Inside Job

Charles Ferguson's documentary does a great job of laying out the financial crisis and showing the outrage that bank executives, who deserve to be called "banksters," have not been prosecuted.

My favorite line is Nouriel Roubini's response when he's asked why there has been no investigation of the crisis. "Because then," Roubini says in his thick accent, "you would find the culprits."

Hopefully the film will stoke the sense of public outrage and make it impossible for the politicians to sweep this under the rug. As I've made clear in my MarketWatch columns, I think the non-response to the financial crisis (along with numerous other mistaken economic policies) are the reasons for Obama's failure, at least so far, as president. The film makes patently clear why Geithner, Summers and Bernanke as well -- all involved in creating the mess -- could hardly be relied upon to clean it up.

Most of what was in the film was familiar to me, but there were a couple of novelties I appreciated. One was the film's focus on the corruption of academic economics. I suspect Ferguson had to go this route because he couldn't get enough bankers and government officials in front of the camera, but it's certainly a valid point and completely in line with the complaint of the post-Keynesians about the thuggish hijacking of the profession. Martin Feldstein, in particular, who I have thought of as simply misguided, came across as smug and odious.

The other novel approach was the focus on the role of drugs and sex on Wall Street. We financial journalists have to sail above this seamy side of life, but it's gratifying to see Ferguson not shying away from it and putting it in the proper perspective of the rampant sense of entitlement and amorality that characterizes all of Wall Street activity. It is another sign of the absence of any sort of integrity.

Kathleen Parker

I've kept an open mind about Kathleen Parker because sometimes she seemed to strike a moderate note and on the whole seemed reasonable for a conservative commentator.

But her thoughtless, insensitive and stupid column on Anita Hill has pretty much destroyed her credibility for me.

Parker writes: "She may have told the truth, but so what?" So what???

So much wrong with this column, it's hard to know where to begin. The tagline, "Let's hope Clarence Thomas has enough faith to survive his second lynching -- and to forgive poor Ginni." Poor Clarence.

This gem: "You see, to be scandalized, one must be deeply sensitive to the mention of anything sexual." Can she truly be so sheltered coming from her farm in South Carolina or wherever it was she was observing the world that she doesn't understand when you cross the line between off-color remarks and sexual harassment? Or is she really just astonishingly stupid? This rivals the naivete (and hypocrisy?) of some of Christine O'Donnell's remarks on chastity and abstinence.

Thankfully, Ruth Marcus, God bless her heart, stepped in and said what needed to be said. After recounting Hill's anguished narration, Marcus, who covered the hearings at the time, said, "If this sounds like a 'so what' situation to you, please explain what your reaction would be if you found your wife, your daughter -- or yourself -- in this predicament."

Plus, if, as Parker does, you concede that Hill might have been telling the truth, then Thomas perjured himself. "To acknowledge that Hill may have told the truth is to accept that Thomas may have lied -- repeatedly and under oath. If Hill testified truthfully, Thomas committed perjury. And this seems, even now, like a pretty big so what."

It's always seemed to me that this is a no-brainer. Anita Hill had no reason to take the stand and lie, whereas Clarence Thomas had every reason to lie.

I haven't yet seen the new Parker-Spitzer show on CNN, though I've been meaning to watch it because I think Eliot Spitzer is a smart guy (in some respects). But if Parker is as vapid as this column indicates, I'm not sure I could stand to watch her.

Washington Post

I still subscribe to the Post and sometimes it surprises me with some good journalism, but I see it turning into something of a rag these days.

The coverage of the G20 meeting of finance officials last weekend marked a new low in business coverage. A scene-setter on Friday was transparently based on a Treasury briefing and shamelessly toed the official line. It even described Geithner's proposal to cap payments imbalances as "elegant" in the lead.

This pandering continued on the reporting of the event itself, with the final story once again parroting the official line. In fact, it looked as though the Post didn't even send a correspondent, so it had to depend on Treasury for its information and could offer no reporting from other participants to round out the picture.

I had kept a subscription for a long time because I know the time is near when we won't have newspapers delivered to our door any longer. But I got fed up, particularly with Fred Hiatt's direction of the editorial pages and the general deterioration in reporting, writing and editing, and canceled. So then they called and offered me six months of daily delivery for the price of the Sunday delivery alone -- so six months for $48. An offer I couldn't refuse. But it still annoys me on an almost daily basis.

New blog

I have a couple of specialized blogs, on food and books, but I'd like to comment sometimes on other things. Rather than set up more individual blogs (film, media, etc.), I plan to use this as a catch-all for other subjects.

I get plenty of opportunities to express my opinions in print. I write a political column for MarketWatch and a regular perspective on international finance for OMFIF that is transitioning from more classical news to a blog-like format. I may cross-post some of those here. I also occasionally write reviews on IMDB or Amazon.

As the title indicates -- Weltanschauung as many know is German for what is generally translated as "worldview" -- these will simply be observations of mine about things I see going on. I spend a lot of time using a lot of different media and frequently these postings will be about what I see there -- both the substance of the issue and the way it's reported.