This blog is designed to give readers a glimpse of our editorial-page operation and how we make our decisions. We’ll let you know who we’re meeting with, what they’re telling us, what events and issues we’re looking at. We’ll also pass on information and observations that may not make our print editions. In addition to the editorial board members who post on this blog, the board includes Publisher David Zeeck, Executive Editor Karen Peterson and Managing Editor Dale Phelps.
Editorial board bloggers
Editorial page editor Patrick O’Callahan oversees the online and printed opinion sections of The News Tribune. He came to The News Tribune in 1987 and has worked at Washington newspapers since 1979. E-mail him at patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com
Editorial writer Cheryl Tucker, in addition to writing commentary, manages the daily production of the editorial and op-ed pages and edits letters to the editor. She began her journalism career in 1974 at a Virginia newspaper and came to The News Tribune in 1978. E-mail her at cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com.
Editorial writer Kim Bradford manages the online opinion section of The News Tribune and writes commentary. She joined The News Tribune in 2005 after working 11 years at newspapers in Washington and Maryland. E-mail her at kim.bradford@thenewstribune.com.
Guest bloggers
Editor emeritus David Seago retired from The News Tribune in 2008 after 41 years at The News Tribune. E-mail him at sds99@harbornet.com.
Richard Davis’ column on state politics frequently runs in the print edition of The News Tribune. He was president of the Washington Research Council, a statewide think tank, from 1986 through 2006. Currently, as a principal with The Simeon Partnership, Inc. he coordinates the activities of the Washington Alliance for a Competitive Economy, a business coalition founded by the Research Council, the Association of Washington Business and the Washington Roundtable.
Karen Irwin of University Place, a mother of four, has been a frequent contributor to The News Tribune's print editions. She has also written for Seattle's Child, Puget Sound Parent, the Tacoma Weekly, the Fayetteville Observer Times and the political blog Right Meets Left. She graduated from California Lutheran University with a degree in English literature and is currently working toward a history degree.
Michael Allen, professor of history at the University of Washington Tacoma, was born and raised in Ellensburg. He served with the U.S. Marines in Vietnam from 1969-70. He has written five books, including the prize-winning "Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus' Great Discovery to the War on Terror," "Rodeo Cowboys in the North American Imagination" and "Western Rivermen, 1763-1861: Ohio and Mississippi Boatmen and the Myth of the Alligator Horse." Allen lives in Tacoma and Ellensburg and has three children.
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During the Enron era, I read the Wall Street Journal for the crime news -- accounts of high-flying CEOs and companies brought low by scandal. Now I read it for drama.
As you would expect, the Bible of Wall Street is covering America's biggest financial crisis since the Depression with an all-hands-on-deck sense of urgency and thoroughness. In retirement, I have time to devour it all every morning.
During the September week that Morgan Stanley and AIG both disappeared, the Journal's page ran two-line banner headlines -- what I call "end of the world" headlines -- on four of the five weekdays.
Another end-of-the world headline appeared Monday:
"Bailout Plan Rejected, Markets Plunge,
Forcing New Scramble to Solve Crisis"
Historic stuff. And some superb and provocative commentary has shown up on the Journal's oped pages. A worthy example is economist Judy Shelton's Monday oped headlined, "Loose Money and the Roots of the Crisis."
The root of the current crisis, Shelton declares, is funny money.
The financial markets are flooded with dizzyingly complex financial instruments like credit-default swaps and structured investment vehicles that worked swell -- as long nobody was really concerned with what they were actually worth.
But the sub-prime mortgage fiasco has exposed an ugly truth: No one is sure exactly how to value all those evanescent debt instruments. Those securities are supposed to be a form of money, but they're problematic because there is no accurate way to value them.
Shelton writes:
Money is the medium of exchange -- the measure, the standard, the store of value -- which defines the very substance of the economic contract between buyer and seller. It is the basic, element, the atom of financial matter.
It's the money that's broken.
Her solution: Return to the equivalent of an international gold standard by setting a "universal reserve asset" independent of the dollar.
In this new world . . .
... the validity of the monetary unit of account is not determined by hollow men roaming the marble halls of government central banks.
This is where the new world of sound money begins. This is where the unknown ideal of capitalism takes form.
Wow. Now that's drama. But it's real. Our leaders next year will in fact be re-inventing modern capitalism. And even on its staunchly free-market editorial pages, the Wall Street Journal acknowledges that it must be so.
