Eliot Spitzer on The Huffington Post

Spitzer Tells Howard Dean: Time To Call Wall St.'s Bluff On Executive Compensation (VIDEO)

2009-11-25T11:16:49Z

With public outrage over extravagant Wall Street pay packages still simmering, Eliot Spitzer, who pursued overpaid financiers as a prosecutor, went on "The Rachel Maddow Show" last night to discuss the issue.

In particular, Spitzer and guest host Howard Dean discussed the pushback from failed insurance giant AIG, as well as the Treasury, against the insistence by President Obama's pay czar that AIG cut compensation for executives. AIG and Treasury officials have been repeating the now-familiar argument, made by banks all over Wall Street, that cutting compensation would result in an exodus of executives from the company.

Spitzer's response: let them go:

There's an old saying, I think it was De Gaulle. 'The graveyards are filled with indispensable men.' The AIG folks who are saying they're indispensable - test them. I think it's time to call their bluff. Say to them, 'you want to leave? Go away. We will replace you at one third of the pay.' The entire structure of Wall Street pay is out of control.

A new study from Harvard, "Wages of Failure," will only serve to stoke public anger at Wall Street compensation as it concludes that "since 2000, the top five executives at each firm (Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers) had received staggering amounts of cash bonuses and had sold mountains of stock." While the CEOs of these companies lost hundreds of millions in stock when the firm went belly up (Lehman Brothers) or was bailed out (Bear Stearns), they still retained massive compensation packages.

As one financial compensation expert put it: "They were rewarded hundreds of millions of dollars, and they got that reward for making catastrophic decisions."

Dean asked why, in light of the massive damage that banks have done to the lives of ordinary Americans, some of these executives are not in jail.

Spitzer replied, "Some of them should be"

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Spitzer: "Geithner's Disgrace"

2009-11-24T07:54:36Z

The issue has been festering for months: Why were AIG's counterparties -- including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and UBS -- paid 100 cents on the dollar when the feds rescued the insurance giant, helping raising the cost of the bailout to nearly $200 billion? A new report issued by Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky now reveals that government officials, notably then-New York Fed President and current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, grievously damaged the nation and capitulated to the very banks they should have been supervising.

Eliot Spitzer: Obama Economic Policies Ineffective, A Continuation Of Bush (WATCH)

2009-11-18T15:31:41Z

Are Obama's economic policies actually working?

Intelligence Squared posed this question to six policy experts at a debate in New York this week. The statement, "Obama's economic policies are working effectively," was defended by Lawrence Mishel from the Economic Policy Institute; investor and former 'Car Czar' Steven Rattner; and Mark Zandi, the chief economist and co-founder of Moody's Economy.com.

Arguing that Obama's economic approach is failing were James Galbraith of the University of Texas; Carnegie Mellon's Allan Meltzer; and former New York governor Eliot Spitzer.

The speakers defending Obama's handling of the economic crisis insisted that the economy, at the precipice a year ago, was brought back from the edge by the administration's strategy. They urged patience in allowing Obama's policies to broaden and take effect, and Zandi, who called the measures "successful," counseled that we should be careful not to be too rash in fundamentally restructuring the economic system:

"The proposition is, "Obama's Economic Policies Are Working Effectively." It's not, they have worked. This is not a mission accomplished, no one is arguing that this is over and done with, we have more work to do, and the administration is still working...And more importantly and perhaps most importantly, we are working through some of the structural problems in our economy, working on the hard, difficult issues, the most obvious would be financial regulatory reform. Now this is something you don't want to do quickly, you don't want to make a mistake. Our financial regulatory structure has been in place since the Great Depression. It feels like it, and we have got to take time to make it right. So, in my view, what the administration has done has been highly successful."

Mishel pointed out that the philosophy of deregulation, which he blamed for the crisis, has a deep-seated history in America -- for which Obama is not responsible:

"But the question is, are you going to judge the Obama administration policy ineffective, because it hasn't corrected what I think is 30 years of generating inequality, false-hearted, silly deregulation and worshipping of markets where we shouldn't have done it that got us into this darn mess? I don't think that's quite appropriate."

But Spitzer took aim at the administration's approach, accusing it of shying away from the kind of comprehensive reform that the financial system needs. The Obama administration is not so different from the Bush administration, at least so far as their approach to the banking crisis goes, he claimed:

"The fundamental error of this administration is that it is continuity. They have embraced the Bush Administration view that if you solve the problem of big banks everything else flows from that. They are wrong. Too big to fail is too big. They don't get it. The only two people I know who don't appreciate that are Tim Geithner and Larry Summers. Paul Volcker, Alan Greenspan, Henry Kaufman, Mervyn King -- every major academic has said, We must get rid of too big to fail."

Watch Spitzer make his case against Obama's effectiveness as manager of the financial crisis below:

Eliot Spitzer arguing against Obamanomics from Intelligence Squared US on Vimeo.

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Will Schwartz: What We're Not Saying: Why I Miss Eliot Spitzer

2009-11-16T18:30:32Z

Why are we still talking about Eliot Spitzer’s sex scandal?

The internet seemed to erupt in collective anger last week when Mr. Spitzer gave a speech on ethics at Harvard Law. Every New York paper took the opportunity to remind the public of the low-brow, obvious irony of Harvard’s pick: that Eliot Spitzer is a whore-mongering hypocrite, a disgraced Democratic Golden Boy, a public sociopath with little to no remorse about his crime.

Well, to me that’s not the angle they should be pursuing. They’re ignoring the moral of the Spitzer story: that we were perversely short-sighted with the way we handled Eliot Spitzer; that we prioritized our bloodlust for personal justice over our desire for effective public policy.

This was a missed opportunity for our news media to elevate the conversation on Eliot Spitzer’s legacy. Last week, I didn’t come across a single publication that talked about why he would have been picked for this speech. About how he banished the mob from the garment industry in Manhattan in the early 1990’s. Or about how he challenged Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns long before we realized how desperately the securities industry needed government regulation. Or about how he attacked AIG.

We seem to have forgotten that Spitzer was enormously effective, and had amazing foresight into the role of government in the private sector.

Albany, meanwhile, is struggling right now largely because of a drastic deficit of leadership, because of the inability of our impotent, wind-bag of a governor to tame the wilds of the State Senate, to reap fruits from a Democratic majority, or to secure votes for his policy.

While Eliot Spitzer gave his unpopular and derided ethics speech, David Paterson, in a terrifying display of exasperation and futility, called the Senate for a special session to approve his budget plan, on which he couldn’t inspire them to vote. No, instead, the Democrats and Republicans bickered, and the Democrats bickered amongst themselves. Now, he’s implying he’ll abandon any principles he may have imbued into his plan. Imagine what his leadership would look like without a Senate Majority.

While Eliot Spitzer was being lambasted by our press last week, Paterson was pushing a gay marriage bill to the Senate Floor prematurely, with the hopes of securing some concrete and tangible achievement for his abysmal reputation. For the sake of his legacy and his election bid, he’s rushing the legislation to the floor without securing necessary votes, at a time of Democratic disunity. If it passes, it would be in spite of his work, not because of it.

I understand that Eliot Spitzer’s hypocrisy was tasteless, unethical; not fitting of an elected official. It's just that I don’t care about it anymore. I'm not sure I ever did. We traded an effective, intelligent, and proactive leader for a weak and useless figurehead. I hope that next time one of our elected officials gets caught with his pants down, we remember this trade-off, reap some kind of lesson from this disaster.

I hope that next time we face down a sex-scandal, we take a deep breath and probe into what decision will best benefit our state and city, what decision will best balance accountability and necessity. Based on last weeks coverage of his Harvard speech, I don't think we've learned much.

The way I see it, Eliot Spitzer committed only one monumental crime against New York State: leaving us with David Paterson as governor.

Eliot Spitzer Talks Financial And Personal Crisis In BBC Interview (AUDIO)

2009-11-14T10:22:00Z

In a wide-ranging interview with the BBC's Carrie Gracie, former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer discusses crashes -- both personal and financial.

During his tenure as New York State Attorney General, Spitzer gained a reputation as a foil to Wall Street. "It is very difficult to have watched this story unfold," Spitzer told Gracie, referring to the economic crisis. "It was during the decade of financial excess that I...played a significant role in trying to highlight the failures that ultimately metastasized to bring down an entire financial system."

Spitzer also discusses his personal trials and the plight of his wife and family.

Click below to listen to the interview.

Eliot Spitzer's Harvard Speech Calls On Wall Street To 'Tell The Truth' (VIDEO)

2009-11-13T00:54:44Z

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The head of an ethics program at Harvard University strongly defended the choice of former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer to deliver a lecture on integrity in the nation's financial markets.

Spitzer, driven from office by a prostitution scandal, did not make reference to the episode during the more than hourlong speech Thursday to an audience of about 300 at the Ivy League school. Spitzer, a graduate of Harvard Law School, said only government can enforce integrity and transparency in the markets, and that its failure to do so helped trigger the Wall Street meltdown.

"We didn't need new laws, we just needed regulators to use the power we already had," he said.

Spitzer was introduced by Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig, the faculty director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, which invited the former governor to speak.

"No one doubts what Governor Spitzer did was wrong," said Lessig, referring to the personal behavior that led to Spitzer's resignation.

But Lessig went on to call Spitzer "the most important living prosecutor of a wide range of corruption."

Harvard students who attended the lecture expressed support for bringing Spitzer to campus, dismissing any irony of the invitation coming from an ethics program.

"I thought Harvard was courageous to bring him, because we need to hear these voices now," said Tara Jayaratnam, a mid-career student at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

While the former governor's personal behavior could not be condoned, Jayaratnam said many public figures have been given second chances and Spitzer deserves one because of his extensive knowledge of regulation, corporate governance and other issues.

Evelyn White, a student at Harvard Business School, said she was very impressed with what she heard from Spitzer.

"About a year ago, I don't think I really would have wanted to hear him speak, but I heard from enough students at other schools who said they had heard him and that he still has a fire and a spark," she said.

As governor and previously as attorney general in New York, Spitzer vigorously pursued deceptive practices and other alleged wrongdoing by major financial companies.

"When the choice had to be made between integrity and market share, integrity and profits, they made the wrong choice," he said in the speech.

Spitzer, a Democrat, resigned in March 2008 after it was revealed he was "Client 9" in a court document that listed the exploits of customers of an escort service. Four people who operated or worked the escort service have pleaded guilty to various federal charges; Spitzer has not been charged with a crime.

Since his resignation, Spitzer has worked in his father's real estate firm and served as an adjunct professor of political science at City College in New York.

According to a description on its Web site, the Safra Foundation was formed in 1986 to provide "serious scholarship in practical ethics in a wide range of fields." The center helps develop ethics programs within the university and also advises other colleges and universities in the U.S. and around the world, according to the description.

