Affairs-of-state and Exchequer from Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn

Here's a nice wrap up of the week's news and views from Brooklyn Beat at Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn. When you go over to the blog check out BB's reading list. It astounds me how much this fellow reads.

Hillary is it, evidently trading her junior US Senator from NYC status for the Secretary of State, according to the NY TIMES:

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/clinton-to-accept-secretary-of-state-job/?hp

Will David Paterson be the next US Senator from NY (my speculation) in some version of the Sarah Palin scenario described for US Senator Ted Stevens (R- Alaska) before he was beaten at the polls. Reportedly, Senator Chuck Schumer is seeking a less high profile junior Senator as a replacement.

There was a very interesting interview with Malcolm Gladwell last night on the Rachel Maddow Show (on MSNBC). The author of Blink, the Tipping Point, and Outliers, found merit in the President-elect's selection of experienced Washington DC -hands, which balances well with Mr. Obama's own confident and intelligence which will enable him to use these experienced Washington-hands (see "the 10,000 hour rule") as the levers to accomplish his plans.

See discussion here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#27831448

2025 - what the future holds for the US and the World, an intelligence report:

http://www.reuters.com/article/usDollarRpt/idUSN2041155720081120

The headline on yesterday's daily news as the market dipped below 8,000 was both comic and tragic : "Only 7,997 to Go !"

Billion dollar bailouts that go to corporations that spend the public mazuma on massages and fine dining, while Detroit writhes... So we shouldn't enter the weekend without a little melancholy, as the tsunami of the current world financial crisis begins to swell against the horizon, like "The Last Wave," all we can do is keep breathing and wonder, what's next ?, a little reading:

Niall Ferguson on the whys and wherefores of the current mess/crisis, from December 2008 Vanity Fair:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/12/banks200812

Mr. Ferguson in 2006, prescient wolf calls of inevitability in the night, VF, October 2006:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/10/empire200610