Brooklyn in Between

Spring comes
in small doses
Like the twinkling of sunset
on the water
or the indigo in the sky
at the end of night

--Brooklyn Beat

The Promenade was jammed yesterday. Cadman Plaza Park filled with strollers, kids playing in shirt sleeves, and Lawyers in Love.

But the winds of change shift, as Brooklyn traverses seasons, a warm sciroco one minute, blending with winter chill. Things will settle, and there will be more winter this weekend, but in the distance we can tell in these intermediate moments, of the inexorable march toward spring.

19th Century Men: Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln, Born February 12, 1809

Charles Darwin: A visionary theorist who studied and advanced the unique scientific concept of evolution, that broke new ground in the study of life and biology, and, not insignificantly, cast aside the Biblical view of the genesis of life.

Charles Robert Darwin FRS (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist[I] who realised and demonstrated that all species of life have evolved over time from common ancestors through the process he called natural selection. The fact that evolution occurs became accepted by the scientific community and much of the general public in his lifetime, while his theory of natural selection came to be widely seen as the primary explanation of the process of evolution in the 1930s,[1] and now forms the basis of modern evolutionary theory. In modified form, Darwin’s scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, providing logical explanation for the diversity of life.[2]

At Edinburgh University Darwin neglected medical studies to investigate marine invertebrates, then the University of Cambridge encouraged a passion for natural science.[3] His five-year voyage on HMS Beagle established him as an eminent geologist whose observations and theories supported Charles Lyell’s uniformitarian ideas, and publication of his journal of the voyage made him famous as a popular author. Puzzled by the geographical distribution of wildlife and fossils he collected on the voyage, Darwin investigated the transmutation of species and conceived his theory of natural selection in 1838.[4] Although he discussed his ideas with several naturalists, he needed time for extensive research and his geological work had priority.[5] He was writing up his theory in 1858 when Alfred Russel Wallace sent him an essay which described the same idea, prompting immediate joint publication of both of their theories.[6]

Biography here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin

Abraham Lincoln: A 19th century man. Complex, perhaps in a more modern way, brilliant and homespun, a remarkable writer and political leader and executive. Despite the myth and the flawed humanity revealed by modern historians, he took enormous risks and made the supreme personal sacrifice in order to preserve the Union, end slavery, and ensure the continuation of the grand experiment that is the American Republic. -- Brooklyn Beat

Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th President of the United States. He successfully led the country through its greatest internal crisis, the American Civil War, preserving the Union and ending slavery. As the war was drawing to a close, Lincoln became the first American president to be assassinated. Before his election in 1860 as the first Republican president, Lincoln had been a lawyer, an Illinois state legislator, a member of the United States House of Representatives, and twice an unsuccessful candidate for election to the Senate.

Biography here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln

Economic Maelstrom: "When you are out there getting the honey..You don't go killing all the bees"

Too dreadful to contemplate, but the question is already being asked, by Martin Wolf of Financial Times: Has the new administration's effort at reversing the economic collapse already failed? Details on the problem, and possible solutions not being taken at present...yet:

Why Obama’s new Tarp will fail to rescue the banks
By Martin Wolf

Has Barack Obama’s presidency already failed? In normal times, this would be a ludicrous question. But these are not normal times. They are times of great danger. Today, the new US administration can disown responsibility for its inheritance; tomorrow, it will own it. Today, it can offer solutions; tomorrow it will have become the problem. Today, it is in control of events; tomorrow, events will take control of it. Doing too little is now far riskier than doing too much. If he fails to act decisively, the president risks being overwhelmed, like his predecessor. The costs to the US and the world of another failed presidency do not bear contemplating.
What is needed? The answer is: focus and ferocity. If Mr Obama does not fix this crisis, all he hopes from his presidency will be lost. If he does, he can reshape the agenda. Hoping for the best is foolish. He should expect the worst and act accordingly.