WATCH:

New York Times Bent Over Backwards To Please Spitzer Flacks During Scandal

2009-11-04T14:14:19Z

Hey kids! Remember that time when South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford disappeared off the face of the earth, leaving his perplexed staff behind to guess that he was hiking the Appalachian Trail, except that actually he was off having an affair with his Latin American soul mate? Good times. And the media responded to the news with extensive offers to give Sanford some help during his time of need, the crowning example coming from David Gregory, who was all: Hey, Mark Sanford, why don't you use Meet The Press as a venue for you to "frame the conversation how you really want to... and then move on?"

Well, taking inspiration from those revelations, Gawker's John Cook has gone back to the future, obtaining the emails between the flacks at the New York governor's office and various New York Times reporters during the reporting of Eliot Spitzer's "Client #9" story, and the results are basically MARK SANFORD x 1,300 pages:

You'd think that, with blood in the water, the traditional coziness that develops between official flacks and the beat reporters who have to talk to them every day would break down into some kind of last-man-standing slugfest. But in the Spitzer case, the opposite happened. The revelations upended the worlds of both reporter and flack alike, and the uncertainty, long hours, and breakneck pace of the scandal actually seemed to throw them together as they worked toward what seems, if you read the e-mail exchanges, like a common goal of getting the news out and behind them.

Which makes sense on a human level. But sometimes good reporting--especially of the government watchdog variety--requires an inhuman suspension of compassion. The infractions documented in these e-mails are misdemeanors, but--in addition to being an unvarnished peek inside the media machinery--they're indicative of the creeping social and professional alliances that inevitably develop between PR handlers and their overworked, easily manipulated charges in the press corps. And they give the lie to the myth of the vigilant watchdog press that keeps the government on its toes. Next time you hear New York Times editor Bill Keller claim that newspapers are uniquely situated to do the "hard, expensive, sometimes dangerous work [of] quality journalism," remember that his reporter broke the story of Spitzer's dalliances with prostitutes. But also remember the time his reporter e-mailed Gov. Paterson's flack to request permission to call Paterson's former mistress.

Oh, hie thee hence for a taste of some of the extreme deference from various reporters, ranging from "could you flacks maybe just tell me what to say" to "shucks, I'm even sorry I have to break this mean old news on your bosses!" At one point, a Times reporter even asks for permission to speak to Paterson's mistress. My favorite moment comes when Lieutenant Governor David Paterson's flack demonstrates more concern for newspaper consumers than the reporter writing the story. Also? From now on, I'm checking into the Mayflower Hotel under the name Errol Cockfield.

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

Eliot Spitzer: Republicans Could Seize Bank Reform Issue

2009-11-03T11:04:09Z

Gauzy words describing the possibilities for change are always more comforting than defending the current dire straits. That is why -- in addition to all the substantive arguments -- the current White House plan for banking reform is so troubling.

States May Sue Banks For Fraud Over Mortgage Crisis

2009-11-03T10:29:19Z

Frustrated by the banks' inability or unwillingness to stop an avalanche of foreclosures, the states are considering lawsuits over the creation and marketing of millions of bad loans as well as the dismal pace of mortgage modifications.

Such cases would have been impossible until recently, because federal regulators had exclusive oversight of national banks. But a 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision in June allowed the states to exercise their own supervision, giving them significant leverage.

Alice Schroeder: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life: Part 1 of 7

2009-10-29T13:24:59Z

When THE SNOWBALL: WARREN BUFFETT AND THE BUSINESS OF LIFE (BANTAM) was originally published in fall 2008, Alice Schroeder's intimate account of the man known as "The Oracle of Omaha" made national headlines. The book's publication also happened to coincide with the depression of the global economy and the collapse of America's banking system. In this seven-part series, Schroeder details Buffett's reaction to the economic crisis, the November presidential race and election of Barack Obama, as well as the decline of Berkshire Hathaway's stock from Triple-A status.
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On October 23, 2006, Berkshire Hathaway became the first American stock to trade above $100,000 per share. By the end of 2007, BRK reached $149,200, which gave Berkshire a market value of more than $200 billion. Berkshire was the world's most respected company, according to a Barron's survey. Buffett's personal fortune exceeded $60 billion, and only a few months earlier, the Dow had reached its all-time high of 14,164.53.2 Businesses were posting record earnings; the market, as a discounting machine, built into stock prices the expectation that an even greater and growing stream of money could be coaxed from consumers' pockets.

Buffett dampened his own shareholders' expectations of Berkshire, yet showed no signs of giving up control or competing any less aggressively than before. Even so, a few of Berkshire's longtime shareholders began to sell stock. Some were donating appreciated shares to charity at a recently run-up price. Others cited Buffett's age; he was approaching seventy-eight. And inevitably, the $149,200 price tag for a single share of BRK drew in the sort of new investors who always buy in at the top.

As reflected in Berkshire's stock price, Buffett had been enjoying a period of almost unbroken success since the end of the Internet bubble. Only one episode of any significance marred the record of these six years. This was a legal threat to Buffett and to Berkshire that, at least initially, was as serious as Buffett's earlier encounter with the SEC over Blue Chip, and Salomon's near brush with death. It had to do with General Re, Buffett's onetime problem-child investment, which had--at least financially--undergone a remarkable recovery.

By 2007, the company had become the most successful of Berkshire's long string of insurance turnarounds. After $2.3 billion of cumulative losses related to insurance and reinsurance sold in prior years, and $412 million of charges for the runoff of Gen Re Securities, the company's derivatives unit, General Re was reporting the most profitable results in its history, with $2.2 billion of pretax operating earnings.3 It had earned back the losses and restored its balance sheet to a better condition than when Buffett bought it; it was operating with nearly one-third fewer employees and the company had been transformed.

General Re had escaped the fate of Salomon and overcome the stigma of its Scarlet Letter. Buffett was finally able to praise it and its senior managers, Joe Brandon and Tad Montross, in some depth in his 2007 shareholder letter, saying "the luster of the company has been restored" by "doing first-class business in a first-class way."

But at the beginning of 2008, four employees of General Re and one employee of AIG were put on trial in Hartford, Connecticut, on charges of federal criminal conspiracy. For those on trial, the next few months would bring to a climax the years of hell that white-collar criminal investigations impose on their subjects. For Buffett, the trial would mean the beginning of the end to this particularly golden chapter of his life.

The trial came about as a consequence of General Re's last act of ignominy before its change of management in 2001. General Re had created a Salomontype scandal of its own in which it broke Buffett's rule of not "losing reputation for the firm." This was the event that had, as it unfolded, adjusted Buffett's perception of the new legal-enforcement environment, in which showing extreme contrition and cooperation produced no advantage in how a company was treated by prosecutors. Extreme contrition and cooperation were now the expected minimum standard--in part because of Salomon. Anything short of that--for a company to defend itself or its employees, for example--could be considered grounds for indictment. Trying to exceed the minimum threshold for extreme contrition and cooperation, as Buffett was always inclined to do when confessing any sort of mistake or flaw, could even be a disadvantage now, attracting more attention to a company at a time when the fairness of certain state and federal criminal procedures was being questioned.

General Re had first become entangled in legal and regulatory problems when New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer started investigating the insurance industry over "finite" reinsurance in 2004. "Finite" reinsurance has been defined in many ways, but, put simply, it is a type of reinsurance used by the client mainly for financial or accounting reasons--either to bolster its capital or to improve the amount or timing of its earnings. While usually legal and sometimes legitimate, finite reinsurance had been subject to such widespread abuse that accounting rulemakers have spent decades trying to rein it in.

In 2003, both General Re and Ajit Jain's Berkshire Re were condemned in a special investigation for selling finite reinsurance that allegedly contributed to the 2001 collapse of an Australian insurer, HIH. Two years later, General Re was accused by insurance regulators and policyholders of having sold fraudulent reinsurance in the 1990s in connection with the failure of a Virginia medical malpractice insurer, the Reciprocal of America. Though the Department of Justice investigated the allegations extensively, no charges were brought against Gen Re or any of its employees.8 That same year, Eliot Spitzer's investigation of the insurance industry prompted an additional investigation that concluded that six General Re employees had conspired with one AIG employee to aid and abet an accounting fraud for AIG. Before long, the New York State investigation was joined by the SEC and the Department of Justice.

In June 2005, two of the conspirators, Richard Napier and John Houlds - worth, plea-bargained and agreed to testify for the prosecution against General Re's former CEO, Ronald Ferguson; its former chief financial officer, Elizabeth Monrad; its head of finite reinsurance, Christopher Garand; and its general counsel, Robert Graham; as well as Christian Milton, head of reinsurance at AIG, all of whom were indicted on federal conspiracy and fraud charges. At the same time, the SEC and the Department of Justice began pursuing a settlement of some sort with Berkshire Hathaway.

The defendants were tried together as conspirators in a case that began in federal court in Hartford in January 2008 and lasted for several weeks. It was noteworthy for the prosecution's use of numerous e-mails and taped telephone conversations in which several of the defendants had repeatedly discussed the matter in colorful terms. The fraud had been executed through a reinsurance transaction designed to deceive investors and Wall Street analysts by transferring $500 million in reserves to AIG to window-dress AIG's balance sheet. This made AIG appear to have more claim reserves than it actually had, which soothed analysts' worries that AIG might be overstating its earnings by failing to record sufficient expenses for claims. In fact, AIG was doing just that.Spitzer, joined by the SEC and the Department of Justice, had investigated this question, and Munger, Tolles & Olson, led by partner Ron Olson, who sat on Berkshire's board, had conducted a massive internal investigation at Berkshire Hathaway. The investigation, which subsequently expanded to include the AIG deal, focused mainly on General Re and its employees. Munger, Tolles was required to, in effect, act as an arm of the prosecution, and worked with the handicap of representing Berkshire Hathaway, General Re, and Buffett personally as its clients. The conflicts posed by this set of relationships were unusual, although not unheard of in the legal profession. Ordinarily Buffett would not tolerate, much less create, such a conflict-riddled situation, but the investigation terrified him and threatened his deeply ingrained desire for privacy.

Buffett thought of himself and Berkshire as indistinguishable. He had fought like a Rottweiler earlier in his career to escape being named in the consent decree to the Blue Chip fraud case. He was far more invested in his gargantuan reputation now, both psychologically and from a business standpoint. During the months in 2005 and 2006 that the investigation was at full boil, the threat to his reputation from the case obsessed him.

Buffett was put through an awkward investigative process by Munger, Tolles and interviewed by the government, but Spitzer was quick to clear him. In April 2005 (five months after he entered the race for governor of New York), Spitzer told George Stephanopolous on ABC This Week that Buffett was "only a witness." He called Buffett an "icon" who had "succeeded in the right way" and who stood for "transparency and accountability." One need not be a cynic to detectthat Spitzer might have been angling for an endorsement from the Buffalo News in the governors' race.

After New York handed the criminal charges over to the Justice Department for prosecution, Buffett still remained in some jeopardy. If prosecutors could find enough evidence to indict Buffett, they would certainly do so. The question was, what is "enough"?

