Just as the penny-stock scandals reflected badly on Colorado's business community in the last decade of the 20th century, Colorado's bank failures in the first years of this century -- eight since 2008 -- will reflect badly on the state for some time to come.
You hear bankers in the state still complaining about over-regulation, but you don't hear many calls for crackdowns on the fast-money track records of the failed banks, or for reform of the wide-open-West, free-market philosophy that led to the failures.
In fact, whenever the state's political and business communities cross paths in the wake of such business scandals in Colorado, the word traditionally used is "mum."
The Denver Post's Aldo Svaldi has done some admirable reporting on the bank failures, documenting for instance that the eight banks that failed, between 2004 and 2008, averaged loan-growth rates of 900 percent, while the average of all U.S. banks' loan-growth rates was just 44 percent during that period. At 76.2 percent, all of Colorado's banks' loan-growth rates for the same four years also ran considerably higher than the national average.
Those figures show how fast leaders of the failed banks, and leaders of Colorado banks in general, were running and gunning during the free-market heyday for Colorado business during Gov. Bill Owens' administration. Neither of Owens' successors, Bill Ritter nor current Gov. John Hickenlooper, have made any move to slow such unfettered risk taking, but to do so would offend the business community each has been dependent on for their election.
So don't expect much more response to Svaldi's reporting than continued "mum." I asked three prominent business figures in town to comment on my thesis for this piece -- that all of Colorado business bears some accountability for the business practices that led to the bank failures -- but none responded to my call.
One former banker told me he knew of several banks that laid off what they suspected were bad loans to some of the failed banks thinking that regulators would catch up with the banks eventually and the process would work itself out. It did. Svaldi has reported that the five banks that failed in Colorado this year will cost the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. $1 billion.
If you recall, that's about how much Silverado Savings and Loan cost the federal government when it failed back in 1988, when I first came to Colorado. "Mum" never changes things anywhere. Speaking up and speaking out occasionally will. Let's hope Svaldi keeps on writing.
You may have noticed that I changed the name of my blog to The SchwabBlog. Nothing more has been changed about it, not its url address nor its tone. Hope you continue to enjoy.
Showing posts with label Denver Post. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Denver Post. Show all posts
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Remembering what we've already learned
I love it when the Denver Post's news coverage belies its editorial conservatism.
On Tuesday, the Post slapped the headline: "More spending not the answer" atop its main editorial, suggesting President Obama was a little off his rocker for arguing with his European colleagues in the Group of 20 that governments need to spend more now to fuel economic recovery rather than cut back, which the European heads of state want to do.
The Post's editorial writers even referred to "left-leaning" economist Paul Krugman, whose column they published directly below their editorial, to subtly underline their opposite tack and to show readers they can be as conservative as any European social democrat.
Krugman, on the other hand, took on the Europeans and blamed them for an economic orthodoxy of austerity that fueled the Great Depression of the 1930s and what he called a Long Depression of the late 19th century. (He expanded on that column in the Sunday Post's business section. The earlier column is no longer searchable on the Post's website.)
Both times in American history, Krugman said, government officials prescribed economic penance -- high interest rates and low government spending -- and caused both initial recessions to elongate into painful, 10-year or longer depressions and recoveries.
Obama's call for more government spending is a recognition of history, while Republican and conservative Democratic calls for restrained deficit spending -- denying extended unemployment benefits to millions of people across the nation -- forget history and ignore informed policy in favor of knee-jerk reaction.
The old ways, some say, have served us well in the past. Oh yeah? When? While ordinary people lose ten years of prosperity to some kind of reverence to establishment principle?
Meanwhile the Post's business writers continued to report stories that go beyond conventional wisdom. Steve Raabe reported Friday that Creighton University economist Ernie Goss has spotted a robust manufacturing and service-industry recovery underway in Colorado, which often runs countercyclical to the national economy.
And Greg Griffin, in Sunday's business section, reported on the real economic pain already being felt by people whose unemployment checks have stopped.
Austerity boosters are usually people who can sustain their levels of income during a business downturn. The bosses who lay off workers usually keep their jobs; I know, I was one of them.
But the U.S. economy right now needs more spending, both from government and from private businesses, to keep hold of a recovery that has not yet gained momentum. Banks need to lend to small businesses so small businesses can hire workers who become consumers, driving renewed economic growth.