Yet hoping for the best is what one sees in the stimulus programme and – so far as I can judge from Tuesday’s sketchy announcement by Tim Geithner, Treasury secretary – also in the new plans for fixing the banking system. I commented on the former last week. I would merely add that it is extraordinary that a popular new president, confronting a once-in-80-years’ economic crisis, has let Congress shape the outcome.

The banking programme seems to be yet another child of the failed interventions of the past one and a half years: optimistic and indecisive. If this “progeny of the troubled asset relief programme” fails, Mr Obama’s credibility will be ruined. Now is the time for action that seems close to certain to resolve the problem; this, however, does not seem to be it.

All along two contrasting views have been held on what ails the financial system. The first is that this is essentially a panic. The second is that this is a problem of insolvency.

Under the first view, the prices of a defined set of “toxic assets” have been driven below their long-run value and in some cases have become impossible to sell. The solution, many suggest, is for governments to make a market, buy assets or insure banks against losses. This was the rationale for the original Tarp and the “super-SIV (special investment vehicle)” proposed by Henry (Hank) Paulson, the previous Treasury secretary, in 2007.

Under the second view, a sizeable proportion of financial institutions are insolvent: their assets are, under plausible assumptions, worth less than their liabilities. The International Monetary Fund argues that potential losses on US-originated credit assets alone are now $2,200bn (€1,700bn, £1,500bn), up from $1,400bn just last October. This is almost identical to the latest estimates from Goldman Sachs. In recent comments to the Financial Times, Nouriel Roubini of RGE Monitor and the Stern School of New York University estimates peak losses on US-generated assets at $3,600bn. Fortunately for the US, half of these losses will fall abroad. But, the rest of the world will strike back: as the world economy implodes, huge losses abroad – on sovereign, housing and corporate debt – will surely fall on US institutions, with dire effects.

Personally, I have little doubt that the second view is correct and, as the world economy deteriorates, will become ever more so. But this is not the heart of the matter. That is whether, in the presence of such uncertainty, it can be right to base policy on hoping for the best. The answer is clear: rational policymakers must assume the worst. If this proved pessimistic, they would end up with an over-capitalised financial system. If the optimistic choice turned out to be wrong, they would have zombie banks and a discredited government. This choice is surely a “no brainer”.

The new plan seems to make sense if and only if the principal problem is illiquidity. Offering guarantees and buying some portion of the toxic assets, while limiting new capital injections to less than the $350bn left in the Tarp, cannot deal with the insolvency problem identified by informed observers. Indeed, any toxic asset purchase or guarantee programme must be an ineffective, inefficient and inequitable way to rescue inadequately capitalised financial institutions: ineffective, because the government must buy vast amounts of doubtful assets at excessive prices or provide over-generous guarantees, to render insolvent banks solvent; inefficient, because big capital injections or conversion of debt into equity are better ways to recapitalise banks; and inequitable, because big subsidies would go to failed institutions and private buyers of bad assets.

Why then is the administration making what appears to be a blunder? It may be that it is hoping for the best. But it also seems it has set itself the wrong question. It has not asked what needs to be done to be sure of a solution. It has asked itself, instead, what is the best it can do given three arbitrary, self-imposed constraints: no nationalisation; no losses for bondholders; and no more money from Congress. Yet why does a new administration, confronting a huge crisis, not try to change the terms of debate? This timidity is depressing. Trying to make up for this mistake by imposing pettifogging conditions on assisted institutions is more likely to compound the error than to reduce it.

Assume that the problem is insolvency and the modest market value of US commercial banks (about $400bn) derives from government support (see charts). Assume, too, that it is impossible to raise large amounts of private capital today. Then there has to be recapitalisation in one of the two ways indicated above. Both have disadvantages: government recapitalisation is a bail-out of creditors and involves temporary state administration; debt-for-equity swaps would damage bond markets, insurance companies and pension funds. But the choice is inescapable.

