The New York Observer » Michael M. Thomas

Panic in Detroit

Let's talk Detroit for just a minute.

Forget the brouhaha the media have blown up around the head of "car czar" Steven Rattner. It doesn't bother me and shouldn't bother you. He happens to be one of those people it's too easy to dislike on principle: (a) because he's so obviously on the Read More

A Claptrap to Lure the Groundlings

This seems like a good time to step back and see where we are and how we got that way.

In last Sunday’s Times, William Cohan and Sandy Lewis laid out a very convincing debunking of what many people with a grain of common sense and market experience believe to be a rosy propaganda barrage Read More

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of the Great Giveaway

I think we have to be realistic. The people who brought us this mess, beginning with the failure of securitized loans that led to a credit crisis that has culminated in general economic conditions that are proving dire for a great many people around the world and in this country, those people … well, they’re Read More

The Great Geithner Giveaway, Part II

For today’s sermon, let us return to the always popular subject, Your Dollars and Mine at Work and Play. I doubt that 1 in 10,000 of We the Taxpayers (and 0 in 535 on Capitol Hill) has a grasp of what has really been going on in the Great Geithner Giveaway, so let me lay Read More

Friendship in the Land of Lost Content

The lengthy lead story about Lehman Brothers in the Business section of last Sunday’s Times appeared to confirm a theory I’ve been trying to put across for some time now (including to some well-known Times business writers): namely, that Lehman’s portfolio of commercial real estate assets was the real problem at that firm. I laid Read More

Of Goldman, Geithner and Grifters

Last week I turned 73. In all that time (as it seems to me), I cannot recall seeing anything in a newspaper that filled me with as much disgust and outrage as this, which appeared on the front page of Sunday’s New York Times: “After Off Year, Wall Street Pay Is Bouncing Back.”

I brooded Read More

Yes, Virginia, There Is a Goldman Sachs

When one looks at the financial/economic mess, one cannot help but be moved and saddened by the “collateral damage,” as functionaries call innocent bystanders killed and maimed in a terrorist or counterterrorist assault. Among the victims, start with the people who owned good stocks in 401(k) and investment accounts who’ve seen their retirement accounts down Read More

Who Will Be Left Holding The Bag?

Unless I’m mistaken, it was only seven months ago that Lehman Brothers slipped beneath the waves and others of this great republic’s signature financial institutions were poised to follow—unless upwards of a trillion dollars in Public Capital were quickly transfused onto their balance sheets.

Now, suddenly, banks are talking about robust and satisfactory first-quarter profits Read More

Dance to the Music of Geithner

Let me begin this week’s sermon by quoting from myself, from a piece I wrote for Forbes.com last October:

“Most halfway educated people know about idiots savants, people who are dyslexic, autistic or otherwise gravely impaired by ‘normal’ cognitive and psychological metrics, but who can reel off complex algorithms and theorems or intuit great scientific Read More

Three Little Words Tell You Civilization Is Collapsing

Stupidity, obesity, and nudity have driven our beautiful society into the Read More

The Bear Facts

House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall StreetBy William D. CohanDoubleday, 468pp, $27.95

Four years ago, on a grayish morning in late May, I left my Brooklyn home and made my way to Central Synagogue on Manhattan’s East Side. I came thither to pay my last respects to Read More

My Own $2.5 Trillion Stimulus: $25,000 to Each Taxpayer: Three guys hatched it at Three Guys—it’s better than World War III!

A trillion here, a trillion there.

A trillion for TARP, a trillion for TALF.

Throw in what’s in the “stimulus” package and you’re probably at close to $3 trillion.

So why not simply distribute $25,000, tax free, to every U.S. taxpayer? There are Read More

Stop Whining About The Dirty Word: Nationalization Is Just Equity

In stringing together the daisy chain of flawed risk analysis in which we are now all entangled—I am reminded of poor daft garlanded Ophelia drifting downstream to her sorry end—no one played a more heinous part than the rating agencies. That they are still in business, let alone regarded as minimally credible, I find amazing, Read More

Why Didn’t Warren Buffett Blast Moody’s?

On Wall Street, and on parts elsewhere concerned with Wall Street, the non-news snows thick and fast. On last week’s Daily Beast, the engaging online “aggregator” edited by Tina Brown, Edward Jay Epstein wrote in revelatory dudgeon about the fact that Berkshire Hathaway owns roughly 20 percent of Moody’s. The big rating agency is certainly Read More

My Personal Tax Plan to Save the Economy

In 1992, a major New York publisher commissioned me to write a book that reflected my take on what was going on in the country. In 1993, I handed over a manuscript of approximately 200 pages titled The Overclass, because that’s what I thought the big problem would be: the emergence of a self-regarding elite Read More