Email to Rich Meislin

EMAIL
From: Ian
Date: 05 October 2008 10:18
To: navigator@nytimes.com
Subject: Message for Rich Meislin re. IHT and Blogs

Rich hi,

Could I invite you to take a look at http://ihtreaders.blogspot.com/2008/10/what-exactly-are-nyt-blogs.html and read to the end and some previous posts on NYT/IHT blogs. There are a number of questions and ideas.

Many thanks,
Ian

http://www.ihtreaders.blogspot.com/
www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com
www.farmblogs.blogspot.com

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What exactly are NYT blogs?

If you're looking for answers about the purpose and ethical boundaries of NYT blogs, you can't find them at the NYT.com Blogs 101
which is maintained by Rich Meislin and where you are invited to send along your favorite blogs.

Mine is A Place in the Auvergne so I'll do that and see that happens.

Actually Think! can be found on http://www.iht.com/ if you look REALLY carefully but I think once the higher-ups spot this, it may be removed.

(To find it, go to the home page, scroll down to the very bottom, and there you will see next to a search box, on the last line, this:

More:
Daily Article Index

Hyper Sudoku

IHT Developer Blog

In Our Pages

Click on IHT Developer Blog (not updated since July which is about when the iht.com crowd knew for sure their days were numbered, so sadly it hasn't been updated since - a pity because I'd love to hear the Last Post from www.iht.com) and you will arrive on a page with some links.

These links are:

BBC Backstage
Google Maps API Blog
jQuery Blog
NY Times "Open"
THINK!
Wordpress Blog

Anyway, back to Rich: question - what is the purpose of NYTs blogs as you see it or is there some 'official' NYT editorial policy statement on this you could share with us? What are the rules, what is going on?

The only thing I can find at Blogs 101 is the NYT giving a small talk about blogging and then some recommendations. Recommendations not referenced elsewhere, I don't believe, on http://www.nytimes.com/ unlike the new WP political site, which includes content from, and links to, blogs.

But recommendations nonetheless.

Quite interesting to see an 'official list' of MSM approved blogs.

It's not a bad 101 listing, but shouldn't the NYT be offering a bit more of a blogging 2.0 listing if it wants to be ahead of the news curve and have a bit more street cred in the blogosphere? (That's another question for you Rich.)

OK, the winners are:

Blogs 101
By RICH MEISLIN
To get the feel of Web logs and blogging, visit some of these sites. Most blogs carry links to other blogs on related topics or that the author likes (known as a blogroll). This page is under development; feel free to suggest your own finds. Business and sports are being built, and suggestions are particularly welcome.
Recent additions: Footnoted.org reads corporate filings and news releases more closely than most people. . . . Terry Teachout's About Last Night covers culture in New York and elsewhere. Interesting blogroll of culture sites, too. . . . Cyberjournalist.net looks at the effects of the Internet and new technology on the media. . . . Paidcontent.org looks at the economics of the Web. . . . ScotusBlog and the related Supreme Court Nomination Blog are keeping a close watch on the proceedings in the court. . . . Crooks and Liars and politics, with a liberal slant. With a great collection of video clips. . . .

Collections & Rankings
Technorati blog search and the Technorati Top 100 list of most linked-to blogs
Feedster Search for news feeds and blogs by topic
Bloglines (Registration required.) Find blogs by topic (or name) and read them here
Blogpulse, from Intelliseek, lets you search blogs and automatically finds trends
Truth Laid Bear Traffic Rankings Most-visited blogs
Flickr Not quite blogging, but fascinating. Storytelling through photo sharing.