It's all there in the history books. All we have to do is remember what we've already learned.
On Tuesday, the Post slapped the headline: "More spending not the answer" atop its main editorial, suggesting President Obama was a little off his rocker for arguing with his European colleagues in the Group of 20 that governments need to spend more now to fuel economic recovery rather than cut back, which the European heads of state want to do.
The Post's editorial writers even referred to "left-leaning" economist Paul Krugman, whose column they published directly below their editorial, to subtly underline their opposite tack and to show readers they can be as conservative as any European social democrat.
Krugman, on the other hand, took on the Europeans and blamed them for an economic orthodoxy of austerity that fueled the Great Depression of the 1930s and what he called a Long Depression of the late 19th century. (He expanded on that column in the Sunday Post's business section. The earlier column is no longer searchable on the Post's website.)
Both times in American history, Krugman said, government officials prescribed economic penance -- high interest rates and low government spending -- and caused both initial recessions to elongate into painful, 10-year or longer depressions and recoveries.
Obama's call for more government spending is a recognition of history, while Republican and conservative Democratic calls for restrained deficit spending -- denying extended unemployment benefits to millions of people across the nation -- forget history and ignore informed policy in favor of knee-jerk reaction.
The old ways, some say, have served us well in the past. Oh yeah? When? While ordinary people lose ten years of prosperity to some kind of reverence to establishment principle?
Meanwhile the Post's business writers continued to report stories that go beyond conventional wisdom. Steve Raabe reported Friday that Creighton University economist Ernie Goss has spotted a robust manufacturing and service-industry recovery underway in Colorado, which often runs countercyclical to the national economy.
And Greg Griffin, in Sunday's business section, reported on the real economic pain already being felt by people whose unemployment checks have stopped.
Austerity boosters are usually people who can sustain their levels of income during a business downturn. The bosses who lay off workers usually keep their jobs; I know, I was one of them.
But the U.S. economy right now needs more spending, both from government and from private businesses, to keep hold of a recovery that has not yet gained momentum. Banks need to lend to small businesses so small businesses can hire workers who become consumers, driving renewed economic growth.
It's all there in the history books. All we have to do is remember what we've already learned.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Ritter campaigns on too many fronts
Gov. Bill Ritter campaigned all over the Denver Post on Thursday, from a piece he and Lt. Gov. Barbara O'Brien planted on the op-ed page defending their proposed cuts to public school funding, to a news story at the top of the Denver & The West cover reporting Ritter backed down from taking drunk-driving crackdown funds away from local police departments.
Campaigns were waged against the governor, too. His name was mentioned on the front page of the newspaper as the villain of budget cutbacks to state-funded health clinics, and on page 4B for being the architect of the $260 million batch of cuts overall in order to backfill a $320 million shortfall of revenues in the current fiscal year.
He was praised by the Post's editorial page for both regulating (read: limiting) and promoting the natural-gas industry in the state, and in Susan Greene's column he was the wizard behind the curtain drawn over tragic cost cutting at the state's Fort Logan mental health facility.
One thing you have to say about the governor in all those situations is that he has chosen to govern the people of his state, making tough decisions required of him by state law.
The move to restore funds to pay for drunk-driving arrests was something you might have expected from a former prosecutor once people complained that it would leave more drunks on the road and more victims of drunks in hospitals.
But the Ritter also has stayed firm on cuts that go against his law-and-order grain by releasing some convicts early in order to save prison money, and allowing other convicts shortened parole supervision, also to reduce state spending.
The general impression of Ritter I got after writing a piece in the current ColoradoBiz magazine was that he is doing his job. The report focused on the governor's political prospects for keeping votes in the Colorado business community during his 2010 re-election campaign, specifically by promoting the growth of clean/green industry in the state.
When I briefly interviewed Ritter for the article last July, I asked him if he was already campaigning for re-election given harsh reactions to some of his decisions among his natural supporters. He unabashedly responded that he has been campaigning for re-election ever since his inauguration.
That's the nature of politics today. Campaigns are always on, 24-7.
It's also the nature of being a governor in a state that is divided somewhat evenly between liberal and conservative voters, although large margins of those voting concentrations hone to the moderate center of their groups rather than the outer fringes.
