Nouriel Roubini:

Over the past year, whenever optimists have declared the worst of the economic crisis behind us, Roubini has countered with steadfast pessimism. In February, when the conventional wisdom held that the venerable investment firms of Wall Street would weather the crisis, Roubini warned that one or more of them would go “belly up” — and six weeks later, Bear Stearns collapsed. Following the Fed’s further extraordinary actions in the spring — including making lines of credit available to selected investment banks and brokerage houses — many economists made note of the ensuing economic rally and proclaimed the credit crisis over and a recession averted. Roubini, who dismissed the rally as nothing more than a “delusional complacency” encouraged by a “bunch of self-serving spinmasters,” stuck to his script of “nightmare” events: waves of corporate bankrupticies, collapses in markets like commercial real estate and municipal bonds and, most alarming, the possible bankruptcy of a large regional or national bank that would trigger a panic by depositors. Not all of these developments have come to pass (and perhaps never will), but the demise last month of the California bank IndyMac — one of the largest such failures in U.S. history — drew only more attention to Roubini’s seeming prescience.

As a result, Roubini, a respected but formerly obscure academic, has become a major figure in the public debate about the economy: the seer who saw it coming.

Roubini argues that most of the losses from this bad debt have yet to be written off, and the toll from bad commercial real estate loans alone may help send hundreds of local banks into the arms of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. “A good third of the regional banks won’t make it,” he predicted. In turn, these bailouts will add hundreds of billions of dollars to an already gargantuan federal debt, and someone, somewhere, is going to have to finance that debt, along with all the other debt accumulated by consumers and corporations. “Our biggest financiers are China, Russia and the gulf states,” Roubini noted. “These are rivals, not allies.”

The United States, Roubini went on, will likely muddle through the crisis but will emerge from it a different nation, with a different place in the world. “Once you run current-account deficits, you depend on the kindness of strangers,” he said, pausing to let out a resigned sigh. “This might be the beginning of the end of the American empire.”

Times Online:

McCain camp prays for Palin wedding
The marriage of the vice-presidential candidate’s pregnant teenage daughter could lift a flagging campaign

Yeah, you read that right. Stop gasping and read some more:

In an election campaign notable for its surprises, Sarah Palin, the Republican vice- presidential candidate, may be about to spring a new one — the wedding of her pregnant teenage daughter to her ice-hockey-playing fiancé before the November 4 election.

Inside John McCain’s campaign the expectation is growing that there will be a popularity boosting pre-election wedding in Alaska between Bristol Palin, 17, and Levi Johnston, 18, her schoolmate and father of her baby. “It would be fantastic,” said a McCain insider. “You would have every TV camera there. The entire country would be watching. It would shut down the race for a week.”

There is already some urgency to the wedding as Bristol, who is six months pregnant, may not want to walk down the aisle too close to her date of delivery. She turns 18 on October 18, a respectable age for a bride.

Hello, dahhhhhhhhhhhlinks. I’m Ta, your hostess here at flaming, shameless Poor Impulse Control. Can I get you a drink? Have a seat. Let’s have a chat, but not the one I expect you’re – it’s okay to laugh – expecting.

As a matter of fact, I was a pregnant teen. No matter what any debutante tells you about fighting your or someone else’s babyfat, this experience is highly overrated. In fact, if you must procreate, I recommend waiting until you’re staring menopause in the sweating face so when you retire your children are too young to follow you to your adult community. That’s for stealing the car, Junior! Fund your own tattoos!

Being a grandparent is – and I can’t say this enough – made of awesomeness. Mazel tov to Mr. and Mrs. Palin! Their children and grandchildren can play together! It’ll be a blast, so long as Mom and Dad remember who’s who, which will be tougher than they think. We’re getting to that age where finding our car keys becomes a challenge on a par with the Riddle of the Sphinx. But don’t worry. Their children will pretend to “help.” But it’s not our recalcitrant teen’s situation we should discuss. No. I am a woman close to Sarah Palin’s age, I have a daughter and a grandson, and I have extensive experience with being the poster child for Maybe We Should Sober Up First, but beyond that scintillating resume, I also used to be a writer of some skill. Let’s talk about me.

