
January 15, 2009
One big global downer: car sales worldwide.
In The Economist today, read about "The Big Chill". Excerpts:
Sales figures published the week before the show confirmed what everyone already knew: the second half of 2008 saw the most savage contraction of demand since the modern industry was formed after the second world war....
Prestigious brands have been clobbered as much as volume manufacturers. BMW’s American sales fell by 40% in the year to December and those of Mercedes by 32%. Rolls-Royce, whose customers might be thought impervious to hard times, sold 29 cars in December 2007, but precisely none last month.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:35 PM | Comments (0)
Next time: turn off the lights, be very quiet, and lie on the floor.
In other words, pretend it's Halloween at WAC?'s house. See Rule 4 and then "Dropping A Summons And Complaint Outside A Door Makes Good Service" by trial lawyer-author J. Craig Williams at his May It Please the Court. This Ninth Circuit case may be limited to its colorful yet hardly shocking facts. WAC? is experiencing profound paramnesia here. Williams writes:
The process server attempted to serve Brenneke four times, leaving notes and asking Brenneke to contact the process server. On the process server's fifth and last trip to Brenneke's house, Brenneke hid in his house, refusing to answer the door when the process server knocked....
Brenneke responded to the door intercom and acknowledged he was at home, and even looked out a front window at the process server.
Still he failed to answer the door.
Frustrated, the process server held up the summons and complaint to show Brenneke, and said, "You are served."
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:55 AM | Comments (0)
January 14, 2009
No ordinary times.
"...a time for us all to read fewer newspapers and more history." Read this one: "Lessons From the Depression" at Bruce MacEwen's Adam Smith, Esq. Excerpt:
Never in my career--or the careers of those I speak with continually--has there been a time of greater uncertainty. The future is as hard to visualize as it is to see the East Side of Manhattan from Central Park West on a deeply foggy morning, or New Jersey from Riverside Park. You know it's there, with definite shape, but you can't see it or draw it or write about it with clarity and conviction.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:17 PM | Comments (0)
Client costs are your problem, too.
Rule 8: Think Like the Client--Help Control Costs.
Ask any associate lawyer or paralegal what a "profit" is. You will get two kinds of answers. Both answers are "correct" but neither of them helps anyone in your firm think like the client.
Posted by JD Hull at 02:31 AM | Comments (0)
January 13, 2009
Hillary's new trial
Only a senator as forthright and as respected as Dick Lugar (R-Indiana) could raise the question the right way. Hillary is one of the great managers of our time, and her husband gives good phone and great parties. She works hard. She's well-traveled. She's even been to Arkansas and Utah, both foreign countries. We know that Bill can hold his own in a conversation with the wife of the Sultan of Kelantan. Confirm her. Washington Post: "Clinton Challenged on Foreign Library Contributions".
Hillary Rodham Clinton, the nominee of President-elect Barack Obama to become the new secretary of state, appeared before a confirmation hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today and ran into a challenge over foreign donations to her husband's presidential library. [more]
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Exotic jurors: the ample, the deaf, the nasty.
Incontinent jurors are different than you and me, Ernestine. Lots of weird jury lore out there this week. The facts range from socially uncomfortable to spectacularly unsavory. Where will it end?
First, Milwaukee's Anne Reed wrote about jurors who are Powerless over Twinkies.
Next, at Simple Justice, our anti-PC comrade Scott Greenfield of New York City writes about "The Politically Correct Jury", inspired by a tragic Ohio drowning case in which a homicide conviction was recently set aside. Reason: a hearing-impaired juror couldn't pick up vocal subtleties in a 911 tape of the defendant, a key bit of evidence. Nor could the Ohio trial court have expected that of her. Greenfield:
What bone in their head compelled a judge to allow a hearing-disabled person to sit on a jury? It's the same bone that allows blind people, non-English speaking, non-fluent-English speaking, incontinent, people with attention deficit with or without hyperactivity, and a variety of others to sit on a jury. It's the bone that makes them believe that pigs may indeed be capable of flight and people should not be defined by their challenges in every situation.
I abhor discrimination against people who are disabled. But I similarly recognize that there is a reason why they are called disabilities. There are some things that they cannot do well. It's not their fault, and they should not suffer for being disabled. But they similarly should not be placed in situations where their disabilities preclude their ability to perform a function adequately.
Finally, at ALM's Legal Blog Watch, Boston's Bob Ambrogi, who could probably write a successful and critically-acclaimed novel, gives us "The Case of the Stinky Juror". It begins with his usual spare prose: "Something smelled fishy in the courtroom of Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Nancy Staffier-Holtz." And: "The smell pierced through even into the judge's lobby." Dang. Air Wicks, maybe? At least for federal courts?
Query: Just how do you cover this stuff at the Trial Practice course you're giving over at old Siwash?
Blue-ribbon juror in many U.S. jurisdictions.
(Photo: NYC's Scott Greenfield in formal "high-prole" federal court garb, readying for voir dire in Missouri.)
