I have actually been on Twitter for some time now. But I wanted to update all of you with some social networking features the site now has and ways you can get more out of the content. Today, I will just talk about Twitter.

Twitter

I really like Twitter as a platform. What separates Twitter from some social networking sites is that it is an asynchronous communication channel.  On Facebook or LinkedIn, for example, in order to friend someone, you need to have them confirm you as their friend.  That means you can affect a walled communication garden of your friends, where anything you say is only heard by them.  On Twitter, I can ‘follow’ you without your having to follow me back. That’s what I mean by asynchronous.

The advantage is clear for any news agency or celebrity trying to get their stories out or burnish their public profile. You can see who’s who on Twitter via a number of third party sites. Twittercounter gives you the top Twitter users by number of followers (right now it’s Ashton Kutcher with 3.8 million followers. @aplusk is his handle. The site Twitterholic ranks the top 100 twitterholics as well.

I use Twitter for three things: to talk directly in real time with the people who read my stuff, to alert people of new content on the site also in real time, and to highlight what I am seeing and reading that shapes my views.  I would  love to see more of you signing up for Twitter and following me (my handle is @edwardnh). Whenever I post a new story, I always announce it immediately via Twitter. So Twitter is now the best way to catch content on Credit Writedowns in real time and to see what I am up to – much better than newsletters or even RSS.

By the way, please retweet my posts.  Retweeting is where you copy my tweet and put the handle RT @edwardnh in front of it and tweet it to your followers.  The more retweets you give our content, the more people it reaches.

There are great ways to use twitter apart from the web. My three favorite Twitter clients are TweetDeck, Digsby and Seesmic. All of these platforms allow you to see updates from your Facebook friends and Twitter followers. Digsby also notifies you about e-mail, LinkedIn and Instant Messenger updates. You can also get Twitter on the iPhone and other cellphones.

That’s it. I look forward to hearing from you all.

Edward

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Pete Cashmore launched a blog called Mashable from his home in Scotland in 2005.  You may have seen the articles from the site in the links from time to time. Well, this happens to be the number 1 social media-focused blog on the Internet, usurping prior leader TechCrunch’s position. Cashmore’s site gets 10 million page views a month and is highly profitable. His Twitter page has 1.6 million followers and rising.

In the video below, he talks to Bloomberg about his take on social media, blogging and the Internet. He sees the web as a meritocracy where anyone who has something valuable to say can succeed if they work hard at it.  New media like blogs are more interactive and democratic and provide a better sense of community than traditional media outlets. Well said, Pete.

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I intend to post a “Healthcare Links” post later today.  I am modelling on my Credit Crisis Timeline. But, the purpose is to present a fairly good distribution of informed articles on the health care reform debate.  I don’t agree with everything you will see on that links post, but I want to try and have a wide cross-section of articles to give a full spectrum of opinion.

Please send any articles I need to include to feedback at creditwritedowns dot com.

Cheers.

Edward

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My RSS Feed is spitting out 25 posts an hour for some reason.  I apologize for the nuisance.  We are working to fix it.

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We expect to have a brief hiccup in service later tonight due to maintenance.  I apologize for the inconvenience.  Hopefully, we will be offline for a very short time.

Regards.

Edward

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You will never hear this term again on Credit Writedowns – not from me, not from Marshall or anywhere else.  I am sick of hearing this phrase and am banning it for good – hoping it goes away and dies a gruesome and painful death.

And don’t get sneaky and try putting it in your comments.  I’ll be watching!

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This is a new, progressive economic policy blog from the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute that launched on April 29th.

The effort is lead by Robert Johnson, former Chief Economist of the US Senate Banking Committee. With contributors like Joseph Stiglitz, New Deal 2.0 is a “one-stop shop” for new insights, analyses and proposals on the country’s economic crisis.

Features will include:

• Braintrusters: Profiles and Q&As with the leading voices in economic and progressive policy, including Joseph Stiglitz, Jeff Madrick, Stanley Greenberg, Hendrik Hertzberg, Elaine Kamarck, Reverend Jim Wallis, Samuel Issacharoff, Anna Burger, Sean Wilentz, and Marcia Dyson.
• The Decoder: Experts explain thorny policies, complicated issues and complex arguments.
• On Markets and Morals: Reverend Jim Wallis and other leading voices offer ideas on the moral vision that should guide our policy making.

The official site, http://www.newdeal20.org, is now live.

