Ed Driscoll, interviewed me for and quoted me in, an article in the New Individualist.
He seemed to particularly like my Parliament of Clocks metaphor.
Blogging
A Blogroll Aggregation & Aimless Musings
Robert Fulford sees Naomi Klein, “a friend to Hezbollah, an enemy of logic,” in battle with the Chicago boys. We are not surprised by the winner. Not that her technique can’t be exasperatingly effective with those who actually try to engage: “Her rule: When facts conflict with theory, change the subject.” (From A&L)
A Great Journalist / Writer – Michael Lewis
Recently on my travels to and from San Diego I had a few hours of uninterrupted time and I chose to read some interesting paperbacks. I usually pick something like a business book or a military history book but this time I decided to liven it up a bit and pick two books by Michael Lewis, one titled “Moneyball” about baseball and “The Blind Side” about football.
I remembered Michael Lewis from reading “Liar’s Poker” in the 90’s about Salomon Brothers, the famous trading firm. The name of the book was from a game that traders would play involving betting on the digits on US currencies, a game that could be played for big stakes.
Liar’s Poker is a fascinating book about a period of time when Salomon was essentially the “king of the world” to borrow a phrase from the highest grossing movie ever. If you are interested in what is happening in the sub-prime market with collateralized debt obligations (CDO’s) or the “securitization” of debt this is a great place to start since Salomon basically invented and popularized the practice for home mortgages.
One interesting element of the book is that Michael Lewis actually was a bond salesman in real life, and this enabled his book to be far more “real” than it would be if written in an interview type format. This was his first book; I think at the time he started out planning to get into finance and then decided to write a book; in retrospect you could also see him going into this business as a writing opportunity. To contrast this with other journalists that we take swipes at from time to time, Lewis clearly understood his material as only a true “insider” could.
Muni Bonds and Garbled Journalism
One of the best financial periodicals available is the Wall Street Journal and I read it daily. I find their standards, overall, to be quite high. Occasionally, however, they write a garbled piece which brings me back to my opinion that “generalist” journalists should go the way of the Dodo. The article in question is titled “Exodus from Muni Bonds Could Yield Opportunities” from Saturday, August 25th.
Blogs Keeping Check on Stupid Newspaper Tricks
This happens a lot. Someone writes a letter to the editor of a MSM publication. The letter is published — but with so many edits and deletions as to change substantially its meaning.
The old excuse for this kind of tendentious editing was, “space considerations.” That was an obvious lie in some specific cases, but there was enough general truth in the phrase to maintain the plausible deniability of editorial bias.
But now, with zero-marginal-cost Internet publishing, there is no excuse for editing on-topic, clearly written, non-abusive reader comments or letters. Yet some MSM editors still do it.