(Audit Corrects: An earlier version said the Crain’s scoop included the information that Mort Zuckerman and Cablevision’s Jim Dolan were also looking; Senior Reporter Matthew Flamm, who broke the story, tells us those details came later.)

Meyerson’s informed opinion

Back to the crisis thing, a Credit to Harold Meyerson, who unlike Brooks above, proves he can hang with the financial-crisis analysis, in a Washington Post column headlined “A New New Deal”. Meyerson says the three decades after World War II were “real” prosperity and calls the late 1920s, the late 1990s, and this decade periods of faux prosperity, mirages created by the heat of huge asset bubbles.

Here are Meyerson’s prescriptions:

And out of this debacle emerge two paramount lessons for our highest-ranking policymakers: Regulate the American financial sector, which is now turning to the government for a bailout. And commit the government to doing all in its power to generate broad-based prosperity, through laws enabling workers to bargain collectively, through a massive public commitment to projects ‘greening’ the economy, through provision of universal health coverage and affordable college educations.

This isn’t (entirely) about ideology. Meyerson clearly knows the subject; Brooks just as clearly doesn’t.

Clothing analysis: why?

When is a tie just a tie?

Don’t ask the Times, which gets another Debit for deciding it would be a good use of precious column inches to analyze the sartorial selections of Messrs. Spitzer and McGreevey, the New York and New Jersey governors felled by sex scandals, and their wives in their come-to-Jesus press conferences.

The look, for him: a dark suit, starched white shirt, red, white and blue striped tie.

The look, for her: a powder-blue jacket, pearl necklace, matching earrings.

This, it seems, is the uniform for the modern public apology.

It was worn, with eerie, down-to-the-last-detail resemblance, by Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York and his wife, Silda, and Gov. James McGreevey of New Jersey and his wife, Dina, when the couples first confronted allegations of marital impropriety…

Actually, we find out the details weren’t quite the same. Spitzer’s stripes slanted down from his right to left, while McGreevey’s went the opposite way. And Silda Spitzer wore two strands of pearls while Dina McGreevey wore one. But the similarities trumped the differences, according to reporter Michael Barbaro.

Hey, Times editors, you’re not Us Weekly, and no one cares.

Strong bond

Credit the WSJ for its excellent three-person interview with bond-guru Bill Gross and his mentor Edward Thorp. A great read.

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