Contrary to the way they are often portrayed on television, modern prosecutors are not simply on a moral crusade trying to bring the guilty to justice; they are pragmatists who make strategic and tactical decisions. Faced with Warren Buffett, America's icon of business ethics, the prosecutors churned through a unique calculus. There could be no greater prize for a prosecutor than to convict Warren Buffett; locking up Buffett could put a journeyman attorney on the road to the Supreme Court.

On the other hand, who would take the risk of prosecuting Warren Buffett and failing to convict him? If Buffett had been caught on videotape mugging and snatching a purse from a ninety-year-old lady, there was a pretty good chance a jury would decide that the tape was doctored, she was the mugger, and he deserved a medal--and he would walk. Not only that, prosecutors wanted Buffett as a potential witness because of the star power and credibility he would bring if he testified on their behalf.

In the end, Buffett was omitted from the government's list of unindicted coconspirators. Some believed that he received kid-glove treatment because of his status as an almost untouchable figure in business. Many in the insurance industry were infuriated because they felt Ferguson and the others were being treated unjustly, especially by comparison. Buffett was left wide open to such perceptions in part because Berkshire did not hire an outside law firm to conduct its internal investigation. Thus no matter how well MTO had performed its responsibilities, the appearance that the investigation was actually not independent was impossible to overcome.

In the trial, the defendants invoked a "Buffett defense," saying that Buffett had approved the outlines of the structured transaction and was involved in setting the fee. The question, however, was not whether Buffett knew about the transaction--he did--but whether he knew it was fraudulent.

General Re's CEO, Joseph Brandon, had been listed among the various unindicted co-conspirators in the case. He had received a "Wells Notice" (of possible civil fraud prosecution) from the SEC, although no civil charges were ever filed. He cooperated with federal prosecutors without asking for immunity. During the trial, Brandon was cited by the defendants' lawyers as having knowledge of the deal; General Re's chief operating officer, Tad Montross, was also named by the defendants as having knowledge of the transaction. In the end, none of the three men--Buffett, Brandon, or Montross--testified in the case.* After weeks in court and a short jury deliberation, in February 2008 all five defendants were convicted on all counts in the indictment and were sentenced to terms ranging from a year and a day (Robert Graham) to four years (Chris Milton of AIG). The convicted defendants said they would appeal.

In April 2008, shortly after the trial ended, Brandon resigned as CEO of General Re to help facilitate a settlement between the company and government authorities that has yet to take place. The settlement, when it comes, is likely to include fines, other penalties, and adverse publicity.

Only a month after the jury reached its verdicts, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer resigned following revelations that he patronized the prostitutes of an escort service called the Emperor's Club.

The Gen Re-AIG case he launched through his investigation was noteworthy in several respects. It is the only U.S. case in which financial reinsurance has resulted in criminal charges and prison sentences, rather than civil settlements. In recent corporate history, no other criminal aiding-and-abetting case has stuck; convictions in a Merrill Lynch case related to Enron were thrown out. For the first time, therefore, employees of one company were held responsible for a fraud committed by another company.

The Gen Re case also was one of the last corporate fraud cases prosecuted under the government policy of compelled waiver of the attorney-client privilege and the attorney work-product doctrine, which was revised after being declared unconstitutional by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Thus, the defendants were arguably convicted using evidence that either would not have been available to prosecutors or would have been thrown out if the trial were held today.

Even though he was obsessed during this period with the investigation's potential to harm his reputation, Buffett was able to compartmentalize the way he always did. Whenever a business opportunity presented itself, he'd shift with startling speed from anxious ruminant to hungry great white shark. Buffett was never more himself than when given the chance to invest in something he wanted at a price of his choosing.

Excerpted from The Snowball:: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder Copyright © 2009 by Alice Schroeder. Excerpted by permission of Bantam, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

"Roosevelt Institute Celebrates A New Agenda for America": Eliot Spitzer, Elizabeth Warren And 13 Others Reflect On The 80-Year Anniversary Of The Stock Market Crash Of 1929

2009-10-29T08:06:58Z

"A New Agenda for America"- On the 80th Anniversary of Great Crash, What Have We Learned and What Lies Ahead?

80 years ago today, on October 29th, 1929, Wall Street saw the worst day in its history. The shock of "Black Tuesday" came to an end, but the misery of the Great Depression was just beginning.

Lynn Parramore, Editor of New Deal 2.0 , the Roosevelt Institute's economy blog, asks some provocative thinkers - lawyers, economists, historian, civil rights leaders, authors, financiers and public figures-- to talk about what the past can teach us and what our focus for the future should be.

250 words. 15 voices. And a new Agenda for America.

Is it Good for the Children?

By Bill Black

Our economy is addicted to waste. It wastes human beings. It leaves them unemployed and often impoverished - and it leaves their children in poverty. Of all the things we have come to accept in America, childhood poverty is the most appalling. We can end most childhood poverty whenever we decide that we are no longer willing to accept it. Poverty used to be common among elderly Americans. Social Security largely ended that disgrace.

We need to take care of parents and grandparents in order to help them take care of children. We must reach out to explain to as many mothers as possible why prenatal care and healthy pregnancies lead to healthy kids, and we must provide that care. We need a foster care system funded well enough to make scandals rare. and we need an adoption system that works for as many kids as possible.

Ultimately, we can't protect kids unless we protect their parents. That brings us back to where we started -- ending the waste of leaving people that want to work unemployed. The government needs to serve as the employer of last resort and the educator of first resort. Kids left in poverty do not get the education they need. Middle class children and their parents must choose between graduating with crushing debts or giving up their educational dreams. The GI Bill transformed America, making college a realistic for millions of veterans. We need a Student Bill for all our children.

Roosevelt Institute Braintruster William K. Black is an Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He is a white-collar criminologist and was a senior financial regulator. He is the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One.

The Great Lesson

By Elizabeth Warren

Historians generally focus on the October 29, 1929 stock market crash as the triggering event for the Great Depression. But the story has a longer arc.

From 1792 through the Great Depression, booms and busts followed each other like day follows night. But President Roosevelt and the New Dealers had an innovative idea: regulation might tame the boom-and-bust cycle. So they created a new Securities and Exchange Commission to bring some discipline to the financial markets, established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to make it safe to put money in banks, and passed the Glass-Steagall Act to separate ordinary banking from high-risk financial speculation.

America was protected from another financial crisis for almost 50 years. But in the late 1970s, we began to pull the threads from our regulatory fabric, overturning laws and cutting enforcement. The results were the S&L crisis, Long Term Capital Management, Enron, and now, the subprime mortgage meltdown.

There are signs that we may have learned our lesson. Last week, the House Financial Services Committee voted for a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency that would consolidate scattered and ineffective consumer credit regulations and establish a home in Washington for policymakers dedicated to rebuilding the middle class. Other reforms are also starting to move.

The banking lobby is as powerful and deeply entrenched as ever, but it was powerful in the 1930s, too. Nonetheless, the New Dealers learned the Great Lesson: Powerful insiders cannot be permitted to write the rules, and prosperity and security depend on a playing field that supports a vibrant middle class. Today, we face a similar set of questions as we faced then. Will the institutions that created the crisis continue calling the shots and writing the rules, or will Washington take the side of families? Have we learned the Great Lesson?

Elizabeth Warren is chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the banking bailouts and first proposed a new federal agency for consumer financial products in 2007.

Will the Day that Lehman Died Mark the Movement to a New Paradigm?

By Rob Johnson

Today marks the 80th anniversary of an epochal day in this country's history -- the beginning of what became the Great Depression. The widespread misery that followed changed our ways of conceiving of the economy and how a good society should operate. While there have been other dark days on U.S financial markets, these have not resulted in an overhaul of the way the economy runs. But September 15th, 2008 -- the day that Lehman folded -- may turn out to mark the movement toward an alternative paradigm.

There are several important differences between the economies of the 1920s and 1930s and today's economy. In 1930, the government share of GDP was a sixth of what it is now and the manufacturing sector accounted for a larger proportion of the national output. Because of this, government intervention could have immediate and drastic impacts both on the ground and psychologically (witness Roosevelt's fireside chats). In those days, the United States was positioned to be the ascendant superpower, running a trade surplus in most months of the troubled 1930s. The U.K was the power in decline, an empire which ran continual trade deficits.

It is too early to say whether the current crisis will have the same impact on our ways that the '29 Crash did. But clearly, several lessons of that traumatic period will need to be relearned. We must once again understand that financial markets need regulation, accept the necessity of government intervention, and move beyond the outmoded thinking that exacerbated a global downturn. Hopefully, our political leaders can learn from history and move beyond market fundamentalism to meet the challenge now and in the future.

Where We Could Have Been - and Where We Might Be Headed

By Bo Cutter

Even in the middle (hopefully the end-game) of our own financial crisis, we should consider where we could have been and where we are going. We could have easily been headed - by this time inexorably - toward a 1930's style depression: but over the ensuing 80 years, scholars and policy makers actually learned -- a phenomenon that is depressingly rare. In particular, Ben Bernanke, a scholar of the Depression, learned how to act, and then had the courage to act. There will be endless post mortems as we come out of the hills with the battle over. But Bernanke acted.

Without taking anything away from this, it is always easier to take hard decisions in a crisis. As the crisis ebbs, all of the special interests, the organizational turf, and the natural aversions to risk quickly rise up again. Actions become harder and harder, and slower and slower. That is happening today. We have not made fundamental decisions about the structure of our finance sector, about financial regulation, or about broader questions involving the shape and nature of the U.S. economy in the post-crisis world. The driver of the next crisis could easily be the U.S. deficit and debt position. This issue will move to center stage over the coming decade, but unless we begin very soon to set a different course than the one we are on, we will be increasingly unhappy with the U.S. economy we have to live in then.

Roosevelt Institute Braintruster Bo Cutter is formerly a managing partner of Warburg Pincus, a major global private equity firm. Recently, he served as the leader of President Obama's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) transition team.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall...

By Thomas Ferguson

Those who gaze into Harry Potter's Mirror of Erised see not their faces, but their deepest desires. The Great Crash and the even greater Depression that followed work the same way, except that their magic is pitch black: Viewers see their worst nightmares.

In the thirties, as New Deal programs ushered in the 40 hour week, Social Security, and unemployment compensation while regulating utilities, stock exchanges, banks, and labor markets, many otherwise sensible people saw Red. They became passionately convinced that America was only steps away from totalitarianism and that swelling public deficits implied a German-style Great Inflation. More recently, we have been told that a tariff bill that passed many months after the Crash was really responsible for the whole mess; that somehow, with all the banks closing as FDR took office, that just doing nothing would have been better than putting people back to work, and that forcing Wall Street to disclose basic information about the products it sells was either un-American or counterproductive or both.

