An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff

The man who sows wrong thoughts and deeds and prays that God will bless him is in the position of a farmer who, having sown tares, asks God to bring forth for him a harvest of wheat.
James Allen

Todays post from Rich Galen (http://www.mullings.com/) had an interesting comment:

• The Goldman Sachs/U.S. Senate showdown the other day was distressing. The Goldman Sachs guys obviously don't understand why the American people are so tired of their ignoring basic decency in their business practices, and the U.S. Senators don't understand why we think they are a bunch of ignorant, showboating jerks.
• If you don't think the thugs who run these financial houses need oversight, consider this inside-the-paper story from the Wall Street Journal.
• In 2008, a guy in Chicago, Evan Brent Dooley, had a trading account with the brokerage firm of MF Global Holdings, Ltd. Mr. Dooley traded in wheat futures. Like Wonder Bread wheat.
• Traders in commodity futures bet on whether they believe the price of that commodity will go up (going "long") or it will go down (going "short").
• According to the WSJ, on the night of Feb. 26, 2008 Dooley "allegedly bought and sold 31,964 wheat contracts." Note the number of contracts.
• He began his trading binge "with a negative balance of about $3,000 in his account and, by the next morning, held a short position valued at $872 million."
• The financial system was operating so out of any known realm of reality that a legitimate brokerage house allowed a guy who was three grand in the hole to make so many trades that in one night he was holding nearly a BILLION DOLLARS worth of contracts.
• Nah. They don't need any oversight

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9FCOG7O0.htm

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704423504575212382106637418.html

An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff.
Adlai E. Stevenson