Hard News: The Debate and Onwards
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you call this leadership?
The Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama urged Congress to get back to work today and renegotiate a massive Wall Street bailout package.
The White House hopeful also suggested raising the limit on bank deposits guaranteed by the Federal Government to $250,000 from its current level of $100,000, to help shore up confidence in the financial sector.
The problem is banks not lending to each other. not small time investors holding 100k under the mattress.
It is an interesting comment on the respective character of each candidate that McCain goes and gets involved in a crisis whilst Obama stands back and offers platitudes
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wow.
http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/09/30/palin_pity/index.html
pretty forthright
Apologies if anyone else has already linked to this
Thursdays debate should be interesting
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It is an interesting comment on the respective character of each candidate that McCain goes and gets involved in a crisis whilst Obama stands back and offers platitudes
Sage: And letting the reality back in the room, Sage, you did notice the House Republicans rejected the bailout legislation by a margin of two to one? Try and blame Nancy Pelosi, but the simple fact is she delivered the votes on her side of the aisle. The Republicans did not, and how exactly did McCain's posturing help?
Leadership, among many other things, is about not making promises you can't deliver on, and being there for the brickbats as well as the bouquets.
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It is an interesting comment on the respective character of each candidate that McCain goes and gets involved in a crisis whilst Obama stands back and offers platitudes
What colour is the sky on Planet Sage? McCain's actual actions since he announced he was "suspending" his campaign are fairly well traversed by Newsweek.
The best that can be said is that he hit the phones on Saturday to persuade Republican lawmakers to back the bailout -- an endeavour in which he very clearly failed.
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And for McCain's sake, let's just hope that vulnerable Republican Senators (Mitch McConnell, John Sununu, Elizabeth Dole, Gordon Smith and John Cornyn are all in that column) don't decide it's in their electoral self-interest to show some, shall we say, "maverick" tendencies of their own. If the guy can't even get results in the Senate, he's toast.
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Oh and for those of you who think the sub prime crisis was caused by greedy bankers, think again.
Nonsense on stilts, sage.
Nobody forced AIG to write risky insurance.
Nobody forced investment banks to buy derivatives of loans they did not write.
Nobody forced ratings agencies to overlook the quality of loan books and insurers.
Nobody forced, and in fact many people opposed, the practice of marking to market that overstated balance sheet strength.
Fanny and Freddie were not the first but among the last to fall over. Recall that the crisis started when Countrywide could not sell on the dodgy mortgages it had written. At that time it emerged that it and other lenders had been encouraging their staff to write as many loans as possible, and to overlook commonsense, to the point of firing loan officers who questioned figures applicants put on documents.
Anyway, if you were really a Mises-worshipping Austrian, like Horwitz, you wouldn't be applauding McCain's ostensible efforts to get a bailout package together. You ought to be disapproving his attempts to interfere in the end of the business cycle.
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Anyway, if you were really a Mises-worshipping Austrian, like Horwitz, you wouldn't be applauding McCain's ostensible efforts to get a bailout package together. You ought to be disapproving his attempts to interfere in the end of the business cycle.
And while I really had to wearily chuckle at the House Republicans who've become born-again fiscal conservatives (remember these are the folks who never saw a pork-buffet spending bill or corporate welfare package they didn't like before yesterday), I wonder how many noted the equally vast irony of voting for a 800 billion dollar nationalisation of Wall Street. Am I totally off the wall in thinking that the US federal government is, in effect, taking an enormous speculative crap shoot with public money?
And just to play devil's advocate, for a moment, would it really be apocalypse now if there's a reality check of people who (as Brian Fallow put it in a front-page column in the Herald this morning) "think they could borrow their way to a standard of living their incomes could not sustain." I guess it's very easy for me to say -- I've never had much choice except to live within my means -- but surely someone saw the butcher's bill coming due?
Now,
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you call this leadership?
