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Todd S. Purdum on Henry Paulson

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Vanity Fair - By Todd S. Purdum - Sep. 21 (Special Report) - Henry Paulson, then the Treasury secretary, in his office last September, the month Lehman fell and the bailout took shape. By Nigel Parry/CPi Syndication. It was February 2008, and Henry M. Paulson Jr., a prince of Wall Street turned secretary of the

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Good Billions After Bad

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Vanity Fair - By Donald L. Barlett, James B. Steele - Sep. 11 (Special Report) - As the Bush administration waned, the Treasury shoveled more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in tarp funds into the financial system—without restrictions, accountability, or even common sense. The authors reveal how much of it ended up in the wrong hands, doing the opposite of what was needed.

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Is the Google Books Settlement Evil?

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Vanity Fair - By Jennifer Massoni - Aug. 29 (Special Report) - “I think very few authors have any real idea what to do,” says novelist (and former lawyer) Meg Waite Clayton. “I’m resentful that I have to wade through forms to protect my rights. Unless I get a written notice from Random House, I think I’m contractually bound to opt out,” she says. Not so, says Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild: “Publishers were not cutting a deal that would put their in-print authors in violation of their contracts.” So which is it? For a third opinion, you can ask the settlement administrator, a Minneapolis-based consulting group, at www.googlebooksettlement.com.

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Palin's Resignation: The Edited Version

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Vanity Fair - Jul. 20 (Comedy News) - If you watched Sarah Palin’s resignation speech, you know one thing: her high-priced speechwriters moved back to the Beltway long ago. Just how poorly constructed was the governor’s holiday-weekend address? We asked V.F.’s red-pencil-wielding executive literary editor, together with representatives from the research and copy departments, to whip it into publishable shape. Here is the colorful result.

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August 2009: Todd S. Purdum on Sarah Palin

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Vanity Fair - Jul. 07 (News Report) - The pattern is inescapable: she takes disagreements personally, and swiftly deals vengeance on enemies, real or perceived. Illustration by Risko. The crowds begin streaming into the Evansville Auditorium and Convention Centre a couple of hours before

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Michael Wolff on Politico

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Vanity Fair - By Michael Wolff - Jul. 04 (Special Report) - Four old-media veterans may have solved the future of news with the Politico Web site, whose audience of six million obsessives and insiders consumes–and feeds–a real-time download of power data. The twist? Politico’s print version is what’s helped make it profitable.

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Wall Street and the Third World

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Vanity Fair - By Joseph Stiglitz - Jun. 13 (Opinion) - When the current crisis is over, the reputation of American-style capitalism will have taken a beating—not least because of the gap between what Washington practices and what it preaches. Disillusioned developing nations may well turn their backs on the free market

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Why Time and Newsweek Will Never Be The Economist

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Vanity Fair - By Matt Pressman - Apr. 23 (Opinion) - While other magazines are hemorrhaging readers and laying off staff, The Economist's circulation has doubled in the past seven years and its ad pages have steadily increased, even as it remains unusually expensive to both readers and advertisers. But while raising subscription and newsstand prices might not be a bad idea, trying to imitate The Economist in other ways is a fool’s errand.

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Madoff's World

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Vanity Fair - By Mark Seal - Apr. 03 (Investigative Report) - Among Bernard Madoff’s many dupes were his closest friends, including two tycoons he loved as surrogate fathers: the late Norman F. Levy—whose girlfriend, supermodel Carmen Dell’Orefice, would lose her life savings—and the prominent philanthropist Carl J. Shapiro. Amid the sobs, screams, and curses in Aspen, Palm Beach, and New York, with victims sharing their stories, the author gets behind Madoff’s affable façade, to reveal his most intimate betrayals.