General
BoingBoing "A directory of wonderful things" from around the Internet
Gawker Gossip and snarkiness about media, showbiz, New York City, etc.
Defamer Similar in tone to Gawker, but with a West Coast slant

Technology & Media
Romenesko The blog all journalists know
Media Bistro Sort of a blog. Its Fishbowl is more of a blog.
John Battelle's Searchblog Media, technology, Internet search, etc.
Dan Gillmor's blog Well-regarded former columnist for San Jose Mercury, now on Bayosphere
Cyberjournalist.net Jonathan Dube for the Online News Assocation
BuzzMachine Jeff Jarvis talks a lot about new media (and himself).
PressThink Jay Rosen of N.Y.U. on The Media vs. the press
SimonWaldman.net Newspapers and new media from a British perspective
Scripting News Dave Winer tracks the world of blogging and technology and has some interesting (and some cranky) thoughts.
TheJasonCalacanisWeblog Blog about blogs from the chairman of Weblogs Inc.
Paidcontent.org Looks at the economics of the Web
Journal-isms Richard Prince, of the Maynard Institute, pays attention to diversity issues in journalism.
Media Law Robert J. Ambrogi

Technology, Toys & Cool Things
Gizmodo From the Gawker empire
Engadget Gadgets of all sorts
Josh Rubin: Cool Hunting "Stuff from the intersection of design, culture and technology"
Cool Tools Kevin Kelly finds all manner of intriguing things.
Josh Spear "The pulse of cool."
Treehugger Environmental design and consciousness

Politics & Government
Daily Kos Markos Moulitsas Zuniga. One of the best-known liberal blogs.
Talking Points Memo Joshua Micah Marshall. Widely read liberal blog from a contributor to Washington Monthly and The Hill.
MyDD Jerome Armstrong and Chris Bowers.
Eschaton Atrios, aka Duncan Black. "Proud member of the reality-based community."
AmericaBlog John Aravosis. Politics from the left; one of the key sources of info in the Gannon/Guckert affair.
Crooks and Liars and politics, with a liberal slant. And a great collection of video clips.
Daily Dish Andrew Sullivan on conservative, religious and gay issues. (He tried to stop but couldn't.)
InstaPundit Glenn Reynolds. One of the best-known conservative blogs.
Kausfiles Mickey Kaus's mostly political blog on Slate
Little Green Footballs
Power Line One of the more widely read blogs from the right.
Iraqi Bloggers Central Good collection of links to Iraqi bloggers.
Mystery Pollster Mark Blumenthal's intelligent analysis of polls and polling.
Wonkette Washington gossip (also from the Gawker empire).
Global Voices gathers some interesting views from blogs around the world.
ScotusBlog and the related Supreme Court Nomination Blog are keeping a close watch on the proceedings in the court.

Also see Traditional Media, below

'Traditional Media'
Altercation. Eric Alterman. MSNBC.
Howard Fineman MSNBC
Bloggermann Keith Olbermann. MSNBC.
Citizen Journalists MSNBC's experiment in participatory journalism
LOOSE wire Jeremy Wagstaff, Dow Jones
The Corner From National Review
Hit and Run From Reason
Editor's Blog John Robinson, Greensboro, N.C., News Record. The paper is conducting a widely-commented-on experiment in increasing communication with its readers.

Other News-Record blogs can be reached from this page.
The Politicker Ben Smith, New York Observer
Tapped from the American Prospect
CJRDaily Updates from the Columbia Journalism Review (successor to its Campaign Desk)
The Huffington Post Arianna Huffington's celebrity blogfest
Blinq Daniel Rubin, a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, blogs for its Web site
Blogspotting from Stephen Baker and Heather Green of Business Week. (You can find other Business Week blogs from there.)

Business
Seeking Alpha and The Internet Stock Blog News and analysis by David Jackson, a money manager and former tech stock analyst
Footnoted.org reads corporate filings and news releases more carefully than most people
New York
Curbed Everyone's favorite New York City topic: real estate
Gothamist
About Last Night Terry Teachout writes about culture in New York and elsewhere. Interesting blogroll of culture sites, too.
NYC Bloggers Thousands of other New York City bloggers, organized by subway line
Food
The Food Section Josh Friedland. With a New York slant.
Gothamist Food From the Gothamist folks
Saute Wednesday Bruce Cole.
Chocolate and Zucchini Clotilde writes about food from Paris.
A Full Belly Alaina Browne.

