BEN STEIN'S DIARY : Amid the Collapse
Stein, Benjamin J.
ben STeIn’S DIary Amid the Collapse by Benjamin J. stein monDay H ere i am in atlanta. As usual, I am staying at the Ritz-Carlton in Buckhead, one of my favorite hotels. When I...
...Bradshaw, and his bond analyst lady, Meredith Whitney, both longtime colleagues, and they invited us to a country music concert that night in Fairfax...
...What would we do without the Frists and the people like them...
...Anyway, you get my point...
...That’s the way it is in middle America: just studded with beautiful girls like stars in the sky...
...There I went to a super trendy, ultra-hip hotel called The Graves 601 and took a nap...
...What a beauty she is...
...The real answer is, “It’s none of your damned business...
...I stopped at the same Starbucks on the way back and she was there...
...They were lovely folks who, rightly, are concerned about Americans’ retirement prospects...
...The first wounded man we saw, a Private Kouchlar if I have that right, was an amazing man...
...In fact, after my nap, I went out to a country club to speak to a large group of financial people about how government started this crisis...
...Wow, is she beautiful...
...EDT, which is 2 a.m...
...I did that autograph and photo thing for more than two hours, and I was really tired by the end of the session...
...Besides, I would only like the campaigning part, not the actually working in the civil service part...
...I met and flirted with a beautiful clerk there named Destiny...
...Really nice hotel overlooking Lady Bird Lake, named for LBJ’s late wife, a true saint and a believer in beautification...
...Kouchlar said he willed himself to stay alive so his brother, who was standing next to his bed, would not have to bury him, as he had buried his mother and father...
...I also stopped at a Chick-fil-A...
...ben STeIn’S DIary Amid the Collapse by Benjamin J. stein monDay H ere i am in atlanta...
...Anyway, Pvt...
...Well, I guess the ones at the BET show feel good, but the others don’t...
...The men are gaily decked out in bling and T-shirts and lop-sided baseball caps...
...I really believe he was in cahoots with some deeply evil men...
...They started it by mandating home loans to people without creditworthiness, then made it worse by not regulating or banning credit default swaps arranged by people without any insurable interest in the bonds they “insured...
...I hope so...
...By the way, my driver stopped on the way up to West Lafayette at a Starbucks...
...I spent a long, long time visiting with a man who had been three years ahead of me at Yale Law School...
...But don’t buy them and continue to let their executives loot the system...
...That was when LBJ, as a powerful member of the Senate, got the Federal Communications Commission to shower TV and radio licenses on himself and Lady Bird...
...Frankly, I doubt it...
...It was cold out but we ate outside at Bangkok Joe’s and met many beautiful girls from UVA...
...I staggered to the airport and flew, dead asleep, to Minneapolis...
...I took more photos...
...I talked to them for a long time, mentioned them at length in my speech, and just fell in love with them...
...I especially December 2008/January 2009 THe amerIcan SPecTaTor 83 ben STeIn’S DIary loved a family named Frist...
...my time in Los Angeles...
...First, they are having the annual meetings of the Future Farmers of America...
...No one but me remembers this, but she was also a willing and eager participant in one of the most crooked empirebuilding deals of all time...
...He’s a lawyer and investment advisor in Birmingham...
...He could recall every detail of the catastrophe...
...Actually, I shouldn’t say that...
...What a difference...
...weDneSDay O ff to indianapolis...
...As I was eating my sandwich, a beautiful red-headed young woman came over and asked me how I was with the Lord...
...The bailout has morphed from being a help to borrowers in Muncie to being an immense life raft for Paulson’s buddies on Wall Street...
...It does not have a big leafy lawn, at least not that I saw...
...He had both of his legs blown off in Iraq...
...Then, to bed and a long sleep...
...It is a huge campus, but mostly vertical...
...I just had eggs in my room and went to bed...
...They finally quieted down, though, and I fell asleep...
...I have done too many bad things to ever even consider being a politi cian...