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The New York Times on the Precipice

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Vanity Fair - By Mark Bowden - Apr. 01 (Special Report) - With a doomsday clock ticking for newspapers as we know them, no one has more at stake than fourth-generation New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., who is scrambling to keep his family’s prized asset alive. Some see him as a lightweight cheerleader, others as the last, best defender of quality journalism. Talking to company insiders, the author examines the nexus of dynasty and character that has brought the 57-year-old Sulzberger to the precipice.

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The Swastika and the Cedar

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Vanity Fair - By Christopher Hitchens - Mar. 30 (Special Report) - In newly liberated Lebanon, the signposts on “the Arab street” point in opposite directions. The author’s experiences—he was buoyed by a huge rally for democracy in downtown Beirut, then beaten up by Fascist bullies—show how much this diverse society offers hope but is still threatened by the Syrian dictatorship next door.

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Wall Street on the Tundra

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Vanity Fair - By Michael Lewis - Mar. 05 (Special Report) - Iceland’s de facto bankruptcy—its currency (the krona) is kaput, its debt is 850 percent of G.D.P., its people are hoarding food and cash and blowing up their new Range Rovers for the insurance—resulted from a stunning collective madness. What led a tiny fishing nation, population 300,000, to decide, around 2003, to re-invent itself as a global financial power? In Reykjavík, where men are men, and the women seem to have completely given up on them, the author follows the peculiarly Icelandic logic behind the meltdown.

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Fannie Mae's Last Stand

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Vanity Fair - By Bethany McLean - Jan. 31 (Investigative Report) - Many believe the government-backed mortgage giants known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were major culprits in the economic meltdown. But, for decades, Fannie Mae had been under siege from powerful enemies, who resented its privileged status, its hard-driving C.E.O.’s, and its huge profits. Surveying Fannie’s deeply dysfunctional relationships with Congress, the White House, and Wall Street, the author tells of the long, vicious war—involving most of Washington’s top players—that helped propel one of the world’s most successful companies off a cliff.

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An Oral History of the Bush White House

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Vanity Fair - By Cullen Murphy, Todd S. Purdum - Dec. 31 (News Analysis) - January 20, 2001 After a disputed election and bitter recount battle in Florida whose outcome is effectively decided by the Supreme Court, George W. Bush is sworn in as the 43rd president of the United States. In foreign affairs he promises an approach that will depart from the perceived adventurism of his predecessor, Bill Clinton, in places such as Kosovo and Somalia. (“I think the United States must be humble,” Bush said in a debate with his opponent, Al Gore.) In domestic affairs Bush pledges to cut taxes and improve education. He promises to govern as a “compassionate conservative” and to be “a uniter, not a divider.” He comes into office with a $237 billion budget surplus.

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Capitalist Fools

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Vanity Fair - By Joseph Stiglitz - Dec. 11 (Special Report) - behind the debates over future policy is a debate over history--a debate over the causes of our current situation. the battle for the past will determine the battle for the present. so it's crucial to get the history straight.

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Wall Street: Profiles in Panic

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Vanity Fair - By Michael Shnayerson - Dec. 10 (Special Report) - It may be premature to say our gilded age has ended. Third Point dropped 10 percent in October, bringing it down 27 percent for the year, but Daniel Loeb is still moving into his extravagant new apartment. Steven Cohen’s SAC was down 11 percent in October and 18 percent for the year to date, but that still leaves him plenty of money to add a second ice-skating rink to his Greenwich, Connecticut, estate. And Larry Gagosian is still selling plenty of art.

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America the Banana Republic

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Vanity Fair - By Christopher Hitchens - Oct. 13 (Opinion) - ... the chief principle of banana-ism is that of kleptocracy, whereby those in positions of influence use their time in office to maximize their own gains, always ensuring that any shortfall is made up by those unfortunates whose daily life involves earning money rather than making it.