In addition, The Roosevelt Institute kicked off the launch of New Deal 2.0 on April 29 in New York with a breakfast panel featuring Nobel Laureates Joseph Stiglitz & Robert Solow, as well as Robert Johnson. Panelists evaluated the economic policy of Obama’s first 100 days and recommend course corrections as the administration moves forward. Their discussion was live-streamed (and live-blogged) on New Deal 2.0. Following the panel, Stiglitz and Johnson gave a media-only, on-the-record briefing with time for Q&A.

Below is a clip from the April 29th session.

100 Days and the Road Ahead from Kara Masi on Vimeo.

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I have grown pretty frustrated with FeedBurner, the RSS Feed Service now owned by Google.  Often, my posts have not  gone out immediately. There are significant ‘outages’ where the service is just plain broken.  And their Feed count reporting has become pretty screwy.  So, I have switched to FeedBlitz, a new competing service.  If you are getting my feeds via FeedBurner or have been using the now outdated www.creditwritedowns.com/feeds/posts/default (check the URL in your RSS reader), then use this new URL: feeds.creditwritedowns.com/creditwritedowns.  Anyone else, can stay with the feed they now have.

I could end my little blurb there, but I am REALLY frustrated with all of this and want to make this post a little rant about FeedBurner and the mother ship Google.  You see, FeedBurner was a much more reliable and better tool before it was acquired by Google.  I like Google’s services (News, Reader, Mail – they are all excellent. I especially like Google Checkout), but it is becoming increasingly evident that in many areas the company has too much power on the Internet with few reliable alternatives.

As for the RSS situation, I am not the only one complaining. Here are a few other complaints you should read:

• Feedburner Needs To Get It Together – TechCrunch, Jan 2009
• Google’s Detailed Response to FeedBurner Criticism – Mashable, Jan 2009

There are lots more complaints like that on the net.  But, isn’t that to be expected for a large service like FeedBurner?  Yes.

Nevertheless, there is more to it than that in FeedBurner’s case.  Take a look at the video below by Dick Costolo, the founder of FeedBurner.  It’s pretty hilarious, really.  He’s wryly telling us that he and FeedBurner have been sidelined by Google ever since the service was acquired.

Dick Costolo from dick costolo on Vimeo.

And there are plenty of reports out there that Google never really wanted to buy FeedBurner for good reasons to begin with. Plenty of people believe the company bought FeedBurner to eliminate its advertising network which competed with Google’s own Adsense network. Not exactly a competition-friendly move. And Feedburner has not exactly been winning awards for innovative, cutting-edge changes since it was acquired.  Sounds to me like there hasn’t been much investment in the business.

As an aside, Google President of Display Advertising David Rosenblatt, formerly of DoubleClick, the large advertising netowrk which our regulators also allowed Google to buy, has just left the company. You can search for the news story on, what else, Google News if you like. Here’s one link.

So, I am off to FeedBlitz. Here is what FeedBlitz says about their service on their site:

What is the FeedBlitz RSS Service?

The FeedBlitz RSS service is a service that makes your RSS feeds better. It enhances feeds with branding, detailed metrics, browser and mobile friendly serving, integrated third party content, easy viral marketing tools and more. It’s fully supported by FeedBlitz, and integrates with the FeedBlitz RSS and blog to email service for one-stop subscriber management and communication.

Create your new, “Blitzed” version of your feed by going to RSS | New – If you need to upgrade your plan or start a 30-day free trial you will be prompted when necessary.

Is this an alternative to Google’s FeedBurner service?

Yes, for many bloggers and organizations, the new FeedBlitz service is a new choice they can consider as an alternative to FeedBurner. We have focused on building a service that allows RSS publishers much greater control over their feeds (content and branding), works better for SEO (search engine optimization), and for users who aren’t familiar with RSS, and will ultimately provide much richer reporting and metrics.

What are the key differences between FeedBlitz and FeedBurner RSS Services?

• FeedBlitz offers significantly more branding and graphic customization, at both whole feed and individual post level;
• Smart truncation retains links, images and other HTML tags on partial feeds and browser-friendly pages giving a richer user experience and greater SEO benefits;
• FeedBlitz automatically delivers a mobile-friendly version of your RSS feed;
• FeedBlitz has reinvigorated splices to integrate your content from new social media services like Twitter, FriendFeed, Last.fm and Disqus, as well as YouTube and others;
• FeedBlitz enables you to add a custom footer (such as a copyright notice) to each article in your feed no matter what blogging or RSS software you use;
• FeedBlitz offers simple, graphical flares and promotional widgets to better help broaden viral distribution of your articles;
• We believe our metrics give a better view into the circulation and reach of your content;
• FeedBlitz is a paid service, providing sustainability and funding support.
• FeedBlitz offers URL parameters to enable publishers to further tailor their feeds.
• FeedBlitz has live, contactable technical support.

