Reason magazine has the interview. You might remember I wrote about this here and here, nearly two years ago.
Upshot of the interview, Gonzalez won his lawsuit for being fired as a whistleblower, but no one was ever prosecuted for looking the other way while a DEA informant murdered people. They didn't want to spoil their drug surveillance. Read at the links only if you have a strong stomach.
Actual headline tonight:
Shootout at OK Corral nightclub in Juarez leaves 4 dead
A little less realism, please!
I imagine that in 1999 the debate over relaxed credit standards supported by Fannie Mae seemed like an obscure wonkish squabble to the NY Times, so they relegated the story to the business section. It sure looks like big news today. Some excerpts from September 30, 1999:
In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.
[...]
Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.
[...]
''Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990's by reducing down payment requirements,'' said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer. ''Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.''
[...]
In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''
Mr. Wallison sounds eerily prescient today, but he's just pointing out the obvious risks of circumventing the market.
So if you hear someone blaming today's economic diffuculties on an unregulated free market you'll know you're listening to a liar or an ignoramus. Major props to Curunir at The Distributed Republic for this find from the NY Times archives.
"How do you feel about the line, "I want you to vote for me, because I support smaller government"?
I replied:1. It gives me very little information about what he will do if elected.
2. But it does mean that, since he is pretending to be one of us, we will get blamed for what he does, even if it has nothing to do with the views we support.
That's why, on the whole, I thought it would be better if Bush had lost the most recent election--not that his opponent would have been any better but that at least we wouldn't have gotten blamed for what he did.
And of course the financial markets have been unregulated all these years.
Dale Amon's simple and handy guide to the differences between McCain and Obama. That should help.
Don Haskins died today. If you're not a sports fan you might not know how he became an important figure in American society. In 1966 as coach at Texas Western he won the NCAA basketball championship by starting five African-American players against the University of Kentucky's five white players.
He was still coach at the school - now called UTEP - when I was a student many years later. Here's Hollywood's version of the stoy...
And some video of the actual event. That's before I was born, but it's still fascinating to me.
Haskins was a hero and the most admired resident of El Paso right to the end.
Here are related things I've posted over the years.
Update: 'Former UTEP and current Nebraska coach Doc Sadler couldn't remember who told him but he never forgot this description of Don Haskins: "He was the John Wayne of basketball." '
In one of those funny quirks of the American political labyrinth, Todd Palin's union dues go to campaign against his wife.
