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Mar. 25th, 2009
Larry Summers! Larry Summers!
Mar. 25th, 2009 06:41 amOn November 5th, 1999, the man who is now Barack Obama's chief economic adviser was Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary. It was the day that Congress passed a bill that he had lobbied hard for, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act of 2000. And as I'm very glad to have been reminded by Boing-Boing guest blogger Richard Metzger, who dug it out of the New York Times archives, this is what Lawrence Summers had to say about Gramm-Leach-Bliley: "Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century. This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy." (Stephen Labaton, "Congress Passes Wide-Ranging Bill Easing Bank Laws," NYT, 11/5/99, page A1.) Here's what the bill's primary sponsor, John McCain senior economic adviser Phil Gramm had to say about it that day, from the same article: "We have a new century coming, and we have an opportunity to dominate that century the same way we dominated this century. Glass-Steagall, in the midst of the Great Depression, came at a time when the thinking was that the government was the answer. In this era of economic prosperity, we have decided that freedom is the answer."
And here's what North Dakota senator Byron Dorgan said, again from the same article: "I think we will look back in 10 years' time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930's is true in 2010. I wasn't around during the 1930's or the debate over Glass-Steagall. But I was here in the early 1980's when it was decided to allow the expansion of savings and loans. We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness." But then, he's basically nobody, right? Who's going to believe a bench-warming nobody from the middle of nowhere, when celebrated geniuses from both political parties say otherwise? Who's going to listen to a borderline socialist from one of the last states in the US to still have a Democratic Farm-Labor Party instead of a Democratic Party, Minnesota DFLP senator Paul Wellstone, when he says that all these experts are "determined to unlearn the lessons from our past mistakes," when (unnamed) math wizards from the most prestigious economics school in America, the University of Chicago, are assuring the NYT's reporter that "the Glass-Steagall Act was not the correct response to the banking crisis because it was the failure of the Federal Reserve in carrying out monetary policy, not speculation in the stock market, that caused the collapse of 11,000 banks. If anything, the supporters said, the new law will give financial companies the ability to diversify and therefore reduce their risks."
Epimetheus howled. More
Shamelessly Stolen from
bradhicksThis Week's Recipes
Pasta With Roast Chicken, Currants and Pine Nuts
Cold Tomato-Cilantro Soup
Cheddar Cheese Puffs
Tangerine-Vanilla Floats
Tacos de Carnitas
Cabbage-Radish Slaw With Cilantro-Lime Vinaigrette
Fresh Tomatillo Salsa
Chili-Spiced Peanuts
Dark Molasses Gingerbread With Whipped Cream
Homemade Merguez
Sausages With Ginger, Star Anise and Soy Sauce
Chipotle Chicken Sausage
Garlicky Pork Sausage With Red Wine, Prunes and Rosemary
Egg Noodles With Soy Broth
Pasta With Roast Chicken, Currants and Pine Nuts
Cold Tomato-Cilantro Soup
Cheddar Cheese Puffs
Tangerine-Vanilla Floats
Tacos de Carnitas
Cabbage-Radish Slaw With Cilantro-Lime Vinaigrette
Fresh Tomatillo Salsa
Chili-Spiced Peanuts
Dark Molasses Gingerbread With Whipped Cream
Homemade Merguez
Sausages With Ginger, Star Anise and Soy Sauce
Chipotle Chicken Sausage
Garlicky Pork Sausage With Red Wine, Prunes and Rosemary
Egg Noodles With Soy Broth
A Mexican Feast With Artisanal Technique
Mar. 25th, 2009 07:44 am
Tacos de Carnitas
By KIM SEVERSON
Published: March 24, 2009
I WAS not going down over a tortilla. And I was certainly not going to fail in front of Julia Moskin.
She sits two desks away from me. We are comrades, battling side by side on the front lines of food journalism. We plot stories and share lunch.
And now, in a cruel twist of fate, we were pitted against each other.
The assignment was straightforward: Create a dinner party for six for $50. There were only a few rules in our culinary Thunderdome. Pantry basics like spices, butter and olive oil didn’t count toward the total price. Guests would bring any wine or liquor. More
An Easy Route to Savory Sausages
Mar. 25th, 2009 07:46 am
Merguez patties.
By MELISSA CLARK
Published: March 20, 2009
I borrowed the food grinder and sausage stuffer attachments for my KitchenAid mixer from my dad. I ordered salted sheep intestines online and soaked them while I stuffed cold cubes of pork and fat through the grinder. After seasoning the meat, I extruded it into the casings, gleefully watching the floppy strands blow up like those long narrow balloons usually twisted into puppies.
The sausages were satisfying to make and marvelous to eat, and gave me culinary bragging rights for at least several months. I fantasized about regular sausage-making sessions, stocking the results in my freezer to serve to my awe-struck friends. More
There is some futility
Mar. 25th, 2009 08:11 amOn building towns in the bottom of dry lake beds beside rivers that flow north in the northern hemisphere. In another age, the Red River Valley blocked in the frozen north by massive glaciers, was a huge lake, larger than California but smaller than the Yukon Territories. It drained, at various times, into the Gulf of Mexico, through the Great Lakes into the Atlantic, and some times into the Pacific. A few small ponds -- Lake Winnipeg, Lake Winnipegosis, Lake Manitoba, and Lake of the Woods -- remain, and the tiny Red River of the North drains north trying to push ice and water on top of ice as it thaws from the bottom to the top.
When I was in college, we had one big flood. All the schools closed. The city was sandbagged. You'd drive past dikes of sandbags that towered many feet over a car and laugh at the piles of sandbags that almost were not high enough. I went and sandbagged a little that year. You stood in a long line and passed bags of sand to the mostly rich owners of houses along the river bank. They provided beer kegs and food. Their long backyards were swirling muddy water and ice floes. The projected crest that year was above the elevation of Fargo. It didn't make that high crest, but water still spreads wide and houses sit surrounded by sandbags and the ghost memories of an old lake that likes to put on her finest and dance in little dark waves to the warming sun of spring.
When I was in college, we had one big flood. All the schools closed. The city was sandbagged. You'd drive past dikes of sandbags that towered many feet over a car and laugh at the piles of sandbags that almost were not high enough. I went and sandbagged a little that year. You stood in a long line and passed bags of sand to the mostly rich owners of houses along the river bank. They provided beer kegs and food. Their long backyards were swirling muddy water and ice floes. The projected crest that year was above the elevation of Fargo. It didn't make that high crest, but water still spreads wide and houses sit surrounded by sandbags and the ghost memories of an old lake that likes to put on her finest and dance in little dark waves to the warming sun of spring.
Fashion’s New and Bigger Role in India
Mar. 25th, 2009 10:09 pm
NONTRADITIONAL Manish Arora’s show featured an animal theme with models’ hair trained into horn shapes and their faces painted to resemble jungle cats.
By GUY TREBAY
Published: March 25, 2009
New Delhi
“IT’S just something I threw together,” Himanshu Verma, an arts organizer, said at one of the mobbed events marking Wills India Fashion Week here. “It’s called a taxi sari,” he added, referring to the aggressively garish outfit of polka-dotted organza and polyester brocade he wore. That pronoun is no typo, by the way: Mr. Verma is a man. More