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Today we find the news media enamored with what Senator Roland Burris said or didn’t say to the Blago impeachment committee last month. Republicans in Illinois are asking for his resignation, and Senator Burris finds himself in a similar position as former President Clinton, defending simple words. Unfortunately for Burris, the problem with alleged perjury are the use of words, specific words and their either specific or broad interpretation. I suppose it also depends upon how and what question was asked. Eric Zorn of the Tribune says, he is not likely to be found guilty of perjury but certainly dishonesty.

In some respect we have to ask ourselves, what did we expect? A Senator tainted by a tainted selection process trying so hard to become Senator, it was likely he was going to stumble over a few words.

Blago on the other hand has become more famous than he had ever hope to achieve. His notoriety has been chronicled by Michael Muth who writes in MidwestBusiness.com.

I hope Governor Pat Quinn can become famous for being a good governor and turning the State around. What do you think?

I enjoyed Stephen Levitt’s book of several years ago, Freakonmics. Ken Springer of the EDC staff reviews it on our website. Levitt and his co-author Stephen Dubner have a blog hosted on the New York Times website. Check out this interesting piece on the TARP plan and a North Carolina Bank called, “A Happy Banking Tale, and Faint Praise We Can Live With“

You gotta love the Swedes. Ever run into a someone from Sweden who caused you to say, ” I just hate that guy/girl”. Probably not. My experience with Swedish people comes from living with them in Rockford, IL. Rockford is home of the Stockholm Inn (the best breakfast place in the world, and makers of the best Swedish pancakes this side of, well, you know where), Nicholson Hardware, Lundstrom-Peterson Paints, Forsberg’s Bakery, Swedish American Hospital and thousands of people named Anderson, Peterson, Lindstrom, and other various Scandinavian derivatives. I’ve also been to visit Sweden. Lovely place, lovely people, and above all people who are calm, cool and not prone to overreacting. A Swedish business owner visiting the United States once told me, “We make decisions in Sweden, we just make them slow”.

Apparently, they, being Sweden, have had a problem with their banking system in the past, and managed to fix it. Noureil Ruobini and have recently been promoting an idea that may have some merit and is based on the expereince of the Swedes a number of years ago. Roubini thinks a temporary nationalization or “receivership” of some of our banks that are “too big to fail, too big to save” might be a sound idea.

What do you think? Their nationalization idea has some merit. Don’t get to worried, I am only going along with the idea that the program would be temporary. I am not a socialist or communist, and frankly people are throwing those terms around a lot these days with fully understanding their full definition or implication. Instead I would like to think of myself as a “PragmaRationalist”.

This plan would kill the downward spiral we are in, and preempt the issues we are going to have (it’s coming!) with commercial real estate, consumer card credit, and other parts of our economic system.

Give it a read and let me know what you think.