...How is a generation of boomers who were ill prepared before going to retire now that their savings have been cut in half or so by the stock market crash...
...The kids were uniformly intelligent, cheerful, and polite...
...This goes back to something I have often said, namely that fast food is better than expensive slow restaurant food in about 90 percent of cases...
...The mom, dad, and two sisters were just glorious people...
...84 THe amerIcan SPecTaTor December 2008/January 2009...
...I really do not understand why there is not revolution...
...Chang’s...
...Then I had a very poor lunch of poorly prepared steak, watched Senator Obama give his usual nonsense speech, and went off to West Lafayette to speak at the business school at Purdue...
...So, I talked to these nice people and then we had some long talks afterward...
...frIDay A n astounding day...
...She was overstepping her boundaries by asking me how I was with the Lord...
...Nice work,Henry M.Paulson, for not doing the smart thing right away but instead letting world confidence in financial markets simply vanish...
...How come no one is even saying boo about this...
...The problems this country faces are basically not solvable by government, so at least for ceremonial reasons, why not have a president who cheers up a long dispossessed part of the electorate...
...Their son was killed in Iraq...
...He told me how badly many of the city’s most prominent families are being hit by the collapse of the regional banking sector...
...Wow, was she cute...
...The town is just jammed with teenagers in dark jackets that say where they’re from...
...Today I spoke at Georgia State University...
...Then, everyone is all atwitter because the Obama juggernaut is rolling into town tomorrow...
...Now it’s a rescue package for billionaires in Greenwich...
...Anyway, I got to Austin and went to my hotel room at the Four Seasons...
...Well, none of this is up to me...
...I’m a big guy,” he said, “and it’s because the EFP hit me and I absorbed the shock that the two guys in the back are still alive...
...The food and my reaction to it kept me up all night...
...Black Entertainment Television is having an awads ceremony here in Atlanta...
...They are also going to need a real stimulus package of major size...
...Their lady friends are lovely and wearing actually normal outfits, quite different from the men...
...and become a star, but that was probably not good advice...
...Especially, I would not like the getting up early part...
...We actually had some long talks before, too...
...Then I talked to some more financial people, and then had lunch with them...
...Government can cure the current financial crisis by guaranteeing solvency of inter-bank loans and by sharply curtailing liability under credit default swaps...
...As usual, the mothers with crying babies were in the first row of coach behind me...
...He could remember exactly how the men who hauled him out of the vehicle put their hands so they could lift him...
...The city is abuzz...
...Now lobbyists cannot even take a senator out to lunch...
...It was Eminem singing “F--k You Osama bin Laden” and it was the part where there are spoken words by George Bush sampled by Eminem, words about finding bin Laden wherever he is...
...We ran into a famous wrestler, Mr...
...Why on earth should a farmer in eastern Washington State have to prop up Goldman Sachs with his hardearned money...
...The story is that Obama might win Indiana, typically a GOP state...
...Obviously, I hate and loathe his racism and the violence that racism engendered...
...I said I prayed constantly and hoped I was all right...
...Then we reassembled in the lobby and I signed autographs and posed for photos with many hundreds of them...
...The young woman worked at Chick-fil-A...
...He could even remember what he was listening to on his iPod when the EFP hit him...
...I wonder...
...It was to benefit wounded soldiers...
...Paulson...
...Truth to tell, I really miss him...
...Keep your long alien fingers out of my face,” was what he said...
...Needless to say, I was sobbing...
...On the other hand, it has many friendly students...
...I’ve gotten so I feel a bit on edge if I do not hear those crying babies behind me...
...Government can do a lot about the current financial crisis...
...Has there ever been a worse treasury secretary than Mr...
...He could remember what kind of Gatorade he drank as he was being hauled out of the blown-up vehicle...
...I awakened at 5 a.m...
...They scared me a bit, but then they started shouting out “Clear Eyes” to me, and all was well...
...I told her she should move to L.A...