Design
Apartment Therapy Maxwell and Oliver Ryan. Tips and things for living better in small spaces
Core77 Industrial design
Design*Sponge A little breathless, but some interesting finds.
Land and Living
MocoLoco Modern design from all over
Reluct.com Design and architecture from a team in the Netherlands.
Treehugger Design with an environmental slant
Miscellany
PostSecret People mail their secrets -- touching, funny, scary -- on homemade postcards.


Another question for Rich: if we're (IHT readers) all going to be reading www.nytimes.com and not iht.com, where is the list of important blogs outside of the U.S.A.? It is rumoured by the recent Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2007 report that some actually exist. Us IHT readers might well be interested in your recommendations.

Can I throw in the idea of something to do with Food and Agriculture for example: one I like is - full disclosure: it's mine - Farm Blogs from Around the World.

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NYT Blogs

On the subject of NYT blogs, and in case you're not familiar with them and only read the IHT or iht.com (where only IHT blogs are played, not NYTs blogs too, which is not the case at nytimes.com where you can see the IHT blogs) here is a full list:


ArtsBeat
Reporters and critics from The Times report from arts events from around the world.

Baghdad Bureau
A collaborative blog from inside Iraq by reporters, photographers and Western and Iraqi staff.

Bats
Times sports reporters on the latest news and best stories unfolding in the 2008 baseball season.

Bitten
Bitten is where Mark Bittman chews on food and things connected to it.

Bits
Insights and discoveries about technology from Times reporters in Silicon Valley and beyond.

Carpetbagger
The Carpetbagger, hosted by David Carr, is a seasonal blog that covers all things Oscar — the news, the nonsense and the players that drive the campaign.

The Caucus
The Times's politics staff on the latest news from the campaign trail and around Washington.

City Room
A news blog about New York City from The Times's Metro staff, including expanded coverage, interviews and multimedia.

Daniel Altman's Managing Globalization
The International Herald Tribune's global economics correspondent on economic news and the challenges of globalization.

DealBook
Daily news on mergers & acquisitions, I.P.O.'s, venture capital and more. Edited by Andrew Ross Sorkin.

Diner's Journal
Frank Bruni, The Times's restaurant critic, reports on restaurant news and trends, the life of a critic and more.

Dot Earth
A blog about climate change, the environment and sustainability by The Times's Andrew C. Revkin.

Economix
A blog that considers economics as the study of everyday life.

Executive Suite
The columnist Joe Nocera offers his take on executives and the companies they run.

Fifth Down
News, analysis and discussion of the N.F.L. and advice about fantasy football teams.

Gambit
Chess news, analysis and discussion about tournaments, events and trends.

Goal
The world of soccer, including international tournaments, foreign leagues and the M.L.S.

Globespotters
International Herald Tribune editors and reporters share tips about the cities they live in and visit.

Green Inc.
From renewable energy policy to eco-advertising, tracking the high-stakes pursuit of a greener globe.

Ideas
Brief posts on all things interesting, compiled by Tom Kuntz and other Week in Review editors.

Laugh Lines
Funny stuff from all over, including editorial cartoons.

The Lede
NYTimes.com follows the day's news stories as they spiral off into unexpected directions.

The Medium
Adventures in digital culture, a magazine blog (and column) by Virginia Heffernan.

The Moment
The Moment is a daily blog that spans the T Magazine universe of fashion, design, food and travel.

Motherlode
Lisa Belkin writes about everything parenting-related — homework, friends, sex, bullying, baby sitters, the work-family balance and more.

The New Old Age
Jane Gross focuses on the elderly and the adult children who struggle to care for them.

Floyd Norris: Notions on High and Low Finance
The Times's chief financial correspondent comments on economics and finance.

On the Runway
Cathy Horyn gives a behind-the-scenes perspective on all things fashion, from backstage at shows to the inner workings of designers' minds.

Paper Cuts
The editors of the Book Review, on books and other forms of printed matter.

Pogue's Posts
Quick hits from the desk of technology columnist David Pogue.

