It may be that this bailout is necessary to stabilize the economy — but someone’s going to have to be held accountable.
We need more stocks — not the financial instruments, but those things where people are clamped in place and exhibited on the public square.
Category: Issues of the Day
From my email
Dear American:
I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.
I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.
I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.
This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.
Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.
Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson
Via Cheers and Jeers.
Current Threat Level
All I can believe is that they figured out that the old terrorism threat level scheme (aka crying wolf) wouldn’t work this time around — like it did in 2004. So they’ve installed a financial threat level to scare us with instead.
And while I think of it, how come with all the shit we go through to get on an airplane, the threat level on all flights is still orange? Shouldn’t the threat level on airplanes of all places be green by now?
Best line of the day that gives you some perspective
“But since 2000… Put it this way: we have just finished the first American business cycle ever, the first since British settlers landed at Jamestown and promptly began dying of malaria, the first ever in which median household incomes did not grow from peak to peak.”
We’re number what?
But today, John McCain declared that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong” — and also explained that we’re “the most innovative, the most productive, the greatest exporter, the greatest importer.”
Exactly why we’re boasting about being the biggest importer isn’t clear — not to get all mercantilist, but buying a bunch of stuff isn’t a great achievement. And last I looked, we weren’t the greatest exporter; that distinction went either to the European Union, or, if you restrict yourself to countries, Germany.
“Country first” — whatever it means it shouldn’t mean saying we’re number one when we’re not. McCain is supposed to be running for president, not head cheerleader.
Magic Marker Strategy
Live along the Texas coast and don’t want to evacuate? Consider this.
Instead of relying on a “Good Samaritan” policy – the fantasy in New Orleans that everyone would take care of the neighbors – the Virginia rescue workers go door to door. If people resist the plea to leave, Mr. Judkins told The Daily Press in Newport News, rescue workers give them Magic Markers and ask them to write their Social Security numbers on their body parts so they can be identified.
“It’s cold, but it’s effective,” Mr. Judkins explained.
Reported by John Tierney in 2005.
Primer on deficit and debt
What’s the difference between the federal deficit and the federal debt?
The federal deficit is the amount the federal government goes in the red during each fiscal year (October 1 through September 30). This fiscal year it is expected to be around $407,000,000,000 (that’s $407 billion).
The federal debt is the total amount from all the deficits (and surpluses, such as FY 2000) over the years. It gets higher most years because the deficit is greater than the amount of debt that is paid off during the year. The debt at present is about $9,650,000,000,000 (that’s $9.65 trillion).
To whom is the debt owed?
About half is owed to the government itself. The Social Security Trust Funds, for example, hold about $2.24 trillion (23%) of the federal debt.
About a quarter of the federal debt is owed to foreign governments and institutions, foremost Britain ($280B), Japan ($584B) and China ($504B). And we owe Ecuador, Venezuela, Indonesia, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Gabon, Libya, and Nigeria about $170B combined. (Guess where they got that money to invest in our Treasury securities.)
The remaining quarter is owed to the American public through mutual funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, etc., in the form of treasury securities — treasury bills, bonds, notes. If you are in a money market mutual fund or have savings bonds, you are carrying part of the federal debt.
Interest paid all those creditors this fiscal year is about $455 billion.
Heck of a job, Goodie
As reported by the Dallas Morning News:
But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain’s health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)
“So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime,” Mr. Goodman said. “The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.
“So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved.”
Not only is the above immoral and duplicitous, it’s not even true. Can you get physical exams at the E.R.? Can you get blood pressure medication from the E.R.? Can you get insulin at the E.R.? Can you get continuing skin cancer prevention from the E.R.?
Best redux line of the day
The truth is that there’s no difference in principle between saying that every American child is entitled to an education and saying that every American child is entitled to adequate health care. It’s just a matter of historical accident that we think of access to free K-12 education as a basic right, but consider having the government pay children’s medical bills “welfare,“ with all the negative connotations that go with that term.
Paul Krugman, first posted here one year ago today.
Of course, Krugman overlooks the fact that many on the right would eliminate public schools as well.
When you care enough to send the very best
From Pharyngula:
It seems that Hallmark Greeting Cards are peddling a line of gay-friendly cards, which irks poor little Donald Wildmon something fierce. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because they’re cute, stylish, and witty, but at the same time he’s afraid to mail a coming-out card to his Mom?