It is that last line that is important. Customer Service. At Google it doesn’t exist. You see, the beauty of Google’s business model is that it is extremely scalable (meaning they can add a huge number of customers/users without needing to add an equivalent cost base or infrastructure. They accomplish this by automating processes, using computers and technology to do the job that otherwise humans would do. This has meant huge profits as Google has grown because their cost base has not grown nearly as much.

But, have you ever used one of Google’s Help Groups (their equivalent of customer service)? It is a nightmare. Try a search (using Google, of course, since that’s what the vast majority use) for “Google Groups” “No response” and you will see what I mean about the nightmare customer service.

So I got fed up and now I am on with FeedBlitz. But, this is not the only area where Google is proving the lie to its moniker, “Don’t be evil.” Take a look at what Former Bank of England MPC member cum blogger Willem Buiter has to say about Google.

Google is to privacy and respect for intellectual property rights what the Taliban are to women’s rights and civil liberties: a daunting threat that must be fought relentlessly by all those who value privacy and the right to exercise, within the limits of the law, control over the uses made by others of their intellectual property. The internet search engine company should be regulated rigorously, defanged and if necessary, broken up or put out of business. It would not be missed.

In a nutshell, Google promotes copyright theft and voyeurism and lays the foundations for corporate or even official Big Brotherism.

Google, with about 50 per cent of the global internet search market, is the latest in a distinguished line of IT abusive monopolists. The first was IBM, which was brought to heel partly by a forty-year long antitrust regulation (which ended in 1996) and partly by the rise of Microsoft.

Microsoft has been convicted of abuse of monopoly power on two continents, in the US as a result of a lawsuit launched by the US Federal Department of Justice and a fair number of States, and in the EU by the European Commission. Unfortunately, by the time the US judicial system got to the point of deciding on remedies, the Bush administration was in office. The Bush administration never saw a monopoly they did not like, so instead of the obvious remedy for the Microsoft problem – unbundling, that is, not permitting the same company to offer both the operating system and application programmes – they settled on a number of weak and rather easily circumvented limitations on Microsoft’s ability to abuse its market power. Fortunately, the European Commission took over after the US Department of Justice was neutered and imposed further, albeit still limited and inadequate, legal constraints on Microsoft’s ability to act as an abusive monopolist.

I believe that the combination of the restraining influence of the US Department of Justice, assorted US States and the European Commission Competition Directorate, under the able leadership of Neelie Kroes, have succeeded in shackling the Microsoft Leviathan to a sufficient degree to allow the survival of Apple, various commercial implementations of Linux and the continued use of a number of varieties of Unix for servers and workstations.

But the Microsoft Leviathan has now been joined or even replaced by Google’s Godzilla as the main threat to the freedom of the internet, and now also a growing threat to key intellectual property rights, especially copyright, and privacy.

Read his full piece at the link at the bottom. It is quite entertaining.  So, that’s my beef here.  Google is a great company, but one that has way too much power and it has started to abuse that power much as IBM and Microsoft before it.  For me, it is axiomatic that this abuse will happen.  It is not because Google is a bad company any more than Microsoft or IBM.  They are simply looking to increase profit by taking advantage of all available opportunities using their people, technological prowess, and size.

But, when a company develops ’size’ i.e. becomes too big, it starts to step on a lot of toes and it becomes a threat to competition.  Unfortunately for those of us who love most of Google’s services, this is what has happened at Google.

By the way, feel free to subscribe to my new feed URL with, what else, Google Reader.

Sources
FeedBlitz RSS Service FAQs – FeedBlitz
Gagging on Google – Willem Buiter

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I will be on the BBC World Service at 2PM ET talking about the Chrysler bankruptcy. First will be a television interview and then a radio interview. I will post the clips if and when they become available.

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This past Sunday Felix Salmon wrote a post called “10 reasons for the lack of German econobloggers.” I found it inaccurate and offensive. Let me tell you why.

I was in Germany at the time I read the post and had been there for the better part of the week. In reading and watching German news, I was very heartened that there was a comfortable debate about the goings-on in finance and in the German and world economy.

