¶ Matins: The Chinese milk problem is the second of this year’s challenges to the Way They Live Now. (Shoddy constructions of the schools that collapsed upon students during the Sichuan earthquake back in May was the first.) Flames from the scandal continue to reach higher into the hierarchy. As China grows more affluent, these scandals will probably increase.

¶ Tierce: You’d think that the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression might inspire the Bush Administration to change its ways. Not a bit of it. What we’re getting is a replay to the Iraq run-up. The government’s bailout plan is written in the Key of Panic.

¶ Nones: Have you discovered a great little organic red wine from Chile, Palin Syrah? It used to a big seller at Yield, a hip San Francisco wine bar, but no longer.

¶ Compline: Google Maps now offers NYC subway directions! (via kottke.org)

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¶ Matins: As the financial collapse continues, I rather egotistically wish that I had the time and energy to comb through old Portico pages in search of I-told-you-so’s. Isn’t that stupid. Let’s say I did. Let’s say I foresaw the whole mess, exactly as it’s playing out (which I most certainly did not). So what? A good idea ahead of its time is really just another bad idea.

¶ Tierce: Patrick McGeehan files a lucid report on the environmental impact, so to speak, of Wall Street’s latest melt-down. It will be bad for the city, of course, but it will be worse for the suburbs — which were already beginning to suffer the tribulations of increased oil prices (home heating and gasoline).

¶ Nones: Two funny videos today: The Cult of the Cupcake and Les Misbarack.

¶ Vespers: Notwithstanding the global gloom and doom, Damien Hirst shattered auction records the other night, bypassing his dealer and going directly to the public. Maybe that’s what you do in a crunch. Carol Jacobi writes in the Guardian about how Holman Hunt did just about the same thing in 1866, in the middle of a bank run. (more…)

¶ Matins: Why do we all feel that the failure of Lehman Brothers is so much worse than everything that has happened before, from Black Monday (1987) to the collapse of Enron? Why do we suspect that, this time, the disaster may engulf us?

¶ Tierce: Floyd Norris on lax financial regulation:

Those who were complaining, only months ago, that excessive regulation was making American markets uncompetitive, had it exactly wrong. It was a lack of regulation of the shadow financial system and its players that allowed this to happen. The regulators might not have gotten it right if they had tried to put limits on leverage, or assure that it was clear what risks were being taken, in the world of derivatives and securitizations. But deciding not to even try, and assuming that risks traded secretly would somehow end up in the hands of those most able to bear them, reflected ideology, not analysis.

¶ Sext: Read about Palisade Prep, a new public high school in Yonkers, funded in part by the Gates Foundation, that aims to send every student to college.

Rosa Kastsaridis, whose 15-year-old son, Frank, is a ninth grader at the school, said the available counseling was an important factor in her decision to take a chance on a promising — but untested — school.

“I graduated from the Yonkers school system 17 years ago and wasn’t able to get a scholarship because the guidance counselor at that time was not educated enough to help me,” she said.

¶ Compline: Today’s one of those days when reading about the horreurs du jour through the elegant francophonie of Jean Ruaud’s Mnémoglyphes is like a comfort from the Psalms.

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