...Well, anyway, I did that, and by the time I got home, I was so tired I didn’t go out to my usual, New York Prime, for a fine meal...
...They are a Gold Star family...
...Plus, he relented and repented of his racism and I think that was a great thing, too...
...They turned out in droves, major standing room only, to hear my little speech, then asked questions for about an hour...
...But I started to feel sort of angry...
...Yes, underwrite their loans...
...I also spoke to him and his very smart son about their impressions of George Corley Wallace, former governor of Alabama...
...But I do think that black people should feel that one of their own is chief magistrate...
...But why do the airlines do it that way...
...Compare them with Wall Street and you really get upset...
...I am pretty sure my parents are here watching over me...
...Truth to tell, I love doing it...
...Now, government can cure the crisis by guaranteeing solvency of inter-bank loans and by sharply curtailing liability under credit default swaps...
...He could remember what he said to a black sergeant who kept him awake so he didn’t die of shock...
...I ate at an Italian restaurant near the hotel...
...On a salary of about $25,000 a year, he assembled an empire worth hundreds of millions or maybe billions...
...This is a last, desperate act of rapine against the American people by Mr...
...The bailout was sold as a way to stabilize the mortgage situation, i.e., money for banks to allow them to keep lending to homeowners...
...But he also gave the white working class a voice they had been denied more or less forever, and I think that was a good thing...
...All day,” she said...
...They have been feeling bad for so long, it’s time they felt good...
...Anyway, I had a very good time in West Lafayette...
...It was so horrible I really cannot say...
...I checked into my modest suite at the Canterbury Hotel and went out for food at P.F...
...I am very tired...
...I don’t think so...
...I do not expect Senator Obama to be able to accomplish anything at all...
...SaTurDay O ff to walter reed with my pal Russ Ferguson, future president...
...Eighteen years old...
...Since I think he actually paved the way for modern political life in America, we have deeply different impressions...
...Many of the participants are staying at the Ritz-Carlton...
...Paulson and I do not like it at all...
...I took a short nap after my speech, then flew to D.C., to my beloved hometown, and went out to dinner with my pal Mike Long and his son, Sam, the webmaster of my website...
...But I figure if someone waits in line for two hours to get her photo with me, I owe it to her to sit there and wait...
...So, Obama is coming here to stake his claim...
...What’s the point of torturing us first class fliers with that endless crying...
...Good old-fashioned graft...
...Or some of them don’t...
...ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer in Beverly Hills and Malibu...
...Of course, instead, under that imbecile Henry M. Paulson we get state socialism of banks and investment banks...
...They did not like him at all...
...I wonder if little Destiny is in my destiny...
...I think I should have been a politician, but now it’s too late...
...The kids have a solid, beefy look to them and many of the girls are really pretty...
...THurSDay I survived a difficult night at the canterbury...
...Better than a movie star...
...I asked her how often she prayed...
...5 a.m...
...Everyone else Russ and I met were also brave, magnificent men...
...Maybe the kids have more legroom that way so they can kick our seats...
...Now, there is a pleasant bunch of people...
...Anyway, that was yesterday...
...But do we get better laws now...
...As usual, I was in the last row of first class...
...It was deeply upsetting...
...Yes, give them loans they have to repay...
...It’s between the Lord and me...
...Russ and I straggled out there to hear Trace Adkins and Alan Jackson...
...I took some photos of her on my phone...
...It was wayyyy too loud, but we stayed for about half an hour and then left...
...When I checked in last night, though, the lobby was a little different from the usual...
...As usual, it was a barely edible meal, but a very comfortable seat...
...Still, LBJ deserves credit for helping to mandate changes in civil rights legislation, change that has 82 THe amerIcan SPecTaTor December 2008/January 2009 benJamIn J. STeIn made possible our first partly black president, whom I expect to be elected a few weeks after I write this...
...TueSDay U p in the morning and off to Austin, Texas...
...I think I had some future farmers next to me making noise...
Vol. 41 • January 2009 • No. 10