Now, I would sum up Felix’s arguments regarding German bloggers as a typical and stereotyped Anglo-American view of Germany and the German-language realm. The core of the view is that Germans are hidebound, hierarchical, conservative and obedient. This is at odds with the ethos of the blogosphere. Therefore, Germany and the German-speaking world will never have a good blogging community.

I happen to think highly of Felix’s work but his views here are out of bounds. Moreover, he’s just plain wrong. There actually is a good thriving German-speaking econblogging community. I have four of the blogs on my blogroll and often correspond with their writers. They are:

• Immobilienblasen:  the blog title means property bubble in German.  I have aways considered Immobilienblasen a good bilingual effort that does a good job of bridging the German and Anglo-American world.  It has been around since well before the econblog space got noticed.
• Zeitenwende: this is a Swiss blog in German and has been a very good source of information fr me on the goings on at UBS, Credit Suisse, Glencore and other Swiss companies. It went on a brief hiatus earlier this year, but I am happy to report that it is back.
• egghat’s blog: Egghat is another German blogger who has been around for quite some time (since before the econblogging space became noticed after Lehman’s demise).  Although, he writes completely in German, egghat does have a lot of good information on the U.S. financial crisis as well.
• Blick Log: this is the most recent German-language blog I have been turned on to.  Very, very good detail on the German situation specifically.  If you want to know what is happening at HSH Nordbank, WestLB or Deutsche Bank, this should be on your list.

There are any number of other German blogs as well (Boersennotizbuch is one) that are not on my blogroll of which I am aware.

As to the substance of Felix’s argument – that German cultural traits prevent a flourishing blogosphere, I would say there might be kernels of truth in what he says. For instance, I was walking through the town centre in Duesseldorf on Monday. And whenever I came to a traffic light I felt that dreaded social pressure I always felt to be coercive and corrosive when I lived in Germany not to cross on red. Social pressure is subtle and the pressure to conform to social norms is one of the key ingredients that created a massive credit bubble. Here it was in action at the pedestrian crossing.

Nevertheless, Felix overstates his case. There are very good German blogs. Moreover, the German press is and always has been MUCH more critical of the government than the U.S. press has been. One could legitimately argue that magazines like Spiegel and even ARD and ZDF, the public television stations, take on a role in Germany that the mainstream media in the U.S. do not.

The arguments that there are few German bloggers compared to U.S. bloggers could be made regarding Australia, Canada, France, Spain, Ireland, or even the U.K. In the U.K, you have Alphaville, Willem Buiter, Alice Cook, and Mark Wadsworth as examples but there are not nearly enough econbloggers in the U.K. given the severity of the economic crisis there. And, it’s not because the Brits are ‘too German’ that there aren’t more blogs there.

Like Felix, I wish there were more blogs outside of the U.S. because they might give us a different perspective. But to say that the Germans will never develop a good econoblogosphere is just plain wrong.

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I am just back from the Easter Holidays and have had a good two weeks for self-reflection.  In truth, I am feeling a bit exhausted despite the fact that I was supposed to have just had a two weeks’ holiday. So, I have decided to make a few changes.  Before I do, I would appreciate some feedback from you regarding this site.

First, I want to give you a pretty unfiltered version of my thought process and then I’ll wrap up with some tentative conclusions I have drawn.  I’m hoping your feedback will help me draw some more definitive conclusions.

Thoughts

I love blogging. Ever since I decided to start blogging last March, I have felt fulfilled by it.  As you have figured out by now, I am a fairly opinionated guy who tends to have an opinion on everything.  Before I started this blog, I really didn’t feel I had a good forum through which to exchange ideas to help come to grip with all of the turmoil in finance and economics.  Now I do and I love it.

There is an incredibly diverse and talented group of econbloggers toiling away, adding their voice to this discussion.  For me, the econblogger space has become in 2008-9 for finance what the Netroots was in 2002 for politics.  It is the go-to place to get a well-informed uncensored view of what is really happening today in the world of finance.  Quite frankly, most mainstream media outlets have not done us justice and a void is being filled by econbloggers.

The incredible thing about econblogging is how good ideas and well-informed views rise to the top.  I mean, this is what the Internet is all about, isn’t it? It’s the ‘Wisdom of Crowds’ in plain view for all to see and it should give us all hope for the future of economics, of journalism, and of progress more generally.