The Pour
Eric Asimov, The Times's wine critic, discusses the pleasure, culture and business of wine, beer and spirits.

The Public Editor's Journal
Clark Hoyt, the readers' representative, responds to complaints and comments from the public and monitors the paper's journalistic practices.

The Quad
Features, interviews and analyses of college sports.

Reading Room
Book Review editors lead discussions of classic books.

Real Estate Q&A
Expert advice for owners and renters, with Jay Romano.

Shifting Careers
Marci Alboher highlights newfangled ways of custom-blending careers and celebrates smart thinking about work.

Slapshot
News and features about the Rangers, the N.H.L and all things ice hockey.

TierneyLab
Science columnist John Tierney checks out new research and rethinks conventional wisdom.

The TimesTraveler
Travel back in time with a blog about The Times of 100 years ago.

Travel Q&A
The travel staff of The New York Times answers your questions, from navigating the modern hassles of flying, to finding the perfect vacation spot.

TV Decoder
A guide to television — what's on, who`s watching and why it matters.

Well
Tara Parker-Pope reports daily on medical science, nutrition, fitness and family health.

Wheels
News and notes on the world of automobiles.

The Business of Green (IHT) versus Green Inc

I don't know who moved first: the IHT with the Business of Green or the NYT with Green Inc.

Either way, I only noticed for the first time a house-advert for Green Inc in the IHT a couple of days ago.

James Kanter's Business of Green Blog (with E. Rosenthal and others) is no more at iht.com; now you go to the NYT's blog Green Inc. (Described on iht.com as the Business of Green's new home on the web, to which you are then directed ) Kanter is the IHT's man at Green Inc.

What is Green Inc? Apart from the beginnings of the end for www.iht.com?

About Green Inc.
How will the pressures of climate change, limited fossil fuel resources and the mainstreaming of "green" consciousness reshape society? Follow the money. From renewable energy policy to carbon markets to dubious eco-advertising, our energy and environment reporters will track the high-stakes pursuit of a greener globe.

Three questions:

a) Increasingly NYT blogs are alternative ways of organising news stories that are run in print or on line - it's not really blogging as I understand it. What do you think they are all about? Is it just a way to allow journalists trained to report facts an opportunity to express opinion? If so, their opinions are tame.

b) Is Green Inc a nice idea for a global audience? It strikes me as very American.

c) The Environment is not exclusively an energy story. Why group them together? And why so little attention to the 'traditional' energy story within Green Inc which seems to largely ignore fossil fuel stories, and focus on renewable energy stories, which is rather missing the point. Are we not going to get into peak oil, pros and cons for example?

To see the meta themes of energy and environment and how to distinguish them, visit A Place in the Auvergne.

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Are newspapers going to surrender entirely the Internet advertising market?

Maybe here's a respite for them to get their act together. I wonder if the NYT Co. has a K street lobbyist, which firm it is, and what they're doing about this anti-trust case?

Google and Yahoo delay search ad partnership

By Diane Bartz
Google Inc and Yahoo Inc have decided to delay implementing a controversial search advertising partnership, Yahoo said on Friday.
"The companies have agreed to a brief delay in implementing this agreement to continue our ongoing discussions with the (U.S.) Department of Justice," Yahoo said in a statement. "We have had discussions with regulators and look forward to responding to their questions about this agreement."
Google issued a similar statement.
"When we announced our advertising agreement with Yahoo in June we agreed to delay its implementation until October to give regulators time to look at the details. As we are still in conversation with the Department of Justice we have agreed to a brief delay in implementing the agreement while those discussions continue," the company said.