Ritter campaigned as a somewhat undefined moderate and won the day in 2006, but the intervening three years have been hard on his continued efforts not to be pinned down.
He doesn't seem to be brave enough to decide against conservative factions in the state, and yet not liberal enough to provoke them and take his chances. Under that cover, he can claim to be serving the largest number of Colorado citizens, and he's basically right.
But serving a crowd often creates new enemies.
Voters will be making hard decisions for and against him in polling places across Colorado come November 2010. And while pissing off both sides of an argument might be appreciated in a news reporter, it usually doesn't work for an elected official.
Campaigns were waged against the governor, too. His name was mentioned on the front page of the newspaper as the villain of budget cutbacks to state-funded health clinics, and on page 4B for being the architect of the $260 million batch of cuts overall in order to backfill a $320 million shortfall of revenues in the current fiscal year.
He was praised by the Post's editorial page for both regulating (read: limiting) and promoting the natural-gas industry in the state, and in Susan Greene's column he was the wizard behind the curtain drawn over tragic cost cutting at the state's Fort Logan mental health facility.
One thing you have to say about the governor in all those situations is that he has chosen to govern the people of his state, making tough decisions required of him by state law.
The move to restore funds to pay for drunk-driving arrests was something you might have expected from a former prosecutor once people complained that it would leave more drunks on the road and more victims of drunks in hospitals.
But the Ritter also has stayed firm on cuts that go against his law-and-order grain by releasing some convicts early in order to save prison money, and allowing other convicts shortened parole supervision, also to reduce state spending.
The general impression of Ritter I got after writing a piece in the current ColoradoBiz magazine was that he is doing his job. The report focused on the governor's political prospects for keeping votes in the Colorado business community during his 2010 re-election campaign, specifically by promoting the growth of clean/green industry in the state.
When I briefly interviewed Ritter for the article last July, I asked him if he was already campaigning for re-election given harsh reactions to some of his decisions among his natural supporters. He unabashedly responded that he has been campaigning for re-election ever since his inauguration.
That's the nature of politics today. Campaigns are always on, 24-7.
It's also the nature of being a governor in a state that is divided somewhat evenly between liberal and conservative voters, although large margins of those voting concentrations hone to the moderate center of their groups rather than the outer fringes.
Ritter campaigned as a somewhat undefined moderate and won the day in 2006, but the intervening three years have been hard on his continued efforts not to be pinned down.
He doesn't seem to be brave enough to decide against conservative factions in the state, and yet not liberal enough to provoke them and take his chances. Under that cover, he can claim to be serving the largest number of Colorado citizens, and he's basically right.
But serving a crowd often creates new enemies.
Voters will be making hard decisions for and against him in polling places across Colorado come November 2010. And while pissing off both sides of an argument might be appreciated in a news reporter, it usually doesn't work for an elected official.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Invisible, old racism
The print version of the old newspaper, the one that gets delivered to my doorstep, had a new subject for me to blog about today, headlined right there, top right, front-page: "Educators to file U.S complaint about DPS."
The story was about an allegation of race discrimination being practiced against African-American teachers in Denver Public Schools.
Larry Borum, according to Denver Post writer Claire Trageser, accused DPS of "plain old discrimination based on race," and I bet Claire Trageser lost many of her readers at that very point in her story, the moment when readers finished reading that exact quote.
Why? Institutional racism.
Herman Malone, an African-American businessman from Denver who co-authored (with me) his book, "Lynched by Corporate America," was this region's forerunner in spotting -- and suffering -- institutional racism, the systemic racism of the sort Borum is complaining of in DPS schools.
Malone suffered it in the business world, through business contracting. Borum is complaining that teachers -- who make a business of their profession -- suffer discrimination at the hands of their employer, DPS.
Borum is chairman of the Denver school district's own Black Education Advisory Council, which counsels DPS board members on issues related to the school district's relations with black students, teachers and parent consumers of the DPS product: education. His criticism of the district, therefore, cannot be taken lightly.
Ironically, Trageser wound up quoting former Denver city councilwoman Happy Haynes, herself African-American, in defense of the district. Haynes admitted DPS recognizes a problem of declining numbers of African-American teachers at DPS, but she said those lower numbers in themselves are not indicators of actual discrimination.