However, it’s not like any of us econbloggers is making tons of coin from this.  We do it because we love it.  But, I am not so sure of my future role in this space.  Blogging has taken a lot of time away from my day job (Consulting) – the admin side of things is crushing. And so I don’t think it is sustainable unless I find some way to earn money from this adventure.  I might also add that I have gained a few pounds in the last year as apparently blogging is not good for your health!  You’ve hear about college students and the Freshman 15?  Well, try bloggers and the Blogging 25.

Before Easter, I was in Mexico where I had nearly no connection to the outside world.  The mobile was off,  Internet access was an hour or two a day, and Television was banned. Quite frankly, there were times during that week when I thought about giving up blogging altogether. My thinking after the week was that I was going to cut back significantly on the blogging because it was costing me time and money.  So, I had every intention to write this post to inform you of my need to ratchet things back a gear.

However, the week afterwards was spent in Germany where I was much more connected – to Europe rather than the United States.  And I have a ton of ideas and thoughts to share from that week.  So, I am at a bit of a crossroads here.  I am not quite sure where things are headed at Credit Writedowns.  I am glad to have played my part in econblogging, but I am not sure what my role will be going forward.

Tentative Conclusions

The first conclusion I drew upon reflection is that my forceful opinions may be keeping some of you from commenting. There are a few of you who have no problem telling me when I’ve gotten it wrong (Denis, VangelV, you know who you are).  But, on the whole, I tend to think there are fewer comments from you than there should be.  I see this as a conversation, not a monologue. In this conversation, you should not be timid in voicing your own thoughts.

I have also been kicking around a few ideas regarding how to make blogging more (financially) rewarding.  Idea number one is a paid monthly newsletter.  Idea number two is a donations button on the site.  I have pu the donations button up already, but I wold definitely love any feedback you can give regarding what would be useful in a monthly newsletter and whether you would subscribe to one.

I have also been thinking a lot about writing a book.  A lot of econbloggers have made a positive contribution in this way: Michael Panzner and Barry Ritholtz to name two.  Yves Smith is also writing a book as well.  The problem with writing a book is it gives me even less time for blogging than I have already.

I would also like to write more about Europe and am looking for some ‘Partner’ blogs there to bring a fresh perspective.  You can see some of them on my blogroll already.  I would also like to talk a bit more about psychology and how it affects economic behavior.

So, you can see these conclusions are very, very tentative. They are more a wish list than conclusions at this stage. The only things that is clear is that I need to exercise more!

I love blogging.  I wake up in the morning brimming with enthusiasm, full of ideas to share with you.  I wish I could do this full time.  But I cannot.  Any way I look at it, there will be a new Credit Writedowns in the coming days and weeks. As I come to some more definitive conclusions on the way forward, your feedback is very, very much appreciated.

Edward

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I have gotten two kind notes that the feed is screwy again, posting links multiple times. Who do I blame? Feedburner of course. I have solved the problem but I would love a nice way to get away from Feedburner. They are really a problem.

If anyone is still seeing the problem, let me know.

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I am in London right now and through next Monday, I will also be on European time, so expect posts earlier than usual.

Also, I will be in transit for the rest of the day today. So posting will be light or non-existent. I’l be back soon.

Cheers.

Ed

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Over the next two weeks I will be traveling and will have a pretty sparse and sporadic posting schedule. Next week is Mexico and then the week after is Germany.

I am definitely looking to post but it probably will not be in the quantity you have come to expect.

While I am on the admin theme, I should note that I am back to using Feed Burner and most of the problems seem to have gone away (except for the wild fluctuations in feed count). Let me know if you are experiencing any delays in getting content. The best feed address to use in order to get timely updates is www.creditwritedowns.com/feed.

Have a great weekend.

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We will be doing some minor site maintenance this wekend.  Site access will be interrupted briefly Saturday night/Sunday morning around midnight EST.

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Our site was down for the entire day from 9am – 9pm EST.  I had a lot of ideas and a particular tip to write about, but the day has been a complete bust.

We apologizie for the inconvenience.  If anyone has good advice on a reliable dedicated IP webhost, let us know.

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McGraw Hill is one of the world’s major book publishers. It also happens to own Standard & Poors, a well-known rating agency. Fellow econblogger Barry Ritholtz was due to release a book via McGraw Hill titled “Bailout Nation.” In the book, he gets a bit rough with the rating agencies — outfits which I see as analogues in the housing bubble to the accounting firms in the shenanigans from the late 1990s.