The delay was expected to last less than a month, a source familiar with the discussions on the issue told Reuters. "We're still looking at the time frame of October," the source said.
The deal, which allows Google to sell advertising for some of Yahoo's online advertising space, is unpopular with advertisers who fear higher prices. Google's web-search market share widened to 63 percent in August, while Yahoo dropped to 19.6 percent and Microsoft Corp slipped to 8.3 percent, according to comScore Inc.
Bob Liodice, president and CEO of the Association of National Advertisers, said his organisation was opposed to the pact. "We're gratified that Google and Yahoo are delaying," he said.
Google uses an algorithm that aims to match consumers with what it says are the most appropriate ads, a formula some advertisers find mysterious and bothersome.
The deal announced in June to share advertising was widely seen as an effort to help fend off Microsoft's efforts to acquire Yahoo, by bringing Yahoo an additional $800 million in annual revenues.
An antitrust lawyer, who regularly brings mergers to the Justice Department, said that the delay was probably not a good sign for Google and Yahoo.
"It means that they were not going to get a clean bill of health in time, and perhaps it's much worse than that. They don't want to go forward and be told that there's potentially a very serious problem there," said the lawyer.
There had been previously been signs that the planned partnership was running into trouble with the Justice Department, in particular reports that the agency had brought on board top litigator Sandy Litvack to work on the deal.
Litvack was the department's antitrust chief under former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Walt Disney Co's former vice chairman.
Google has argued the tie-up means Google and Yahoo could work together to improve the chances that consumers will be more likely to get ads for products they will want to buy -- thus giving advertisers more bang for their buck. It has also said that since it sells its advertisements by auction that it has little control over prices.

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How the NYT hides financial meltdown journalistic failure

Let's just leave aside for now who is sorting out the 'financial meltdown' and the lack of penetrating questions about this (I hadn't seen that actual term, financial meltdown, used in the IHT in a headline until an Opinion piece in Friday's paper btw!!), namely an ex-Goldman Sachs chief who got us into this mess (that's him up there - yes, I know you know that, so why do the IHT keep running boring pictures of men in suits whose faces we already know? Another question...)

What blew me away from the article below, which could have been given the entire front page, was the fact that the absolutely key SEC meeting back in 2004 that got us into this thing - that the IHT now, only now, dares to refer to as a financial meltdown - was NOT attended by anyone from the MSM, INCLUDING THE NYT.

(What did get most of the IHT front page on Friday was the fighting in Pakistan; again, for anyone who follows my blog A Place in the Auvergne check out the labels Afghanistan/Pakistan and Financial Meltdown to see when I first started using those labels, when I first made the fighting in Pakistan my lead daily story and where the NYT story sits in the news cycle).

In fact a software engineer from Indiana was more on the ball about the implications of this meeting for investment banks,the credit markets and the global financial system than the entire journalistic might of the NYT, WSJ, FT etc etc etc.

And why this pretty damning admission was buried in the 19th para is another very good question as it is extremely newsworthy in and of itself.

So this is a double fault for me: being 4 years behind the news curve, and then not making that fact itself the front of the news curve.

Hello Newspaper 1.0: it's no point telling us about this meeting now, interesting as it may be for historians, whom I'm sure will do a better job of putting the past together than the IHT/NYT.

What we want - given that you know when these types of hearings are going to take place - is to have people smart enough to understand the possible implications and report on it, before the meeting takes place, not four years later.