The real lesson of the Crash, of course, was what happens when you fail to regulate markets, especially financial markets. And the lesson of the New Deal is how you fix this. You can safely disregard claims that regulating banks and stock exchanges destroys profits or the capitalist system or somehow threaten "freedom." The caterwauling about "socialism" is extensively a smokescreen for private interest and avarice; and if banks are deleveraging -- cutting back their lending -- then vigorous state action to secure credit and mortgage markets is no threat to the future of anyone but loan sharks.

Thomas Ferguson is Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, Senior Fellow of the Roosevelt Institute, and a member of the Advisory Board of INET.

Lessons from the Great Crash and its Aftermath

By David Woolner

The collapse of Wall Street that eighty years ago ushered in the worst economic crisis in America's history. By the time Franklin Roosevelt took office three years later, the downturn had reached unimaginable proportions. The GNP had plunged by 67%; total stock values by over 80%; nearly 11,000 banks had closed their doors, bringing about the total collapse of the US banking system. Roughly 45 % of all homes were either in foreclosure or were in danger of being foreclosed; personal income had fallen by 44%, and more than one quarter-one quarter-of the national labor force was unemployed.

FDR assumed power at a time when the "state capacity" of the American government to intervene in the social and economic well-being of the average American was extremely limited. There had not yet been a New Deal, which meant no unemployment insurance or social security, no federal deposit insurance, no SEC to regulate the stock market, no minimum wage, no Home Owners Loan Corporation or Federal Housing Authority, and no major effort to build a modern infrastructure.

But this is not the whole story. The global crisis tested not only capitalism, but of democracy itself. Thanks to FDR's efforts, the United States avoided extremist solutions and attempted to refashion capitalism in such a way as to restore the faith of the people.

Our government must play a role in providing the security and independence that the free market alone cannot. If we can embrace the spirit of innovation and faith in government that animated the New Deal, the prosperity that managed capitalism can bring is ours to enjoy.

David Woolner is senior vice president of the Roosevelt Institute.

Emergency Checklist

By Jeff Madrick

We have lost a generation in America to a simple ideology that government is at best a necessary evil whose influence is to be minimized. Going forward, there is much to do: reform healthcare; re-regulate finance; build a universal pre-k system; build a light rail and public transportation system; radically reduce carbon emissions, create a sensible Bretton Woods III.

Once we are well out of the woods of the crisis, here is where I would begin: raise income taxes. America's government must lead us back to the path of excellence and global competitiveness. The nation must invest in its healthcare, education, and infrastructure. It must subsidize new industries, new technologies. It must reinvigorate manufacturing. It must expand radically its safety net to protect those who lose jobs and even careers. It must borrow less from overseas to do all this.

We can raise taxes by 3 to 5 percent of GDP, thus generating $450 billion to $750 billion of money to invest infest in the future. That is enough money to get the job done and it would still leave government spending in America at all levels below 40 percent of GDP-and below most of what the rest of the rich world spends. Would it impede growth? No way. Not if invested properly. It hasn't overseas, and it won't here.

If we do not find the will to do these things, growth will be impeded. Here is a cliché that is true: The nation's future is at stake. This is an emergency. Sound the sirens.

Roosevelt Institute Braintruster Jeff Madrick is fellow at the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis, The New School.

Cure for Collective Amnesia

By Eliot Spitzer

How little we have learned! Reviewing the 80 years that have passed since the '29 Crash and reflecting on the abyss into which we descended just over a year ago, it is easy to feel despondent at our lack of accrued wisdom. Sure, we had several decades where sound banking principles were foisted upon a cowed banking community. For a time, institutions were permitted neither to be "too big to fail" nor "too big to manage."

But the story changed.

Over the past several years, we have seen the all-too-predictable return of irrational euphoria and the belief that those who ride a speculative wave have actual wisdom, not luck. We have suffered collective amnesia with respect to the cost of undervalued financial risk. We willingly believed in an alchemy that pretends to turn debt into equity. We subscribed to a naive view that unbridled leverage is a sound financial architecture.

Is there a way to shake off our amnesia? Of course: We need reasoned rules limiting the rapacious excesses of the untamed financial world, regulatory symmetry between risk and reward, safe guardianship of the public fisc, regulators willing to brave prevailing winds and power brokers, and a sense of humility whenever we believe we are truly smarter than those who preceded us.

Eliot Spitzer is the former governor of the state of New York.

Economic Lesson Unlearned

By Henry C.K. Liu

Milton Friedman thought the Fed could have prevented the Great Depression of the 1930s, if only it had engaged in monetary easing to counteract destructive market forces. Friedman's counterfactual conjecture -- though not provable -- has been accepted by central bankers as monetary magic to rid capitalism of the curse of business cycles. Friedman held out the false hope that central bankers could negate debt-deflation instability with wholesale liquidity injections (the term "debt-deflation" was coined by Irving Fisher in 1933 to describe the way debt and deflation can destabilize each other).

The problem is that negating debt-deflation does not work. Unfortunately, Greenspan's acceptance of the idea led to a series of increasingly-large debt bubbles. The final one burst in 2007.

The economist Hyman Minsky, famous for developing a psychological theory of financial crises, explained how debt-deflation really works by illuminating its effect on the asset market. He recognized that when panicked people start distress selling, asset prices drop. This causes losses to agents with maturing debts, which, in turn, reinforces more distress selling and reduces consumption and investment spending which deepens deflation. This spiral of debt came to be known as the "Minsky Moment."

Alas, mainstream economists have largely ignored Minsky's insight. Friedman's counterfactual conclusions obscured the great lesson the world could have learned from the crash of 1929 and condemned the world to another disaster 80 years later. It is time for a sea-change in economics in which the realities of instability and speculation are properly understood. Only then can we prevent another epic economic disaster.

Roosevelt Institute Braintruster Henry C.K. Liu is an independent commentator on culture, economics and politics.

Income Inequality Threatens America's Basic Economic and Political Systems

By Bruce Judson

Today, we have the highest level of income inequality in our nation's recorded history. We must address the structural flaws in our economy that created, and continue to widen, this divide. History teaches that extreme inequality leads to political instability. We cannot assume that we are immune.

In President Obama's words, the middle class is experiencing "the American Dream in reverse." Rising long-term joblessness and the possibility of 13 million foreclosures (more than one in every four American mortgages) create the potential for the former middle class to move from frustration to anger -- an anger sparked by reduced circumstances and the belief that they have been treated unfairly.

With each job loss or foreclosure, another family -- now on a down-ward spiral -- potentially loses its faith in our basic economic system and our basic system of governance. America's ongoing vitality requires that people trust that these systems work, and that our democracy is self-correcting. With rising income inequality, this trust is now at risk.

America has never been a nation of haves and have nots. If the gulf widens, it's hard to imagine that our future will be marked either by a healthy economy or a healthy democracy.

The only other time in our nation's recorded history that income inequality approached current levels was 1928, just before the Great Crash. The New Deal eliminated the excesses of an unsustainable system. It was not easy then, and it will not be easy now. But it is essential.

Roosevelt Institute Braintruster Bruce Judson is a Senior Faculty Fellow at the Yale School of Management and the author of the new book on economic inequality, It Could Happen Here: America on the Brink.

Rethinking Capitalism

By Maya Rockeymoore Cummings

Eighty years after the Great Crash, skyrocketing unemployment, rising foreclosure rates, and exploding national debt indicate that our country has failed to learn important lessons from the past.

Wall Street, the federal government and the mainstream media tell us that things are not as bad as they seem. We hear terms like "jobless recovery", but Americans across the country can tell you that if there are no jobs, there is no recovery. The very engine that drives the U.S. economy -- the American workers -- is fundamentally broken.

We got here through capitalism run amok, driven by anything-goes bankers and Wall Street charlatans. After a series of bursting bubbles, Wall Street got a helium injection from the largest transfer of public wealth our nation has ever seen. Too-big-to-fail banks got over by capturing the institutions and levers of government, perverting the will of the people and nullifying our democracy in the process.

We have reached an inflection point as a society. We must stand up or risk being steamrolled into a corrupt oligarchy. We must rethink capitalism. This is not about a socialist, fascist, or communist agenda. It is about confronting free market fundamentalists. It is about regulation without apology. It is about protecting people from fraud. It is about building wealth and security for American people of all backgrounds. And about creating transparency in our financial institutions and our democracy.

We can achieve a fair, balanced and just economic system. But we must pound on the doors of our democratic institutions to make it happen.

Braintruster Maya Rockeymoore Cummings is president and CEO of Global Policy Solutions.

How to Start Anew

By Marshall Auerback

Much like Herbert Hoover, who failed to respond adequately to the fallout from the Crash of 1929, Barack Obama cannot seem to cut himself free from conventional wisdom. The Administration is attempting to reform the unreformable -- to revive a zombie economy full of insolvent banks instead of shutting them down and restarting them anew as FDR did.

Obama and his advisors must free themselves from the discredited dogmas of neo-liberalism and channel the spirit of FDR's bold experimentation. We need less deficit terrorism. Fiscal policy must be much more oriented to personal balance sheets, not bank balance sheets. We need to turn around the private sector and begin to produce more tax revenue, so that the large deficits would be short-lived. If we continue down the current path, we slow recovery and court large budget deficits for many years to come. Far better to spend now to create jobs and get the private sector growing again.

We need to make loans truly affordable for households. We need large -scale employment programs that restore households' capacity to pay. We need to deal with the over-supply of homes. And we need swift and cheap bankruptcy procedures that provide households a fresh start.

Most of all, we need to turn the financial system away from the trade-and-fee model and toward a system that focuses on carefully evaluating creditworthiness and on limiting the growth of Ponzi processes over an enduring period of economic growth.

Roosevelt Institute Braintruster Marshall Auerback is a market analyst and commentator.

Did We Hit 'Rewind'?

By Barbara Arnwine

On this anniversary of the Great Crash of 1929, we continue to battle critical issues of economic and social policy that adversely impact minority and low-income communities. Policymakers must aggressively address and equate economic and civil rights matters, like the ongoing foreclosure crisis, payday lending, mortgage scams and disparities in education. The elimination of the racial wealth divide is essential in ending institutional racism that has long pierced this nation.

The current housing collapse was premised on a subprime market inundated with racially discriminatory and predatory lending, which led to economic displacement of unprecedented scale. According to the Center for Responsible Lending, black homeowners lost more than $92 billion to foreclosures since 2007 and over the next several years, are projected to lose a total of $122 billion, while Latinos are expected to lose $98 billion.

Americans cannot attain the asset growth necessary to build "wealth" if simultaneously their biggest assets -- their homes -- are being unceremoniously depleted. African Americans own significantly less property than they did more than 80 years ago. The typical Black family owns 10 cents to the White family's dollar and the typical Latino family owns 12 cents. In what has been called the "Silent Depression," people of color continue to experience unacknowledged economic hardship.

We must act to reverse these alarming trends ... it's time to hit "fast forward"!

Roosevelt Institute Braintruster Barbara Arnwine has been the executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law since 1989.

