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Mundane in Maryland

Doing some last-minute shopping before cooking. Happy Thanksgiving!

Life Sucks For Lehman

11 Nov 2008 15:57 EST DJ Lehman Brothers Plans To Sell Art To Help Pay Off Creditors

By David McLaughlin Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (LEHMQ), which is in the process of unloading billions of dollars in assets to raise money for its creditors, now plans to put its art collection up for sale. Lehman has art stored in warehouses in Manhattan and in Paris that it says is worth about $8 million. But before it can sell any of it, it needs to pay bills owed for storing, transporting and framing the art. Lehman owes $20,000 to three companies that have liens on the art. Its asking the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan for permission to pay the bills so it can begin looking for buyers. Lehman didn't provide details about the artwork in its court filing Monday. The investment bank also said it has valuable art in its offices, though it didn't say how much that art is worth. The art sales is the latest move by Lehman to sell its assets following its historic collapse in September. Lehman said the art collection represents "significant value" to the company, but the sales won't make much of a dent in the $600 billion Lehman owes to creditors. Since its Sept. 15 bankruptcy filing, Lehman has sold its U.S. broker-dealer operations for $1.54 billion and its energy unit for $230 million. It has also sold a plane for $24.9 million and a stake in a hedge fund for $250 million, plus a $250 million stake in a new fund.

The Open-Source President

About that "open-source" president we were talking about a few nights ago: In a column in today's NYT business section David Carr leads with Netscape founder Marc Andreessen and his meeting with Barack Obama in the spring of 2007. An excerpt:

Always game for something new, Mr. Andreessen headed to the San Francisco airport late one night to hear the guy out. A junior member of a large and powerful organization with a thin, but impressive, résumé, he was about to take on far more powerful forces in a battle for leadership.

He wondered if social networking, with its tremendous communication capabilities and aggressive database development, might help him beat the overwhelming odds facing him.

“It was like a guy in a garage who was thinking of taking on the biggest names in the business,” Mr. Andreessen recalled. “What he was doing shouldn’t have been possible, but we see a lot of that out here and then something clicks. He was clearly supersmart and very entrepreneurial, a person who saw the world and the status quo as malleable.”

And as it turned out, President-elect Barack Obama was right.

...

“I think it is very significant that he was the first post-boomer candidate for president,” Mr. Andreessen said. “Other politicians I have met with are always impressed by the Web and surprised by what it could do, but their interest sort of ended in how much money you could raise. He was the first politician I dealt with who understood that the technology was a given and that it could be used in new ways.”

The juxtaposition of a networked, open-source campaign and a historically imperial office will have profound implications and raise significant questions. Special-interest groups and lobbyists will now contend with an environment of transparency and a president who owes them nothing. The news media will now contend with an administration that can take its case directly to its base without even booking time on the networks.

A new paradigm in governing? The level of intimacy that Obama has developed with the electorate via text message and the Internet has already shown what is possible - the first post-modern presidential campaign. What's next?

The President-Elect

What a crazy place.

I was moved far more than I expected tonight. Forget the electoral maps and 3-D graphics, the talky pundits and bloggerheads, and the day-to-day madness of the last 22 months. It's all over, and what we've ended up with is a genuinely historic moment.

Tom Friedman said (as have some bloggers) that the election of this black man brings us to the symbolic - and true - end to the American Civil War:

And so it came to pass that on Nov. 4, 2008, shortly after 11 p.m. Eastern time, the American Civil War ended, as a black man — Barack Hussein Obama — won enough electoral votes to become president of the United States.

...

This moment was necessary, for despite a century of civil rights legislation, judicial interventions and social activism — despite Brown v. Board of Education, Martin Luther King’s I-have-a-dream crusade and the 1964 Civil Rights Act — the Civil War could never truly be said to have ended until America’s white majority actually elected an African-American as president.

Look at all the screaming faces of excited young black children on TV, and you know that they - and all children - now have a new kind of hero.

On a smaller scale, many are relieved the Bush years are over; it's a democratic coup. The cheering, screaming, banging, honking and clapping that has not stopped on my block (and elsewhere across the country, literally) since 11 p.m. are not only hundreds of Brooklynites (hipsters and cab drivers alike) expressing support for Obama. It's also the very real, very palpable manifestation of that great catharsis.

On an even closer level: I've spoken with Republican friends and acquaintances, and universally the fear among them is that Obama is a reckless big-government liberal who will conspire with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to ruin America, morally and financially.

But maybe, we hope, this new president of ours will run a modest, useful, efficient government.

NYT:

Mr. Obama won the election because he saw what is wrong with this country: the utter failure of government to protect its citizens. He promised to lead a government that does not try to solve every problem but will do those things beyond the power of individual citizens: to regulate the economy fairly, keep the air clean and the food safe, ensure that the sick have access to health care, and educate children to compete in a globalized world.

Sounds like some neophyte fantasy-world gobbledy-gook, right? Washington is gridlocked, impossible - "gummed up," as Obama so illustratively said in the video announcing his candidacy in 2007.

Still. Alex Castellanos, the Republican strategist, just this minute on CNN asked - rhetorically yet genuinely - if Barack Obama is going to be the "open-source" president for our new generation - by building government that serves the people. Working from the bottom up, not top-down. He meant it admiringly, in response to this, from Obama's election-night speech:

"And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn – I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too."

I, for one, am hoping.

Last Days

A great video. It captures the size and scope of the Obama campaign.