More from Juárez: NPR blog-post and story:

[More from Mexico. This is last story by slain newspaper journalist Armando Rodriguez, of El Diario de Juárez , translated by Molly Molloy…]

Dead man in canal was a street corner clown

The man assassinated

identities of the murderers.

[Scott Carrier is working on an HV Hour about the murders in Juárez, Mexico, starting with his NPR series, then moving onto the current much, much worse situation. The following are some emails from Scott…]

Yesterday Armando Rodriguez, the journalist who’d written most of the stories (901) on this year’s executions in Juárez Mexico, was himself executed:

Juarez journalist slain

El Pasa Times staff report 11/13/2008

A Juarez journalist known for his work as a crime reporter for El Diario de Juarez was gunned down Thursday morning in front of his home, the newsapaper’s Web site reported.

Armando Rodriguez was preparing to take his daughter to school in Juarez when a gunman approached his car and fired several shots at point-blank range, according to accounts provided by the newspaper. Rodriguez reportedly died at the scene.

The assailant then fled to a waiting car carrying other men and sped off in an unknown direction.

Rodriguez was the police beat reporter for El Diario de Juarez and had become an expert on the brutal drug cartel violence that has gripped Juarez for the last several years.

“He was a good person and a good reporter,” said KINT-TV (Univision Ch. 26) reporter Pedro Villagrana, who has worked closely with Rodriguez for more than a decade.

Word of Rodriguez’ slaying quickly spread throughout the Juarez and El Paso journalism community. Some members of the Juarez media including his colleagues at El Diario de Juarez gathered at the crime scene to mourn his death, according to the newspaper Web site.

Juárez has always been a violent place. No rule of law. People get killed and nobody is arrested, not even an investigation. What’s new now is the rate of murders. There are more than 100 executions each month in Juárez, 1300 this year alone. Last year there were about 300.

Paula Flores attends the burial of her daughter Sagrario Gonzalez,
a maquiladora worker abducted and killed in April 1998.
(Photo © Julián Cardona)

Barron’s this week interviewed an institutional money manger named Jeremy Grantham.

They asked “Do you think we will learn anything from all of this turmoil?”
His answer:

We will learn an enormous amount
in a very short time
Quite a bit
in the medium term
And absolutely nothing
in the long run.
That would be the historical precedent.

We’re all looking forward to this week’s economic news.

No, what what Congress does; I’m talking about the upcoming This American Life episode: “Another Frightening Show About the Economy.”

It’s by TAL’s Alex Blumberg and NPR’s Adam Davidson of TAL “Giant Pool of Money” fame.

Listening to the two’s work on the new NPR Planet Money podcast and blog reminded me how damn good they are. AdamD’s the econ extraordinaire guy for NPR. And AlexB of TAL and NPR, well, I gotta ask…

Is Alex Blumberg the best reporter on the planet?

His little asides make a story, like from this report on SEC Chair Chris Cox and the stock-trading practice of Naked Short-Selling:

“It gets confusing, as it often does, when you get to the naked part.”

“Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, despite having names a child might give a puppy, are… well, were…”

Planet Money “Naked Short Selling, Meet Moral Hazard” (27:27 mp3):

And there’s this AlexB blockbuster: “What’s In A Number?” The TAL topic was a report on Iraq civilian casualties. Alex transformed it into an insightful portrait of both the science and humanity in statistics.

A recent NY Times article,  “Daring to Say Loans Made No Sense,” is devoted to TAL’s “Giant Pool:”

“One of the remarkable things about the report is the absence of evildoers…”

“Market appetites for anything that resembled a mortgage pushed loan standards down: ‘No income, no asset. You don’t have to state anything. Just have a credit score and a pulse.’ (Mr. Blumberg pointed out that the pulse thing was optional: 23 dead people in Ohio were also approved.)”

Alex/Adam also just offered this cheerily titled story:

Last week’s Bernake/Paulson/Cox C-Span Congressional Extravaganza left me impressed w/:

• SEC’s Cox’s extremely educational testimony on what his agency can/can’t regulate (according to current law).

• FedRez’s Bernake’s insight on foreign banks are intertwining w/ those in USA.

• Congressional questioning, whether from D or R, seeking some/any clarification on procedures for the “proposed purchase of troubled assets”.

• Was particularly proud of my own Junior Sen. Jon Testor’s (D-MT) understanding of the implications and history of this year’s gov bailouts, and his pointing out how in past, the Fed/TreasDept has said all $X-Billion of the loan appropriation might not be used (as they’re saying now), but in fact every penny was.

Sec. of $s Paulson, otoh, met every request for clarity w/ a variation of: “We want the money and we want it now.” Heard no evidence this guy has any clue what he’s doing, what he’s going to do, or even what he did.

I gave him the benefit of doubt, tho — maybe he was hiding details in hopes of expediency. So I looked elsewhere for some sign this guy’s even mildly competent.

Found none. But along the way did run into lotsa illuminating info. What follows is an audio and url annotated travelogue of my trip thru the web.

“Mexico’s Red Days” by Charles Bowden in GQ on the escalating Juárez, Mexico murders:

The killings have the cold feeling of butchery in a slaughterhouse, and they are everywhere: done in broad daylight, on streets, in markets, at homes, and even in Wal-Mart parking lots. Women, children, guilty, innocent—no one is safe.

These are red, endless days.

[Mr. Massett explains why the media explanations of the mortgage crisis explain nothing.]

When the US credit markets began to blow up last year, every newspaper in the country served up two explanations for the mess: “sub-prime mortgage” and “collaterized debt obligation,” or “CDO.”

A sub-prime mortgage sounds bad on the face of it, so no problem there. But CDO has no obvious meaning. Only a few days ago I watched an NPR journalist try to figure it out from the words themselves (”let’s see, ‘collateralized’ refers to ‘collateral,’ so there must be a thing like a house or a car someplace, and ‘debt’ means, well, debt, and an ‘obligation’ means, um, you have to do something, right?”) The usual fudge is to drape the riddle with adjectives like “opaque,” “complex,” and “hard to understand,” as if these were explanatory principles. The phrase “complex and opaque financial instruments known as CDO’s” doesn’t tell you anything, really, but at least it sounds bad. Dern near as bad as a sub-prime mortgage. Moving right along, in other news…

The trouble is CDO’s were never meant for the average investor, or the average journalist. They are Wall Street inventions designed for the big players, investment banks like Citi or Merill or Bear Sterns. To understand them you have to think like an investment bank. This is no harder than thinking like a Martian.