Will History Repeat Itself?

By Heather Gerken

Rahm Emanuel summed up the most important lesson of the Crash of 1929: "never let a serious crisis go to waste."

The reason is simple. Policy depends on politics, and our democracy is not well suited to getting a lot done quickly. A year ago, many thought that the Obama administration would be able to pass any legislation it wanted because it had so many energized supporters and such an impressive grassroots network. That was a mistake. Electioneering is different from governing. Note, for instance, how hard it's been to convert 'Obama for America' into an equally muscular'Organizing for America'. Elections are the rare moments when voters pay attention; the drama of the race focuses people's attention on the issues, and candidates provide human stand-ins for abstract policy proposals.

When candidates turn to the workaday project of governing, voters tend to fall away. They stop organizing, they stop volunteering . . . they even stop paying attention. That's a problem if you want to pass something in Washington, where killing legislation is perhaps the ugliest form of blood sport, if only because it's so easy to do.

The New Deal 1.0 got passed because voters stayed engaged even after Roosevelt moved from campaigning to governing. If that were just because of Roosevelt's personal appeal, then we might think that the charismatic Obama can match his achievements. But the architects of the New Deal 1.0 had a good deal more than a charismatic president. They had the Great Depression. Depressions involve terrible human costs, which is precisely why they have such a powerful ability to concentrate the electorate's mind. The New Dealers used voters' hunger for change to push through massive reform. They didn't let the crisis go to waste. The question is whether historians will be able to say the same thing of the Obama administration.

Roosevelt Institute Braintruster Heather Gerken is the J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law at Yale Law School.

Prescription for Economic Health: Booster Shots of Confidence

By Mario Seccareccia

The Great Crash of 1929 taught us that a modern monetary market economy is governed by confidence. As John Maynard Keynes put it, monetary relations and, more precisely, asset values, are held up by one's belief in the future. Without it, the whole credit-driven economic system comes to a halt and economic agents scramble for cover by seeking to acquire liquidity.

While in a non commodity-based monetary system a central bank can quite easily supply liquidity in its role as lender of last resort, a central bank cannot single-handedly instill confidence in the future. When confidence is lost, monetary policy is impotent in building up asset values, which can only be sustained if people believe in future revenue arising from future production. The economy remains trapped in a state of paralysis in which everyone is seeking to remain liquid. History tells the tale: Excessive optimism prior to the Great Crash turned to hopelessness during the early 1930s.

The New Deal changed things because we recognized the power of fiscal policy to remold expectations. Public spending sparks increased incomes, and also triggers great expectations. Once confidence returns, private initiative takes hold, and private economic agents begin to borrow and spend. This was the discovery of the New Deal era. Unfortunately, New Dealers did not understand that the fiscal injection could not be a one shot "deal". We need booster shots.

Obama's policy makers have come to recognize the power of fiscal policy to move the economy out of a slump. What they have not understood is that fiscal authorities must regularly rebuild confidence by reestablishing growth. Policy makers should not fear applying booster shots of further public spending.

Roosevelt Institute Braintruster Mario Seccareccia is editor of the International Journal of Political Economy.

Jerry Brown: Is CNBC Pimping for State Street Bank?

2009-10-21T16:04:32Z

If street thugs were to hold up a convenience store and drive off with $1 million, it would be national news. But when a venerable Boston bank rips off California's two largest pension funds for $56 million, it's business-as-usual -- at least to the anchors of CNBC.

State Street Bank -- the world's largest servicer of pensions -- systematically ripped off CalPERS and CalSTRS over a period of eight years. It did this by adding a tiny surcharge on foreign currency trades. But this adds up, especially considering that some $35 billion in 42,000 transactions were traded by these funds since 2001.

So when two whistle-blowers filed suit under seal in April 2008, attorneys from my office immediately investigated -- examining hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, interviewing witnesses and subpoenaing records.

They found in the course of an 18-month investigation that State Street was contractually obligated to give CalPERS and CalSTRS the "interbank rate" at the precise time of the trade. Instead, State Street consistently charged at or near the highest rate of the day, even if the
interbank rate was lower at the time of trade. And traders concealed the fraud by deliberately failing to include time stamp data in its reports, so that the pension funds could not determine the true execution costs.

When the suit was filed, we notified the media and held a press conference -- to bring the fraud to light and to deter other financial traders from considering similar action. This is a routine part of prosecuting important corporate fraud cases.

But, in a commentary post today, CNBC anchor Michelle Caruso-Cabrera sneered at California's effort to recover $200 million in damages and penalties, using a made-up quote from Elliot Spitzer to call it "quaint."

This follows an interview Tuesday that was straight out of the Daily Show. CNBC invited me on to talk about the case, and then Caruso-Cabrera asked why I would come on the air to talk about it.

Her co-anchors seemed to have no problem with the rip-off ("as long as they quoted you a dollar and you paid the dollar, what do you care what they got it for") and questioned the integrity of the whistle-blowers ("that whistle-blower -- is that a private law firm that you guys have hired to do this for you?") Unbelievable . And for the record, the whistle-blowers are industry insiders who have yet to be named.

The tone and substance of the interview are symptomatic of the Eastern financial elite, who think that $200 million is small potatoes, and big business should be given the benefit of the doubt.

In my book, there's nothing quaint about corporate fraud. There's nothing quaint about ripping off pension funds. And, I -- along with attorneys general from across the nation -- will continue to bring these high-priced rip-off artists to justice.

Visit my website, www.jerrybrown.org

Catie Lazarus: TV Review: The Good Wife Goes to Better Heights

2009-10-21T12:56:15Z

The
Good Wife is closer than any Oprah or Barbara Walters special will ever be to bringing
this viewer to understanding why Hilda Spitzer, Elizabeth Edwards (until
recently), Hilary Clinton, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Onassis, and so on, stood
by their men.

In
this one hour, weekly, CBS procedural, Alicia Florrick, who Juliana Margulies
adroitly portrays, must pick up their pieces when Peter Florrick, her attorney
general husband is caught in salacious sex and corruption scandals and lands in
prison. Alicia finds herself forced to into a new role as a breadwinner and
single (for all intents and purposes) mother, one she seems to mainly enjoy. Why
doesn't she divorce Peter remains elusive, except that it seems logical that an
educated mother of two children would focus on the bottom line instead of on keeping
face.

Sure
Elizabeth Edwards was finally forced to pull the plug, but the majority of the wives
unwillingly embroiled in political scandals stay on and Elizabeth Edwards held
out as long as she could. Based on the divorce rate, fewer non-famous couples
feel the need to stick it out, even under less salty circumstances.

If staying put seems unrealistic, the
unsexy nature of Alicia's new life is believable. She returns to practicing
law, as an associate at a fancy Chicago firm, a life she had put on hold when
Peter became a political appointee. Every episode revolves around her cracking
a new uphill legal battle, albeit not all on her own, but always on behalf of
the runt.

As with other procedural shows, she will prevail and justice will reign in the runt's favor. Alicia's newfound life-calling is to rescue the underdog, whether it's a neglected, wealthy white, innocent teen unfairly pinned
with a murder or three widowed single mothers whose husbands were unfairly killed and blamed with a train crash by a (faux) conglomerate Cross National Freight. Her cases get solved with the help of humans who feel for her. Like when Alicia
is tipped off, somewhat miraculously, by a low-level Cross National Freight
worker who returns after hours to Alicia's law firm, to give her a two
word clue, "Newbury Heights." (Later in the episode, the same witness blurts out that Alicia shouldn't do to her what's been done to Alicia.)

Even
though most corporate battles are rarely this black and white or centered on
innocent individual victims, mainstream depictions of heroines these days seem
forced to revel in their feminine instincts, come off as assertive but not too
aggressive. When Alicia is forced to decide between caring for people and
protecting her own job, she feels torn. While she pities a key witness, a young, working class white
mother, and her clients, three, Latina and black, poor, widowed mothers, Alicia
turns to her high school aged daughter, Grace, for advice. Her daughter's name
is no more (or less) cliché than her pearls of wisdom. As the two sit on the
couch, watching TV, Grace tells her mom, "You can't just not do your job."

One,
meaning I, hope The Good Wife won't fall prey to other formulas. Thus far,
Alicia hasn't fallen for her modestly arrogant (if such a phrase exists), old
friend and boss, Will Gardner, played by Josh Charles. He is attentive and
protective of Alicia, defending her against his biting, nakedly ambitious,
aging, competitive female colleague, Diane Lockhart, perfectly played by
Christine Baranski. There are no legal
records documenting partners, even those who want to shutup their associates,
applauding every softball caught, not that it's not something to strive
towards.

Outside
of these soapy moments, most of the tension and airtime revolves around
Alicia's work as an associate. Her sidekick is Kalinda Sharma, a scrappy, underpaid,
sexy, and "down-to-earth" research assistant, played by the agile and
beautiful Archie Panjabi.

If
The Jay Leno Show cut work for dramatic actors, The Good Wife has brought more
opportunity for New York based dramatic actors. The fourth episode features Martha
Plimpton, who guest stars as a pregnant executive with a bloated defense of her
corporation, Cross National Freight. She undermines Alicia, sniping jealously
about Alicia's comfortable relationship with Will by saying, "I guess he
finds you challenging, something with an interesting history." Luckily,
Alicia has built up an arsenal of answers, like "After the past seven
months, I'm vaccinated."

Alicia's
public humiliation is not a hindrance, even though many of her opponents try to
turn it into a problem. Her baggage is a bonus. The assumption is that her own
experiences inform her ability to empathize with victims in need of a champion. There is another, albeit unspoken, assumption that the other white, well read, fed, and bread
lawyers haven't experienced real pain
and therefore can't empathize with real people.
It's a believable hypothesis, but the idea that one must be able to identify, psychologically speaking, in
order to execute a task is problematic.

Indeed,
she has suffered. Alicia must relocate her and her teenage children, Zack and
Grace, to a small Chicago apartment and pull them out of their tony private
school and suburban Highland Park home. She also loses friends, including one
whose son Alicia the lawyer goes on to rescue from juvie, with little thanks
from his folks.

To
the show's credit, Alicia's husband, children, and mother-in-law don't
idealize or pity her. The misogynistic, sleazy, smart, politically ambitious
husband is performed, not surprisingly, by Chris Noth. It's hard to tell Peter
Florrick apart from Mr. Big and Detective Mike Logan, as his distinct,
low-pitched, gravely voice can be heard on three channels simultaneously, including re-runs.

While
their relationship can be testy, Peter tips Alicia off during her first legal
case, helping her to solve the case. Their relationship also works against her.
In the same case, an old political foe of Peter tries to sway the judge against
Alicia, claiming she received confidential information from Peter. She did, but
he can't prove it, and somehow he comes off the bad guy for trying to do so.

