I first heard of Clara Lemlich from the fine PBS Series, "New York, A Documentary Film" by Ken Burns. Of course, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire became the catalyst for the progressive movement underway at the time, which also propelled Al Smith to prominence in New York State.

I worked 18 years for a corporation that employed the Sheet Metal Workers Union. All of us salaried employees knew that our compensation and benefits package were a collateral benefit to the union labor contracts. That was almost 30 years ago, however. I'm not sure that today's corporate salaried employees get that relationship.

We sorely need more Clara Lemlich's, Rose Schneiderman's, Sam Gompers' and Al Smith's today. We need strong labor unions and fair minded bureaucrats in Washington in order to level the "business" playing field. It really does benefit everyone in society when that exists.

Thanks again midtowng for another nostalgic look at our roots.

an abstraction. This way they can mask the parts that don't necessarily produce the outcome they like. (ex. Real GDP, Core Inflation)

It has always been about class warfare.

The quality of a derivative instrument is only as good as the actually data it consists of. All the other analytics are "derived" from that underlying data. Now, it may not have been 100% fraud, but a lot of things go into scoring a mortgage besides Fair Issac. School district, employer size, security, demographic composition. Many of these statistical methods are never used at the mortgage committee level. It's basically unregulated, making more art than science.

I think it is time to preserve the segments of the financial system that are relatively healthy and write-off the rest. It is over for the financial conglomerates.

I'm not sure what the question was yesterday but the New York Times has written a host of articles explaining the details.

The Origins of Subprime, derivatives is one of the top read posts on EP and is really long, going into the history of derivatives and some of these vehicles. (A professor did a drive by post and it appears reposted her article here).

OMG, where to begin. Outraged? Hell yes! Pissed? You betcha! How about we bring back the stocks and put all the bastards in them. Since there are so many of the SOBs, it would probably solve the unemployment problem as well. BTW Robert, did you follow the links to the Times Topics for derivatives and credit default swaps? They answered my questions regarding yesterday's thread on CDOs.

This paragraph really drives home our dilemma:

Here’s what is most infuriating: Here we are now, fully aware of how these scams worked. Yet for all practical purposes, the government has to keep them going. Indeed, that may be the single most important reason it can’t let A.I.G. fail. If the company defaulted, hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of credit-default swaps would “blow up,” and all those European banks whose toxic assets are supposedly insured by A.I.G. would suddenly be sitting on immense losses. Their already shaky capital structures would be destroyed. A.I.G. helped create the illusion of regulatory capital with its swaps, and now the government has to actually back up those contracts with taxpayer money to keep the banks from collapsing. It would be funny if it weren’t so awful.

If I were the administration, I would get out in front of this tsunami and start speaking frankly, now! The people who perpetrated this scam need to be brought into the sunlight and absolutely, unmercifully grilled and prosecuted. The continued assurances, platitudes and non-speak from Bernanke, Geithner and Summers will not suffice. I would think that Congress will be compelled to start investigations real soon.

When is someone going to explain to the public exactly how AIG got into this mess . . . fraud or mismanagement. It is always somebody else's fault then these companies fail. Now it's a math equation's fault? At the end of the equation, AIG was the mullet. To learn more go to www.newyorkshockexchange.com

and worse, I've been flaming one IBM as well as G.E. who are obviously running ad campaigns to get stimulus money because they are notorious to even promise! Promise to create U.S. jobs to get federal, state contracts...as in writing, on paper, agreed to, part of the deal...
and they do not create the jobs and yet the states never seem to say "hey, screw you IBM, give us back our incentive package".

Yes they surely will.

Thank you Sean Hannity! The man's been in office less than a month. Take a chill pill, please. This right wing hysteria lacks dispassionate objectivity:-)