Guess what? McGraw Hill, abruptly canceled the book, shortly before its release was due. They did not like the ’style.’ Apparently, this is how business in the United States is conducted.  Shambolic, if you ask me. I suspect this could be a PR nightmare for McGraw Hill.

Here’s what Barry has to say.

Since the news came out today, I might as well spill the details about my battle with McGraw Hill over the content in the book.

I did not release this news. I got a message this morning (apparently left last night) from a reporter at the NY Observer who covers the publishing industry. I assumed McGraw Hill had contacted him, but I have no direct knowledge of that.

I had previously spoke to Jesse Eisinger of Portfolio about my headaches with the publisher a few weeks ago, but asked him to keep it off the record. Once the Observer called me, I told Jesse “The cats out of the bag” and he ran with this story: McGraw Hill Drops Book Critical of S&P.

The manuscript was submitted to S&P in December (I posted on it here) and the review and revision process began. For the most part, the editing process was painless. I had been warned by other writers that most modern publishers edit for typos and grammar, but not for deep content or editorial vision. I hired Aaron Task, whom I know from the Street.com, to be my editor. (Aaron ended up being a whole lot more than that, but I will save that story for a later date).

Most of the changes that came back from McGraw Hill were minor stylistic copy editing stuff. Very light, very simple. They took out the word “Fuck” which appears 2x (once each in two separate chapters) and I of course put it back in. How can any book about Wall Street not have that word in it?

When it came to chapter 14 — Who is to Blame?, there were issues about the style of what I wrote about the ratings agencies. I literally called the ratings agencies and investment bankers “Pimps and Whores;” I accused them of engaging in pay for play (buying ratings) payola, etc. Rather than describe it, I will simply post the original version here.

There was a lot of pushback on this. My editor at McGH convinced me this was a matter of style, not content. So being flexible (something I don’t usually do), I agreed to rewrite this. The newly edited version was far more factual, detailed — and in my opinion, more damning. You can read the revised version here.

Now, before you assume I am an idiot for doing a book that was critical of the ratings agencies with a publisher that owns S&P, understand that I properly anticipated this. My contract gave me Final Edit. Not only that, I had previously discussed this issue months earlier with then publisher Herb Schaffner. (He was laid off in a big Q4 round of firings).

Sometime over the summer, Herb informed me that the ratings agencies discussions would have to be handled “delicately and diplomatically.”

I responded, “Sorry, Herb, but I don’t do diplomacy.” If they wanted someone who was subtle or diplomatic, boy did they have the wrong guy. I offered to return the advance check and we could all move on. He backed down, and I assumed — apparently quite wrongly — that this was the end of this issue. How can you write a book on this subject and not lambast the ratings agencies?

I am not sure if this was in August or September, but that is my best guess as to the approximate time frame.

Where was I? Oh, yes, the pushback on the changes

The stylistic changes were still objected to. The problems came not from Legal, but from the corporate division of McGH. Legal had not even finished reviewing the manuscript at this time.

I came to the inescapable conclusion that this was an attempt by the McGH corporation to water down my content. All of the conversation with various editors strongly implied as much, and the same was made clear by them to my agent Lloyd.  I even found an email from me to him, subject matter:  “McG Hill S&P Freaking Out” dated Monday, January 05, 2009 11:14 AM.

Anyway, at this I drew my line in the sand at this point. My contract gave me FINAL EDIT.

I informed McGraw Hill that at this point, the manuscript was finished, and I was done. It was either “Fill or Kill.” In an email, I gave them until that Friday, to accept or reject the manuscript. That deadline came and went with no answer, and the following. Monday I went to lunch with my editor and told her I was ready to show the book to other publishers, as I assumed they had rejected it. She asked for another week (I agreed) and that Friday, they told me they as per my request, they would drop it.

They gave me two nonsense excuses — the first, they were concerned about my libeling Senator Phil Gramm (My answer to them: bullshit).

The second excuse was an issue with sourcing and verifying the material. This is of course, more nonsense. Nearly all of my sources are available online, and the others that are in books were all purchased from Amazon.com. And that does not address the small matter that McGraw Hill had pulled 90 pages of additional sources from the book as “redundant and unnecessary.”

