Second Post

This isn't just music that lends itself to introvert obsessions, it's a whole label about the transference of interpersonal relationships both into and onto pop music, about how right it is that thinking about your life makes it harder, about candid vulnerability as a serious alternative to ironic distance, maybe even an extended explication of one of my favorite hopeful theories, that songs don't replace people, they represent them, in which case our relationships with songs are, in fact, relationships with people, an evolution of communication rather than an avoidance of it.A week ago, Warren Buffett rescued Goldman Sachs by injecting $5 billion in capital. Did Buffett bargain for warrants that can be exchanged at an unknown later date for nonvoting shares? No: He is not a fool. Buffett gave Goldman Sachs $5 billion in return for senior preferred stock, the kind that votes and also is more valuable than ordinary shares. That is to say, he used his money to buy something. Goldman can now employ the cash to fix its liquidity problems. The United States Congress and the White House should use the public's $700 billion to buy something, namely senior preferred shares. Why are Congress and George W. Bush not simply following the road map laid out on this problem by the smartest investor of our era? Either Congress and the president are a bunch of blithering fools -- or what they actually want is to insure the public's money is never seen by the public again.