U.S. regulator's 2004 rule let banks pile up new debt
By Stephen Labaton
Friday, October 3, 2008
"We have a good deal of comfort about the capital cushions at these firms at the moment."
- Christopher Cox, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, March 11, 2008.
As rumors swirled in March that Bear Stearns faced imminent collapse, Christopher Cox was told by his staff that Bear Stearns had $17 billion in cash and other assets - more than enough to weather the storm.
Drained of most of that cash three days later, Bear Stearns was pushed into a hastily arranged merger with JPMorgan Chase - backed by a $29 billion dowry of taxpayers' money.
Within six months, other lions of Wall Street would also either disappear or transform themselves to survive the financial maelstrom - Merrill Lynch sold itself to Bank of America, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection, and Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley converted themselves into commercial banks.
How could Cox have been so wrong?
Many events in Washington, on Wall Street and elsewhere around the United States have led to what has been called the most serious financial crisis since the 1930s.
But decisions made at a brief meeting on April 28, 2004, explain why the problems could spin out of control. The Securities and Exchange Commission's failure to follow through on those decisions also explains why regulators did not see what was coming.
On that bright spring afternoon, the five members of the SEC met in a basement hearing room to consider an urgent plea by the big investment banks. They wanted an exemption for their brokerage units from an old regulation that limited the amount of debt they could take on. The exemption would unshackle billions of dollars held in reserve as a cushion against losses on their investments. Those funds could then flow up to the parent company, enabling it to invest in the fast growing but opaque world of mortgage-backed securities, credit derivatives - a form of insurance for bond holders - and other exotic instruments.
Five investment banks led the charge, including Goldman Sachs, then headed by Henry Paulson Jr. Two years later, he left Goldman to become the U.S. Treasury secretary.
A lone dissenter - a software consultant and expert on risk management - weighed in from Valparaiso, Indiana, with a two-page letter to warn the commission that the change would be a grave mistake. He never heard back from Washington.
One commissioner questioned the staff about the consequences of the proposed exemption. It would only be available for the largest companies, he was reassuringly told - those with assets greater than $5 billion. "We've said these are the big guys," said one commissioner, Harvey Goldschmid, provoking nervous laughter, "but that means if anything goes wrong, it's going to be an awfully big mess."
Goldschmid, an authority on securities law from Columbia University in New York, was a behind-the-scenes adviser in 2002 to Senator Paul Sarbanes when he rewrote U.S. corporate laws after a wave of accounting scandals.
"Do we feel secure if there are these drops in capital we really will have investor protection?" Goldschmid asked.
A senior staff member said the commission would be hiring the best minds, including people with strong quantitative skills, to parse the banks' balance sheets. Annette Nazareth, the head of market regulation, reassured the commission that under the new rules, the companies for the first time could be restricted by the SEC from excessively risky activity.
"I'm very happy to support it," said Commissioner Roel Campos, a former U.S. government prosecutor and owner of a small radio broadcasting firm in Houston who then deadpanned: "And I keep my fingers crossed for the future."
The proceeding was sparsely attended - none of the major media outlets, including The New York Times, covered it.
After 55 minutes of discussion, which can be heard on the Web sites of the agency and The Times and its international edition, the International Herald Tribune, William Donaldson, then the SEC chairman and a veteran Wall Street executive, called for a vote. It was unanimous. The decision, changing what was known as the net capital rule, was completed and published in the Federal Register a few months later.
With that, the five big independent investment firms were unleashed.
In loosening the capital rules, which are supposed to provide a buffer in turbulent times, the SEC also decided to rely on the firms' own computer risk models, essentially outsourcing the job of monitoring risk to the banks. Over the following months and years, all would take advantage of the looser rules.
The leverage ratio - a measurement of how much the companies were borrowing compared to their total assets - rose sharply at Bear Stearns, to 33 to 1. In other words, for every dollar in equity, it had $33 of debt. The ratio at the other companies also rose significantly.
The 2004 decision gave the SEC, for the first time, a window on the banks' increasingly risky investments in mortgage-related securities. But the agency never took true advantage of that part of the bargain. The supervisory program under Cox was a low priority.
The SEC assigned seven people to examine the parent companies- which last year controlled financial empires with combined assets of more than $4 trillion. Since March 2007, the supervisory office has not had a director.
