Former Fugitive Marc Rich Lost With Madoff

Maybe all the profanity will keep you reading

(NEWSER) - There are so many books about the financial crisis, how does one choose which to read first? One method: Go for the one with the most instances of the word “fuck.” Conveniently enough, Paul Kedrosky has assembled a handy list. Not big on the idea of the f-word prominently featured in your bailout books? Don’t worry, the clean ones appear at the bottom of the list:

1. The Big Short by Michael Lewis: 15 total, .06 per page

Incumbency carries plenty of advantages

(NEWSER) - Sure, things look glum for President Obama, but he’s still the odds-on favorite to win the 2012 presidential election. Carl Cannon tells us why:

• A “generic Republican” doesn’t exist. Obama trails that very thing by double digits in a recent poll, but the GOP nominee will bring his or her own baggage.
• There might be more than two candidates. Lou Dobbs? Glenn Beck? There’s a lot of rumbling out there about third-party runs.

Colleagues clash with Too Big to Fail author

(NEWSER) - Andrew Ross Sorkin isn't the only entrepreneurial writer in the New York Times stable, but he might be the most successful, with his DealBook blog and newsletter, his Times column, and now his bestseller, Too Big to Fail making him ubiquitous in the media these days. “It’s hard to overstate Sorkin’s centrality as an information hub on Wall Street,” Sherman writes in New York, noting the financial bigwigs who showed up for Sorkin's book party. “He’s a 32-year-old guy, and there were all these titans of Wall Street crowding around to say hello and make nice to Andrew," adds New Yorker media columnist Ken Auletta. More»

$23B is galling, but at least the bank is sensible: Sorkin

(NEWSER) - On Thursday Goldman Sachs is set to announce its third-quarter results, but the talk of Wall Street is the size of this year's bonus pool—predicted to be more than $23 billion. That's the largest figure in the company's history and twice as much as it paid out in 2008, but for New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin, "we can’t have it both ways": After praying the banks wouldn't fail, now we don't want them to succeed. More»

(NEWSER) - Facing a burdensome political agenda, decreased popularity, and widespread opposition to his key policies, President Barack Obama appears poised to become the next Jimmy Carter, Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie write in the Washington Post. Both are "smart, moralistic" presidents who inherited brutal economies, but both responded with top-heavy spending. “Obama has mistaken his personal popularity for a national predilection toward emergency-driven central planning,” they write. More»