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Cindy McCain's $300,000 Outfit

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Vanity Fair - Sep. 04 (Comment) - One of the persistent memes in the Republican line of attack against Barack Obama is the notion that he is an elitist, whereas the G.O.P. represent real working Americans like Levi "F-in' Redneck" Johnston. It caught our attention, then, when First Lady Laura Bush and would-be First Lady Cindy McCain took the stage Tuesday night wearing some rather fancy designer clothes. So we asked our fashion department to price out their outfits.

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Tuesdays with Rupert

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Vanity Fair - By Michael Wolff - Sep. 03 (Special Report) - Here was the old man, in white shirt, singlet visible underneath, doing one of the same basic jobs he'd been doing since he was 22, having inherited the Adelaide News in Australia from his father. And he was good at it. He was parsing each answer. Re-asking the question. Clarifying every point. His notepad going. He knew the trade. Of how many media-company C.E.O.'s could that be said? This wasn't a destroyer of journalism--this was a practitioner.

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Bringing Down Bear Stearns: Politics & Power

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Vanity Fair - By Bryan Burough - Jul. 05 (Special Report) - ...around 11...Bear's stock began to fall. It was then, questioning his trading desks downstairs, that Molinaro first heard the rumor: Bear was having liquidity troubles, Wall Street's way of saying the firm was running out of money. Molinaro made a face. This was crazy. There was no liquidity problem. Bear had about $18 billion in cash reserves. Yet the whiff of gossip Molinaro heard that morning was the first tiny ripple in what within hours would grow into a tidal wave of rumor and speculation that would crash down upon Bear Stearns and, in the span of one fateful week, destroy a firm that had thrived on Wall Street since its founding, in 1923.

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Bridge over Troubled Blather

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Vanity Fair - By James Wolcott - Jul. 03 (Opinion) - The voters, watching Obama strike one note of harmony with McCain after another, are going to think, Hell, if McCain is right on so many issues, why not just vote for him to begin with? Why go for the echo when you can have the golden-oldie original? The time for Obama to be conciliatory and solicit McCain's help in the Senate is after he's beaten his ass in the general election, not before.

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Believe Me, It's Torture

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Vanity Fair - By Christopher Hitchens - Jul. 02 (Special Report) - What more can be added to the debate over U.S. interrogation methods, and whether waterboarding is torture? Try firsthand experience. The author undergoes the controversial drowning technique, at the hands of men who once trained American soldiers to resist--not inflict--it.

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What will it take to save Zimbabwe?

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Vanity Fair - By Alexandra Fuller - Jun. 28 (Opinion) - All seems lost, international spectator fatigue has set in. But I would argue that this is a country worth saving, not only because it is the only moral choice, but because Zimbabwe is traditionally and strategically important to the stability of the whole of southern Africa. Every day that Mugabe is allowed to continue his regime is a day of healing lost to the country and the region. Escalating instability here can and will have a profound effect on our ever enmeshed global community.

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How the Web Was Won

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Vanity Fair - By Keenan Mayo, Peter Newcomb - Jun. 05 (Special Report) - Fifty years ago, in response to the surprise Soviet launch of Sputnik, the U.S. military set up the Advanced Research Projects Agency. It would become the cradle of connectivity, spawning the era of Google and YouTube, of Amazon and Facebook, of the Drudge Report and the Obama campaign. Each breakthrough--network protocols, hypertext, the World Wide Web, the browser--inspired another as narrow-tied engineers, long-haired hackers, and other visionaries built the foundations for a world-changing technology. Keenan Mayo and Peter Newcomb let the people who made it happen tell the story.

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The Comeback Id: Politics & Power

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Vanity Fair - By Todd S. Purdum - Jun. 02 (Special Report) - Bill Clinton's relevance--and his presence in public life--is as close to permanent as any politician's can be. Before touching off a string of controversies in his wife's campaign this year, he was among the most popular figures on the planet, one of only three Democratic presidents in the 20th century to serve two full terms. His looming presence will make him a factor in the Democratic vice-presidential sweepstakes, the fall campaign, and every future presidential election of his lifetime, whatever his wife's fate.

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