This Lawyer and Broke Guy Go Into a Bar… Now it seems the D.C. Pointy Heads have come up with this brainwave that says before we, the people, can declare bankruptcy, we have to go to an unregulated (and not known and loved universally as couth) credit counselor who makes money by talking us into repaying our debt. Huh! Worse, credit card issuers have ponied up $10 million for this beloved group. No conflict there. William Binzel from the National Foundation for Credit Counseling compared it to a medical briefing before surgery. What analogy was he trying to make: castration?

DRAMIT! Samsung is coughing up a $300 million hairball for participating in a global conspiracy (that’s a big mother of conspiracy – what will they be called when we populate Mars?) to fix DRAM prices. Hynix of Korea and Ifineon of Germany (they make it global) took their knuckle rapping earlier, Hynix last April and Infineon a year ago. See what happens when you piss off the Americans like Dell, Compaq, HP, Apple, IBM, and Gateway. Price fixing is their responsibility.

Questions of the Week
1. Did Carl Rove and Scooter Libby leak Valerie Plame’s name to the press? Did they have sex with that woman? Did Judith Miller conspire? Did Robert Novack, defrocked Inside Politics antagonist of the thinking people, the only one who seems to have written the Plame story, have sex with anyone? Is this getting really good, or what?
2. Should vehicle driving activities like fixing hair, breast feeding, arguing, reading maps or reading anything, playing poker or cards of any type, sex, smoking, hollering at kids or spouse, letting dog or cat drive, letting kid drive, nose picking, checking teeth in rearview mirror, or fishing a beer from the six-pack in the back seat be banned like talking on the cellphone, and if so, what constitutes fixing hair?
3. Why don’t laptops have a REAL built-in mouse that can slide around on all that space where touch pads and other disjointing crap that should be declared illegal resides, and regardless of color, shouldn’t funky pencil-eraser type nubs sticking out of the keyboard also be outlawed?
4. What is Time Warner’s love affair with AOL? Why don’t they dump it like the bastard stepchild that it is and stop treating it like the first born?
5. Has Harriet been stalking W? Is that why he wants her on the big bench?
6. Will Canada and Denmark go to war over Hans Island, a NY studio-sized speck of land up where it’s too damn cold for most humans? What right do Canada and Denmark have to go to war anyway? Who do they think they are: us?

Weekly Dumb Ass Award To banks, which, despite eternal cycles, never seem to realize that higher interest rates or declining housing values will kick their real estate portfolios in the balls. Banks are supposed to know this stuff; they shouldn’t need the Fed to tell them and then run around in a state of utter dismay.

Worst Staged Event of the Year Award W talking to our soldiers in Iraq about the desires of the Iraqi people for a new constitution and the capabilities of the Iraqi soldiers to defend voters against terrorism.

Weekly Chump Award To my team, my heroes, the NY Yankees. Boo hoo!

Weekly Chutzpah Award To the Los Angeles Archdiocese for the hiding sexual abuse of children by 126 clergymen over seventy-five years. What is an appropriate penalty for betraying, in the most horrific way, these children? What is the appropriate penalty for betraying their followers? What is the appropriate penalty for betraying believers of every faith?

10% Equals 98%? Wood River Capital Management, a hedge fund with two to three-hundred million (reportedly – which means no one knows for sure) under management stuck 98% of one of its funds into an unprofitable startup. Forget about everything but the 98%: ex-DLJ banker John H. Whittier (a high WASP name if ever there was one) promised he’d not dick around with any more than 10% (that’s 10% John, not 98% - there is a difference) of his portfolio bet on one loser. It seems John also lied about getting audited, but he may have told the truth when he told a client that he might go to jail.

DeLay Update
1. Tom and his daughter’s phone records were subpoenaed by his nemesis, Ronnie Earle, a Texas state prosecutor. In turn, DeLay’s attorneys have subpoenaed Ronnie to have him explain his conduct with grand jurors. Wouldn’t that be part of the court record, or are they talking off-the-record hanky-panky?
2. According to those in the know, Tom’s still the go-to-guy for Republicans. They’d better be careful or they might not need a go-to-guy.

