The New York Times really goes off the deep end this morning with an article suggesting, on the basis of not a scintilla of evidence, that the former district attorney of New York County, Robert Morgenthau, was motivated by personal greed in putting a donor together with City College.

I rang Mr. Morgenthau this morning (it so happened we were in the same town in Massachusetts), to find out what the Times smear-hatchet job left out.

If you just read the Times story, you'd think that Mr. Morgenthau and the CEO of Nabors Industries, Eugene Isenberg, hatched the gift to City College as a plot to ingratiate themselves with Rep. Charles Rangel, who was in a position to help Nabors with what the Times calls a "tax loophole" and a "tax shelter." As the Times puts it, Mr. Morgenthau "was an investor in Mr. Isenberg's oil drilling company at the time he arranged and attended two meetings between the two men, meaning his finances stood to be affected by the fate of the tax break." There was just one meeting, in September 2006, but more about that later.

Carver Bancorp Inc., which, according to Yahoo! Finance has cash per share of $15.50, is trading today at below $5 a share. Granted it's a highly regulated industry (which is, along with the presence of some debt and the small size of the company, probably why fewer investors have pounced, and part of why I haven't bought any yet). But there aren't many places in capitalism where you can buy $15 for $5. The company's president and CEO, Deborah Wright, is a big deal and in certain ways a pillar of the New York establishment. The bank has a better reputation that a lot of others in the mostly immigrant and African-American communities it serves.

Deposit insurance is supposed to make banks more robust by making deposit money less flighty. But in a strange way it can also have the unintended consequence of making the equity part of a bank's capital structure less robust than it might otherwise be.

From a Bloomberg News article on how business schools are competing to erect elaborate and expensive new buildings:

Yale business faculty now work in buildings that date back to 1836, in offices designed as bedrooms and dining rooms with fireplaces and plaster moldings. Many classrooms and staff offices are in a sunken building constructed in 1961, which first housed Yale's computer and later its astronomy department.

Hurt Recruitment

"The current facility doesn't look and feel like a business school," Levin said. "I think it does hurt us in attracting students."

Having more students will allow Yale to assure its programs are fully enrolled and to justify the size of its faculty, Oster said.

"You don't want to be in a position where you have three students in each category because you'll never get enough recruiters and you won't get classroom excitement if the electives have too few people in them," Oster said. "We don't have enough students to go around."

The Washington Post (link via Romenesko) reports that the 90-year-old Rev. Sun Myung Moon is close to buying back the Washington Times from one of his sons. That follows on the heels of 92-year-old Sidney Harman's purchase of Newsweek. What's the takeaway? Do you have to be older than 90 to have the years of accumulated wisdom to see the value in a print publication? Or to have a short-term enough investment outlook not to worry that that value will be eroded by the Internet? Maybe when CBS's Sumner Redstone hits 90 three years from now he'll go on a newspaper or magazine buying spree. Or Maurice "Hank" Greenberg in five years. Print media: the fountain of youth.

Reason magazine, not exactly a bastion of Christian cultural conservatism, makes the essential point to counter alarmism (such as that on display in this Bloomberg News dispatch) about the consequences of Judge Royce Lamberth's decision halting embryonic stem cell research: "there is a lot of private and state funding available for stem cell research."

Not to mention that Congress can change the law that Judge Lamberth relied on to halt the research. And that federally funded research on non-embryonic stem cells, such as those from cord blood, may be just as fruitful.

No matter what you make of the ethics of embryonic stem cell research — a question on which reasonable people can disagree — the point that not all scientific or medical research needs to be funded by the federal government sometimes seems lost in the reaction to the judge's decision.

George Melloan, author of The Great Money Binge, disagrees publicly with Bill Gross on deflation: "he stacked the deck."

From David Brooks's New York Times column:

This emphasis on mental character lasted for a time, but it has abated. There's less talk of sin and frailty these days. Capitalism has also undermined this ethos. In the media competition for eyeballs, everyone is rewarded for producing enjoyable and affirming content. Output is measured by ratings and page views, so much of the media, and even the academy, is more geared toward pleasuring consumers, not putting them on some arduous character-building regime.

I disagree with this on several levels. First, I think Mr. Brooks is faulting capitalism for failing to do something that it isn't really capitalism's responsibility to do. Character can come from parents, from teachers (who often work for government or non-profit schools), from religion, from sports leagues (often non-profits), from non-profit organizations such as the Boy Scouts or Outward Bound, and from religion. It doesn't have to come from the media.