If Mr Geithner or Lawrence Summers, head of the national economic council, were advising the US as a foreign country, they would point this out, brutally. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, IMF managing director, said the same thing, very gently, in Malaysia last Saturday.

The correct advice remains the one the US gave the Japanese and others during the 1990s: admit reality, restructure banks and, above all, slay zombie institutions at once. It is an important, but secondary, question whether the right answer is to create new “good banks”, leaving old bad banks to perish, as my colleague, Willem Buiter, recommends, or new “bad banks”, leaving cleansed old banks to survive. I also am inclined to the former, because the culture of the old banks seems so toxic.

By asking the wrong question, Mr Obama is taking a huge gamble. He should have resolved to cleanse these Augean banking stables. He needs to rethink, if it is not already too late.

On Good Banks and Bad Banks and what to do about them: http://blogs.ft.com/maverecon/2009/02/good-banknew-bank-vs-bad-bank-a-rare-example-of-a-no-brainer/

The full Martin Wolf article here with charts and data: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9ebea1b8-f794-11dd-81f7-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1

February, the Cruelest Month?: Economic Blues

OK, the inauguration was last month. Job losses increasing. Market and home prices continue to fall/barely hanging on. The Super Bowl, replete with Bruce Springsteen and a fourth quarter wrestling match between the West and the Rust Belt, hampered by by economic blues. Change. Check. Post-party governance. Nope. Hope. Ch....eck, for now. Ya gotta believe.

Printing The NYT Costs Twice As Much As Sending Every Subscriber A Free Kindle
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2009/1/printing-the-nyt-costs-twice-as-much-as-sending-every-subscriber-a-free-kindle

Quo Vadis: Salaries, Jobs, and Equity.
The NY TIMES article on "The Big Fix" was interesting until it ridiculously equated "Big Oil" "COAL" "WALL STREET" and "Teachers Unions" as issues that need to be addressed (i.e., tamed) before the economy can be "fixed". A different article, on another issue entirely,seems to address the absurdity of this position, and the entire issue of wealth, greed, and the workplace. Huge salaries to hire "The Best"?
Howard Jacobson: You can never get enough sex, but you can have too much money
Society will always be unjust. The question is how great we can bear the disparity to be

The weakest argument made for excessive earnings is that only by offering a fortune do you attract the right person. It should always have been obvious that that's a truism which proves its very opposite. If it's only the fortune that makes the job suitable for the man then the man is by definition unsuitable for the job. Even banking – the one place where the rapacity criterion might have applied – has proved that. The greedy, we now know, are not even good at greed. And were it true that we must pay the most to get the best, why do we argue differently when it comes to the jobs we prize above all others? Let teachers or nurses strike for half a day to improve their pittance and they are accused of irresponsibility and greed, of not honouring the sacred codes of selflessness we associate with their professions. Here the very opposite to the avarice principle prevails: we pay the least to get the best.
A sentimental assumption about job satisfaction underlies this double thinking. Teachers and nurses, we say, do what they do because they love to do it; for them the calling is its own remuneration. (An assumption that doesn't look the other way, with our pitying the poor banker for whom the only relief from the grinding unrewardingness of his job is the prospect of a seven-figure bonus.) But however true it is that the best of what we do we do because we choose to, and let money come or let it not, extreme inequalities in pay must create discontent. Society will always be unjust – not only unequal but undiscriminating – in its distribution of rewards. The question is how great we can bear the disparity to be; and when a banker gets more in his Christmas box than the entire annual teaching salary of a failing inner-city comprehensive – though not so failing as the banker's bank – we have passed the point of tolerance. I might have tried to calculate how many undernourished children could be fed with the money the average Premier League footballer earns every time he misses a penalty, but we indulge footballers. Like rock stars and actresses they get us through the grey days of life in an innocent reverie of emulation, which is I suppose preferable to envy.

Article here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/howard-jacobson/howard-jacobson-you-can-never-get-enough-sex-but-you-can-have-too-much-money-1521706.html

The Next Paradigm Shift?: Toward a New Political Economic Model

The last paradigm shift in our political economy was one away from government and toward market driven.

