New Issue; Bill Black on Le Show

(1) May/June issue in the mail: E-subscribers have received their May/June issue, and print subscribers should be receiving it shortly.  I posted John Miller's column, No Fooling--Corporations Evade Taxes, last week. Today I posted Randy Albelda's comment, Teachers, Secretaries, and Social Workers: the New Welfare Moms?, and also Barry Deutsch's latest 'toon. Many thanks to Rock Netroots, a blog from Rock County, Wisconsin, for the beautiful solidarity cover image.

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(2) Bill Black on Harry Shearer's Le Show: The thankfully omnipresent Bill Black was on Harry Shearer's radio program, Le Show, which originates at KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif.  Harry Shearer starred in This is Spinal Tap, and is the voice actor behind many of the characters on the Simpsons, including Mr. Burns, Smithers, and Ned Flanders.  He turns out to be a great interviewer, too.  And Bill is, of course, a great interviewee.  Some of what he says in the interview repeats material from the feature article we ran in our Jan/Feb issue, Still Banking on Fraud, but he also gives a lot of detail about his role as a regulator during the S&L crisis, and the contrast between the prosecutions of fraudsters in that era and the utter failure to prosecute anyone today.  At one point Shearer is impersonating a young mortgage broker and you can almost hear one of the Simpsons voices (I think it's about half-way through--he's saying "It's a no-brainer!").  Anyhow, here's the interview:

--Chris Sturr