Peter's
shadow looms in her private life as well. At the beginning of the fourth
episode, Peter questions his mother Jackie for referring to Alicia as only the
third person pronoun,
"she." Unapologetic, Jackie belittles Alicia, telling on her
to Peter for spending long hours at the law firm, hinting that Alicia is
probably having an affair with her boss. (Since
when is midnight at a law firm for an associate "late"?) The two
women rarely see eye to eye, as Jackie refuses to acknowledge her son's bad
behavior. It is a different generation and Alicia won't cower.

"You
respect me," Alicia screams at Jackie, furious when Jackie sheepishly
admits to having taken Zack and Grace to see their father without Alicia's
permission. Enraged, she threatens to kick out Jackie if it happens again. It's
too bad she isn't volatile more often, because she's remarkably authentic and captivating when
she comes unhinged.

Alicia's
own stabs at parenting are limited. She seems less involved with her children
than one imagines (and hopes) was the case when she was a stay-at-home mom. Instead,
Alicia seems more like a traditional, breadwinner father. Their bonding time
consists of her taking them to school in the morning and popping in their
bedrooms at night for a minute or two. The two teens seem to show little
interest in coddled. That said, there's no syrupy attempt to mask the
challenges in parenting teenagers, but the show seems to assume that children,
even teenage ones, are better seen and not heard. Alicia doesn't consult her
husband, she tells him what is going on with the kids.

It's
evident she misses having a partner. In the second episode, Alicia indicates
how much she misses the intimacy, sexually, of being with her husband, and
caresses the scrape in their headboard, as she reminisces about an indent they
made during some tawdry, fun, biblical activities. But the happier memory turns
sour when she recalls Peter sliding out of the bed to deal with a work call
and, despite her objections, leaving her to return to work.

Now
the tables are turned and Peter is longing for her to stay loyal and forgive
his trespasses, like his being caught sucking on the toes of an escort. Peter tells
her how beautiful she is now, confessing that jail gives him plenty of time to
mull things over. Alicia responds that she has had time to think outside of
prison. By the end of the fourth episode, we are left not knowing whether she
will continue to stand by him. Alicia is taking it day by day.

After
all, she is attractive and now the breadwinner having returned to the legal
world. She must shepherd Zack and Grace through adolescence and teach them and
herself how to navigate the constant unsolicited commentary from strangers, including
a homely, older, fem

ale applicant who has the nerve (and lack of self
awareness) to compliment Alicia for looks less dowdy in person than she does on
TV. Alicia is always being judged, whether the input is positive or negative,
even subordinates feel comfortable eschewing their opinions.

Yup,
it sucks to have married a shmuck. Alicia is forced to ask herself if Peter
always was one, a question which non-political mates ask themselves in even the
most respectful relationships. One wonders what role, if any, Alicia Florrick, will
play in informing the decisions made by bright, self-actualized political wives,
when they find themselves in similar circumstances. Based on the number of
stories just this year, including Governor Elliot Spitzer, Governor Mark Sanford, Senator John Ensign,
Senator John Edwards, is no question that the circumstance will arise.

Read more: Governor Sanford, Chris Noth, Julianna-Margulies, Christine Baranski, Senator Edward Kennedy, Obama Prime Time, Julianna Margulies, Josh Charles, Cbs, Feminism, Eliot Spitzer, Procedural-Drama, Good Wife, Elizabeth Edwards, Alicia Florrick, Hillary Clinton, Former Senator John Edwards, Hilda Spitzer, Senator Ensign, The-Good-Wife, Entertainment News

Spitzer: Don't Let The Feds, Banking Lobby Handcuff State Regulators (VIDEO)

2009-10-21T11:51:56Z
The House Financial Services Committee will vote today on whether to establish a Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Former New York Governor, and Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer warned that while this new federal agency is important, it must not come at the expense of handcuffing regulators at the state level, who have been more pro-active in investigating the banks than the feds.

Spitzer argued that the federal government would try to limit the power of the state regulators because of heavy influence from the banking lobby:

Because the banks don't want us looking into what they're doing. We were looking at subprime debt. That was the very issue where the banks went to the OCC, and the OCC went to court to stop us, and we had to fight for years in the courts for the power to look at subprime debt. Meanwhie we've seen what happened.

Spitzer and Ratigan also examined which key provisions need to be in the bill but are being fought by the bank lobby.

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Ratigan also interviewed TARP Inspector General Neil Barofsky on what the true cost of TARP will be, and whether the taxpayer will get their money back. Barofsky is not optimistic:

This idea that we're going to have a 17 percent return or a profit on the TARP is an incredibly unrealistic expectation. $50 billion to the mortgage modification program is not coming back. It's not coming back by design. Tens of billions of dollars to the auto industry - the administration itself acknowledges it's going to be a stretch to get that money back. Plus, uncertainty throughout the other TARP programs. We know that CIT is staggering on bankruptcy. If that goes down that's another $2.2 billion that's going to be lost. So while it's difficult to quantify the [true cost of TARP], I think we have to be more realistic about the likelihood of what it could be.

Barofsky also confirmed that banks like Goldman Sachs can continue to make massive and risky bets at the expense of the taxpayer because the banks still have access to very cheap loans from the government, who will no doubt bail them out if one of their huge bets goes south, because "there has not been meaningful regulatory reform in the financial system."

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Read more: Bailout Bandits, Neil Barofsky, Eliot Spitzer, Financial Crisis, Banks, Business News

Thomas W. Carroll: Gov. Paterson: Where Is Your Education Strategy?

2009-10-19T14:11:30Z
This past week, New York Governor David Paterson proposed $686 million in mid-year cuts in state aid to public schools. While New York clearly continues to face challenging fiscal and economic times, the cuts -- unaccompanied by any education reforms whatsoever -- underscore that Paterson remains AWOL on educational issues.

In 2007, then newly elected Governor Eliot Spitzer laid out a sweeping educational vision, settled the state's long-simmering fiscal-equity lawsuit, doubled the number of authorized charter schools, and pushed through serious accountability measures.

In contrast, since taking office as governor, Paterson has yet to articulate an educational vision. His most significant education proposals have revolved around student access to snack foods, reflecting his wife's concern about student obesity and broader health issues.

Earlier this year, the governor signed an extension of mayoral control of New York City's schools, but frankly the final agreement on this issue resulted from a deal struck directly between Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver -- negotiations that left the governor on the sidelines.

On charter schools, the governor's only significant action has been to freeze charter school per pupil aid, at the same time that aid to school districts rose slightly. His later promise to reverse this freeze and restore $30 million in charter-school funding remains a mere promise.

The governor's failure to lead on educational issues is surprising -- indeed, very surprising. As a state Senator and Senate Democratic Leader, Paterson was articulate and passionate about educational issues. And, although he opposed charter schools when the law was adopted in 1998, since then, he had become an enthusiastic supporter of these alternative schools.

Paterson's current lack of leadership on educational issues is even more striking when compared with President Barack Obama's gutsy leadership on education -- in the midst of dealing with much more serious distractions than faced by Paterson.

Also, Obama's Race to the Top grant competition has provided some governors with a platform to drive educational reforms within their states.

Governor Schwarzenegger -- facing fiscal challenges even greater than New York's -- still nonetheless proposed sweeping educational reforms in response to Race to the Top. Educational reforms also are being pursued in Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Tennessee and other states.

In New York, however, not a single significant educational reform is being pushed by the Governor. Indeed, even the state's response to Race to the Top is being handled by others. Tellingly, the state Board of Regents and the new state education commissioner (the latter selected by the legislatively appointed Regents, not the governor) are formulating the state's response.

Everyone understands that the governor must give priority to the state's fiscal crisis, but Paterson should not ignore educational issues.

Consider just a few issues that simmer while the governor fails to act. The state is in clear violation of a state court of appeals fiscal-equity decision calling for more funding for city schools. Across the state, hundreds of thousands of students are consigned each year to failing schools. Several hundred million dollars in federal Race to the Top funds are at risk because of inaction on key issues. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) exams show virtually no progress on raising the state's student achievement levels. And, an extraordinarily large racial achievement gap persists.

All in all, not a time for standing still.

Without any further delay, Governor Paterson should step up and lay out a clear and compelling vision for how he would ensure that every child in New York is guaranteed a quality education.

Thomas W. Carroll may be followed at www.twitter.com/nyedreform.
Read more: Education, Arne Duncan, Charter Schools, David Paterson, Barack Obama, New York, Race to the Top, National Assessment of Educational Progress, New York Board of Regents, Eliot Spitzer, Naep, Education Reform, Arnold Schwarzenegger, New York News

Spitzer On Breaking Up Big Banks: White House Just Doesn't Get it (VIDEO)

2009-10-19T11:18:03Z
Former governor of New York, and attorney general, Eliot Spitzer criticized the White House this morning for being "the only institution that doesn't get" the continuing danger of having massive banks that are 'too big to fail.'

Alan Greenspan is now saying break up the institutions... Volcker in his testimony a few weeks ago said we should not be insuring these big institutions to do proprietary trading. A bank has to be a bank... The White House seems to be the only institution that doesn't get this. You still have Tim Geithner, Larry Summers, and maybe Ben Bernanke out there saying let's keep the status quo.

Spitzer was joined on the panel by Rob Johnson, a former Soros fund manager as well as the former chief economist for the Senate Banking Committee during the Savings & Loan crisis. The panel discussion ranged from reforming the banks to public outrage that firms like Goldman Sachs are back to making enormous profits that are only possible because of earlier, large infusions of public money that staved off disaster.

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Read more: Video, Eliot Spitzer Wall Street, Economy, Eliot Spitzer Video, Eliot Spitzer, Financial Crisis, Wall Street, Too Big to Fail, Business News

Meredith C. Carroll: Revisiting Misstressed Opportunities

2009-10-15T12:02:56Z
It recently came to my attention that opportunity once knocked on my door but unfortunately I was upstairs at the time taking a nap with a pillow over my head.

In light of the David Letterman extortion incident, it dawned on me that at an earlier time in my life I should have tried and might have had a chance to become an Other Woman. And not just any Other Woman (because I have standards), but the Young Other Woman in a high profile sex scandal.

After every possible intimate, shocking and creepy detail of each sensational nooky story du jour is recited over and over for weeks and weeks on the nightly cable TV shows, the men involved always go back to doing what they did before (except for the ones who are occasionally shipped off to prison or forcibly shamed into resigning).

But the Young Other Woman's life is never the same. She becomes eminently unemployable by traditional means. While she vows to keep her head up, mouth shut, legs closed and return to work at her entry-level desk job, the whispers at the water cooler of her harlot-like ways eventually grow too loud and she becomes too emotionally drained to maintain a 9-5 office existence.

So instead she sells her story to the highest bidder among the weekly tabloids, takes it all off for the right price in one of the monthly skin magazines, fights in a celebrity boxing match, appears on a schlocky reality TV show or practices law with the degree she was able to earn because the high-profile married man with whom she was involved paid the tuition bills. In fact, if she plays her cards right, post-scandal she'll only have to work a handful of days in her life (which is key because, seriously -- who's going to hire a lawyer who can't even ensure the contents of her own diary remain confidential?).

