Poor Edmund Andrews, a once-happy economics reporter for the New York Times. Not so long ago, Ed went through a mid-life crisis, divorcing (expensively) his first wife and re-marrying. Despite a settlement that effectively cut his take-home pay in half, and despite a new wife whose money-management skills, and her work ethic, both seemed dubious, Ed decided to plunge on a $500,000 “small but stately” home in Silver Spring, Maryland, just north of DC. Nobody ever got poor betting on the DC housing market, did they?
Well, that was so yesterday. Everything, but everything went south for Ed, but, ever resourceful, he decided to write a book about it, about how even an honest, hard-working fellow like himself got sucked into the current housing crisis, thanks to smooth-talking bankers and their new-fangled, “pay never” mortgages. The Times, not too surprisingly, ran a piece by Ed giving a synopsis of his sad tale.
Well, not everyone seemed to take Eddie’s sufferings quite so seriously as he did, but his troubles didn’t really start until Megan McArdle started checking around and discovered that Ed’s second wife Patty had filed for bankruptcy just before taking up with Ed and that she’s just recently filed for bankruptcy again, details that Ed somehow left out of his piece for the Times. Eventually, Ed responded to Megan, who then, well, Megan pretty much backed a bulldozer over both Ed and Pat. You can view the carnage here.
All of which leads me to say this: Megan, I may have said a few unkind things about you on the web, but that was years ago, when I just a kid, really, in dog years, at least. In fact, Megan, I’m not very smart, and I often say things without even knowing what they mean! So, Megan, please don’t hit me.
