GoodCelery! (October 4, 2008 09:58 AM):

The style: Paul Craig Roberts isn't piecocake's (let her know), but that diversity is what keeps our/my attention. We'd be demented if gorgeous slabber-dribble, pink-o's (celeryviews) goofs only wrote Walt Whitman poems and sent sweethearts boxes of chocolates.

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What do you think of what Kurt Vonnegut had to say about writing styles in the essay excerpted below?

Newspaper reporters and technical writers are trained to reveal almost nothing about themselves in their writings. This makes them freaks in the world of writers, since almost all of the other ink-stained wretches in that world reveal a lot about themselves to readers. We call these revelations, accidental and intentional, elements of style.

These revelations tell us as readers what sort of person it is with whom we are spending time. Does the writer sound ignorant or informed, stupid or bright, crooked or honest, humorless or playful--? And on and on.

Why should you examine your writing style with the idea of improving it? Do so as a mark of respect for your readers, whatever you’re writing. If you scribble your thoughts any which way, your readers will surely feel that you care nothing about them. They will mark you down as an egomaniac or a chowderhead--or worse, they will stop reading you.

The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not. Don’t you yourself like or dislike writers mainly for what they choose to show you or make you think about?

Did you ever admire an empty-headed writer for his or her mastery of the language? No.

So your own winning style must begin with ideas in your head. (Emphasis added)

From "How to Write with Style "

http://www.harmonize.com/probe/aids/manual/style.htm

GoodCelery! (October 4, 2008 09:58 AM):

The style: Paul Craig Roberts isn't piecocake's (let her know), but that diversity is what keeps our/my attention. We'd be demented if gorgeous slabber-dribble, pink-o's (celeryviews) goofs only wrote Walt Whitman poems and sent sweethearts boxes of chocolates.

---

Yes.

Man lives not

by bread (or cake

or celery) alone,

he must have

peanut butter.

blunderdog (October 4, 2008 09:29 AM):

"Does he [Roberts] offer thoughts on that (hopefully small) part of the problem too?"

Not to my knowledge, but Roberts' email address is PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

I think we do agree. I will add that nobody has less credibility than the administration right now. I just want to make sure we do a thorough credit check on Sherman before we give him a jumbo loan and start slicing and dicing this into an over leveraged CDS that then loses the ability to be judged on its actual value;)

I did a search on Thom Hartmann, the LA Times and Brad Sherman (not exhaustive) but couldn't find anything of relevance. If you have any links they would be greatly appreciated.

I did find an interview he had on the Alex Jones show--

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bH1mO8qhCs

Which after listening to, I can't say inspired much confidence in his allegations.

He would not identify the names of the congresspersons originally making the allegations, he used the word Wall Street in the place of the pronoun "they" on multiple occasions and never got any more specific than that. I get the impression from the interview that he is walking this back somewhat.

The style: Paul Craig Roberts isn't piecocake's (let her know), but that diversity is what keeps our/my attention. We'd be demented if gorgeous slabber-dribble, pink-o's (celeryviews) goofs only wrote Walt Whitman poems and sent sweethearts boxes of chocolates.

Great comments keep chiding, and poking. Look her, and over there--

*everything is a subject, of course, to a particular point.

Your self is the subject. Being in your beautiful presence

Your impression is subject, your thoughts and emotions.

The presence of nature. -- Eugene Delacacroix (ideas~).

... an anthology. a whole world. a universe. Skip "stuff"!

.

An obese fat cat politico, sees homeless people with their ribs popping out. An historian, we may not realize is wearing pajamas, tells of past historic evils. Nobel thinkers chide, advise, and a Mr Ellsburg etc., reminds? A agnostic's accrued wisdom is freely given. A lawyer with a cowlick hairdo, from reading UT sometimes, tears his hair out? A misspelling spouse may not have a concealed tattoo, great. But scoops more than two dips, sorta a Hallmark Card to ponder. A shared personal experience. Its even a tear drip experience. It's good to Skip. Who can grasp, and comprehend all that is written to guide, instruct, and point the Way? Ya' go yonder, that away! ~go to stop/ and go lightred,orange,green. I do enjoy. Maybe wear the welcome mat out too. It's lunch? It's hard to not hush. It's so stimulating. Enriching. A banquet table. It's a diverse shared grouping. It's more fun than playing boring solitaire.