My best shot at being the Young Other Woman came and went in the mid 1990s. For a short time I did some side work as a personal assistant to a cast member on Saturday Night Live. As part of the gig, it was necessary for me to be involved in almost all aspects of his life, including spending time at his apartment with his wife and baby. I'd be kicking myself now for having missed out on the chance to be a (retired) star in my own right if I hadn't since learned that he's gay.

If only Monica Lewinsky had made a name for herself a few years before that, I could have had the perfect role model. After all, Monica and I are the same age, attended good colleges, have loving parents. Like Monica, my people know people. My cousins have cousins who know people. In fact, I'm sure if I tried I could have been a White House intern, too. And with enough liquid courage and the right G-string, I totally could have out-Monica-ed Monica. (Although I would have been classy enough to destroy the blue dress or at least bright enough sell it before it was seized as evidence.)

Prior to that, emulating the Long Island Lolita, Amy Fisher, might have been an extraordinary option for me. (Never mind that I grew up on the other side of the Long Island Sound in Westchester County, where it's safe to say there aren't too many Joey Buttafuoco-types. He's 100 percent Long Island.) I'm sure my aim with a pistol would have been bad enough to maim but not kill, too. And 17 years later, Amy's still making money on her notoriety, whether it's through "stolen" sex tapes, starring in her own pay-per-view movies or performing regularly at a strip club. Some girls have all the luck.

Had I been on the receiving end of former Idaho Sen. Larry Craig's toe tapping (forgetting that it's pretty clear I'm not his type), I would have tap-tap-tapped right back and then type-type-typed it up into a tell-all tome (with the help of a ghost writer, of course).

And where has South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's Argentine girlfriend been hiding? Does she think she's better than all the other Young Other Women by remaining silent on the affair? Such a waste. Former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's bimbo got it all wrong, too, by charging up front and not realizing the real money comes at the back end. Rookie mistake.

But all Young Other Women, aspiring and otherwise, can take a page from Rielle Hunter's playbook (although she's not so Young). She did and is still doing everything she can, including getting knocked up and hanging around like bad case of the clap, until she can morbidly move up to John Edwards' first lady status with Dave Matthews as her wedding band. While she's clearly one in a million, a girl can dream.
Read more: Mark Sanford, Monica Lewinsky, Stephanie Birkitt, Dave Matthews, John Edwards, Amy Fisher, Rielle Hunter, Saturday Night Live, Larry Craig, Joey Buttafuoco, Eliot Spitzer, Ashley Dupre, David Letterman, Mary Jo Buttafuoco, Comedy News

Eliot Spitzer: Chamber Of Commerce Must Be Stopped

2009-10-14T17:44:40Z
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce--the self-proclaimed voice of business in Washington--has been wrong on virtually every major public-policy issue of the past decade: financial deregulation, tax and fiscal policy, global warming and environmental enforcement, consumer protection, health care reform ...
Read more: Chamber of Commerce, Eliot Spitzer, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Business News

Eliot Spitzer Sells Murray Hill Garage For $10 Million

2009-10-08T12:17:38Z
For all the talk of a return to politics, former Governor Eliot Spitzer remains ensconced in his family's muscular real estate business.

Last week, Mr. Spitzer sold a parking garage underneath The Corinthian condomium built by his dad Bernie in 1987. The price: $10.275 million, an apparently handsome deal for the governor-turned-real estate mogul.
Read more: Eliot Spitzer Resignation, New York Real Estate, Eliot Spitzer Resigns, Eliot Spitzer Prostitution, Eliot Spitzer Hookers, Real Estate, Eliot Spitzer, New York, Murray Hill, New York News

Glynnis MacNicol: I'm Sorry, So Sorry: Top Ten On-Air Apologies

2009-10-07T11:14:03Z

David Letterman's public apology Monday night for bad behavior is merely the latest in a long list of famous public apologies. Mostly these are for similarly bad behavior (Letterman has the rare privilege of adding extortion victim to the list), though a couple of times it's been the result of someone shooting their mouth off. Letterman joins a list that includes a whole lot of politicians -- Bill Clinton, Jim McGreevey, Mark Sanford, Eliot Spitzer -- and one or two jackass entertainers.

Strangely, it was hard to come up with women for this list! Paris Hilton was a last-minute addition, but if you can think of any let us know and we will happily add: women screw up too. Also interesting to note is how many of these apologies occur on late night television; Letterman also joins an esteemed list there, too, though up until last night he was on the other side of the couch. With that in mind, we bring you our Top Ten Public Apologies , from nappy-headed hos to "I did not have sexual relations with that woman!" to Hugh Grant, the standard bearer of late night apologies, relive all your famous oh-no-they-didn't breaking news moments. No doubt there will be more.

President Bill Clinton...Really Should Have Told Everyone To Mind Their Own Business

Eliot Spitzer Admits That He Actually Did Spitz-Her

NEXT: Men Behaving Badly, Hugh Grant Sets the Gold Standard For Late Night Couch Mea Culpas

Read more: Paris Hilton, Michael Richards, Jim McGreevey, Mark Sanford, Bill Clinton, Seinfeld, Kanye West, Hugh Grant, Don Imus, Larry King, Eliot Spitzer, David Letterman, Public Apologies, Letterman Apology, Letterman-Extortion-Video, Media News

Craig Alan Silverman: Bill Maher, Roman Polanski and Barack Obama

2009-09-29T17:00:14Z
It's not easy to escape religious roots. No one makes their own choice at birth regarding religion, yet ancestry and religious rules decide a lot. Jewish status is mostly matrilineal. Islam is patrilineal. When parents have different religions, confusion, complexity and conflicts often occur. Witness the interesting situations of Bill Maher, Roman Polanski and Barack Obama.

Bill Maher entertains me. He provokes thought and I like that. I TiVo Real Time on HBO. I've laughed at Maher's live act at the Paramount in Denver. Between three trips to the synagogue for Yom Kippur services, I watched Religulous on DVD. Sacrilegious, I know.

Bill Maher's mom Julie is Jewish. She hid that fact from her children during their Catholic upbringing. Bill's mom explained it this way in her son's movie, "Every family is dysfunctional." Bill Maher belittles religion, but oy vey -- what an interesting Jewish show Bill Maher had on HBO this High Holiday weekend.

The panel was three middle aged Jewish guys talking like they were naked in the Shvitz. I watched the re-emergence of an energized and laughing Elliot Spitzer, a serious and smart Nobel Prize-winner Paul Krugman, and Bill Maher who started the evening with "Jew jokes" in his monologue. A Jew can get away with that. Lots of Jews like to joke and ask provocative questions. Bill Maher is no different.

Why would Maher's mom steer clear of announcing her Jewishness? In that generation, in a western civilization, being Jewish was a death sentence for six million. It did not matter if you followed the faith or had mixed ancestry -- some Jewish blood was enough to get you killed.

Look at Roman Polanski's family. His parents were reportedly agnostic, but his father was a Polish Jew who married a Catholic. The Palonski family got devastated by the Nazis -- too much Jewish blood. Ghettos and concentration camps were part of the famous director's childhood culminating in the murder of his mother at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Roman Polanski committed statutory rape in 1977 at Jack Nicholson's home in Los Angeles. It is not speculation -- he admitted it in a California court before he fled to France to avoid sentencing. Among other things, Polanski left behind at the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese's Holy Cross Cemetery the interred remains of his slaughtered wife Sharon Tate and their posthumously-named son Paul Richard Polanski.

Yom Kippur is Judaism's most serious and important day; Jews are commanded to abstain from anything connected to work and atone for their sins and pray for forgiveness. The Day of Atonement began at sundown on Sept. 27 this year. On last Sunday's Kol Nidre evening (when Jews go to synagogue to renounce promises they will not keep), Roman Polanski was to be the recipient of the Golden Eye award at the Zurich Film Festival. He never made it. The Swiss government, Los Angeles law enforcement and perhaps G-d had other plans for Roman Polanski.

Here in Denver, we have billboards and a prominent radio personality questioning the birth status of President Barack Obama. Fewer than half of Republicans believe Obama was born in the United States. They refuse to accept the word of Dr. Chiyome Fukino, director of the Hawaii State Department of Health, who declared she has inspected the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawaii State Department of Health verifying Barrack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen.

Stanley Ann Dunham came from Christian heritage but was agnostic. Our president's father was also apparently agnostic but had Islamic heritage. Obama bashers love to question every detail of his upbringing and heritage. So did Barack Obama, who came to terms with the mysteries of his youth in his famous memoir, Dreams from My Father. In that book, Barack Obama describes in detail his decision to become a Christian.

Something on the original birth certificate supposedly poses a problem for the president. Could it be that his mother was protecting him in some way, by claiming he was white or some other half-truth about his heritage? Could it be that baby Barack's religion was noted as Islam? Would this have precluded Obama's ascendency to our nation's leader? More ominously, would an indication of Islam at birth warrant a death sentence from Muslims who believe apostasy carries this consequence?

Here in Denver, many of us mourn the death of the Rocky Mountain News. Before it died, the Rocky's conservative editorial board had some sage suggestions for the birthers:

May we offer some advice? Get a life. It appears that the phenomenon known as Bush Derangement Syndrome - with unhinged left-wingers willing to believe any scurrilous rumor about the 43rd president - has a mirror image on the right.

Some claim that Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii, and his birth certificate was faked. Others concede he was born in Hawaii but say he gave up his U.S. citizenship at age 6 when his mother, who married a citizen of Indonesia, moved the family to that nation.

It's difficult to believe rational adults can take these allegations seriously (and they have in fact been debunked). Obama served eight years in the Illinois legislature and most of one term in the U.S. Senate. If he were not a citizen, don't you think at least one of his campaign opponents would have found the proof to make that charge stick?

Even if the facts were murky, however, what possible point is there to raising them at this time? Does anyone seriously believe a court is going to try to bar from office the candidate chosen as president by a clear majority of voters? What do these zealots want, civil disorder?

Lineage and religion -- they are killer topics.
Read more: Roman Polanski Arrest, Eliot Spitzer, Bill Maher, Religulous, Barack Obama Birth Certificate Controversy, Obama Birthers, Paul Krugman, Judaism, Denver News

Krugman: "I Was Kind Of Hoping Obama Might Be FDR, But Maybe Not" (VIDEO)

2009-09-26T00:33:01Z
On "Real Time with Bill Maher" Friday night, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said that while the American dream is not totally dead, it is "dying pretty fast," particularly when it comes to social mobility. Krugman made this statement during a lengthy discussion with former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and host Bill Maher about the troubled state of the American economy and where we are in terms of reforming the system.

Both Krugman and Spitzer expressed optimism that America could right itself in the coming years if the correct steps were taken, but they were also highly critical of the degree of inequality that has become a part of American life and the lack of reform that has so far taken place.