The Wall Street Journal begins a news article on existing home sales: "Existing-home sales plunged to their lowest level in 15 years in July as inventories soared, painting a grim picture for the housing market absent government support in a stubbornly sluggish economy."

A reader-participant-community member-watchdog-content co-creator e-mails: "What about the possibility that so much government support for everything is the problem?"

Remember, there's an awful lot of government support for the housing market already — foreclosure relief, the home mortgage deduction, Fannie and Freddie, the FHA, the super-low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve.

Keith Hennessey has a really wonderful response to Paul Krugman's New York Times column from yesterday on taxes. The American Thinker's Richard Baehr also takes on Professor Krugman on some of the factual points in an article that initially struck me as having an inappropriately and gratingly screechy tone but that upon reflection I realized is probably intended as a satire of Professor Krugman's own tactic of accusing those who disagree with him of being liars.

Thanks to the reader-participant-community member-watchdog-content co-creator who sent the American Thinker piece. The Hennessey piece came from the morning e-mail of Mr. Hennessey's Economic Policies for the 21st Century group.

Bloomberg News publishes an op-ed piece by Tim Duncan, who agrees with the Communist Party USA organ that Elizabeth Warren is the best person to head up the new consumer financial protection agency. Don't worry about her, Mr. Duncan advises:

Regardless of who is appointed director of the CFPB, there is no chance that the financial industry will be ignored. It spends tens of millions on lobbying annually, donates hundreds of millions to members of Congress and there are dozens of statutory and regulatory provisions preventing the adoption of whimsical or unnecessary regulation governing the industry.

The New Yorker's Jane Mayer breathlessly profiles Charles and David Koch in an article headlined "Covert Operations: The Billionaire Brothers Who Are Waging a War Against Obama."

The idea that the campaign is "covert" is echoed in the text of the article, which says, "In Washington, Koch is best known as part of a family that has repeatedly funded stealth attacks on the federal government, and on the Obama Administration in particular."

Ms. Mayer also uses an anonymous quote to try to prove her point: "The Republican campaign consultant said of the family's political activities, 'To call them under the radar is an understatement. They are underground!'"

But there's nothing covert or stealthy or underground about it, as evidenced by the fact that Ms. Mayer is able to write about it in her article. The details are readily available on Web sites, federal election records available on the Internet, and in tax returns that are posted on Web sites.

Director James Cameron says of global warming skeptics, "I think they are swine."

According to a report in the Aspen Times, Mr. Cameron also complained about "the strong effect the right-wing punditry — Cameron named the regulars: Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, who are known for their sharp attacks on environmentalists — has on Americans."

More: "Cameron and a host of other climate-change activists said there needs to be a broad educational campaign, one aimed at convincing voters and politicians that not being able to prove that fossil fuel-produced carbon is changing the temperature of Earth is not a license for inaction."

Well, if the goal is "convincing voters," calling them pigs may not be the most effective way to start.

And there's been a pretty broad and intense "educational campaign" already, including Vice President Gore, the New York Times, the Obama administration, and a lot of the educational, press, and corporate establishment.

Commenter Ben, responding to the post on "seven types of jobless Americans that you may not see on television or in the newspapers regularly, but who nonetheless are out there," lists an eighth: "I had a friend who was a concessionaire at Yankees stadium. When the team was away on road trips, she said she would collect unemployment."

"Used-car prices jump by as much as 30%," is the headline over an article in USA Today. The article makes reference to "a limited supply of vehicles," but doesn't mention one big reason why: the government-mandated destruction of all those vehicles that were traded in under the "cash for clunkers" program.

Higher prices for used cars make new cars of the sort manufactured by government-owned General Motors and Chrysler more attractive by comparison. "Cash for clunkers" may have been a good deal for those who could afford a new car and get the subsidy available under the program, but, if the USA Today report on used-car prices is accurate, it has ended up hurting those who need or want to buy used cars, because they now have to pay more money. It's a reverse Robin-Hood.

"In Face of Egg Recall, FDA Calls for More Authority," is the headline on an NPR article this morning. This is a classic example of the theory that in the private sector, if you fail, you go out of business or lose your job, but if in the public sector you fail, your budget and staff gets increased and you get "more authority."