Business & Media, Oct. 6, 2008:

It seems anxiety from the financial crisis is reaching new highs, but the tipping point for one individual came at the Lehman Brothers gym in the midst of the company’s collapse.

While former Lehman CEO Richard Fuld was testifying before the House Oversight Committee Oct. 6, CNBC reported he had been punched in the face at the Lehman Brothers gym after it was announced the firm was going bankrupt. CNBC and Vanity Fair contributor Vicki Ward said Fuld was attacked at the gym on a Sunday following the bankruptcy.

“Frankly, I sat there and listened and I’m with the guy who apparently, the day before Barclays announced they were coming in and Lehman had already filed for bankruptcy, went over to him in the gym and punched him because that’s how I feel when I, you know, when I watched that,” Ward said on the Oct. 6 Power Lunch. “I didn’t think he was contrite at all, I thought he was arrogant.”

ABC News, Oct. 7, 2008:

Less than a week after the federal government committed $85 billion to bail out AIG, executives of the giant AIG insurance company headed for a week-long retreat at a luxury resort and spa, the St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, California, Congressional investigators revealed today.

“Rooms at this resort can cost over $1,000 a night,” Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) said this morning as his committee continued its investigation of Wall Street and its CEOs.

AIG documents obtained by Waxman’s investigators show the company paid more than $440,000 for the retreat, including nearly $200,000 for rooms, $150,000 for meals and $23,000 in spa charges….

To hear City Councilwoman Shelley Midura tell it, residents of New Orleans are about to get screwed — again — by Entergy. She makes a compelling case.

The council regulates utilities in New Orleans, and Midura chairs the council’s Utilities Committee. Her ire thus is no small matter.

Over the years, the council has taken Entergy New Orleans and its predecessors to court (or to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) many times, and often won. Still, the utility never seems to tire of trying to put the screws to its customers.

The latest example of Entergy’s disregard for local ratepayers, however, is one for the ages. Entergy New Orleans (ENO) is effectively sitting on its hands while two of its sister companies — Entergy Mississippi Inc. (EMI) and Entergy Arkansas Inc. (EAI) — move to pull out of a “system agreement” under which six Entergy subsidiaries agreed to share the costs and benefits of generating and transmitting electricity.

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photo credit: Gary Hershorn, Reuters
The cliché juxtaposing Wall Street and Main Street was killed yesterday, beaten to death by Washington, D.C., legislators after a long period of overuse by presidential candidates and television pundits. The actual age of the cliché was unknown. The Wall Street/Main Street cliché is survived by two prominent catchphrases, It’s a Free Country! and It Is What It Is, and several lesser-known dependent idioms.    

From a cover story in the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, of all places:

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You guys regularly make a mockery of the 24-hour news networks. Do you see anything good about the format?

STEPHEN COLBERT: There’s not more news now than there was when we were kids. There’s the same amount from when it was just Cronkite. And the easiest way to fill it is to have someone’s opinion on it. Then you have an opposite opinion, and then you have a mishmash of fact and opinion, and you leave it the least informed you can possibly be.

JON STEWART: We’ve got three financial networks on all day. The bottom falls out of the credit market, and they were all running around. On CNBC I saw a guy talking to eight people in [eight different onscreen] boxes, and they were all like, ”I don’t know!” It’d be like if Hurricane Ike hit, and you put on the Weather Channel, and they were yelling, ”I don’t know what the f— is going on! I’m getting wet and it’s windy and I don’t know why and it’s making me sad! Maybe the president could come down and put up some sort of windscreen?” By being on 24 hours a day, you begin to not be able to tell what’s salient anymore.

What they said.

I don’t know what’s worse in cable news: a week when there’s actually lots going on (the credit collapse, the U.S. presidential “race”), or when there’s nothing going on and whatever they choose to yak about (Missing College Girl! American Idol!) takes on more import just because…well, it fills time between the Head-On and the Free Credit Report commercials.

Wolf Blitzer is still the Unflappable WolfBot 3000, thinking that giving equal time to two screaming heads in Brady Bunch boxes means Journalism is Being Committed Here. Hannity and Colmes = Fair and Balanced, because they’re offering both sides of the issue when it comes to the question: Are Liberals Destroying America Because They Hate It, Or Because They Just Don’t Know Better?. Keith Olbermann vibrates with the exact same level of outrage whether he’s discussing American torture policies or Bill O’Reilly’s latest idiocy; there’s an hour to fill, and the hour becomes more important than the filling, because it’s all delivered with the same graphics, the same sound effects, the same urgency.

It’s the irrelevancy of equivalency, and I don’t know what the answer is. But, hey: it’s a good, thought-provoking interview, and it’s in Entertainment Weekly…and not, tellingly, on any of the cable news networks.

With the help of new policy advisor and driver Emmett “Doc” Brown! Or didn’t you hear?

Does anyone else think it’s a bad idea for Sarah Palin to be seen publicly dissing witches so close to Halloween? 

I realize bars plagued by the college crowd may often be on the receiving end of generally inappropriate behavior: poor tipping, the occasional vomit-y bathroom, defacement of property due to Greek letters being etched into tables, a lack of appreciation of aged cheeses (this is more of a Velveeta crowd). But to the proprietors and employees of the Columns and the Delachaise — your dislike for the college crowd, which you will inevitably serve because of your location, does not justify poor service.
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As bloggers and Twitters have noted, James O’Byrne’s signed editorial in The Times-Picayune, “Next time, we won’t leave,” ain’t where it used to be on the paper’s Web site, for whatever reason.

For the moment, it can be read here, or on page B-7 on the dead-tree edition. (If it disappears again, we saved a copy.)

A sample of O’Byrne:

News flash: We know it’s dangerous to live here. We accept the possibility of no gas, no power, no readily available food. We’re Katrina survivors. We’ll figure it out.

But if the enduring image of Gustav is a U.S. soldier with an M-16 denying a citizen the right to return to his home, then you can pretty much write off the next “mandatory” evacuation. Leaving your home in advance of a storm is an extraordinarily stressful, difficult, traumatic and expensive proposition. The one thing that must be honored is that people must be allowed to return to their homes as soon as humanly possible.

As a journalist, I spent the past two days driving around reporting on the storm. And by Tuesday afternoon, this city was as safe as it needed to be. Indeed, all those tree branches and debris would be picked up and stacked neatly on the curb by lunchtime on Wednesday if people had been allowed to come home.

I fully appreciate the risks of letting my family stay. But I have to weigh that risk against the alternate risks, of getting trapped in an endless evacuation traffic jam, of being stranded on a highway far from help, of not being able to return in a timely manner, to secure our property and come back to as much of a normal life as possible.

New Orleans is my home. I love it, and I choose to keep living here. But if you are a public official who wants me to leave for the next storm, then you have to hear what I am telling you. It’s time to rewrite the contract.

WWL-TV has the story on their blog:

STATEMENT FROM N.O. COUNCIL MEMBERS ARNIE FIELKOW AND STACY HEAD

Fielkow and Head have worked for 24 hours to encourage the administration to allow access to the city earlier.

At a minimum, Orleans should have followed all the other parishes and allowed re-entry as of 6 am Wednesday.

While conditions in New Orleans are not good, electricity is not widely available, and health services are seriously depleted, Cms Head and Fielkow believe that people who need to return, particularly small business owners, should be allowed to make decisions for themselves.

Methinks things are Tier-ing up at City Hall…

Banksy update: someone has painted over the visible portions of the flowers in the original painting. The paint is beige though, not gray, so the perpetrator could be a “Gray Ghost” copycat. Intrigue in the world of guerilla graffiti. Photo by toaminorplace.