Criticism From SF Weekly Worse Than Global Financial Meltdown?

By Matt Smith

Here's a pop quiz(R):

Which is worse?

A.) A U.S. banking crisis sparks a chain reaction in global financial markets leaving no economy unscathed, spawning talk of unemployment, poverty and despair like nothing seen since the1930s.

B.) SF Weekly criticizes a bureaucrat.

If you answered B, you must be a savvy financial analyst just like the boys and girls at The Bond Buyer. The Daily Newspaper of Public Finance recently elevated SF Weekly to the status of Lucifer himself in a profile of airport finance bureaucrat Kevin Kone.

In an article titled "Deal in Focus: After a Busy, Crazy Year, S.F. Airport Prices its (?) Offering for $90m" -- (We don't have any idea what this means either) -- writer Andrew Ward explains that recieving criticism from SF Weekly is the worst thing that can possibly happen.

Ward notes how global chaos, combined with financing missteps "made Kone one of the poster children for the municipal market meltdown this year."

Then Ward offers this stunning money shot:

"Worse yet, SF Weekly - a local newspaper that is read by his supervisors and their elected bosses - wrote in August that the "apparent bumbling" and "maladroit financial engineering" by the "zeros" who manage the airport's bonds could result in a "fiery crash that could end up costing local taxpayers millions of dollars."

The paper objected to refunding ARS with insured debt after the last standing triple-A rated bond insurers, Assured Guaranty Corp. and FSA Assurance Corp., began to face credit questions from increasingly nervous investors and credit analysts," Ward wrote.

It's useful to know that SF Weekly can be more devastating than an international finance crisis.

But Ward's revelation begs a question: What is SF Weekly not worse than?

A.) An Ice-Age-causing meteor impact?

B.) Nuclear Armageddon?

C.) The Sun's transformation into a red giant that engulfs planet earth?

D.) The Big Crunch, in which space's expansion reverses, and the universe collapses, thus ending history itself in a black hole singularity?

The reader providing the first correct answer, along with a name and physical address, receives a free tchotchke from SF Weekly.

Photo Via: NicknackPaddywhack