I was a big believer in letting characters write themselves. If you let them tell you about themselves you can’t end up with Mr. Darcy playing with Tonka Trucks or anything by Jeff Foxworthy, but you’re a sucky writer if you force characters to do stuff that’d be outside the range of their personality. It’s a complex business because people are so complex. Learn from events. What do they mean? If you close your eyes, and listen, and let yourself feel your way around the psyche of your imaginary friend, you will be okay. This technique also teaches you – meaning me – when people are doing something outside of their ordinary behaviors. In other words, when Samantha stutters, Darren – either Darren – knows Endora’s camped up in the nursery, because Sam doesn’t stutter. Instinctively, you know the basics. You don’t trust people who smile all the time and speak slowly, and when calm people start blinking they’re rethinking a situation under stress. In other words: they’re lying. So let’s draw a character for a moment, remembering that there are no easy answers, and let’s call her Sarah Palin.

You’re a saucy damsel raised in the kind of End Of Days church athiests cross themselves and avoid, you’ve been married to the same snowmobiling dude for about twenty years and you have a pack of children you may or may not pay much attention to over a long period of time. You seem to believe in the fire and brimstone stuff, but you’re an elected official and not home baking cookies. You believe you’re on a mission from God, which means you’re allowed to eliminate your enemies. They deserve it. One day, you’re a free-wheeling state governor, when your political party’s presidential candidate calls and asks what you’re doing next week, and for the next four years. So far, I understand you as a character. As a poet or novelist, I could help you walk, talk and sign distasteful bills into law. But then something happens. Your oldest daughter, who had better knock it off, comes up pregnant and everyone, everywhere, says something stupid. Weeks pass, and the presidential campaign may be in trouble.

Inside John McCain’s campaign the expectation is growing that there will be a popularity boosting pre-election wedding in Alaska between Bristol Palin, 17, and Levi Johnston, 18, her schoolmate and father of her baby. “It would be fantastic,” said a McCain insider. “You would have every TV camera there. The entire country would be watching. It would shut down the race for a week.”

Poor Impulse Control reader: you’re a creative, empathic person. You know that most teen marriages fail spectacularly within five years, usually with lifelong repercussions. You know this is a disaster in the making. Our character did not have to agree to join the candidate on the trail, or when the rabbit died, could have retired to the governor’s mansion. In a quiet moment, ask yourself this question for which there are no easy answers: what kind of mother, what parent, what human being, what psyche places her daughter’s shotgun wedding in a presidential election season and invites the international press?

What the fuck is this?

Rehab is not glamorous. Rehab is what happens when you’ve been drunk since the baby was born and the social worker is losing her patience and the waiting list is so long you pour yourself into the bottle and someone in your family has thousands of dollars he or she spends several times over. Rehab is no picnic, no day at the beach, no walk in the park, baby. Rehab means you need new friends, a new job and a new place to live because you’ve fucked up so badly you need a court-ordered time out. Rehab is a dreaded ordeal and not a beauty treatment. So I thought.

Thank Christ Bioré, Paris, Lindsay, and Britney have set me straight.

Pete and I just came back from the feared, loathed and loved Somerset Diner, where Sixty Minutes was on five or six giant flat screen TVs, muted, with closed captioning scrolling down the page at an energetic clip. Thing was: the transcriptonist must’ve been Welsh or Israeli or something where vowels were optional and word breaks were created with delicious whimsy. The result was – and I hope you saw this at home – gibberish. I looked up a few times and came within inches of inhaling french fries, which would have made me miserable because those french fries were really good. In any case, Wall Street is melting down, and anyone still advocating deregulation and socialized losses for the rich deserves not a promotion but a turn at public humiliation.

Fortunately – did I mention it? – Sixty Minutes was on, Scott Pelley’s an absolute moron, and there was public humiliation for viewer, interviewer and candidate alike.