Until last week, the most common axiom about plumbers was that when they bent over to fix a pipe, you could see the crack of their butts.
Not anymore.
Thanks to Joe Wurzelbacher, we can now go to plumbers for our political future.
Wurzelbacher was mentioned about two dozen times in the debate between Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain this past week. They called him Joe the Plumber, an average Ohio guy who had told Obama during a campaign swing that he was planning on buying a business that makes $250,000 to $280,000 a year. He then asked the candidate, "Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?"
The exchange was caught on tape (what isn't these days?). And from there, the pipe hit the fan. McCain held up Joe as an average American businessman w
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The I.M.F. hired a law firm in August to conduct the investigation, which is taking place just as the global financial crisis threatens to swamp smaller and poorer nations for whom the I.M.F. provides crucial support. The investigation was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
“This is a very bad time for a leadership distraction,” said Simon Johnson, a former chief economist at the I.M.F. “I think the global crisis is just beginning, and I think it’s going to get much worse before it gets better.”
In a written statement, Mr. Strauss-Kahn said he had done nothing wrong. “With my full support, the I.M.F. is examining an incident which occurred in my private life in January 2008.” He wrote that he was cooperating with the inquiry but that “at no time did I abuse my position as the fund’s managing director.”
Over the summer, the allegations came to the attention of A.