Yes. Apparently it will deliver the 12 votes that went AWOL yesterday. Of course, McCain is now claiming it was his idea. Liar.
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you call this leadership?
The Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama urged Congress to get back to work today and renegotiate a massive Wall Street bailout package.
The White House hopeful also suggested raising the limit on bank deposits guaranteed by the Federal Government to $250,000 from its current level of $100,000, to help shore up confidence in the financial sector.
The problem is banks not lending to each other. not small time investors holding 100k under the mattress.
A quick refresher Sage:
Yes, the problem is banks not lending to eachother. But why aren't the banks lending to eachother? Because they're worried the bank they lend to will fall over and not pay it back.
Okay, but why do banks need to lend from eachother? Because they don't have enough money deposited with them to lend out to their customers. So they borrow (when they can) from other banks with money. And then lend it to their customers at a higher rate than they borrow it for, thereby making a 'profit'.
So if a bank wants to lend money to customers but doesn't have enough and can't borrow it from other banks ... what do they do? They need to increase their deposits. But how do they get their customers to deposit more money when their customers (Joe Public) are freaking out about banks falling over?
Well, one way is for the Govt to increase the Govt guarantees on deposits fro $100k to $250k. That will encourage people with more than $100k to put it into the bank, instead of gold bars under the bed. (BTW - I don't agree with your assertion that someone with $100k is a small time investor. But then I don't live in the UK where coffee is NZ$10+ a cup)
But anyway, if you think Obama is wrong that's your prerogative. But what has McCain proposed instead, and ... more importantly ... can he deliver? Evidently not, based on yesterday's example.
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This is fun:
McCain is denying he blamed the Democrats for the bailout failure -- while he has a campaign ad running that blames the Democrats for the bailout failure.
I recall I asked yesterday whether his campaign could get anymore weird and erratic.
Yes. Yes, it could.
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RNZ noon has the cops praising the "It's not OK" campaign for the rise in reported violence, as not an actual increase but an increase in reporting it to the cops and not taking it anymore.
Well done Russell.
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RNZ noon has the cops praising the "It's not OK" campaign for the rise in reported violence, as not an actual increase but an increase in reporting it to the cops and not taking it anymore.
Which is precisely what I was trying to explain to Peter.
For all that people like him have mocked that campaign (and new measures like screening for family violence at the public health coalface) this stuff has worked.
Well done Russell.
Hell, I just turned up on the day. The credit should go to the people at the Families Commission who drove the project, and made sure there was support there for people who were moved to act on the messages.
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I recall I asked yesterday whether his campaign could get anymore weird and erratic.
Yes. Yes, it could.
Which is why we just know the Biden / Palin debate is going to be a blast. She has already started with her "I remember his speeches from 2nd grade" jibes. I bet there is a whole lot more where that came from
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McCain is denying he blamed the Democrats for the bailout failure -- while he has a campaign ad running that blames the Democrats for the bailout failure.
To be fair, Russell, McCain might have no idea what his own freaking campaign staff are putting in front of that "I'm John McCain and I approve this message" soundbite.
But, hell, this is worth repeating: If Nancy Perlosi could bewitch two thirds of House Republicans into voting against the bill with around fifteen seconds of "partisanship" in a floor speech, what does it say about the GOP. Apart, that is, from either "harden up" or "that smell better be something on your shoe"?
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Like shooting fish in a barrel...
Couric: And when it comes to establishing your worldview, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and to understand the world?
Palin: I've read most of them, again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media.
Couric: What, specifically?
Palin: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years.
Couric: Can you name a few?
Palin: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news, too. Alaska isn't a foreign country, where it's kind of suggested, "Wow, how could you keep in touch with what the rest of Washington, D.C., may be thinking when you live up there in Alaska?" Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/30/eveningnews/main4490618.shtml
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Slate has a remixed transcript of the Presidential debate that's worth reading. Using independent sources to verify the facts cited by each candidate, they've republished the entire debate noting where the claims are not supported - you simply hover over the redactions to see what was originally claimed. Lots of interesting reading for fans of either candidate.