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 07:10 PM | Comments (2)
January 12, 2009
"From Mistrust to Cynicism to Corruption"
We are not sure that "Madoff's a bad man" but do see this one at Trusted Advisor by Charles Green. Thanks to the Blawg Review editor, the vigilant and uncanny Ed.
In Twain's and Eastwood's stories, an organization starts out proud of its reputation for rectitude. Then someone descends into venality. It starts with “borrowing” to tide things over the weekend. But--as with any crackhead--it doesn't stop there.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Does culture drive global trends more than economics?
The US, Russia, the EU, China and India may react differently to the same event. See at Richard Lewis's Cross-Culture, one of our favorite sites, "Culture and the Credit Crunch". I don't think the post supports the thesis that well--but it's an interesting and worthy idea. Excerpts:
The USA, with its risk-taking, speculation and short-termism, is always likely to tend towards boom and bust. But we should never underestimate the USA's supreme ability to bounce back. As staff started filing out of Lehman Brothers for the last time, representatives from other investment firms were filmed outside trying to recruit those leaving. A true demonstration of the American spirit.
How about China? Its march may be held up by temporary obstacles along the way, but it is an inexorable march with an unstoppable momentum.
[W]hat future for the EU? In a crisis, will the key countries hold together? Or will German caution berate Anglo-Saxon profligacy and French pride be hurt by German frankness?
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
January 11, 2009
New Zealand: A Kiwi summer vacation.
The Griswolds do Easter Island? Well, Wellington's Geoff Sharp is not Clark Griswold, but do see "How to Salvage a Summer Holiday" at his mediator blah...blah.... It begins:
Given my last post you are forgiven for expecting this entry to come from a remote Andean valley or beamed out from atop Machu Picchu which, btw, is rumoured to have gone wireless. [more]
Stop. Machu Picchu gone wireless? Say it ain't so, Geoff.
Sir Geoffrey of Wellington
Posted by JD Hull at 11:38 PM | Comments (0)
January 09, 2009
Clients, and the psychology of the Madoff affair.
Trust is only earned in a deeply personal way--it cannot be garnered and granted by someone else.
See "The Gullible and Bernie Madoff" at Neil Senturia's The Baby Blog. Senturia, a well-known Southern California entrepreneur and consultant, argues that "every gullible act occurs when an individual is presented with a social challenge". Put another way, it's a Groucho Marx thing: Madoff's most raving fans were investors he at first ignored; if he and his organization had pitched them, and asked them to join "the club", the investors might have ignored him.
Senturia: "Beware of doors that only open with a secret knock."
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 03:32 AM | Comments (0)
January 07, 2009
Update: Sweet Caroline
According to a blog yesterday at The Economist, new polling shows that Caroline Kennedy's quest for Hillary Clinton's New York U.S. Senate seat is in trouble. This is strange and somewhat sad news. Here's a smart and decent if private woman who, ironically, didn't correctly ramp up for and manipulate the political press coverage her own family first turned into an art fifty years ago. Excerpt:
It's about the lousy image that Mrs Kennedy has presented, and her inability to deal with a suddenly skeptical press corps that had only ever treated citizen Caroline as a princess.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 03:47 PM | Comments (0)
January 06, 2009
Franken: Good enough, smart enough--but not there yet.
Stuart saves Minnesota by 225 votes. Writer-actor-funnyman Harvard grad Al Franken (color him a big bold D) is certified as winner and declares victory. But now ex-Dem incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman (R) has a week to challenge the Minnesota election board's decision. We think Coleman will meet that deadline before this post is done. See NYT, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Boston Herald. Watch for the Senate to delay seating Franken.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:49 AM | Comments (0)
January 05, 2009
111th Congress: The Hill watching the watchers.
See, e.g., the Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg. The House Financial Services Committee takes a stab today at the SEC's past monitoring of the Madoff funds' business and investment methods, which some SEC employees had allegedly regarded as "questionable" and off the wall. SEC’s inspector general David Kotz, among others, get questioned.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Force-starting the economy: one way out?
See at Reuters "Japan's Yosano Says Quantitative Easing May Not Work". In "quantitative easing", governments flood the banking system with new money to promote lending; it generally happens when lowering "official" interest rates doesn't do anything because rates are close to zero. But doing that now, when you're already in debt up to your wazoo, doesn't make that much sense to WAC?, and hey we majored in English. But people like Japan's finance minister and Tel Aviv's Shalom Hamou--who commented here recently via a press release which is now all over the Net--are worried.
Allman Brothers perform "One Way Out", former U.S. national anthem circa 1971/traditional philanderer folk ballad.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:28 AM | Comments (0)
January 02, 2009
Greenspan: "I made a mistake."
In Salon, see Andrew Leonard's excellent "The Economy Crumbled"--but then let's get busy cleaning up our mess. WAC? prefers Pollyannas who like to solve problems. Excerpt:
There were warnings along the way. Cassandras who feared that exotic financial innovation, specifically unregulated at the behest of both Democratic and Republican politicians, was setting the stage for a major systemic shock. But their voices were drowned out by a chorus of status quo defenders who told us, again and again, that financial innovation was making the world a safer, less risky place.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 04:07 AM | Comments (1)