Awl pal Felix Salmon talks debt limit: "It’s increasingly looking like the best-case scenario is that America simply loses its triple-A credit rating — something which in and of itself will be pointless, dangerous, unnecessarily expensive and potentially catastrophic. The worst-case scenario, of course, is an outright default."
Yesterday's defeat of a gay marriage bill in the New Jersey Senate is just one more disappointment in a string of bitter losses for those who seek equal justice under the law. Sure, other countries don't seem to have a problem making fairness legal, but here at home, at the state level, we have apparently decided that we're not going to play along. Many of the objections you hear center around religion, but the sorry undercurrent behind the unwillingness to grant the same rights to homosexuals that their fellow citizens already enjoy and frequently abuse is actually one concerning politics and economics, i.e., in These Troubled Times legislators [...]
After Henry Blodget fired editor John Carney from his role as the editor of Clusterstock last week, some clearly felt that Blodget, the Business Insider cofounder and CEO, owed an explanation. Blodget and Reuters finance blogger Feliz Salmon got into a Tweet-spat, which culminated in Blodget serving up something like a master class on New Media Economics Friday evening. Blodget was direct, laying out the numbers behind running a web site. His arithmetic checks out-but that doesn't mean his math makes sense.
Felix Salmon seems uncharitably disposed to Goldman Sachs' change of season: I suspect that when it comes to bonus time at Goldman, December 2008 will never matter. The 2008 bonuses will be paid based on the 2008 fiscal year, while the 2009 bonuses will be paid based on the 2009 fiscal year. And those $1.3 billion of losses in December-losses which will never show up in any annual report-will be conveniently ignored by the compensation honchos.
I suspect he might be right! There's a great related bit from William D. Cohan, whose House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street would be at the [...]
What do you do after you've fired blogger John Carney as managing editor of Clusterstock on grounds of lack of cheap sensationalism? Why not have a snippy little girl-spat with Reuters finance blogger Felix Salmon! Go Henry Blodget, go! Show the tweens how it's done.
Also, you know what? The Internet: Let's Get Rid Of It.