Her response was typical, stereotypical, of an institution's response to an allegation of institutional racism.
Systemic racism often is invisible to those working within the criticized system.
Perhaps it's only visible to those who are its victims.
"Lynched by Corporate America" is a lesson in systemic, institutional racism; in its case, racism existed and yet was denied at U.S. West Communications, the predecessor of now Qwest, our area's largest communications provider.
Qwest, although it settled with six of Herman Malone's co-plantiffs in a federal lawsuit, defeated Malone in his shared discrimination claim before a federal-court jury, and left him hanging to pay thousands of dollars in legal fees for pressing the case.
Not many readers recognize all that as institutional, systemic racism; the book, after all, hasn't sold very many copies.
But Boron's raising the issue of systemic racism in a school district in our region is another indicator that the racism exists here, even if many people do not recognize it. And Boron's Black Education Advisory Council complaint shows more blacks are aware of institutional racism in the age of Obama even if their institutions cannot admit to it.
Speaking of invisible things, though: Old editor that I am, I noticed the missing period after the letter "S" in the Post's front-page headline. I only mention it here because I noticed it.
The story was about an allegation of race discrimination being practiced against African-American teachers in Denver Public Schools.
Larry Borum, according to Denver Post writer Claire Trageser, accused DPS of "plain old discrimination based on race," and I bet Claire Trageser lost many of her readers at that very point in her story, the moment when readers finished reading that exact quote.
Why? Institutional racism.
Herman Malone, an African-American businessman from Denver who co-authored (with me) his book, "Lynched by Corporate America," was this region's forerunner in spotting -- and suffering -- institutional racism, the systemic racism of the sort Borum is complaining of in DPS schools.
Malone suffered it in the business world, through business contracting. Borum is complaining that teachers -- who make a business of their profession -- suffer discrimination at the hands of their employer, DPS.
Borum is chairman of the Denver school district's own Black Education Advisory Council, which counsels DPS board members on issues related to the school district's relations with black students, teachers and parent consumers of the DPS product: education. His criticism of the district, therefore, cannot be taken lightly.
Ironically, Trageser wound up quoting former Denver city councilwoman Happy Haynes, herself African-American, in defense of the district. Haynes admitted DPS recognizes a problem of declining numbers of African-American teachers at DPS, but she said those lower numbers in themselves are not indicators of actual discrimination.
Her response was typical, stereotypical, of an institution's response to an allegation of institutional racism.
Systemic racism often is invisible to those working within the criticized system.
Perhaps it's only visible to those who are its victims.
"Lynched by Corporate America" is a lesson in systemic, institutional racism; in its case, racism existed and yet was denied at U.S. West Communications, the predecessor of now Qwest, our area's largest communications provider.
Qwest, although it settled with six of Herman Malone's co-plantiffs in a federal lawsuit, defeated Malone in his shared discrimination claim before a federal-court jury, and left him hanging to pay thousands of dollars in legal fees for pressing the case.
Not many readers recognize all that as institutional, systemic racism; the book, after all, hasn't sold very many copies.
But Boron's raising the issue of systemic racism in a school district in our region is another indicator that the racism exists here, even if many people do not recognize it. And Boron's Black Education Advisory Council complaint shows more blacks are aware of institutional racism in the age of Obama even if their institutions cannot admit to it.
Speaking of invisible things, though: Old editor that I am, I noticed the missing period after the letter "S" in the Post's front-page headline. I only mention it here because I noticed it.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
News you can use tomorrow
If you want to peak into the future of newspapers and the newspaper business, check out an article in Monday's Denver Post about a MediaNews project called I-News.
Colleen O'Connor seems at first to be writing a "must-report" story on the front page of the Business section for her employer, the Post and MediaNews Group, Dean Singleton's newspaper publishing company that owns the Post and many other newspapers, shoppers and weeklies across the nation.
But the project is indeed news.
MediaNews is testing a new method of delivering news to consumers at home and in hotels that truly gives a glimpse of what newsgathering is moving toward. It won't be for free, as your own gathering can do now across many websites on the Internet, but it will be a product of your own choosing, delivered to the screen of your choice as well: cell phone, fax, mobile device, Internet reader (Kindle), desktop or laptop computer, or your hotel door as a batch of loose papers collected for you by the desk and dumped there, like a newspaper, after you have "subscribed" at the hotel's expense to the news you want delivered.
