Finally, someone at the Times is picking up the torch and pitchfork

We called for a march on the banking industry last December. It seems to be getting some traction. Maureen Dowd, NY Times Columnist, today describes an incredibly tone-deaf performance by one of those supposed pillars of the banking industry, Northern Trust, which held a lavish golf tournament and party in Los Angeles featuring one of my favorite singers, Sheryl Crow (whom Dowd rightly describes as a "civil servant" since the party was paid for by a bank that took taxpayer bailout money.

But I've been complaining for months about the likelihood -- and the reality -- that these banks would keep doing this stuff. Why is anyone still indignant and surprised?

UPDATED 2/25, 7:34am - Should have included this in original post, but here is Northern Trust's open letter responding to the questions about its lavish shindig.

Here's the comment I submitted to Dowd's column at NYTimes.com. We're waiting to see if it's accepted for posting on the site (Times has a habit of not allowing itself to be called out in its own pages for its weak coverage of a topic -- ask any PR person who has tried to get a factual error corrected in print in the paper):

I warned that Wall Street firms and commercial banks would blithely continue to hold these kinds of parties in a blog post on December 10, 2008 (http://www.ratingagency.com/2008/12/you-get-torches-i-get-pitchforks-and-we.html) followed up by clear evidence that these bandits are clueless about their responsibilities to the taxpayers when GMAC -- after begging for $60 billion from the government -- held a lavish breakfast at an upscale catering hall in South Jersey the very next day (http://www.ratingagency.com/2008/12/they-just-dont-understand-do-they.html), and a news report out of the UK that Citigroup held one of its legendarily excessive bashes out of the US to keep it under the US media radar (http://www.ratingagency.com... report on the party at http://meetingspodcast.com/?p=244)

But the Times didn't even pick up on its own society page reporting to comment on the fact that just weeks after his company melted into oblivion, Lehman's Richard Fuld was photographed in full formal regalia at a fancy ball for the New York Library's Young Lions Dinner, except that many young lions now couldn't afford to attend because they had just lost their jobs at Lehman -- Mr. Fuld seemed hale and hearty. (Blog post at http://www.ratingagency.com... Fuld in tuxedo at http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/11/07/fashion/09evening.ready.html)

If you're going to cover this stuff, cover it consistently, don't affect that "shocked, shocked" attitude long after you should have been on these peoples' cases.

— Steve Lubetkin, Cherry Hill, NJ