Great piece from Benen on what McCain *really* did in the White House photo-op meeting...
Labels: 2008 Elections, Barack Obama, Cheney, dubya, economy, John McCain, macroeconomics
Just a Thursday...
Clearing out some tabs I've had open in Firefox for a few days now:
"We will be told that the Federal Reserve and the Treasury have finally gotten it right. The scope and size of the proposed program will arrest the decline in home prices, restore stability to the financial markets, enable banks to get back to the business of lending, and restore the confidence of the American consumer.
While the program certainly has each of these points as a goal, the amount of time to achieve each goal is unknowable, but an important factor. Moses was told he would lead the Jews to the Promised Land. He didn’t know it would take 40 years. And, in all due respect to Bernanke and Paulsen, Moses was working with God. They are working with Congress."
-Jim Welsh, Welsh Money Management
Labels: 2008 Elections, Angry Bear, Bonddad, dailykos.com, economy, John McCain, macroeconomics, Spending, The Big Picture
Some money quotes, tho I do not understand the rules they're talking about here (bolding mine):
As we learn this morning via Julie Satow of the NY Sun, special exemptions from the SEC are in large part responsible for the huge build up in financial sector leverage over the past 4 years -- as well as the massive current unwind
Satow interviews the above quoted former SEC director, and he spits out the blunt truth: The current excess leverage now unwinding was the result of a purposeful SEC exemption given to five firms.
You read that right -- the events of the past year are not a mere accident, but are the results of a conscious and willful SEC decision to allow these firms to legally violate existing net capital rules that, in the past 30 years, had limited broker dealers debt-to-net capital ratio to 12-to-1.
Instead, the 2004 exemption -- given only to 5 firms -- allowed them to lever up 30 and even 40 to 1.
Who were the five that received this special exemption? You won't be surprised to learn that they were Goldman, Merrill, Lehman, Bear Stearns, and Morgan Stanley.
As Mr. Pickard points out that "The proof is in the pudding — three of the five broker-dealers have blown up."
Labels: 2008 Elections, economy, Homeland Security, macroeconomics, NY Sun, The Big Picture, Wall Street
Says it all about Real Conservatism...
There's your sign...
Labels: 2008 Elections, economy, macroeconomics
...last I checked...he could be up to even more flipflops on this whole financial meltdown/regulation/no regulation thingy...oh yeah,
here's a few more...and more on it
here...
Labels: 2008 Elections, Chris Matthews, Insurance, John McCain, macroeconomics, NBC, real estate, taxes, Think Progress
A mere
billion or two down the drain...pilots are all safe [but injured].
Labels: Homeland Security, macroeconomics, military, Spending
I was listenening to our new
XM radio in the car on the way home last night, and they have a great new channel on
XM130 - POTUS08.
Everything about the presidential election, which is cool in general.
They had a segment that segued with a discussion of Hillary talking about some sort of relief for college students since the rate of college tuition hikes was 2-3x that of inflation over the past...some time, I missed the interval. ANYWAY, they had two people on to discuss the rediculous college price hikes...the first guy was Richard Vedder, a professor of economics at Ohio University and fronting for some group called
The Center for College Affordability and Productivity (they
blog here) He stated that the relief should go directly to students...in the manner of slashing subsidies to post-secondary schools, giving it all to the students and then have the colleges compete to pick up these students...it sounded a little fishy but I did give it enough thought to write down his name while in the restaraunt parking lot picking up chinese food for dinner...then the second guest was Pedro de la Torr, who identifed himself as being with a group called
CampusProgress, affiliated with the
Center for American Progress. CfAP is a well-known pregressive group, but they indentified it so I sort of knew what was coming. But I googled Vedder's name just now,
and this is what I found. He belongs to well-known right-wing thinktanks such as the American Enterprise Institute and the National Taxpayers Union. And, he supports pro-tobacco propaganda. Interesting. But, the whole point is the website that had it:
sourcewatch.org.
Labels: 2008 Elections, blog, colleges, Democrats, education, macroeconomics, media, RNC, sourcewatch.org
They are completely delusional. Completely. Interesting to see just how rediculous the sub-prime lending truly was. Of course, there were some people that
were worried about this macro- issue over the past few years that
saw this whole ball of wax coming down the pipe...
Labels: 2008 Elections, blog, Boston, dailykos.com, economy, macroeconomics, Masachusetts, poverty, RBE, real estate, The Big Picture, wages
The Big Picture is quickly becoming my fav economics blog. As
I've always stated that the unemployment rate is completely bogus, since the
denominator is a melange of stats regarding those that WANT to look for jobs + those employed.
Since the labor pool has shrunk, the percentage of course has gone down.
Labels: economy, macroeconomics, media, RBE, The Big Picture, unemployment
The Big Picture, by an anonymous high-level exec somewhere in NYC, looks like a great read - lots of actual facts about the macro-economic landscape, analyzed by someone that does this all the time, with lots of detail and data to review...just look at the reviews on the 2007 Q1 revised GDP growth post (we flatlined with only a 0.1% growth) and the stuff on the front page regarding the housing market (we're still finding bottom, and the data shows that we're on a strong downhill slump)...and, lest you think this guy is a mega-lib, please look through some more and see that Kudrow is all over the blog - not a guy that is know to be a lib :)
Labels: blog, economy, macroeconomics
