Say “Bueller, Bueller” in a monotone and just about everybody in the free world knows you’re echoing Ben Stein as the drone of an economics teacher in the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
But while Ferris gave himself a day off, it would seem that Stein just can’t stop doing something.
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Lawyer, actor, author, economist, television performer, talk show guest, presidential adviser, Stein, 63, belongs in the multi-tasking hall of fame.
Add newsmaker to Stein’s resume. Stein the economist is now generating headlines for tarnishing the halo of Goldman Sachs, the investment bank that is generally celebrated for getting everything right at a time when other banks got most things wrong.
In his “Everybody’s Business” column in Sunday’s New York Times Business section, Stein took on Goldman for a kind of double-dealing and/or risk management that is common to investment banks.
Essentially, the company seemed to speak with two voices, Stein argues. It urged people to invest in products related to the subprime mortgage market. At the same time, it also protected itself from any losses in this market through the stock-market tactic of short selling.
The company does not deny doing this, Stein makes clear, but he finds it troublesome.
“To my old eyes, the recent unhappiness about mortgages and Goldman’s connection with them are not examples of sterling conduct,” Stein wrote. “It is bad enough to have been selling this stuff. It is far worse when the sellers were, in effect, simultaneously shorting the stuff they were selling.”
Stein concludes by asking whether Henry M. Paulson Jr., Goldman’s former chairman and CEO, should now be serving as treasury secretary.
“It was classic take-no-prisoners, grumpy Ben Stein,” wrote Herb Greenberg in MarketBlog on marketwatch.com. Greenberg went on to take exception with Stein, as do several people who wrote in to comment.
Sen. Chris Dodd, the chair of the Senate Banking Committee and a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, Tuesday said that Paulson should “address the concerns” raised by Stein. If he doesn’t, the committee will launch an investigation, Dodd added.
And the Times today followed Stein without acknowledging Stein by publishing a long story on how Goldman and other banks did exactly what Stein said they did.
All of this proves again that Stein, unlike his Ferris Bueller character, is far from boring. He’s a man with a host of connections and a variety of talents.
Stein’s father, the late Herbert Stein, was chairman of Richard Nixon’s Council of Economic Advisors.
Ben Stein is a 1970 graduate of Yale Law School. After working as a poverty lawyer and with the Federal Trade Commission, he served as a lawyer and speechwriter for Richard Nixon. (Stein’s website stresses that he did not write the Nixon line: “I am not a crook.”)
Stein, who also worked for President Gerald Ford, was one of several Nixon officials rumored to have been Deep Throat, Bob Woodward’s Watergate source. Stein was a childhood neighbor and high school classmate of Carl Bernstein, Woodward’s reporting partner. However, Deep Throat proved to be someone else, and Stein remains a strong supporter of Nixon.
From the White House, Stein went on to write for the Wall Street Journal. Later he worked as a screenwriter. After his role in Ferris Bueller, he became a cameo king, appearing in movie after movie and also voicing characters in animated films.
Stein had a role in television’s The Wonder Years and from 1997 to 2003 he was the host of the Comedy Central game show Win Ben Stein’s Money.
The author of many books, including several novels, Stein is an advocate of intelligent design. He remains a staunch Republican, who this year has contributed $750 to Rudy Giuliani’s campaign. However, Stein has also given $2,000 to comedian Al Franken, a Democrat who is running for the U.S. Senate in Minnesota.
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