Thanks for that piece.

I like that suggestion, and I'd support it, but it seems unlikely to me that it is going to be the grand "fix" he may be claiming it is.

How does Roberts' plan help the holders of the previously "AAA" rated securities (bonds) which are now worthless?

Some of those investors are actually depending on those holdings for their survival.

Does he offer thoughts on that (hopefully small) part of the problem too?

in a rational world the 'save the homeowners plan' was always the best one - Some of the Bankers just don't know how to deal with 'the Psychology' - You know they think America hast to show to the world that our form of capitalism still works - or there is not going to be any more money to bail out the homeowners!

gandhi (October 4, 2008 05:26 AM):

Bernie Sanders explains why he voted against the bailout again:

Incredibly, for the first seven years of Bush's tenure, the wealthiest 400 individuals in our country saw a $670 billion increase in their wealth. That is just 400 families...

This bill does not deal with the absurdity of having the fox guarding the hen house. Maybe I'm the only person in America who thinks so, but I have a hard time understanding why we are giving $700 billion to the secretary of the Treasury, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, who along with other financial institutions, actually got us into this problem.

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Here's a different and much better remedy for the toxic mortgage derivatives crisis, proposed by former Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, Paul Craig Roberts. It will more than repay a close reading:

Bail Out the Homeowners!

Why Paulson's Plan is a Fraud

By Paul Craig Roberts

03/10/08 "ICH " -- - Is the Paulson bailout itself as big a fraud as the leveraged subprime mortgages?

Yesterday, here on CounterPunch, I discussed the bailout as proposed and noted that the proposal cannot succeed if it impairs the US Treasury’s credit standing and/or the combination of mark-to-market and short-selling permits short-sellers to prosper by driving more financial institutions into bankruptcy.

A reader’s comment and an article by Yale professors Jonathan Kopell and William Goetzmann raise precisely this question of the fraudulence of the Paulson package.

As one reader put it,“We have debt at three different levels: personal household debt, financial sector debt and public debt. The first has swamped the second and now the second is being made to swamp the third. The attitude of our leaders is to do nothing about the first level of debt and to pretend that the third level of debt doesn't matter at all.”

The argument for the bailout is that the banks will be free of the troubled instruments and can resume lending and that the US Treasury will recover most of the bailout costs, because only a small percentage of the underlying mortgages are bad. Let’s examine this argument.

In actual fact, the Paulson bailout does not address the core problem. It only addresses the problem for the financial institutions that hold the troubled assets. Under the bailout plan, the troubled assets move from the banks’ books to the Treasury’s. But the underlying problem--the continuing diminishment of mortgage and home values--remains and continues to worsen.

The origin of the crisis is at the homeowner level. Homeowners are defaulting on mortgages. Moving the financial instruments onto the Treasury’s books does not stop the rising default rate.

The bailout is focused on the wrong end of the problem. The bailout should be focused on the origin of the problem, the defaulting homeowners. The bailout should indemnify defaulting homeowners and pay off the delinquent mortgages. As Koppell and Goetzmann point out, the financial instruments are troubled because of mortgage defaults. Stopping the problem at its origin would restore the value of the mortgage-based derivatives and put an end to the crisis.

This approach has the further advantage of stopping the slide in housing prices and ending the erosion of local tax bases that result from foreclosures and houses being dumped on the market. What about the moral hazard of bailing out homeowners who over-leveraged themselves? Ask yourself: How does it differ from the moral hazard of bailing out the financial institutions that securitized questionable loans, insured them, and sold them as investment grade securities? Congress should focus the bailout on refinancing the troubled mortgages as the Home Owners’ Loan Corp. did in the 1930s, not on the troubled institutions holding the troubled instruments linked to the mortgages. Congress needs to back off, hold hearings, and talk with Koppell and Goetzmann.Congress must know the facts prior to taking action. The last thing Congress needs to do is to be panicked again into agreeing to a disastrous course.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com