Dream of the Dragon

Tag: tricks of the trade

May 4, 2010

Watchdog Wonder

by Justin

I love this. In a time when journalism is on its deathbed and simultaneously in its infancy on emerging medias, MoJo’s Twitter alerted me to this little watchdog wonder.

People generally get less analysis, they spend less time consuming information, partisanship and propaganda are rising almost as high as during the days of Yellow Journalism. To combat this decline in depth and understanding jobs are being lost and papers fold under the pressure of the internet. Everybody knows how strange these days are. But what I appreciate most about the evolution of the blogosphere is the heightened degree of accountability. A number of sources, not just ProPublica, drew attention to the questionable allegiance of a source in this NY Times article. Read the rest of this entry »

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April 29, 2010

Slick.

by Justin

The federal government finally sprang into action to address the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Preliminary estimates fell well short of how rapidly the oil is spreading and recent projections suggest it will make landfall on Friday afternoon. All that elevated the crisis from one of probable ecological disaster to a certain threat against Louisiana’s natural resources – cue Homeland Security and the EPA to kick things up a notch.

First off, spill is inaccurate. In the sense that the oil was intended for a specific container and ended up missing that target completely, sure. But spill tends to mean from one container to another – implying that there’s a finite amount in the source spiller. What’s happening right now is more like an oil hemorrhage. Read the rest of this entry »

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April 28, 2010

Goldman’s Not Wrong, But Blankfein Is

by lbej

I don’t feel bad for anyone on the other side of a Goldman trade.  I know LOTS of these folks and they knew exactly what they were doing, same as the Goldman traders did.  Nobody in the market thought Goldman traders were a bunch of saints working for the benefit of the downtrodden.  Goldman is a bookmaker and Wall Street is Vegas.  Now, if they fixed games, that’s illegal and they should be prosecuted.  Hopefully that’s what the current investigation will sort out.  But if the betting is legal (it was/is) and the games aren’t fixed…oh, well.  Gamblers know the house usually wins and they bet anyway.

As for the housing market, it was a bubble, not a fraud.  Those are two different things.   Read the rest of this entry »

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