A Little Of The Old In And Out



In: Andrew Cuomo. Eliot Spitzer (and, to a lesser degree Jerry Brown) made Attorneys General cool, vital, relevant just as Rudy Giuliani, post-September 11th, made Mayors cool (then squandered his political capital ina quixotic run for President). Now, in the hour of the wolf, Attorneys General like Andrew Cuomo are holding the financial bad guys' feet to the fire and becoming the stuff heroic folklore in the American popular imagination.

Cuomo's legendary anger -- in his messy divorce, in his clumsy exit from a Governor's race he had already clearly lost -- almost proved to be his thumotic downfall. Now, aimed at the big banker scumbags who have put the United States it is well served. If only he could be as hard against the real danger of Medicaid fraud, which, in the era of Obama's stimulus package, could approach Wagnerian dimensions. Do your thing, Andrew Cuomo.



(image via nytimes)

Out: GE's Dividend Cut. For the first time since at least the 1940s, GE is cutting its dividend. GE, generally considered the best-run company in the United States, cut its dividend by a startling two thirds allowing them to save $8.7 billion and increase injections into their financial subsidiary. They want to maintain their triple-A rating. GE was -- and in many ways still is -- a bellwether of the American economy just as Missouri before 2008 was the bellwether of the American electoral map. Its suffering, alas, is a microcosm of the state of our financial system. At post time, in reaction, GE shares are selling at under $9 down 1.7%.



(image via abcnews)

In: Dealing With The Syrians. Alright folks: grown up time. We are not fans of Henry Kissinger's reptilian realpolitik -- or, more accurately, his "me-politik." Quite the contrary. But we felt, acutely, his distress in this instance of diplomacy. From Kissinger by Walter Isaacson:

"Kissinger's only failure in bringing the December Geneva Conference together was that he was unable to secure the participation of Syria. President Hafiz al Assad, who had burned into his soul the historic injustices that centuries of foreigners had wrought on his land, was a suspicious man. When Kissinger came to Damascus, he found the Syrian President seated beneath a grand oil painting of Saladdin crushing the last Christian Crusaders."

How does one negotiate with the such a man? By dangling the beloved Golan Heights? Using the leverage of the Harriri tribunal? What? And yet, decades later (and new leadership), we find ourselves in negotiations with Syria. Clearly Obama is trying to attract Syria from out of Iran's orbit, thus lessening Persia's influence in the region, making the Achmadinejad regime more amenable to quitting the fuck out of its not-so-secret nuclear program. That first step is in Damascus, where Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Senator Kerry -- who was on Obama's short list as Secretary of State -- made a curious pitstop.

And with oil prices so low, we cannot fail to note that Achmadinejad ... just doesn't have that flavor to his step anymore. Damascus-Washington relations are the new black.