And as of September 2008, the office had not completed a single inspection since it was reshuffled by Cox more than a year and a half ago.
The few problems the examiners preliminarily uncovered about the riskiness of the companies' investments and their increased reliance on debt - clear signs of trouble - were all but ignored.
The SEC's division of trading and markets "became aware of numerous potential red flags prior to Bear Stearns's collapse, regarding its concentration of mortgage securities, high leverage, shortcomings of risk management in mortgage-backed securities, and lack of compliance with the spirit of certain" capital standards, said an inspector-general report on Sept. 26.
But the division "did not take actions to limit these risk factors."
The commission's decision to effectively outsource its oversight to the companies themselves fit squarely in the broader Washington culture of the past eight years under President George W. Bush.
As with other agencies, the SEC's decision was motivated by industry complaints of excessive regulation at a time of growing competition from overseas. The 2004 decision was aimed at easing new regulatory burdens that the European Union was about to impose on the foreign operations of U.S. investment banks. The Europeans said they would agree not to regulate the foreign subsidiaries of the investment banks on one condition - that the commission became the regulator of the parent companies, along with the brokerage units that the SEC already oversaw.
A 1999 law, however, had left a gap that did not give the commission explicit oversight of the parent companies. To get around that problem, and in exchange for the relaxed capital rules, the banks volunteered to let the SEC examine the books of their parent companies and subsidiaries.
A lone voice of dissent in the 2004 proceeding came from the software consultant from Indiana, who said that the computer models run by the companies - and that the regulators would be relying on - could not anticipate moments of severe market turbulence.
"With the stroke of a pen, capital requirements are removed!" the consultant, Leonard Bole, wrote to the SEC on Jan. 22, 2004. "Has the trading environment changed sufficiently since 1997, when the current requirements were enacted, that the commission is confident that current requirements in examples such as these can be disregarded?"
He said that similar computer standards had failed to protect Long-Term Capital Management, the hedge fund that collapsed in 1998, and were unable to protect companies from the market plunge of October 1987.
The SEC's most public role in policing Wall Street is its enforcement efforts. But critics say that in recent years it has failed to deter market problems.
"It seems to me the enforcement effort in recent years has fallen short of what one Supreme Court justice once called the fear of the shotgun behind the door," said Arthur Levitt Jr., who was SEC chairman in the administration of President Bill Clinton. "With this commission, the shotgun too rarely came out from behind the door."
Cox was a close ally of business groups in his 17 years as a member of the House of Representatives from one of the most conservative districts in Southern California. Cox had led the effort to rewrite securities laws to make investor lawsuits more difficult to file. He also fought against accounting rules that would give less favorable treatment to executive stock options.
Under Cox, the SEC responded to complaints by some businesses by making it more difficult for the enforcement staff to investigate and bring cases against companies. The commission has repeatedly reversed or reduced proposed settlements that companies had tentatively agreed upon. While the number of enforcement cases has risen, the number of cases involving significant players or large amounts of money has declined.
Cox dismantled a risk management office created by Donaldson that was assigned to watch for future problems. While other financial regulatory agencies criticized a blueprint by Paulson that proposed to reduce their stature - and that of the SEC - Cox did not challenge the plan, leaving it to three former Democratic and Republican commission chairmen to complain that the blueprint would neuter the commission.
In the process, Cox has surrounded himself with conservative lawyers, economists and accountants who, before the market turmoil of recent months, had embraced a far more limited vision for the commission than many of his predecessors.
On Sept. 26, the commission formally ended the 2004 program, acknowledging that it had failed to anticipate the problems at Bear Stearns and the four other major investment banks. "The last six months have made it abundantly clear that voluntary regulation does not work," Cox said.
Cox declined requests for an interview. In response to written questions, including whether he or the commission had made any mistakes over the past three years that contributed to the current crisis, he said, "There will be no shortage of retrospective analyses about what happened and what should have happened."
He said that by last March, he had concluded that the monitoring program's "metrics were inadequate."