Corporate Crook Update
1. Like rats jumping a sinking ship, (and they usually know when to jump) institutions (customers) are fleeing Refco, one of the bigs in futures and commodities brokering as Phillip R. Bennett, CEO, and Santo C. Maggio, Capital Markets Group head, take indefinite leave. Bennett has since been arrested and charged with securities fraud, and that’s not good. It seems he hid hundreds of millions in related-party transactions and Refco’s financial statements for the last couple of years can’t be relied upon. (Don’t you just hate it when that happens?) Looks like Refco’s 9% 2012 bonds are taking the worst beating: $40, down from $108 last week.

Drivers Wanted VW’s head of personnel, caught giving pleasure trips and other favors to employees in return for support for company policy, is under what the Germans call formal judicial investigation. Ooooh and tsk! Soon it will be illegal for companies to pay their employees lest it be proven that it entices them to work.

A Sequel to end all Sequels If Warrant Beatty and Rob Reiner end up in opposition to the Governator, as some rumor (remember, this is Hollywood, rumors are fact) they may, what will it be called: The Terminator meets Tracy (as in Dick) and Bunker (as in Archie)?

Law & Disorder
1. Gilbert, Heintz & Randolph, seem to want it from both sides, advising Congoleum, the floor covering people up to their asses in asbestos class actions, and also representing claimants, either directly or indirectly. What is the world coming to—if you can’t trust your lawyer…?
2. A Merck (you remember, the Vioxx people) defense attorney (sex-female) got into a shouting match with a judge (sex-female), the one you don’t shout at particularly when she is overseeing 2400 Vioxx-related suits, and only settled down when the judge offered to have her ass hauled out of court. Good theater. Does Merck know how much is at stake? Does Merck realize that pharmaceutical companies aren’t on Santa’s two big C lists, Christmas and Chanukah? Does Merck know that law isn’t going to win its case, lawyers are?

Take my IPod, Please Jobs, in one of his famous black t-shirt and back-drop presentations peppered with humility rolled out Apples’ new video IPod. I had hoped they’d fix the problems with the audio version first. In our tiny household, we’re on our third in nine months.

Irony of the Week. Congress is worried about the $11 million a day to house displaced Katrinaites. Why? In Iraq war dollars, we’ve got fifty years.

Not Your Father’s Bud Cuvée du Cent Cinquantenaire, (if you have to ask, you can’t afford it) is Grand Marnier’s new $225-a-bottle vintage liqueur, and here we’d just learned how to say Grand Marnier (no, it isn’t Grand as in the ancient Mariner).

Payola Clear Channel, the big of radio, canned two execs and smacked a few others around for keeping pay-to-play arrangements (dubbed payola in 1960 for those of you who remember that vintage) with Sony BMG secret. Sony agreed to tighten its anti-payola policies and donate $10 mill to music education, which is about like you and I buying a postage stamp, well I mean before the went up from fifteen cents in 1980.

What Goes Up Must Come Down Elevator companies controlled by the Americans, the Swiss, the Finns, and the Germans, are about to be charged with global price fixing. Remember that the next time you punch a button.

Uh-oh Remember what happened when CPA firms switched from being dull, boring, honest auditors to CONSULTANTS with fancy names like Accenture and fancy slogans like “Now it gets interesting.” It got interesting all right: remember Arthur Andersen, the Adam and Eve of Accenture and, before being forced out of business, auditors for such stellar names like Enron, WorldCom, Sunbeam, and Waste Management? Well, now the lawyers are getting into the game, consulting clients on outsourcing, i.e. paying someone to run part of the business. Let me see, would that include fraud decisions. That way, Kenny Boy and Stilling, (the only thing still in Stilling is that he is still awaiting trial) could blame some guy hiding in the mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and we know how hard it is to find anyone there.

Great Canadian Pumpkin! It took most of Canada’s parliament, but Martha and that’s a good thing Stewart got her special visa, the ones issued to hardened criminals who want to venture across the 49th and wreak untold havoc amongst the natives, to enter the pumpkin rowing contest in Windsor, NS. Alas, the weatherman grounded her in Maine where the rain stayed mainly on the plane.

And finally, we pause to remember fellow passengers on this tiny spaceship we call Earth, passengers who are suffering the loss of loved ones.