Day Links

• "How the same people could excuse Slansky and the ‘doctor’s plot’ and at the same time carry on the Rosenberg campaign as they did calls for political psychiatry."

  Ronald Radosh quotes I. F. Stone from a long time ago, in the context of Morton Sobell's confession and the backfill now on the Left. Read the whole thing, right down to the last paragraph, where the stark implication should whack you in the head: facts don't matter to these people.
  
  This dynamic is in play right down to the present day. All you have to do is ask yourself why Ken Lay was on his way to jail when he died, and then place your bets on people like Jamie Gorelick or Christopher Dodd. Those people will live to ripe old ages and never even be handled roughly in the maimstream press, let alone see the inside of a cell.
  
  
• Jay Jardine links Colby Cosh on ethics:

  "So how many Caseys are out there, living on the edge in the American wilderness? If home lending practices were really as insane as he has demonstrated, using nothing but a head full of self-help nonsense and the guts of a burglar, how much abuse was perpetrated by bright people who really knew how to game the broken system? How much bad debt still remains to be purged, and how low can the bottom of the housing market be? No one can say: All one can do is tremble with dread for the fate of the republic."

  No government can build moral character in individuals. It can, however, foster and cultivate all the worst impulses in individuals. It is a hard thing to live rationally throughout a lifetime for the same reasons that it is always easier to destroy something -- or just let it go to natural ruin -- than to build something. All the natural entropic tendencies of the whole universe are also present in the character of individuals, as evidenced in the fact that it is a constant day-to-day endeavor to identify and move for values with the idea of holding them in order to preserve and enhance life. The wrong moment's slack can wreck the whole thing. In the ethical climate of this country now, it is probably the easiest thing in the world to let go of any remaining shreds of honorable sentiment and join the general slide into oblivion, all with the approving imprimatur of the United States Government, which for reasons beyond me is still ethically impressive to countless millions.
  
  
• I don't know about you, but I'm paying attention to Karl Denninger.
  
  
• Did you think that "packaged securities" was an advance in financials technology? Arnold Kling linked Tyler Cowen digging up a blog-name from the past: "Mindles H. Dreck" points out some of the rig behind the game.
  
  
• "A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money." Whether he ever actually said the thing in billions back in the day, I only wonder whether Senator Everett Dirksen would believe what it's all coming to.
  
  Historical perspective: I remember my father saying, during the Reagan years, that he believed that he would live to see the first two trillion-dollar federal budget.

New York In Black & White

Reader Greg sends along the link to this collection of old photographs of New York City.

I find the very first one splendid and heartbreaking all at once, now.