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Which is why we just know the Biden / Palin debate is going to be a blast. She has already started with her "I remember his speeches from 2nd grade" jibes. I bet there is a whole lot more where that came from.
Including her thoughts on the bailout:
""But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the -- oh, it's got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, um, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is part of that."
From the WaPo
Ahem, yes I guess that clears that up then...
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<blockquote>To be fair, Russell, McCain might have no idea what his own freaking campaign staff are putting in front of that "I'm John McCain and I approve this message" soundbite. </blockquote>
More fool him then.
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Which is precisely what I was trying to explain to Peter.
What part of "cut off state-funding to no-hoping breeders and this will stop" did you fail to grasp Russell?
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I recall I asked yesterday whether his campaign could get anymore weird and erratic.
Yes. Yes, it could.
Yes, he's crazy alright. But we'll find out soon if he's crazy like a Fox. Just as the leaves fall in Autumn, I always get despondent around election time - wondering if democracy is wasted on some people. Sadly some voters (on all sides) just take whatever is served in front of them and accept it as fact/true.
Which is why we just know the Biden / Palin debate is going to be a blast.
Hopefully Biden will ask her about how, as a woman, and as a person who believes in 'family values', she feels about her party buying the domain name "voteforthemilf.com".
According to a blogger on HuffPo:
it was discovered yesterday that the McCain campaign owns voteforthemilf.com. The URL was purchased via the McCain campaign's Go Daddy account. Furthermore, McCain's camp is not denying ownership at this point. Even more telling is that upon entering the URL, the site immediately redirects you to a personal video message from Gov. Palin on McCain's official website. A video posted to YouTube shows the redirect in case the campaign changes it, as seems likely:
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Interestingly, Slate edits Obama's best lines, IMO, regarding McCain's errors on Iraq - several are redacted:
And so John likes -- John, you like to pretend like the war started in 2007. You talk about the surge. Redacted. You were wrong. Redacted. You were wrong. Redacted. And you were wrong.
We don't know the threshold for the edits but I find this an interesting point since McCain didn't really have a come back.
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Aaargh! Me got punk'd!?
Erroneous Claims
All of the sites claiming or inferring John McCain’s campaign owns the domains and registered them privately to dodge the possible scandal are making up what they think is news without actually checking the facts. The truth is it could be anyone that registered the domains (including Sarah Palin herself) but the proof can only be obtained with a subpoena to the Private Registration holder DomainsByProxy. DomainsByProxy happens to be used by GoDaddy and Network Solutions, the biggest domain registrars on the internet. I have used DomainsByProxy for a couple of my domains in the past (and on a somewhat unrelated note I started receiving credit card offers in the mail shortly after I discontinued using their services). That doesn’t mean that my domains were once owned by John McCain’s campaign does it? edit: For the record, I DO NOT OWN THE DOMAIN, contrary to what some forums are already saying. It is still unknown who purchased the domain.
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New Palin!
Couric asks her what magazines and newspapers have helped shape her worldview. Palin flails around and it eventually becomes evident that she can't name a single magazine or newspaper she has read:
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Slate has a remixed transcript of the Presidential debate that's worth reading. Using independent sources to verify the facts cited by each candidate, they've republished the entire debate noting where the claims are not supported - you simply hover over the redactions to see what was originally claimed. Lots of interesting reading for fans of either candidate.
Top of that Slate page includes:
we slashed any statement drawing on actual data or recalling past events while sparing hypotheticals, platform statements, and personal anecdotes. More important, we were agnostic as to whether the redacted facts were accurate.
Slate redacting something doesn't mean they thought that it wasn't supported, just that it potentially could be (and probably has been)checked for accuracy.
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Oops, in my enthusiasm to re-read the speech and have my prejudices about McCain confirmed, it appears I wasn't reading the intro closely enough... thanks for point this out Tim.
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