Betsy Newmark on this season’s comedy goldmine, John Edwards :

I still think that there is something suspect about this nothingburger of a job that Edwards had there at Fortress. He earned close to half a million dollars for a 15-month stint working at Fortress to study the relationship of capital and poverty, but seemed to miss the whole involvement of his employer with subprime lending. If you or I wanted to study poverty and capital, we’d probably have to go to a university and do some research. Giving a job for someone to do some study while on the job just doesn’t rate a six-figure salary for anyone besides a potential presidential candidate. It seems yet another way to get around the campaign finance laws.

I love this country! Who knew the big bucks were in poverty studies? I haven’t had such a laugh since I discovered that Richard Breeden’s squeaky-clean corporate governance hedge fund to keep wicked American corporations super-ethical is registered in the Cayman Islands. Only in America! (Okay, in Breeden’s case, only in the British West Indies, but you know what I mean.)