I think this stunning journalistic failure is worthy of a bit more than a one sentence nod in para 19 and I'd love to know which media did attend, if "none of the major media outlets, including The New York Times, covered it."

The arrogance of it!

Because I'd sure like to be reading the 'minor' ones who did.

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The IHT Brand Paradox: When you want to be edgy, modern, audacious but your brand holds most of its value in its history

Creating a gentle revolution in Champagne
By Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop
Friday, October 3, 2008
SINGAPORE: Cécile Bonnefond doesn't look like a revolutionary, but this 54-year-old Frenchwoman sounds a little like one when she describes some of the ways in which she has marketed Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin, the Champagne house of which she became chief executive in 2001.
There was the collaboration with Emilio Pucci, who dressed a 9,000-bottle limited series in his flamboyantly colored prints. The interior designer Andrée Putman made a Champagne box that doubles as an ice bucket, decorated with her signature checkerboard pattern. Karim Rashid, a designer from Egypt, created the Globalight, an orb-shaped lamp that is also an Isotherm bottle carrier.
Innovation of any kind is tricky when the company you are running dates to 1772, and it can seem superfluous when your sales are rising even in tough economic times.
Yet Bonnefond, who has managed some of the best-known brands in Europe at companies like Groupe Danone and Grand Metropolitan (now Diageo), sees innovation as necessary to preserving Veuve Clicquot's place in a changing world.
"I see my job as really managing a paradox," Bonnefond said on a recent business trip to Singapore. "With Veuve Clicquot, you have history, but we also want to be the most edgy, modern, audacious, 'in' name in Champagne."
Audacity is part of Veuve Clicquot's heritage. In 1814, Barbe Nicole Ponsardin, the original Veuve, or Widow, Clicquot, defied Napoleon's nautical blockade of Russia by secretly shipping 10,550 bottles of Champagne to Königsberg (now Kaliningrad). By the 1860s, the czarist court and aristocracy were drinking 700,000 bottles per year, or 75 percent of Clicquot's production.
With the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, sales of Champagne to Russia abruptly halted. It wasn't until recently, with the rising wealth in Russia, that sales have picked up to the point where Bonnefond can say that "for the first time, this year, we've finally sold more bottles in Russia than Madame Clicquot."
Despite the emerging global economic slowdown, Bonnefond said the company had record sales in 2007 and was "only feeling a small pinch" this year, an accomplishment she attributes to " a very loyal core consumer group."
Marlous Kuiper, head of alcoholic beverages research at Euromonitor International, said Veuve Clicquot had outpaced growth in the global Champagne market in recent years, sometimes by as much as five percentage points.
Veuve Clicquot comes under the umbrella of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, along with the Champagne brands Moët & Chandon, Dom Perignon, Krug, Mercier and Ruinart. Although LVMH does not release a breakdown of production or sales among its wine and spirit brands, the division had total net sales of €3.2 billion, or about $4.4 billion, in 2007, up 7 percent over the previous year, with 62.2 million bottles of Champagne sold in 2007, a 3.8 percent increase over 2006.
According to the latest LVHM results report, Veuve Clicquot and Moët & Chandon have had so far this year a "good performance." Bonnefond said, "I have to make my shareholders happy and they are very happy."
A native of Paris and a graduate of the European Business School with a degree in marketing, Bonnefond joined Danone's marketing division in 1979 before moving to Kellogg's in 1984 as marketing manager for France. Over the next 10 years, she held growing responsibilities across Europe in sales, marketing and general management. In 1995, she joined Grand Metropolitan as chairman and chief executive of a new unit overseeing the activities of Grand Met food brands including Brossard baked goods, Häagen-Dazs ice cream, Green Giant frozen foods and Old El Paso Mexican products.
When Grand Met sold its bakery business to Sara Lee in 1997, she joined that company as chief executive of the bakery division in France and Italy.
At Veuve Clicquot, Bonnefond has shown some of the qualities that helped the original owner propel the company, including a knack for seizing the moment. Soon after she joined, she introduced a Veuve Clicquot Rosé nonvintage Champagne. "Knowing that 90 percent of the rosé Champagne drunk in the world was nonvintage, there was a feeling that we were missing a business opportunity," she said.
Bonnefond chose Japan as a test market for the first limited production of the new Champagne. The response was so enthusiastic that the company did not have enough bottles to test it in Hong Kong and Belgium as planned. After increasing production, she took nonvintage rosé international in 2006. Today the product represents around 10 percent of the company's overall sales.
Bonnefond has also moved into other product extensions. There's the Clicquot gift carton that unfolds into an insulated Champagne bucket, a neoprene jacket to keep the bottle cool, and an ice bucket in the bold orange of the brand.
She said that she was not recruited to Veuve Clicquot to "bring in a revolution" but that she was "accelerating" business.
"We've just pushed the boundaries further," Bonnefond said.

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