(L-R) Tony, Joe, Vic and Jiggs examine the Big Pink Styrofoam Ball   It is a festive day, or at least it would be if everyone wasn’t bummed out because of the Congress and the Market. They need celebrating the way we do in Washington at Big Pink. This year is a magical line-up of […]

Paul Newman left us over the weekend. He had the most striking blue eyes in Hollywood for several decades, a good solid marriage and great salad dressing. His eyes looked out at me from the fridge when I went to start putting dinner together and suddenly felt a sense of deep and irreparable loss.   […]

I was not going to get caught short like I did in the Nixon-Kennedy debates. That was the goal, anyway, but of course it got away from me. There were Chinese astronauts doing a space walk, according to the last message I read before leaving the office. I was uncertain if this was the past-tense account of […]

The Corner at 23 Wall Street, circa 2004 Yesterday, I heard the corporate end of the McDonald’s food enterprise was having a hard time securing loans. Later in the day, the Feds showed up in person to pad-lock Washington Mutual, and largest savings and loan instution in these United States. The assets on the books […]

Threat, Stimulation and Identity So, it is Sunday and the fourth day of autumn and the storm is ashore and the assessment of the damage has begun. It could have been worse, is the first word. The disaster of Katrina got everyone’s attention, including me. I hauled a couple cases of bottled water back to […]

T. J. Birkenmeier in his study   Secretary Paulson has a plan to get us out of this mess. He pulled an all-nighter over the wee kend, and presented a three-page paper to the Congress. He is looking for about a trillion dollars, give or take a few dozen billion, and wants emergency authority to […]

You can understand that they might have some functional problems. The markets are closed in Moscow today for “correction,”, and the system is clearly rattled to its sandy foundation. It has been spectacular of late. Russian heavy bombers have deployed to Venezuela, relations with Cuba have warmed, and Russian ships are headed for the Caribbean. […]

Instead, I heard a Hong Kong chemical tanker with 22 crewmembers was taken by=2 0pirates in the Gulf of Aden, near Somalia. That makes it an even dozen ships that have been hijacked in the pirate-infested waterway since July 20, if you are keeping count. You have to pass the gray-green mound of Great Socotra […]

I have traditionally not paid much attention to the markets, but that is where the 401k is, and I have trusted T Rowe Price to do the best in bundling my investments. I have had to watch like a hawk of late, since the Court-ordered Domestic Relations Order was signed, stripping me of more thousands […]

They had said rain today, but the storms got here early. It rained last night and the clouds are broken today with shreds of blue behind.   It is not that way with Ike slamming over Galveston, where my cousin’s place is now under water.   Here, it is gentle. There may be some T-storms […]