According to author Daniel Yergin, and other analysts and solons at the Davos-fest, who mapped the shift to market driven, we may be heading to a more European model. Since "welfare" has developed such a negative connotation, perhaps we need to coin a new term to replace "welfare state": one pundit mentions "the social state"; how about "The Humane State" ? Or better yet, "The Sane State"?

Is Europe's welfare system a model for the 21st century?
By Katrin Bennhold

Tuesday, January 27, 2009
DAVOS, Switzerland: Along with skiing and partying into the night, Europe-bashing has long been a favorite sport, whenever the world's business and political elite gather here for their once-a-year winter schmoozefest.

But this year many of the critics have fallen conspicuously silent. As top executives, government leaders and a wide range of experts gathered Tuesday for the weeklong World Economic Forum to talk about the challenges facing the battered global economy, the question many were asking was this: Could Europe's much-reviled social welfare system actually end up being the model for the 21st century world?

In the United States, the global stock market rout has wiped out trillions of dollars in retirement savings and rising unemployment is leaving more people without health insurance. In response, officials of the new administration of President Barack Obama have been busy studying the Swedish bank bailout of the 1990s and the Swiss and Dutch health care systems and have been quietly contemplating whether Europe's high fuel taxes and carbon trading system are the right way to limit the burning of fossil fuels that contributes to global warming.

In China, where the demise of the American consumer has exposed the perils of excessive savings at home, the government has not only recently proffered a big Keynesian-style stimulus program but has also just announced a three-year plan to provide universal health care. Though modest by comparison, China's health care plan goes in the direction of what has long been considered a fundamental right in Europe.
"When the world's biggest economy and the world's biggest emerging economy look for lessons in the same place at the same time, you know something is up," said Kenneth Rogoff, a professor at Harvard University and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, who is one of the 2,500 participants in Davos this year. "We are seeing a paradigm shift towards a more European, a more social state."

Such shifts are rare.

The Depression of the 1930s eventually ushered in Keynesian demand-side policies and, after a devastating world war, firmly established the need for some sort of welfare state in every major industrial democracy.

The oil price shocks of the 1970s and a wave of inflation helped turn the governing approach in the other direction, empowering Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and other advocates of lower taxes, smaller government and deregulation.

A year ago, at the opening of the 2008 World Economic Forum, a front-page article in the International Herald Tribune suggested that global capitalism was again ripe for such a generational transformation. Amid the worst financial crisis since the Depression, that transformation is now in full swing.

With whole swaths of the banking sector being propped up by trillions of dollars in taxpayer funds and hundreds of billions more being dedicated to deficit-financed public spending programs across the world, the most striking feature so far is the comeback of big government.
The the full article from today's International Herald Tribune appears here:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/27/business/27shift-416683.php

Building the Great Society 2

It has seemed clear, to me at least, from early on in the Bush administration, as the country began its general social gravitation toward the New Pharaoh - The Corporation, and away from Government as a necessary social -political institution and function of a democratic society, that things, no matter how badly, how relentlessly market-driven, and capital-motivated they become, will eventually go so far to the right that some kind of correction would be inevitable. Well, that day has come. Even under the Clinton Administration, government was viewed as Too Damn Big. The 44th President of the US seems less concerned about whether government is Big or small, just that it is effective.

