To the editor,

In “Wall Street’s Near Death Experience,” [November, 2009] author Andrew Ross Sorkin makes an egregious error that casts into doubt his understanding of the financial markets that he purports to explain to readers.

Describing the dire financial conditions during the week of the Lehman failure, he says “…Treasury bills were trading for less than 1% interest, as if they were no better than cash, as if the full faith of the government had suddenly become meaningless.”

For any type of bond, including Treasury bills, a low rate of interest indicates that investors have a high level of confidence in the issuer’s creditworthiness. High interest rates are required when the issuer’s standing is in doubt; this is why “junk bonds” always carry high rates of interest, to compensate for their default risk – that is why they are sometimes called “high yield bonds.” Therefore a rate of less than 1% for Treasury bills means the exact opposite of what Sorkin claims – it unambiguously indicates that the guarantee of the government has become extraordinarily valuable and meaningful, as indeed it had during that terrible week. It’s not that Treasury bills were no better than cash – it is that they were as precious and valuable and safe as cash.

I trust you will correct this error in subsequent editions.

Yours truly,

Donald Luskin

What to do with your spare time? No spare time, you say?

I recommend skipping books and articles about “the death of this” or “the rebirth of that” or anything remotely related. Unless it’s about my favorite college sports team.

In the political world, amateurs — which includes 100% of all intellectuals and their pretending wannabes — fail to grasp the obvious. As an example, this is obvious: sometimes the public just votes for the new guy because they’ve grown weary or angry at the old guy. This is especially the case if the new guy is cute, his wife is cute and their kids are super cute.

Then he gets in office and turns a hard left, mostly because that’s the direction his Sherpa, the Axelrod, tells him leads to glory.

What should conservatives do now? Once again, let me be the cranky voice of experience in actual politics: Do not over-think elections. Here is the winning tactic: Wait until the public grows weary and angry again, this time at last year’s “new guy” and then — drum roll -- be the other candidate. Should you voice a new paradigm? No, you should STFU and be the other candidate.

Now, over at the ivy league of the think tank world, the very accomplished (no kidding) American Enterprise Institute, scholars are bursting with spare time. After all, ponderous policy wonkery just ain’t selling, certainly not as much as the stuff pushed by the mavericky and rougue-like noisemakers on talk radio and cable TV.

What’s an AEI dude to do?

Write a slightly interesting “bloviation” on the mavericky and rougue-like noisemakers and their failings. Consider this paragraph:

...conservatives can start by engaging the central argument of the most serious indictment of conservatism on the scene, Sam Tanenhaus's new book, The Death of Conservatism. Tanenhaus's argument is mischievously defective; he thinks the problem with conservatism today is that it is not properly deferential to liberalism's relentless engine of change. In other words, it is an elegant restatement of G.K. Chesterton's quip that is it is the business of progressives to go on making mistakes, while it is the business of conservatives to prevent the mistakes from being corrected. That won't do. A conservative movement that accepted Tanenhaus's prescription would be consigning itself to be the actuary of liberalism.

That was an except from a windy walk through the mind of Steven F. Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute and the author of The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution, 1980-1989.

So, fellow conservatives, do not despair. No need to reinvent anything. Instead, believe in the enduring goodness of the public. Believe that Americans will wake up, just as we did to LBJ and to Carter. Hell, also to Tom DeLay and George W. Bush.

Go back to basics: support job creation, take only a fair vig off our earnings, defend our interests abroad and otherwise, STFU.

Their separate speeches to the International Olympic Committee were so dreadful, and in such a characteristic way, that they might be symptomatic of something that has serious implications for American governance...

Both Obamas gave heartfelt speeches about . . . themselves. Although the working of the committee's mind is murky, it could reasonably have rejected Chicago's bid for the 2016 Games on aesthetic grounds -- unless narcissism has suddenly become an Olympic sport.

In the 41 sentences of her remarks, Michelle Obama used some form of the personal pronouns "I" or "me" 44 times. Her husband was, comparatively, a shrinking violet, using those pronouns only 26 times in 48 sentences. Still, 70 times in 89 sentences conveyed the message that somehow their fascinating selves were what made, or should have made, Chicago's case compelling.