Maybe Dean can be forgiven for selling off the bottom of his Sunday front page of the Post to Target if the ad revenue the sales produce buys him a jump start on the newspaper of the future. Newspapers have to reach that future faster than they have ever been forced to before.
Traditionally, the future has not been a newspaper's familiar territory, and certainly not a profitable one. But MediaNews may have linked to a little corner of the next 100 years of publishing. Their experiment will be fun to watch.
Colleen O'Connor seems at first to be writing a "must-report" story on the front page of the Business section for her employer, the Post and MediaNews Group, Dean Singleton's newspaper publishing company that owns the Post and many other newspapers, shoppers and weeklies across the nation.
But the project is indeed news.
MediaNews is testing a new method of delivering news to consumers at home and in hotels that truly gives a glimpse of what newsgathering is moving toward. It won't be for free, as your own gathering can do now across many websites on the Internet, but it will be a product of your own choosing, delivered to the screen of your choice as well: cell phone, fax, mobile device, Internet reader (Kindle), desktop or laptop computer, or your hotel door as a batch of loose papers collected for you by the desk and dumped there, like a newspaper, after you have "subscribed" at the hotel's expense to the news you want delivered.
Maybe Dean can be forgiven for selling off the bottom of his Sunday front page of the Post to Target if the ad revenue the sales produce buys him a jump start on the newspaper of the future. Newspapers have to reach that future faster than they have ever been forced to before.
Traditionally, the future has not been a newspaper's familiar territory, and certainly not a profitable one. But MediaNews may have linked to a little corner of the next 100 years of publishing. Their experiment will be fun to watch.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Biden's less than townee meeting
Vice President Joe Biden gave a couple of impromtu speeches during a supposed town-hall meeting streamed live over the Internet by 9News yesterday.
I watched, and then I tried to write something about what I listened to, but for the life of me could not remember much. It all seemed so blah, blah, blah.
Biden had a few moments. "These are real, live jobs, for a real, live future," I heard him say. "These jobs are going to be high-paying, good jobs." And, "It's not just about a job, it's about a job people can live on."
And Biden and Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis announced a $500 million job-training program that would focus on retraining people nationwide for "green" jobs -- work related to energy efficiency, fixing global warming and saving the world's environment, primarily in the United States.
It was inspiring, and not at all in the spirit of Colorado Republican Party Chairman Dick Wadham's critical comment to Denver Post Reporter Jessica Fender about Democrats from Washington: "They're costing more jobs, and they're costing Coloradan families more than they could ever replace with these feel-good government programs they're talking about."
But Wadhams is right (both literally and figuratively) about one thing. The jobs Biden is talking about for the middle class -- the Vice President came to Denver under the auspices of his leadership of a White House Middle Class Task Force -- are so far the fantasies of Washington bureaucrats rationalizing the spending of billions and billions of dollars.
Biden, in fact, said he was coming to Denver as a representative of a government unlike any other in the world. "No government in the world has had a trillion dollar allocation out there" to apply to a nation's jobs formation and the cleaning up of its environment, he said.
And he's correct.
Liberals in America, me among them, and the middle class (I guess I register in the lower portion of that class right now) can thank our national government for dedicating the money it has legislated to rebuilding an economy the past Bush administration, Wall Street and Corporate America has left destitute.
But other than two questions from the audience that actually challenged the bevy of Cabinet members and their top deputies who showed up at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, there was not much town-hall in the town-hall meeting.
Official Colorado and official Washington did most of the talking, and other than the tall stools most of the officials sat on, the look of the meeting, through the lens of 9News, was mostly as if the speakers had a podium separating them from the private club members who surrounded them.
The public was invited to pick up tickets to the event at 9 a.m. at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in downtown Denver Tuesday morning, and I got there at 8:55 hoping to attend the session in person and provide some first-person coverage here in my blog.
But all the 20 or 25 tickets that were made available at the hotel were already given away when I got there, so I came home hoping to pick up coverage of the meeting either on the 9News or Denver Post websites.