As we take a deep breath and we, and the administration, sees where this amazing moment in our nation's history takes us, let's step back a minute and reflect on the Thoughts of that Pre-eminent Philosopher of the 1960s, whose overall success was tainted by the debacle of the Viet Nam War, but whose efforts in pressing Civil Rights legislation and using government as a tool to build a Great Society cannot now be underestimated. Although he is less heralded and less admired than JFK, or Lincoln, his efforts in supporting civil rights legislation, education and social programs in the 60s, have to be viewed as having a direct impact upon January 20, 2009:

Did you ever think that making a speech on economics is a lot like pissing down your leg? It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else.
Lyndon B. Johnson

No member of our generation who wasn't a Communist or a dropout in the thirties is worth a damn.
Lyndon B. Johnson

The CIA is made up of boys whose families sent them to Princeton but wouldn't let them into the family brokerage business.
Lyndon B. Johnson

The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure.
Lyndon B. Johnson

We have entered an age in which education is not just a luxury permitting some men an advantage over others. It has become a necessity without which a person is defenseless in this complex, industrialized society. We have truly entered the century of the educated man.
Lyndon B. Johnson

This administration here and now declares unconditional war on poverty.
Lyndon B. Johnson

Only two things are necessary to keep one's wife happy. One is to let her think she is having her own way, and the other is to let her have it.
Lyndon B. Johnson


We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. It is time now to write the next chapter - and to write it in the books of law.
Lyndon B. Johnson

We have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.
Lyndon B. Johnson

We live in a world that has narrowed into a neighborhood before it has broadened into a brotherhood.
Lyndon B. Johnson

We must open the doors of opportunity. But we must also equip our people to walk through those doors.
Lyndon B. Johnson

There are no problems we cannot solve together, and very few that we can solve by ourselves.
Lyndon B. Johnson

Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.
Lyndon B. Johnson

If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: "President Can't Swim."
Lyndon B. Johnson


Finally, I have a copy of "Quotations from Chairman Lyndon," a takeoff of course on the "Quotations of Chairman Mao." The little red book, which features LBJ in a Mao jacket on the cover, was published as a satire since, at the time, LBJ had a bit of what we know today as "W" in him---that Texas folk wisdom and mistrust for intellectuals. But in some ways, his work was prescient, so let's remember one last quote:

If the American people don't love me, their descendants will.
Lyndon B. Johnson


--Brooklyn Beat

'To Repel Ghosts' ('Fantasmi da scacciare'): Jean-Michel Basquiat in Rome

Jean-Michel Basquiat; Firenze 1985; Photo © Michael Halsband



Self portrait (Plaid), 1983
Acrylic and paper on panel
Thaddaeus Ropac Collection
Salzburg - Paris

'To Repel Ghosts' ('Fantasmi da scacciare'): Jean-Michel Basquiat in Rome
The MemmoFoundation in Palazzo Ruspoli, Via Del Corso. Through February 1, 2009.If there is any city that can make you believe in ghosts, that is, in the continuity of spiritual existence after death, it would have to be Rome. Besides the remarkable antiquity everywhere, of a city with roots back to 753 BCE (although historians believe it may have been closer to 625 BCE), ancient structures and fragments of structures, there are physical relics of Saints and Popes and Clergy everywhere, literally mounted on the walls or under the altars of churches (chiese), dating back to the Renaissance and earlier. There is even a "Museum of the Souls in Purgatory" on the lungo Tevere, containing objects or photos of objects that show "tangible traces" of apparitions made by various souls in Purgatory to those left behind on earth, including hand or fingerprints on book pages, wooden boards or articles of clothing from Belgium, France, Germany and Italy.

Therefore, maybe that is what makes the exhibit, "Fantasmi da scacciare," To Repel Ghosts, of work by Jean Michel Basquiat at the Palazzo Ruspoli, so fascinating and provocative here. This isn't the enormous Brooklyn Museum retrospective of 2005, which presented every aspect of the Brooklyn-born artist's career in deep focus. Here, Basquiat's work is limited to about 40+ wonderfully chosen pieces, including some created in collaboration with Andy Warhol and Francesco Clemente, more than ten works being exhibited for the first time and 5 previously unpublished photographs by Michael Halsband.

Selection of works from the exhibition: http://www.fondazionememmo.it/nuovo_sito/eng/incorso/gallery_incorso/gallery_04.asp
The work, curated by Olivier Berggruen, Associate Curator, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, is beautifully presented here. The soft grey, not white, gallery walls, cause the stark blackness of the "SAMO" images, as well as the Mediterranean blues and blood reds of other works here, to stand out in beautiful relief.