All of the book’s submitted footnotes/end notes can be found here.

~~~

I did not go to the media, they did. I was stunned to read this ridiculous statement from McGraw Hill Spokesman Steven Weiss:

the publisher dropped the book because of a conflict with Ritholtz over editing, not because of his criticism of S&P. “The material needed extensive corroboration across a range of topics. We could not agree on unified approach with the author for resolving the issues”

Really? You cannot verify these footnotes?

As you can see, the overwhelming majority of the footnotes come with URL included. So I guess if you lack an internet connection or are unfamiliar with Google, you might have trouble corroborating the contents of the book. But for everyone else over the age of 6 years old who is possession of any IQ score better than 75, it really should not be a problem to accomplish.

But to prove it even further, I challenge any of the McGraw Hill editors or publishers (or any of the editorial staff) to take a polygraph/lie detector test — at my expense. If the poly proves anything I said was false or anything Mr Weiss said was true, I will let them edit the book however they want, or kill it altogether and not publish anywhere else. (The PR flack would likely pass the poly, because he doesn’t have first hand knowledge of what transpired, only what he is told — so even if he is telling lies, he doesn’t know they are false. Hence, he would pass).

Yes, I will happily take a poly also.

But if the test proves that they are lying and I am telling the truth, I want a public apology from them in a trade magazine or the WSJ, and a waiver of the advance return.

Sources:
McGraw Hill Drops Book Critical of S&P
Jesse Eisinger
Portfolio, Feb 10 2009 1:15pm EST
http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/daily-brief/2009/02/10/mcgraw-hill-drops-book-critical-of-sp

Did McGraw Hill Spike Barry Ritholtz’ Book Over Comments About S&P?
Joe Weisenthal
ClusterStock, Feb. 10, 2009, 3:42 PM
http://www.businessinsider.com/2009/2/did-mcgraw-hill-spike-barry-ritholtz-book-over-comments-about-sp

Original Version: Ratings Agencies: Moodys, S&P, and Fitch
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/02/ratings-agencies-moodys-sp-and-fitch-original/

Revised Version: Ratings Agencies: Moodys, S&P, and Fitch
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/02/rating-agencies-moodys-sp-and-fitch-revised-version/

Footnotes/Endnotes
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/02/endnotessources/

Source
About Bailout Nation . . . – Barry Ritholtz

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If you have been having difficulty accessing the site, my apologies.  The site has been down for part of  the day both yesterday and today.  We are working to fix the problem.  As a result, we have revered back to the old look and feel temporarily.

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Hello again.  I hope you all had a good few days away. I will keep posting fairly light today as we have one day left until the weekend. This is a brief housekeeping post.  I wanted to alert you to a number of changes we have made to the website.

First and foremost, we have updated the site’s look.  Now, that we have been using WordPress for over one month, it was time to start making some changes.  Please feel free to sound off about anything that you like or anything you do not like.

In addition, you should note that we have added a weekly newsletter in order to serve a number of readers who really wanted that option.  This newsletter will only include a “Best of” from the wek so as not to deluge you with more than you can read. Click here to sign up for the new weekly.

We have also switched our comments to a provider called Intense Debate.  It seemed to offer the best comments moderation of all of the third-party comment hosting companies we polled.  Let us know if you have any problems with commenting.

And we have one final housekeeping note.  The full archives are now available via the navigation bar just below the header.  Basically, the sidebar archives menu was pretty useless.  We have replaced it with a collapsible menu of all the posts in the archives in a new Archives page.  This allows you to browse the archive titles and click through directly to the articles or to do a simple search.  I think you will find this format much more accesible.  Have a look here.

That’s it.  At some point, we will add a Technology tab to recount the do’s and don’ts of switching hosts or URLs. Any of you with your own blogs might benefit from our travails. I know that Calculated Risk just switched URLs and it looks like it went off without a hitch.

Feel free to drop us a line on other improvements you feel would enhance your reading experience.  All the best.

Happy Holidays.

Edward

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It was a surprise and honor to visit the indispensable finance resource Business Pundit and find our site mentioned amongst the list of best business blogs for the year.

In putting together her list, Drea Knufken said:

Some blogs truly define today’s business voice. These blogs represent a healthy mixture of independent and mainstream voices, prominent academics and small business owners with equally strong opinions.

We compiled a completely biased sampling of our 50 favorite blogs, sorted by category. The categories are neither based on anything official nor are representations within them equal. For example, we have included a ridiculous number of finance and investing blogs, an industry where coverage truly stood out this year. It is possible that we have forgotten other categories.

