I was getting ready to go on CNN earlier today to talk about a story that’ll be in tomorrow’s dead-tree version of Time when I saw the breaking news about the DOJ and FBI busting 406 people, 60 of whom were arrested yesterday, for mortgage fraud. The denouement of the three-and-a-half-month-long “national takedown” dubbed Operation [...]

I vaguely recall the great Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969 (although I certainly didn’t remember that the initial blowout of Union Oil Platform A happened the day after my fifth birthday), and have more specific memories of getting tar on the bottom of my feet from walking on a Santa Barbara beach in the [...]

A reader from Texas writes, apropos of my column about Richard Rainwater’s decision to cash in his big bet on rising oil prices: My guess is Rainwater has always known how his $300m bet was going to turn into $3.5billion. Not because he’s the greatest investor or speculator of all time. He has no crystal [...]

I’m sitting here listening to Lehman Brothers executives explain how they lost $2.8 billion in the last quarter, and pledge not to do it again. CEO Dick Fuld started off the conference call a half-apologetic, half-gung-ho little speech, which I found entirely comprehensible. But then Fuld mentioned that he’d heard investors and analysts ask for [...]

I’m going to be on CNN’s Your $$$$$ this weekend (it airs Saturday at 1 p.m. ET and Sunday at 3 p.m.) talking with Ali Velshi and John Rutledge about the economy and the presidential campaign. Rutledge is what I’d call a legit supply-sider, a guy who believes fervently that low taxes on capital are [...]

You’ve (maybe) read the first draft. Now the not-all-that-different rewrite is in the issue of Time with the fat kid on the cover and online here. It begins: When Barack Obama says a John McCain Administration would amount to a third term of George W. Bush, he’s not just blowing smoke, especially when it comes [...]

An alert friend has called my attention to the fact that I was quoted, by name (!), in what appears to be the lead editorial in today’s Anniston Star. The Star is a small but venerated Alabama newspaper that has over the years employed the likes of Jim Yardley, Robin DeMonia, Seth Lipsky, Adam Nossiter [...]

LA Times columnist TJ Simers interrogates Phil Jackson before Game 3: “I believe you’re getting paid $10 million for moments like this,” I said at his pre-game news conference. “How would you even know that stuff?” he replied. “You’re not the IRS.” “Is it more than that?” “Do I ask information about you?” Jackson said. [...]

The addition of Jason Furman to Barack Obama’s economic team has gotten some attention. Furman was John Kerry’s economics spokesguy in 2004, but more to the point he’s about as centrist as centrist Democrats come, thinks Wal-Mart is swell, and is a protege of Bob Rubin. So I figure it’s worth mentioning that, during the [...]