Periodically, conservatives latch onto a new line of attack against President Obama. Apparently, the new one is "narcissism." Marty Peretz talked it up yesterday in a bizarre piece, and George Will endorsed the argument in his column today.

Putting aside Will's fondness for dramatic ellipses, his criticism is simply detached from reality here.

The speeches are online, and reading them, it's tempting to wonder if Will even read the remarks before using them as the basis for a cheap column.

I was born and raised on Chicago's South Side, not far from where the Games would open and close. Ours was a neighborhood of working families -- families with modest homes and strong values.

Sports were what brought our community together. They strengthen our ties to one another.

Growing up, when I played games with the kids in my neighborhood, we picked sides based not on who you were, but what you could bring to the game. Sports taught me self-confidence, teamwork, and how to compete as an equal.

Sports were a gift I shared with my dad -- especially the Olympic Games.

Some of my best memories are sitting on my dad's lap, cheering on Olga and Nadia, Carl Lewis, and others for their brilliance and perfection. Like so many young people, I was inspired. I found myself dreaming that maybe, just maybe, if I worked hard enough, I, too, could achieve something great.

But I never dreamed that the Olympic flame might one day light up lives in my neighborhood.

But today, I can dream, and I am dreaming of an Olympic and Paralympic Games in Chicago that will light up lives in neighborhoods all across America and all across the world; that will expose all our neighborhoods to new sports and new role models; that will show every child that regardless of wealth, or gender, or race, or physical ability, there is a sport and a place for them, too.

That's why I'm here today. I'm asking you to choose Chicago. I'm asking you to choose America.

And I'm not asking just as the First Lady of the United States, who is eager to welcome the world to our shores. And not just as a Chicagoan, who is proud and excited to show the world what my city can do. Not just as a mother raising two beautiful young women to embrace athleticism and pursue their full potential.

I'm also asking as a daughter.

See, my dad would have been so proud to witness these Games in Chicago. And I know they would have meant something much more to him, too.

You see, in my dad's early thirties, he was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. And as he got sicker, it became harder for him to walk, let alone play his favorite sports. But my dad was determined that sports continue to be a vital lifeline -- not just to the rest of the world, but to me and my brother.

And even as we watched my dad struggle to hold himself up on crutches, he never stopped playing with us. And he refused to let us take our abilities for granted. He believed that his little girl should be taught no less than his son. So he taught me how to throw a ball and a mean right hook better than any boy in my neighborhood. But more importantly, my dad taught us the fundamental rules of the game, rules that continue to guide our lives today: to engage with honor, with dignity, and fair play.

My dad was my hero.

And in this hard-luck story of hers, does one detect the race card rustling near the top of the deck, ready to get dealt into play as needed? Is the Olympic Committee supposed to get guilted out, or become afraid that if it doesn't give FLOTUS what she wants, they'll be guilty of being insensitive to her hard-luck story as a struggling African-American growing up in Chicago?

Update... Mark Spahn writes,

Did anyone do a weirdness check on Michelle Obama's Olympic speech before she read it from her teleprompters?

The creepiness of the 20-year-old Michelle sitting on her dad's lap watching the Olympics on TV has already been remarked upon.

Summers, who is the director of the National Economic Council, the White House office that coördinates all economic policy in the Obama Administration, has rarely travelled outside Washington this year, and was in Detroit on a fact-finding mission....

Larry Summers, one of the most brilliant economists of his generation, left Washington nine years ago as an outgoing Treasury Secretary celebrated for having helped to create the boom of the nineteen-nineties. Harvard quickly hired him as president of the university, in 2001, and he arrived with an ambitious agenda that included increasing financial aid, placing a bigger emphasis on science, pushing faculty to spend more time teaching undergraduates, and continuing the expansion of Harvard into the Allston area of Boston. But five years later he was gone, forced out by a faculty that had lost confidence in him after a series of controversies, beginning with a dispute with Cornel West, a professor of Afro-American studies, and ending with comments that Summers had made about women faculty in the sciences. The problems stemmed from the blunt, sometimes arrogant manner for which he had been known throughout his career.