Fender and Lynn Bartels were chatting inanely on an instant message board when I got to the Post's site, but then I found the live stream at 9News and was able to turn off the newspaper's silly assignment of two writers trying to do two different things at the same time.
But even the televised version of the session suggested something less than a wide-open-spaces discussion of middle-class restructuring and globe-saving enterprise.
The fixed camera couldn't pick up all participants, and the speeches came off, as I have already said, as blah, blah, blah. In fact, I nearly fell asleep in front of my computer.
But that would be like sleeping on the job. And no one in this economy can afford to do that!
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Roar of the crowd saves Pinnacol money
Gov. Bill Ritter must have been listening to the crowd of anti-tax demonstrators outside his window when he pulled his administration away from taking the $500 million of Pinnacol Assurance surplus assets on the negotiating table for the state budget.
Ritter made clear that he doesn't want the state's institutions of higher education to suffer $300 million in cuts proposed by the Joint Budget Committee, but he ducked under the desk, as it were, when it came to taking the money from an employer favorite, Pinnacol.
It will be interesting to see if the governor will sign a bill that remains that would make clear Colorado state government controls Pinnacol surplus money, if indeed that law is passed by the legislature.
But in the meantime there are those anti-tax folks who were outside his window.
Democrats, progressives and liberals ought to take note of the crowd, which was estimated at more than 5,000 outside the Capitol. The Denver Post, the only major newspaper in town anymore, said the anti-tax "tea party" was one of a dozen held throughout Colorado and 750 reportedly held throughout the country. That kind of turnout cannot be ignored by incumbent politicians, even if their incumbency is as "young" as the Obama administration's.
What the rallies showed is conservatives -- from the now less-influential Christian right and Moral Majority, to the blathering talk show hosts who can still whip up a frenzy -- still hold power over some people, and the millions of voters who cast ballots for John McCain didn't lose their voices or their ability to make placards with Obama's election.
It was fun to read the Post's quote of demonstrator Bertha Holland from the rally. "It's pretty sad that I've lived 65 years and never had a reason before to protest something," Holland told the Post. But what is sad is that Holland never had the guts during 65 years of life to oppose her government on an issue before Wednesday.
Ritter is right to heed the demonstrators, and put the budget-balancing act on the backs of doctors and other less powerful special interests, like state employees, who are going to lose money in the budget deal no matter how it falls. He'd be wrong if he raises fees paid by the general public to the point they create their own opposition to his politics.
But balance is a critical skill for a politician.
Balancing on a razor's edge is dangerous, but always entertaining folly.
Ritter made clear that he doesn't want the state's institutions of higher education to suffer $300 million in cuts proposed by the Joint Budget Committee, but he ducked under the desk, as it were, when it came to taking the money from an employer favorite, Pinnacol.
It will be interesting to see if the governor will sign a bill that remains that would make clear Colorado state government controls Pinnacol surplus money, if indeed that law is passed by the legislature.
But in the meantime there are those anti-tax folks who were outside his window.
Democrats, progressives and liberals ought to take note of the crowd, which was estimated at more than 5,000 outside the Capitol. The Denver Post, the only major newspaper in town anymore, said the anti-tax "tea party" was one of a dozen held throughout Colorado and 750 reportedly held throughout the country. That kind of turnout cannot be ignored by incumbent politicians, even if their incumbency is as "young" as the Obama administration's.
What the rallies showed is conservatives -- from the now less-influential Christian right and Moral Majority, to the blathering talk show hosts who can still whip up a frenzy -- still hold power over some people, and the millions of voters who cast ballots for John McCain didn't lose their voices or their ability to make placards with Obama's election.
It was fun to read the Post's quote of demonstrator Bertha Holland from the rally. "It's pretty sad that I've lived 65 years and never had a reason before to protest something," Holland told the Post. But what is sad is that Holland never had the guts during 65 years of life to oppose her government on an issue before Wednesday.
Ritter is right to heed the demonstrators, and put the budget-balancing act on the backs of doctors and other less powerful special interests, like state employees, who are going to lose money in the budget deal no matter how it falls. He'd be wrong if he raises fees paid by the general public to the point they create their own opposition to his politics.
But balance is a critical skill for a politician.
Balancing on a razor's edge is dangerous, but always entertaining folly.
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