Who Wants to Kick a Millionaire? by Frank Rich

[Joanne98]

DURING the Great Depression, American moviegoers seeking escape could ogle platoons of glamorous chorus girls in "Gold Diggers of 1933." Our feel-good movie of the year is "Slumdog Millionaire," a Dickensian tale in which we root for an impoverished orphan from Mumbai's slums to hit the jackpot on the Indian edition of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire."

It's a virtuoso feast of filmmaking by Danny Boyle, but it's also the perfect fairy tale for our hard times. The hero labors as a serf in the toilet of globalization: one of those mammoth call centers Westerners reach when ringing an 800 number to, say, check on credit card debt. When he gets his unlikely crack at instant wealth, the whole system is stacked against him, including the corrupt back office of a slick game show too good to be true.

We cheer the young man on screen even if we've lost the hope to root for ourselves. The vicarious victory of a third world protagonist must be this year's stocking stuffer. The trouble with "Slumdog Millionaire" is that it, like all classic movie fables, comes to an end - as it happens, with an elaborately choreographed Bollywood musical number redolent of "Gold Diggers of 1933." Then we are delivered back to the inescapable and chilling reality outside the theater's doors.

Just when we thought that reality couldn't hit a new bottom it did with Bernie Madoff, a smiling shark as sleazy as the TV host in "Slumdog." A pillar of both the Wall Street and Jewish communities - a former Nasdaq chairman, a trustee at Yeshiva University - he even victimized Elie Wiesel's Foundation for Humanity with his Ponzi scheme. A Jewish financier rips off millions of dollars devoted to memorializing the Holocaust - who could make this stuff up? Dickens, Balzac, Trollope and, for that matter, even Mel Brooks might be appalled.

Madoff, of course, made up everything. When he turned himself in, he reportedly declared that his business was "all just one big lie." (The man didn't call his 55-foot yacht "Bull" for nothing.) As Brian Williams of NBC News pointed out, the $50 billion thought to have vanished is roughly three times as much as the proposed Detroit bailout. And no one knows how it happened, least of all the federal regulators charged with policing him and protecting the public. If Madoff hadn't confessed - for reasons that remain unclear - he might still be rounding up new victims.

There is a moral to be drawn here, and it's not simply that human nature is unchanging and that there always will be crooks, including those in high places. Nor is it merely that Wall Street regulation has been a joke. Of what we've learned about Madoff so far, the most useful lesson can be gleaned from how his smart, well-heeled clients routinely characterized the strategy that generated their remarkably steady profits. As The Wall Street Journal noted, they "often referred to it as a ‘black box.' "

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/12/21-3

[roseBudd]

1. Please support the new York Times by clicking through to this link to read Frank Rich...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/opinion/21rich.html?_r=1&hp

Whether you love or hate the NYTimes unpaid bloggers do not have the wherewithal to feature columnists such as Krugman & Frank, nor the ability to write a series such the one I link to below.

We owe the New York Times and all the other beleagured newspapers who employ reporters to uncover stories and lawyers to force government to uphold Sunshine laws our page views.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/business/21admin.html?em=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1229893303-0QWeYr16EZ0HYOCBmydr/A

White House Philosophy Stoked Mortgage Bonfire

Eight years after arriving in Washington vowing to spread the dream of homeownership, Mr. Bush is leaving office, as he himself said recently, “faced with the prospect of a global meltdown” with roots in the housing sector he so ardently championed.

There are plenty of culprits, like lenders who peddled easy credit, consumers who took on mortgages they could not afford and Wall Street chieftains who loaded up on mortgage-backed securities without regard to the risk.

But the story of how we got here is partly one of Mr. Bush’s own making, according to a review of his tenure that included interviews with dozens of current and former administration officials.

From his earliest days in office, Mr. Bush paired his belief that Americans do best when they own their own home with his conviction that markets do best when let alone.

[acmavm]

2. Fantastic article. Let me ask about something I don't have a clue on.

With the demise (or whatever) of the 'written' media, how will these people make a living, let alone a lucartive one?

[roseBudd]

4. The newspapers need to make money on online ads to make up for the revenue that was disrupted...

it's not just declining circulation in the core product (print) that has been disrupted by the internet, a big reason for the trouble newspapers are in, is Ebay & Craigslist, as classified advertising used to be a very big part of newspaper's revenue.

I believe liberals should make a consious effort to click through to the newspapers or AP articles that interest us, to the originator of the article, the one whose imfrastructure made it all possible.

By doing so we are helping the free online content pay for itself as page views or impressions are what determines the online inventory that a newspaper can realize.

If we read it on Common Dreams we deprive the NYTimes, WaPo, Seattle Times, LATimes all good so called liberal papers of the revenue they deserve.

The other very important reason to click through is because we become a roving band of Nielsen families as the metrics, reading Rich & Krugman but ignoring Kristol is like voting.

On the internet, there is no hiding what gets read and what gets ignored.

[RainDog]

3. I support public torture of business executives

to provide a deterrence for future crimes.

but I will settle for confiscating their ill-gotten gains.