As the catalog by Olivier Berggruen and Francesco Pellizzi notes: "The artist affirms his presence through the evocation of fragments, as a way of “repelling ghosts”, a favorite phrase of his that appears in at least three paintings. The eerie presence of zombie-like creatures that appear to be coming back from the dead, the remnants of writing, sometimes erased, sometimes ‘etched’ into the canvas with unequalled force: these affirm Basquiat’s peculiar situation in which he tried to bridge the abyss between the evanescence of life and its affirmation through the painter’s gesture."

The exhibit includes "Eroica II" and other richly text-imbued works that seem to channel the artist's affinity for Gnostic wisdom and secret language, transcending graffito, and linking the streets of Brooklyn and the Lower East Side, circa 1980s, until his untimely death in 1988, with those of Rome in the 21st century, at once backward looking and forward gazing. Transgressing boundaries of "high" and "low" art, "life", "death", and most of all, notions of "beauty" and "aesthetics."

The Memmo Foundation at the Palazzo Ruspoli: http://www.fondazionememmo.com/
--Brooklyn Beat

Brooklyn Ever-green

Settling back into the New York groove can be a trying undertaking. Despite the rain and wind, I decided to get out of the office for a few minutes and take a brisk, long walk down toward the water and back. After a couple of weeks in bella Roma it sure wasn't a walk along the Lungo Tevere to Trastevere or across via Tomacelli to Vatican City, but for now it would have to do.

Still, NYC always throws one a surprise. Whether it was the late trash pickup because of the inclement weather or if there is a scheduled date for tree pickup, Joralemon Street was imbued with the heavy scent of pine. From Clinton almost down to Furman, a long train of evergreens, stripped of decorations and tinsel, lined Joralemon, outside of nearly every home. On one, the remnants of a popcorn and cranberry garland. The big evergreen in our back yard in Flatbush is vibrant and pretty but more olfactorily neutral. Here, the discarded trees made the winter air surprisingly fragrant, dotted by the cold rain, for this brisk afternoon walk, more restorative than purposeful. Walking and thinking of how it was in Rome and how it is in NYC. But aided in the effort to Be Here Now by the aromatic remnants of a Christmas (so recently) past.

--Brooklyn Beat

Roman Daze: "Oh, to Be Back in the Land of Coca-Cola"

The Piazza Di Spagna, the Spanish Steps. December 2008 - January 2009. Featuring the "Light of Freedom" (memorializing the victims of kidnapping everywhere). Photo - Brooklyn Beat

Back from the Eternal City. Savoring the memories and experiences of traveling with My Better Half and our four kids (13x2, 17 and 20). Meeting our daughter who is studying in Urbino for the year. We stayed in an apartment near the Spanish Steps, walking all over the city. Seeing the antiquities and the art, old and new. Shopping in the supermercati with the Romans, making and enjoying family meals together, talking the train to Napoli and Pompei down the coast. Jean Michel Basquiat exhibit. Visiting the Jewish Ghetto (geto), seeing the Great Synagogue and the Portico d'Ottavio, and talking with the Italian - Jews there. Attending midnight Mass on Christmas at the Chiese di San Ambrogio e Charles for the experience. New Years eve, crazy fireworks. Watching The Godfather 2 in dubbed Italian. Shopping. Seeing a new world and returning to a familiar one with a different perspective.

On our last day, on the via del Corso, this tune popped into my head and now I see I will never shake it...