...Summers found himself in the office of Detroit’s mayor, Dave Bing, meeting with executives from auto-parts suppliers. Everyone gathered around a large circular table...

Summers opened with a tone of skepticism: The future of activist government was at stake, he warned. If Obama’s programs wasted money, they would discredit progressivism itself...

Summers looked exhausted. The previous day, he hadn’t left the White House until after midnight, and he was up at dawn to make the flight to Detroit. As Granholm talked about layoffs, he eyed a bottle of soda on the table in front of her. Summers drinks many Diet Cokes a day, and he was badly in need of one. He got up, his shirttails peeking out from underneath his jacket, and shuffled over to a counter at the side of the room in search of a caffeinated beverage. All he found was an empty glass, which he carried back to his seat. The manufacturers took turns explaining their plight...

As they spoke, Summers caught Granholm’s attention and mimed a request for some of her soda. She moved the bottle closer to him, smiling. He drank quickly, but it didn’t help. He shifted his weight in his chair. He made jerky, shaking motions with his head. He ran a hand through his hair. Still, by the time Mario Sciberras, of Saline Lectronics, was speaking about what he would do with one of the new loans, Summers was asleep.

This is something of a habit: he has fallen asleep in two public meetings—and, reportedly, one private meeting—with the President this year.

Horrible. The images of the bloated, undead, sleep deprived, diet-Coke soaked Summers listening to the American economy with his politically dead ears and acting on it with his fractured intellect are nothing short of grisly.

But he just keeps coming. Sometimes it seems as though nature has declared that the descent of Larry Summers' last end is destined to take a form something like THIS.

I don't know why your friend started with the comment "Horrible" in regards to the Larry Summers article. Summers himself said that failure of Obama's policies would discredit progressivism itself. And then he promptly fell asleep. He's my new hero!

One of my personal dreams is that we should have a public health insurance option. To tell you the truth, this was not on my list at the beginning of 2009. But so many really irritating people have been announcing that a public option is impossible/wrong/possibly treasonous that now I yearn for it night and day.

"I honestly don't know why the article became such a lightning rod," says John Mackey, CEO and founder of Whole Foods Market Inc., as he tries to explain the firestorm caused by his August op-ed on these pages opposing government-run health care. "I think a lot of people who got angry haven't read what I actually wrote. There was a lot of emotional reaction—fear and anger. I just wanted to get people to think about whether there was a better way to reform the system."

...Yet his now famous op-ed incited a boycott of Whole Foods by some of his left-wing customers. His piece advised that "the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us closer to a complete government takeover of our health-care system." Free-market groups retaliated with a "buy-cott," encouraging people to purchase more groceries at Whole Foods.

Why did he write the piece in the first place?

"President Obama called for constructive suggestions for health-care reform," he explains. "I took him at his word." Mr. Mackey continues: "It just seems to me there are some fundamental reforms that we've adopted at Whole Foods that would make health care much more affordable for the uninsured."

"The sort of rock-star-making-history thing had its peak," ...Barack-in-the-Box creator Heather Courtney...said. "It seemed like people said 'That's all done now, let's get down to business.'"

...Not so, says another souvenir store manager in Washington, where 80 percent of the merchandise is still all Obama. The "Inaugural Superstore" was supposed to be a temporary fixture on 7th Street but stayed open indefinitely because sales remained strong.

Some of the more irreverent shirts sell best, said manager Aisha Williams. There's the "Obama is my Home Boy" shirts or Obama as "The Soul Brotha," fashioned after "The Godfather" movie poster. Obama condoms come with the message "Hope is Not a Form of Protection."

"It's a different vibe," she said. "We get a lot of overseas tourists, and they're not concerned with his popularity."

... That's been the biggest shift in Obama merchandising _ the rise of anti-Obama sales in recent months.