Contrarian Pundit

You might be hard pressed to imagine a pro-banking-industry proposal that Geithner, Bernanke, Sheila Bair, and John Dugan all think is stupid and destructive, but Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D., Colo) has succeeded:
Attention is focused on the House-Senate conference on a once-in-a-generation rewrite of the rules of finance. But a provision added, almost unnoticed, to a [...]

If you’ve every doubted whether medical research is thoroughly contaminated by conflicts of interest and corporate dollars, be sure to read Marcia Angell, the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, in the latest Boston Review.
Consider the following statistic she cites:
[I]n 2004, after the NIH National Cholesterol Education Program called for sharply lowering [...]

I apologize for my recent absence from the blog, but it was for a worthy cause: I was swamped trying to finish two 4,000-word investigative stories.  I’m happy to report that both are now in print and on newsstands across the Bay Area.
The first is “It’s A Wonderful Bank” for San Francisco magazine.  It takes [...]

Ten days ago, when I was too overwhelmed with work to comment, Brookings scholar Michael O’Hanlon and his researchers published an op-chart in the New York Times with statistics on how we’re doing in Afpakiraq.  Many of the numbers seem to show improvement in our war operations, but under closer examination, they tend to reveal [...]

I’m sorry for the dearth of posts for the past two weeks.  I was overwhelmed with work, including my first feature for the magazine.
The blog will return to normal, starting with a post on Brookings scholar Michael O’Hanlon.

Bob Hebert captures the vibe of our current malaise: the futility on display in the Gulf, in Afghanistan, on financial reform, and elsewhere.
President Obama’s top adviser on energy policy, Carol Browner, unintentionally underscored the monumental futility of the response in a comment she made on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
“This is obviously a difficult [...]