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dWSJ's John Stoll sits with Matt Dolan and explains how a survey shows Americans are willing to buy cars from bankrupt automakers. (Read more)

David Koeppel explores an interesting slice of the housing bubble's remnants in a piece about how hopes for a rebirth in New York's poverty-stricken Rockaways has now turned into a nightmare. The lede is provided  below.

Five years ago, an area ridden with high crime and poverty seemed positioned to turn into a reinvigorated community by the sea, complete with new condos and co-ops. But the mortgage crisis crushed that momentum.

Today, a large swath of the Rockaway peninsula in Queens, N.Y., teeters

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FORM 13F INFORMATION TABLE

________________

TITLE OF VALUE SHARES OR SH/ PUT/ INVESTMENT OTHER VOTING AUTHORITY
NAME OF ISSUER CLASS CUSIP (X$1000) PRN AMOUNT PRN CALL DISCRETION MANAGERS SOLE SHARED NONE
______________ _____ _____ ________ __________ ___ ____ __________ ________ ________________

A.H. BELO CORP CLASS A COMMON COMMON 001282102 53 10214 SH SOLE SOLE
ABITIBIBOWATER INC COMMON 003687100 178 46000 SH CALL SOLE SOLE
ACE LTD NEW COMMON H0023R105 1148 21200 SH SOLE SOLE
ADVENT SOFTWARE COMMON 007974108 505 14345 SH SOLE SOLE (Read more)

MADOFF: Our firm has made a, you know, fairly 13 decent living as a fast market competing with a slow market, 14 so I'm not sure that it's in our own best interests to have 15 everyone on a fast market but, since our good Chairman has 16 asked us all to take off our selfish hats and speak for the 17 public good, I'm going to try to do that. ... (Read more)

Citi may not be bankrupt, but that doesn’t mean that longtime investors are happy about the lump of coal the bank has left in their stocking. One of those feeling less charitable with his accolades is William B. Smith, President and Chief Executive Officer of SAM Advisors, LLC.

He was still giving Citi CEO Vikram Pandit a thumbs up earlier this year, noting that "[m]y turnaround and his might look a little different, but I think he will pull the turnaround off." Now, however, that love is gone.

Today, Smith took his irritation straight to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, asking in an open letter (republished below) for the treasury secretary to step into the breach and help stop a mismanagement of company assets that, Smith says, “has now vaporized 200 Billion dollars in Market Capitalization and diluted common shareholders beyond recognition.”

Smith wants a few things to happen. Citi, he says, needs to be broken up in order to reveal the true value of it’s pieces. And he wants the board of directors and the “inept” management of Citi to be shown the door. What Paulson can do to spur this along is anybody’s guess. But Smith should be given a few gold stars for effort, as he is correct when he says a Citi fiasco is a problem for Paulson as well. After all, Citi is holding a few billion dollars in taxpayer money provided through Paulson’s TARP program.

“Unfortunately for you and me, since both of us have skin in the game, the “rot” of incompetence has acted as cancer and has permeated throughout the capital markets,” concludes Smith, adding that his plan “will allow the company to get to the other side of this horrific credit cycle, and ultimately break the company up in an effort to monetize the assets for the benefit of long suffering shareholders, and now YOU, the United States Treasury.”

No news back from Paulson. But it tis the season for giving.

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After giving the nation's banks a few billion dollars sans strings, then watching them horde the money instead of lend it, a reasonable mind might believe America's politicians would have seen their folly the next time around.

But Congress seems to think free money is just the ticket for every ailing industry, proposing today to hand over $25 billion to the country's moribund auto industry under similarly loose terms.

The White House expressed surprise that Congress "would propose a bailout that fails to require auto makers to make the hard decisions needed to restructure and become viable." Of course, this protest rings a little hollow given the administration's cheerleading of the opaque TARP structure that started Congress down this road in the first place.