Anyway, Wildmon is asking his flock to send negative letters to Hallmark. How about taking a moment to send the very best to thank Hallmark for being non-discriminatory? Use the AFA’s form, or email directly to Donald J. Hall.
You gotta go read and see what he suggests as your Bonus action! It’s perfect.
Most interesting line of the day, so far
“Relative to McCain, whose promised spending cuts are extremely vague, Obama does indeed look like a fiscal conservative.”
David Leonhardt in an in-depth analysis of Obama’s economic policy in The New York Times Magazine.
Now That’s Rich
Paul Krugman’s Friday column talks about levels of rich and middle class — a topic we’ve been playing with around here for a couple of days. Krugman includes this:
The trouble with Mr. Warren’s question was that it seemed to imply that everyone except the poor belongs to one of these two categories: either you’re clearly rich, or you’re an ordinary member of the middle class. And that’s just wrong.
In his entertaining book “Richistan,” Robert Frank of The Wall Street Journal declares that the rich aren’t just different from you and me, they live in a different, parallel country. But that country is divided into levels, and only the inhabitants of upper Richistan live like aristocrats; the inhabitants of middle Richistan lead ample but not gilded lives; and lower Richistanis live in McMansions, drive around in S.U.V.’s, and are likely to think of themselves as “affluent” rather than rich.
Even these arguably not-rich, however, live in a different financial universe from that inhabited by ordinary members of the middle class: they have lots of disposable income after paying for the essentials, and they don’t lose sleep over expenses, like insurance co-pays and tuition bills, that can seem daunting to many working American families.
Indeed. Our society is much too complex to be divided into poor, middle and rich; eight or nine tiers are probably the minimum to have any meaning.
Krugman’s whole column deserves a read.
Who’s rich?
Maybe they’re drinking foreign beers, a sure sign
Also speaking at the press conference: a Denver activist and homeowner who was recently questioned by the police about bricks being unloaded at her house. Says the ACLU, “Although the bricks were acquired for masonry repairs, Denver police accused the activist of ‘stockpiling’ the bricks for the [Democratic Convention]” Just a few hours ago, I walked down Denver’s 16th Street Mall. A number of restaurants appeared to have stockpiled chairs and tables for patrons to sit at. The patrons themselves appeared to be stockpiling bottles of beer on the tables. I’m not sure what to think.
Doldrums
Maybe part of it is just August — last year I had a poll on your least favorite month and August edged out January. I see that FunctionalAmbivalent is taking some time off to reconsider his blog.
Maybe an exciting new NewMexiKen poll would help.
At Saturday’s Saddleback Forum (NewMexiKen and family lived just down the road for 10 years), Senators Obama and McCain were asked to define “rich” with a number. They were asked the question in the context of taxes and so answered with an income number (though one could argue that rich is defined by net worth and includes much more than income).
Granted then, that like so much of our discourse, this is too simple to be very meaningful, but —
{democracy:38}
‘We Are All Georgians’? Not So Fast.
An excellent, brief summary of the situation in Georgia — past and present — by Michael Dobbs in The Washington Post.
Take five or so minutes and you will have a balanced understanding. Very worthwhile.
Best line of Friday evening
Would President McCain have handled the Georgia-Russian thing as well as Bush:
“It’s hard to know since he’s a corrupt, pandering politician who is clearly willing to do anything to get elected, but if we take him at his word, we’d have to assume that we’d have declared war on Russia.”
“I’m not saying we won’t get our hair mussed. 20-30 million tops…”
Most ‘I don’t think so’ line of the day
McCain said he told [Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili] “that I know I speak for every American when I say to him today, we are all Georgians.”
Dangerous and Unstable
It’s sort of funny when he’s just an unhinged senator. But think for a moment where we’d be if this man were president right now, as he may well be in six months. This man takes the counsel of the people who got us into the Iraq War. On foreign policy, he is in league with the people who were so extreme they’ve now largely been kicked out of the Bush administration. People like John Bolton and others like him.
It’s beyond Obama or political strategy or dinging McCain on this or that policy.