However smattered the designations on this list, rest assured that every single one of these blogs is worth reading. If you find something missing, or want to show off your own blog, we encourage you to comment.

Thank you Drea for mentioning us. And thank you readers for getting the word out about our site. We hope to continue to meet or exceed your expectations for relevant and thorough business and financial analysis.

All the best.

Ed

p.s. – Do visit the list (linked below) as it is a great resource for finding go-to sites on many different business subjects. Sites like Calculated Risk, Financial Armageddon, The Economist’s Gulliver, or Beat The Press are all there.

Source
The 50 Best Business Blogs of 2008 – Business Pundit

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Today I learned that we lost one of the most talented bloggers out there, Tanta from the blogsite Calculated Risk.  Tanta had been battling cancer.  She died aged 47 and will be missed not only by those who knew her but by her many readers and fans.

Calculated Risk released a lovely memorial post to her yesterday:

http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/2008/11/sad-news-tanta-passes-away.html

Please visit their site and add your condolences to the many who have already done so.

Sources
Doris Dungey, Prescient Finance Blogger, Dies at 47 – NY Times
Sad News: Tanta Passes Away – Calculated Risk

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Willem Buiter has a very useful and provocative blog at the Financial Times website called Mavercon.  The Dutch-born former Bank of England MPC member is not afraid to take policy makers to task or call a spade a spade.

In his latest post on why banks are refusing to lend to creditworthy customers, he has some useful insights and a very memorable quote:

Banks that don’t lend to the non-financial enterprise sector and to households are completely and utterly useless, like tits on a bull.

Buiter is always interesting, sometimes provocative and often hilarious.

Source
Tits on a bull – Willem Buiter, FT Mavercon

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A few weeks ago we attempted to switch the blog here over to WordPress from the Blogger platform. It didn’t go so well. In the interim, some of the technical issues seem to be sorted out. If you are reading this post, then we are all ready and set to go.

By and large, everything is about the same in terms of look and feel — although there are some minor changes. My hope is that WordPress will make page loads much faster. And perhaps it will allow more flexibility and bells and whistles that will make this a better blog as well. Please shoot me an e-mail, if you have any comments.

Edward

UPDATE 817AM ET 20 Nov 2008: A helpful reader alerted me that comments were not working.  They should be working now.  Thanks, Tom.

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Brian Gongol comes out with a list of the most-trafficked business and economic blogs every month. This month, we made it onto the list at number 25. I want to thank everyone for reading this blog and helping it get into the top 25 so quickly.

I started this blog back in March as a project to help bring a well-informed alternative view of finance, economics, politics and foreign policy into the mainstream consciousness. Most people could give a damn about economics and finance. They think it’s pretty esoteric stuff and have just not paid attention to their own finances let alone the world’s finances.

But, these have become very interesting times. And I imagine many more people are paying attention now. My hope is to be able to play a small part in bringing the right questions and issues into view so that we the people can bring a better-informed opinion to bear on our policy makers at this critical juncture in world economic history.

There are three thing which I hope come across in my writing. I very much respect the views of my fellow econ bloggers who I see as colleagues in an effort to make economics and finance interesting. I also respect the views of my readers and enjoy your many comments and criticisms. But, it is that final note — on criticism — where I hope to leave the best impression.

There are those times when I publish a post that I look back and wish I hadn’t! Sometimes it’s just a bad writing day, but other times it’s bad facts. The reality is I am going to get things wrong from time to time. I do my level best to reference my source material and check facts before I publish. But, errors do creep through. And despite being an opinionated blowhard on occasion, I must remain true to the facts. So, when I do make a mistake, I will always try to own up to it and correct it so that you as a reader feel you are always getting a well-informed view of the global economy financial markets and geopolitics.

As a result, I will always enjoy any feedback you can offer and am very grateful for your readership.

Thanks so much.

Edward

Source
The EconDirectory: Traffic Rankings for Business and Economics Websites – Gongol.com

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We have now moved from Blogger to WordPress as the software for the site, but everything else should remain pretty much the same. You may have noticed we were offline for a few hours earlier today, but everything is back to normal — or at least it should be.

Special thanks to both Tom and the blogger at http://www.recessionsurfer.com for your comments and suggestions about WordPress and TypePad. Feel free to offer any further advice now that the site is using WordPress,

Please let us know if you are still having some difficulties accessing the site or you notice some glaring errors or omissions.

In the meantime, I expect to issue a flurry of posts to make up for some lost time.

Cheers.

Edward

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