Quotes of the day

[Wall Street] is a sophisticated marketplace in which firms compete aggressively to secure trade orders and assignments from large corporations and financial institutions. The intense competition for virtually every trade lowers the cost of capital and widens access to financial markets for companies, institutions and governments all over the world. Collectively speaking, Main Street is Wall Street's client and generally has been very well taken care of. In this crisis, Wall Street professionals, through carelessness or errors, lost a lot more money than Main Street did, and probably more, proportionately, lost their jobs too. Wall Street didn't benefit from the market declines, and only in the past few months has it recovered some of what it lost.--Roy Smith

No one will tell you they are a derivatives trader anymore. It's like labelling yourself a sex-offender. Whatever we did, I sure hope it was bad. Because we're getting hell for it.--unnamed derivatives trader

Nothing says “I’m a schmuck from out of town with no pull at the rental counter” like a PT Cruiser.--Tony Woodlief

Eric Holder, Attorney General of the United States, walked up to former DC Councilman Kevin Chavous at an event and told him to pull an ad criticizing the administration for its opposition to the DC school voucher program. The Attorney General of the United States! This is as outrageous and shameful as it is consistent with other administration hostilities toward free speech (see also here) and freedom of the press.--Andrew Coulson

They say that in Hollywood any publicity is good publicity. Thus I was delighted to see Brad DeLong paying attention to my random thoughts on the Krugman/Dubner dispute, Indeed he officially declared that I had lost my mind. But that is not all bad, because in America there are always second acts. On the same day Brad DeLong formally announced that the little known blogger Andrew Sullivan would henceforth be welcomed back into polite society. Someone may want to inform Andrew in case he hasn’t heard the wonderful news. So I knew that there was still hope that a similar fate awaited me someday; when and if I adopted the “correct views” I too might be welcomed back, like a reformed mental patient in one of Stalin’s hospitals. Or just as Fox News can expect to start get interviews again once they “shape up.” Or just as the insurance industry can expect to get a better deal in the health care legislation once it stops saying those awful things.--Scott Sumner

I fail to see the value or the worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditures of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35 year-old civil war. ... Thousands of our men and women have returned home with physical and mental wounds, some that will never heal or will only worsen with time. The dead return only in bodily form to be received by families who must be reassured that their dead have sacrificed for a purpose worthy of futures lost, love vanished, and promised dreams unkept. I have lost all confidence that any assurances can be made. As such, I submit my resignation.--Matthew Hoh, senior civilian advisor and former Marine posted in Afghanistan