This man is simply too dangerous and unstable to be president. People need to wake up and get a look of the preview he’s giving us of a McCain presidency.
NewMexiKen agrees with Marshall. Keep your eye on the ball people. War, and war especially with a powerful foe, trumps all other issues — except, of course, who’s wearing a flag lapel pin.
Let’s Compound the Blunder!
From an insightful piece about Georgia-Russia by Gregory Djerejian.
This is what our foreign policy mandarins masquerade about as they play policy-making, in their Washington work-stations. It’s, yes, worse than a crime, rather a sad, pitiable blunder.
And one McCain would have us compound, I stress, again! An honorable man who served his country well, it is clear his time has past and his grasp on the most basic foreign policy calls we’ll need to make in the coming years is very tentative indeed. He’ll be surrounded by second-tier ‘yes-man’ realists and residual neo-con swill, few with any ideas worth pursuing if we mean to take the national interest seriously with sobriety and freshness of perspective. So let us help him exit off-stage gracefully, as he served his country with dignity when called upon, but let us not sacrifice our children’s future to ignorants with deludely romantic notions of empire. Been there, done that.
Georgia and the Utter Fecklessness of Condi Rice
One would have thought that having an ace Kremlinologist on board as Secretary of State might have helped America defuse this Russo/Georgian powder keg.
But apparently this resurgence of Soviet style aggression (re-birth pangs, perhaps?) wasn’t enough to make Dr. Rice disrupt her vacation.
I do hope that this episode is the final nail in the coffin of the myth of Condi’s competence.
Georgia, South Ossetia and Russia
Many factors are involved in the present conflict but the central one is straightforward: the majority of the Ossetes living south of the main Caucasus range in Georgia wish to unite with the Ossetes living to the north, in an autonomous republic of the Russian Federation; and the Georgians, regarding South Ossetia as both a legal and an historic part of their national territory, refuse to accept this.
Update:
Here’s is the essence of what I posted earlier that Rob may be referencing in his commment. On reflection, I thought it was weak and took it out. Upon further reflection, possibly it is a decent illustration. In any case the analogy is not meant to imply right or wrong, simply that it’s not simple.
Let’s assume Texas broke away from the United States about 20 years ago. Let’s further assume that west Texans would rather be united with their compadres and kinfolk in New Mexico, which is still part of the U.S. (In this analogy the U.S. is Russia, Texas is Georgia, west Texas is the part of Georgia that wants to be separate from Georgia — namely South Ossetia, and New Mexico represents the Russian Republic of North Ossetia.)
Texas is refusing to let the west Texans reunite with the New Mexicans. The U.S. is supporting the west Texans and has invaded Texas.
Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Who knows?
You’re In Danger
And John McCain would ramp up all the worst traits of the current administration. His instincts are always toward force and the people advising him come squarely from the Cheney wing of the current administration. In comparison to Bush he’s not just more of the same. There’s every reason to believe he’d be much worse.
The current situation in Georgia and his response should make clear to everyone how dangerous a president John McCain would be.
Whatever you think of Obama and the Democratic Party, John McCain would be an unmitigated disaster as President of the United States.
If you’re against Obama, at least demand the Republicans chose someone capable of handling the job. Haven’t we had enough incompetence and wrong-headedness?
Racism by region
FiveThirtyEight.com takes a look at the Bradley Effect today. It includes this:
It may be that in the Northeast, which is arguably the most “politically correct” region of the country, expressions of racism are the least socially acceptable, and that therefore some people may misstate their intentions to pollsters. By contrast, in the South and the Midwest, if people are racist they will usually be pretty open about it, and in the West, which is nation’s most multicultural region, there is relatively little racism, either expressed or implicit.
Allowing for generalization, do you think he’s correct?
The Bradley Effect is named for Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley. When African-American Bradley ran for governor of California in 1982, exit polls showed him a clear winner. When he lost, subsequent analysis showed that some voters had lied about whom they voted for rather than appear racist to pollsters. The Bradley effect is about lying to pollsters, not about voting on the basis of race.
Best line of the day, so far
“The hazards Americans treat as facts of life — the risk of losing your insurance, the risk that you won’t be able to afford necessary care, the chance that you’ll be financially ruined by medical costs — would be considered unthinkable in any other advanced nation.”