Every so often WaPo editors of one section or another strike gold with their front page stories.
The 15 May issue of the Business Section could be called “The Ides of May for Autonomobiles.” You will hear more of that later.
Today the Business Section hit a grand slam. The stories provide perspectives on why The Mobility and Access Crisis, The Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis, The Energy Conservation Crisis and the Wealth Gap Crisis are all becoming worse every day.
The feature story scopes out the dark side of the ethanol subsidy’s impact on the price of corn and thus food and other goods.
Below that is a report on how the ethanol subsidy lobbyist are being welcomed with open arms by pandering politicians looking for cover on gasoline prices.
The juxtaposition of these two items should be frightening for anyone concerned with Mobility and Access or Energy Conservation.
The top of the page reports on historic highs for home mortgage foreclosures, one important aspect of the Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis.
The rest of the page considers the Wealth Gap – the most important threat to democracy and free markets.
The right side bar documents that all the indicators of white collar gambling – the stock market – are positive.
The left side below the fold tells of a hedge fund trying to oust the management of Sunrise Senior Living to raise the price of the stock. No word on what impact that will have on the lives of the seniors living in 444 senior living facilities in US of A, Canada and the EU.
The bottom of the page is devoted to Steen Pearlstein’s summary of the use of debt to generate profits for the flippers of Intelsat.
As a counter-point to all this, the upper right story is on how two senators are trying to block the Blackstone IPO. The problem is the private buyout shops are paying too little in taxes.
For now the private sector is awash in money and does not know how to spend it in ways to make citizens happy and safe a necessity if we are to preserve democracy and free markets over the longer term.
Read it a weep.
EMR