Brooklyn Ron

Wall Street, Schmall Street. What About Around the Corner? Listen in.

 [Image: seen on Gowanus Lounge site.]

A trip down the block reveals the immediacy of the financial crisis and shows how local the crisis is.

One thing we can do is Buy Local. Merchants and business leaders are calling on all to convert Black Friday to Brooklyn Friday.

Listen (by clicking dark arrow on left side of rectangular image:)

Wall Street's Downscale Values: Dow Dips as Barack Vows Help for Homeowners and Jobless

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped a hundred points while Barack Obama spoke of his plans to help the struggling middle class, pinched homeowners and the unemployed.

It was one of the strangest things in the history of modern television, to see sidebar images of the Dow sliding downward while Obama addressed the media, all on the same screen.

It was Obama's first press conference since his history-making election to the presidency.

Obama did not make shameless appeals to the dice-rollers of Wall Street, as George W. Bush did over the past couple of months, clearly trying to appease The Street with his offer of a trillion dollars, no strings attached.

You did not have to read between the lines to understand that Obama wants to attach some strings, in the form of loans and jobs that will feed those who do not live off investments.

That kind of thinking -- that kind of talk about investing in education and green projects to provide jobs for the jobless -- bores some Wall Streeters, and makes other Streeters angry. They pull their money back and the Dow drops.

What Wall Street wants is bucks invested in banks, no strings attached at all, no demands for limiting the Street's unseemly bonuses.

No, their desire in life is money, more money than you can shake a stick at.

There are many in country, however, who are only waiting for Justice to some day begin prosecuting those who wreaked this havoc on the country and the world, to begin prosecuting the criminals who hustled homeowners and honest investors out of their modest accounts and their modest American dreams.

Re Eliot Spitzer: Let Us Now Praise Infamous Men

So now it's finally decided that Eliot Spitzer will not be prosecuted for his fling with a prostitute.

Welcome to the 21st Century.

But the former governor's demise brings to mind the glory that was once his and cannot be forgotten.

Spitzer, back when he was state Attorney General, stood up, virtually alone, to Wall Street and to the predatory lenders that were victimizing vulnerable homeowners in the state and driving them into foreclosure.

If there's any current or former official who should be praised for recognizing and taking action against the greedy bandits of Wall Street, it is Eliot Spitzer.

Character flaw, character schmaw. We know that Spitzer had hubris galore, that he was like a spoiled prince given reign too soon over the kingdom of York.

But to mix a metaphor, let's give credit where credit is due. He saw what others did not. He took action when others did not.

We should remember also that the feds clamped down on Sptizer pretty quickly, assuring he would go no further in his pursuit of Wall St. malfeasors and financial abusers of elderly homeowners.

And the clamper in chief, who would be George W. Bush, continued to allow Wall St. to run roughshod over the territory; as Spitzer fell low, Wall St. chortled gleefully and openly at his demise.

The rest, as they say, is history, a sad history of a nation made to suffer from Wall St.'s unchecked offenses.

Here's a modest proposal, bellowed to Barack Obama, that surely will fly as high as a recently-born, innocent bird:

Let's make Eliot Spitzer Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, as we hold the stones and put personal shortcomings in proper perspective.

[Note: the above is a Getty image and can be viewed on a Business Week website.]

Explaining Economy, Bush Shows Ignorance That Astounds and Frightens

When I heard President Bush's first words on the tube, I was so stunned that I immediately turned away from the care-giving task that should have demanded my full attention.

Fortunately the object of my interrupted care giving survived without any pain, trauma or -- for that matter -- any awareness that my mind had wandered to the idiot on the screen.

I wish I could say the same for the country, that it has not suffered because of the idiocy of this president who I used to think was pretending when he sounded like an uneducated spurner of things wise or well phrased.

Here's Bush introducing his remarks about his planned ka-billion dollar bail-out of the money bundlers, telling us why he decided to "act and act boldly."

Brace yourselves:

"It turns out that there's a lot of interlinks throughout the financial system. The system had grown to a point where a lot of people were dependent upon each other. And that the collapse of one part of the system wouldn't just affect a part of the financial markets. It would affect the average citizen."

I heard this and was stunned that the leader of the free world could sound so uninformed and simple minded, like a Candide whose stupidity by its very boldness can wreak havoc on millions around the globe.

Countless Americans who consider themselves weak on the basics of the economy would be embarrassed to give remarks like that; they would do anything -- sacrifice all sleep and comfort -- to study and consult and think, in order to avoid sounding so sophomoric and, really, moronic.

I shudder as I ponder the implications of the reality that underlies all this: that this man was voted into his high office by a majority of the American people.

Well, you know what I mean.

[photo is by AP's Pablo Martinez Monsivais.]