"On bad mornings I wake up and think that we are turning into a Latin American country," Krugman said. "But on good mornings I think, well this is America, we have always in the past managed to turn ourselves around, and there is an FDR just around the corner if we could only find him. I was kind of hoping Obama might be FDR, but maybe not. "

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Read more: Paul Krugman, Eliot Spitzer, Bill Maher, Business News

Marcia G. Yerman: Emma Thompson, Featured in Fatal Promises , Speaks Out on Human Trafficking

2009-09-17T16:06:58Z
Human trafficking...the statistics are overwhelming. Approximately 800,000 people are illegally trafficked through international borders annually. 1.39 million people are trafficked into sexual exploitation. There are 16,600 people trafficked into the United States yearly, with America being one of the top ten destinations. New York City serves as a major portal for this activity.

A new film documentary, Fatal Promises directed by Kat Rohrer, will be screening from September 16th - September 24th at the Cinema Village in Manhattan. Rohrer partnered with her mother, Anneliese Rohrer, a 30-year veteran of Austrian journalism, to examine the various facets of human trafficking. The film, four years in the making, follows the stories of five people -- three women and two men. They relate how they were lured by promises of employment, and lacking opportunitie,s sought job solutions abroad. Their harrowing nightmares ended in relief brought about by rescue or through escape. Their personal narratives fulfill the need to put a face to an issue that is perceived as overwhelming. As Gloria Steinem points out in her on-camera comments, "What we need are stories."

In tandem with these visceral accounts are interviews with activists, government officials, and legislators. Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of UNODC, discusses the "moral imperative" of getting human trafficking on the political agenda, positing that the world is "dismissing [a] tragedy of enormous dimension."

The culmination of a seven-year effort to push through legislation that became the New York State Anti-Trafficking Law is shown as Eliot Spitzer signs the bill into law. The follow up scene is his resignation as Governor, after being exposed as a patron of a prostitution service. The juxtaposition exemplifies the dichotomies in a culture that is rife with contradictions and subtexts about sex.

Prominently featured in Fatal Promises is actress and activist Emma Thompson. In addition to making powerful public service announcements, Thompson is the co-curator (with Elena, a trafficking survivor), of the interactive art installation Journey. The work puts the viewer directly into the experience of a sexually trafficked woman. Journey traveled to Vienna, where it was showcased outside the 2008 U.N. Global Initiative to Fight Trafficking conference. There is a mordant episode in the documentary conveying the limitations of the U.N. gathering where 2,000 "official" participants met. The price tag of the four days comes to a cool $2,9000,000. It is noted that the conference was "proudly" sponsored by the United Arab Emirates -- a country that is listed with the United States Department of State as being on the "Tier 2 Watch List" of nations (The tier structure is examined in one of the film's interviews.).

A frustrated Thompson speaking on-camera asks, "What is the point of us all traveling to Vienna if we haven't got a plan?" While recruitment is accomplished on a person-to-person basis and individuals are translated into goods and services, corruption is rampant -- from law enforcement officials to the visa process. Thompson emphasizes, "There needs to be a real chain of decision, command, and action."

While Thompson was in New York City to attend previews of Fatal Promises, I was able to interview her via proxy. Below are excerpts from the conversation.

What are the plans for the installation of Journey in New York City and America?

The plan is that we bring Journey over to New York on November the 9th until November 16th. I'm not entirely sure where it will be yet, because we haven't yet chosen our site. But it means that it will be sitting there open to the public all of that time and I will be there, and Helen (Helen Bamber Foundation) will be there, and Michael Korzinski, the other director of the foundation, will be there. It [Journey] is immensely expensive to travel, so we're hoping that we can get help from Homeland Security to take it to Washington next. That's what we're hoping for.

Do you see the film and art installation as having potential to make the problem of human trafficking more visceral and of higher visibility?

Of course, yes. I mean this is one of those problems that is going to have to be spoken about and talked about and shouted about for a long time to come. We're not going to be bashing this out of existence just by producing a film and an installation. But what we can do is start to make it very clear that there is a big problem. The film is fantastically well researched and very interesting, and put together in such a way that you don't feel as though you are being sort of hammered. You can really take in the information and walk away with it. It's very cleverly done. The installation is an art installation, so it is a completely different kind of experience. But the two things together are pretty effective. After that, you know a lot...and you can go and get on and do something.

You have become an activist in this cause, but your frustration with the Vienna Forum was quite apparent. As you asked, "What is the point of us all traveling to Vienna if we haven't got a plan?" Can you speak to the difference between the on-the-ground realities and the world of diplomats and legislation?

The world of diplomats and legislation is a highly bureaucratized, very slow moving thing -- a bit like a glacier. Diplomats, and certainly home office civil servants and that type of personnel, are famously unbudgeable. So they're the people I want to come to the installation, because it's very important for people who work within the civil sector of society to see what's going on and connect with it in a visceral way, rather than just receiving facts. There is a huge disconnect between what is understood by persons in authority about trafficking, and what actually occurs to people. It is getting better, but it is very, very slow. As for what politicians really understand about it? Unless they've made it a particular interest, it is not something I've found people to be very informed about at all...at all. So at the moment it is an issue that I think is very much sidelined and not put at the top of any agendas, which I think reflects very ill upon us. I think that to start the 21st century with a huge new slave trade flourishing does not reflect well on any of our governments. I mean, it is absolutely appalling that we have allowed this to happen -- because we have allowed this to happen. We knew this was happening a long time ago and we didn't take steps. We didn't inform, we didn't think to ourselves, 'Oh, women are being bought and sold. What does that mean? I wonder if that means they are commodified. And what do we do about that?' There's been no rhetoric about that. There's been no discussion even. It's as though because prostitution is the oldest profession -- blah, blah, blah -- everyone thinks, 'Oh, well. This is just another manifestation of that.' And it's not. It's something quite else. It's a new slave trade.

How do you respond to the irony that the conference was sponsored by the UAE, when they are on the list of offenders?

Well, you know, people will take money from anyone! (hearty laugh) The U.N. has become its own worse enemy. I think it's bedeviled by bureaucracy. I think it's been declawed in every conceivable way. And I think in its corridors misogyny holds tremendous sway -- at least that's what I've witnessed...I know what the problems are. Again, that's a question of self-examination for the U.N. to say, 'What can we do to become more effective?'

Is part of the problem that anti-trafficking activists are on a continuum, and they don't agree with each other on core beliefs and strategies?

Sure. All NGOs are on collision courses because they all need money, and they all need money from the same sources...In relation to prostitution or not prostitution, that's a whole debate of its own. And it is of course connected, because what this is also about is our relationship to sex. Which is something we're going to have to start talking about much, much more honestly and in much greater detail... We've got to find out why we have a huge customer base for this service. Why? What's going on? What is it about us at the moment that makes us so keen to buy people? Those questions must be asked. As for prostitution or not prostitution -- and everyone takes a view -- it doesn't really make any difference to the customer whether a woman has chosen to be a prostitute or not. So it's not necessarily going to change the customer. And it's certainly not going to change the experience of a trafficked person whether prostitution is legal or not in their country. So it's not a question of saying legalize it all and that will make them safer because that does not work, actually. Prostitution is legal in Austria. Prostitution is legal in Holland. And in Amsterdam, they have one of the worst problems with trafficking imaginable. It's just awful. So legalizing doesn't necessarily stop trafficking...But in relation to this particular slave trade that is going on, the buying of people and selling of people, it doesn't really matter whether you believe prostitution should be legalized or not. You've got to get behind a movement that stops people being sold for whatever reason they're going to be sold. I think that's probably where I stand on it."

When I contacted Kat Rohrer by e-mail for a statement about the goals of her documentary she responded, "My film is about the survivors' stories. I want the public to hear their anger. Their voices are too seldom heard on an international, or even local, platform. It is precisely because I understand that the world community is faced with a myriad of seemingly never-ending issues -- from economic and environmental disasters to hunger and war -- that I spent four years making this film. Human trafficking is modern-day slavery. To ignore it is to ignore our humanity. How can we, as a conscientious society, tolerate slavery in 21st century? Simply put, we can not, we must not."

Rohrer will be partnering with anti-trafficking organizations including Equality Now, Nomi Network, History Starts Now, CATW and NOW to get wider visibility for the topic. Panel discussions are going on throughout the film's run, and plans are in the works to take the documentary to universities nationwide. There will be a DVD available in the future.

Those who have been "bought, sold, and discarded" will finally have listeners.

Photos courtesy of GreenKat Productions

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Read more: Sexual Trafficking, Equalilty Now, Emma Thompson, Nomi Network, U.N. Global Initiative to Fight Trafficking, United Nations, Gloria Steinem, Tier 2 Watrch List, Documentary Film, Now, Ngo, Psa, Eliot Spitzer, US State Department, United Arab Emirates, Human Trafficking, Fatal Promises, Prostitution, Kat Rohrer, Helen Bamber Foundation, Journey, Art Installation, History Starts Now, New York State Anit-Trafficking Law, Catw, Entertainment News

Spitzer: "We're Sowing The Seeds For A Future Crisis" (VIDEO)

2009-09-16T10:16:17Z
Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was on MSNBC's "Morning Meeting" today and expressed his fear that we're "sowing the seeds of a future crisis" by allowing the sense of urgency of passing meaningful reforms of Wall Street to fade, letting us return to "doing business the way it had been done":

We have moved away emotionally from a sense of crisis. Ben Bernanke says we are out of the recession. The economy will be growing. Suddenly we are back to the status quo ante. We're back to doing business the way it had been done and the sense of urgency has gone. The old institutions have gotten bigger. Those that survived have gotten our taxpayer backstop. They are now enveloping Congress in this argument, 'hey, things aren't so bad. Let us continue to do the job as we were doing it.' And a couple of us are saying, wait a minute, we haven't confronted "too big to fail." We are sowing the seeds of a future crisis. But there is no longer a sense of urgency. The President's speech on Wall Street a couple days ago just disappeared into the ether as though it didn't happen. The audience was quiet; the public didn't respond. It's gone.

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Read more: Bank Bailouts, Morning Meeting, Financial Crisis, Dylan Ratigan, Eliot Spitzer, Eliot Spitzer Video, Eliot Spitzer Morning Meeting, Business News

Lloyd Constantine, Spitzer Confidante, Writes Book About Scandal, Troopergate

2009-09-14T09:56:27Z
CHATHAM -- In the months after Gov. Eliot Spitzer's sudden resignation from office, Lloyd Constantine again and again asked himself the same vexing question: What am I going to do with myself?

There didn't seem to be an easy answer.

For about two decades, Constantine's professional life had been centered mostly on two concerns: A landmark class-action lawsuit against the credit card industry and Eliot Spitzer's political career.
Read more: Priceless: The Case That Brought Down the Visa/Mastercard Cartel, Journal of the Plague Year, Troopergate, Governor Spitzer, Lloyd Constantine, Eliot Spitzer, Lloyd Constantine Spitzer, New York News