Nico Pitney's biggest problem was (apparently) not listening to what amounted to Obama's introduction to him, coming off more like a junior high student who doesnt realize the teacher is helping him set up his cute little presentation and then repeats parts of the intro. It was very cute, very staged and very Obama in line with his recent health care town hall meeting: "The president called randomly on three audience members. All turned out to be members of groups with close ties to his administration: the Service Employees International Union, Health Care for America Now, and Organizing for America, which is a part of the Democratic National Committee. White House officials said that was a coincidence."

Nico Pitney is such a Roaring Twenties gangsterish name. Nico 'the rigged' Pitney. Whaddya hear whaddya say...

Is it of any consequence whether Sheila Bair is a Kansas Republican, whatever that means? As long as pundits are running around with a bunch of square pegs they don't know what to do with, why not refer to Larry Summers as a Hedge Fund Democrat, or Tim Geithner as an Apparatchik Switch-Hitter? Trying to frame the issues of the banking crisis around the left-right axis is like bring a knife to a gunfight, intellectually speaking. Until more pundits can transcend their choice of college major and get the core of the story right, they should refrain from calling people rubes, and maybe refrain from punditry. Yes, bank receivership and conversion of unsecured debt to equity might be a little complicated. If you don't fully understand it, don't write about it, and above all, don't give your highly-conflicted sources the benefit of the doubt. Sheila Bair and Alan Grayson clearly understand these issues better than Scheiber or Lizza, although I'm not so sure about Marcy Kaptur after she addressed Ben Bernanke as the former chairman of Goldman Sachs during a hearing.

Quoting Toryentalist: Nico Pitney is such a Roaring Twenties gangsterish name. Nico 'the rigged' Pitney. Whaddya hear whaddya say...

I can't forget 60's singer/songwriter Gene Pitney of "Town Without Pity" fame. It is a fairly good oldies tune. John

Quoting Namazu: Is it of any consequence whether Sheila Bair is a Kansas Republican, whatever that means? As long as pundits are running around with a bunch of square pegs they don't know what to do with, why not refer to Larry Summers as a Hedge Fund Democrat, or Tim Geithner as an Apparatchik Switch-Hitter? Trying to frame the issues of the banking crisis around the left-right axis is like bring a knife to a gunfight, intellectually speaking. Until more pundits can transcend their choice of college major and get the core of the story right, they should refrain from calling people rubes, and maybe refrain from punditry. Yes, bank receivership and conversion of unsecured debt to equity might be a little complicated. If you don't fully understand it, don't write about it, and above all, don't give your highly-conflicted sources the benefit of the doubt. Sheila Bair and Alan Grayson clearly understand these issues better than Scheiber or Lizza, although I'm not so sure about Marcy Kaptur after she addressed Ben Bernanke as the former chairman of Goldman Sachs during a hearing.

Sheila Bair apparently self-identifies as a Kansas

An interesting diavlog. Sorry that I am not even up to being able to ask a dumb question about it.

I'm not going to go on a tirade about Ryan's cringe-inducing defense of Dana Milbank, because I think Jamison Foser says it better with two pictures. Hat tip to Glennzilla, whose post on the hiring of Dan Froomkin by the HuffPo is worth a read if you care about good journalists. Froomkin, as you probably know, was fired by the outfit that mysteriously (or not) keeps paying Milbank.

Quoting bjkeefe: I'm not going to go on a tirade about Ryan's cringe-inducing defense of Dana Milbank, because I think Jamison Foser says it better with two pictures.

Hat tip to Glennzilla, whose post on the hiring of Dan Froomkin by the HuffPo is worth a read if you care about good journalists. Froomkin, as you probably know, was fired by the outfit that mysteriously (or not) keeps paying Milbank.

Lizza is well-known for playing the game. Just ask Spencer Ackerman.

I thought that Lizza did redeem himself a bit though when he made the perfectly sane point that so long as the question is tough, who cares about the process of determining who gets to ask it? The underlying worry is that the Prez tries to use his power to arrange for softballs. If the questions tossed at him aren't softballs, then end of argument. But yeah, generally speaking, the rush to defend Milbank was a little creepy.

1. Ban credit default swaps, or at least require buyers to have a common law "insurable interest" in the instruments being insured.
2. Impose a tiny tax per share on stock sales that would be inconsequential to long-term investors but would reduce the oceanic flow of speculative hot money through the stock market.
3. I'm not sure how gains on short sales are taxed, but they should be taxed as ordinary income and not capital gains.