When I Paint My Masterpiece

Oh, the streets of Rome are filled with rubble,
Ancient footprints are everywhere.
You can almost think that you're seein' double
On a cold, dark night on the Spanish Stairs.
Got to hurry on back to my hotel room,
Where I've got me a date with Botticelli's niece.
She promised that she'd be right there with me
When I paint my masterpiece.
Oh, the hours I've spent inside the Coliseum,
Dodging lions and wastin' time.
Oh, those mighty kings of the jungle, I could hardly stand to see 'em,
Yes, it sure has been a long, hard climb.
Train wheels runnin' through the back of my memory,
When I ran on the hilltop following a pack of wild geese.
Someday, everything is gonna be smooth like a rhapsody
When I paint my masterpiece.

Sailin' 'round the world in a dirty gondola.
Oh, to be back in the land of Coca-Cola!

I left Rome and landed in Brussels,
On a plane ride so bumpy that I almost cried.
Clergymen in uniform and young girls pullin' muscles,
Everyone was there to greet me when I stepped inside.
Newspapermen eating candy
Had to be held down by big police.
Someday, everything is gonna be diff'rent
When I paint my masterpiece.

-Bob Dylan

Copyright ©1971 Big Sky Music

"Auguri! " and Happy New Year..from Rome

The Piaza di Spagna --The Spanish Steps -- now jammed with holiday revelers. The flower and keychain and handbag salesguys now have tables covered with bottles of beer, wine, champagne, foccaccia, sandwiches, an other goodies for sale. Most drinking here seems to occur with meals, so public drunkeness is rare and frowned upon. Tonight, drinkers are everywhere, as are fireworks. The Spanish Steps, still alight with the Christmassy "Light of Freedom" in honor of the victims of kidnapping worldwide, are filled with revelers wearing blinking light headgear and other paraphernalia..

After visiting the Steps we returned to our apartment to celebrate the New Year together. At midnight, the fireworks started. Explosions, lights, and sparkling all over this wonderful, crazy city. Strangers wishing each other "Auguri" which translates somewhere between "good luck, "good fortune" and "congratulations." Like wishing a good "augur" of future fate and fortune. THis city is at once enormously religious and pagan at the same time. A crowd of uniformed high ranking polizia and carbineri officials hurried down the street accompanying a city official in a suit. But the crowd drinking and shooting fireworks received no comment. New Years in Rome, We are together again as a family, so far from New York, but after a couple of weeks, beginning to feel strangely at home ere.

It is New Years in Rome. The eternal city ticks off another year. Happy New Year ! Auguri !

DEEP IN THE HEART OF......ROMA

After a 7.5 hour flight spent in the grueling, velvet confines of business class due to an unexpected upgrade, we landed at Fiumicino AIrport in the Eternal City. Saturday, our first day in Rome. The first signs that we are in this 2000 year old city, long-time home to Roman Catholicism, are the young Roman women, dressed up like Santa Claus, in short red skirts, on roller skates, handing out marketing brochures for Rome's Christmas festivities. The Santa hat is a popular accoutrement here. Babies and young children are not. Neither are Ipods evident as they are in NYC.

Cypress and Palm trees on the way from the airport remind us that we are on another continent, on the Mediterranean Sea. Although the palm trees are mindful of oceanfront properties in the southern US, the fantastic proximity of so much antiquity, dating back to 735 BCE , quickly reminds us that we are not in Miami Beach. Saturday night, the Piazza di Spagna , jammed with tourists, seeing and being seen...

On the terrace, seeing stars under a new sky. The sky one has dreamed of, pure, like a blue light reflected in a window. We are here with our children, visiting our older daughter who we haven't seen since September. Here we are, all of us together, under the Roman sky....

WINTER SCENE IN BROOKLYN

Francis Guy, Circa 1819-1820, provenence: The Brooklyn Museum



Court Street & Joralemon Street, 1:30 PM, December 16, photo by Brooklyn Beat

Governor Rod "Blog" Blagojevich Turning Elected Office Into His Personal ATM. Any potential fallout for the O Team ?

Well, Governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois seems like a pretty cool customer, for an allegedly corrupt wackadoo. Ironically, it seems like that same strong sense of mid-western American pragmatism, of stockyards and commerce on the Great Lake, and American common sense, that informs and gave this unique world-view to Lincoln and Obama, also contributes to Governor Blog's downfall here...

