Paul Haahr’s Blog

Over my vacation, I read Kurt Eichenwald’s Conspiracy of Fools, which is a wonderfully entertaining, novelistic narrative of Enron’s history and collapse. More on that in future posts, but having just finished that book, I choked when I read this in the New York Times’s hagiographic profile of Henry Paulson from Sunday:

Most notably, he advocated bundling bad loans into off-balance-sheet entities that theoretically would allow banks to improve their financial standing. The plan was a total flop and yet another signal that Mr. Paulson underestimated the severity of the problem.

I’m sorry, but how would that have helped? Isn’t this just an accounting trick? Isn’t the issue that these loans are not being repaid? I can understand the value in writing the loans down, but moving them off balance sheet without writing the loans down just shifts the problem around. Something’s very wrong with the state of accounting if this is what the Treasury Secretary is recommending.

I moved away from New York two decades ago for a life I enjoy a lot in San Francisco, but tonight we had one of those magical nights which you can only get in a city like New York.

The center of our evening was seeing South Pacific at Lincoln Center. It’s a great production of one of the great musicals. I’d never seen South Pacific before and I was surprised at how uncliched it was. While some of the story didn’t seem particular fresh and it couldn’t be controversial in the way it was in 1949, thanks to progress in society, I think they found something deeper in this production than I would have expected. Despite the disappointment of seeing an understudy for Kelli O’Hara, all the performances were great. It’s the type of show which reminds you how powerful live theater can be.

Then, walking home, we were surprised by beautiful fireworks in Central Park, courtesy of the New York Philharmonic. There’s nothing quite like walking along and seeing the sky light up like that.

These both followed doing some things with the kids and just being out and around the city. The day wasn’t too hot and humid, unlike a few recent ones. All in all, what one wants in a city vacation. I love living in San Francisco, but still miss New York when I’m not here; tonight reminded me of why.