Anyway, one potential hitch here: It sounds like some Obama people, although apparently not involved in anyway in the wheeling and dealing, made comments that made it sound like someone on Team Obama had discussed the possible replacements with Governor "Blog"... So, it could be a little messy. The problem, as I see it, is, if someone from O's team heard this attempt at "fundraising" and went back to Barry O and said "this guy is a nut" but they didn't report the bribe-asking to the Feds, that is, they decided to keep out of it cause they were busy with the campaign or whatever, it could cause headaches. I wonder if the Feds advised Barry O of this investigation ? You would think they would since he is the President-elect. But since the US Attorney Fitzgerald probably wanted to stay apolitical and see if there were any entanglements -- well, you've got to wonder.. What did George Bush know about the investigation and when did he know it? Did he share this info with the President-elect while he was showing him around the new digs ?

Hopefully, when the Prsesident-elect chats with Governor "Blag" he will get the Rod to agree to resign. Unless he has a cheshire cat smile because he holds a hidden ace...let's see what the coming news cycles bring.

Blue Monday - Krugman: 'Depression Economics"

Growing unemployment mixed with media focus on holiday spending. We seem to be floating on a plane of uncertainty, if not unreality. This recession has either hit you really hard already or you have a sense of concern or uncertainty that it is looming out there. If you haven't been immediately hit, that is, you still have a job and you didn't have much money to invest in the first place, so you haven't really lost any, you are aware of how bad things are in a more abstract sense. Statistically, we know things are bad and getting worse for a lot of people. Where is it going. Will the incoming administration's steps do more than give hope -- will it have impact? No one can be certain, but clearly, the Government needs to do something. We are heading in the holiday season. Down deep, people still have hope that, as the year ends and the calendar changes, the new administration enters, the world will change. At the moment, and in the eyes of economists like Nobel winner Paul Krugman, we may be heading for a long climb back up. As the economy started to turn early this year, greeting card designers and trend spotters were already projecting a holiday focus on family, home, counting one's blessings. With the holidays already a lot less merry and bright than past years, we are surely in for some post-holiday gloom in January. Let's hope the public sector financial engineers and political economists can, if not make some magic, begin to provide some leadership and sustenance to those most immediately in need and to our nation as a whole.

from the Krugman interview:

Salon: How bad do you think this is going to get?

Awful. Without a major stimulus package -- sorry, I guess the politically correct term is now "economic recovery plan" -- I'd say that we were definitely headed for double-digit unemployment. Right now the economy is clearly falling as fast as, or faster than, it was in 1981-82, which was a terrifying slump. If Obama doesn't come up with a massive plan, and possibly even if he does, this is going to be a slump that pushes 10 million-plus Americans below the poverty line, and more.

Full interview at Salon here:
http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/feature/2008/12/08/paul_krugman/print.html

Coda: Skywatching: Jupiter, Venus and the Crescent Moon

I stepped out onto Court Street and was greeted by an achingly brilliant tableau: the Moon, Jupiter and Venus, like platinum etched by diamonds, together in the crisp, clear evening sky.

I stood on the corner of Schermerhorn and Court. By the time I would get home to Flatbush, the Moon and its companions would have somehow have fallen out of the sky, but here on Court Street, it was as though the firmament had been peeled back, revealing the secret clockwork that reflected a googleplex of string and quantam mechanics within, or else, as if a Countermoon had suddenly appeared in the black, western sky to keep its partner company in its solitary revolutions. I imagined everyone would be looking at the sky. But, no, I was alone in my awe.

No one on Court Street seemed to be looking up. Everyone went about their business. I had the urge to bring it to the attention of passersby. Instead, I called home, excitedly told my wife and one of my kids, but when they went out to look, the trees, the angle of view, the tall Victorian rooftops, something, blocked this magnificent occlusion from view.

I was alone in my wonder.