Wow!
by tristero
Marcy Kaptur sounds like a Democrat, a real one:
Hat tip, Avedon
"what digby sez..."
They Don’t Miss A Trick
by tristero
Nate Silver’s noticed something weird going on with election betting:
There’s something funny going on over at Intrade with respect to the pricing of the Obama and McCain contracts.
Right now, Obama is trading at 52.3 points. That is, Intrade implies that he has a 52.3 percent chance to become the next President.
Now, I happen to think that is a patently absurd price. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Over at BetFair, another large UK-based gambling and futures site, you can also buy an Obama contract. But the price there is 1.62, which implies a 61.7 percent chance that Obama will become the next President.
That is a huge spread, 51.5 points versus 61.7 points. ..
It does seem to be Intrade specifically that’s out of line, rather than Betfair. At Iowa Electronic Markets, yet another political futures exchange, the probability of the Democrats winning the popular vote is about 61 percent…
It’s pretty obvious that this is not some sort of random walk. Rather, every so often, some individual trader or some small group of traders are shorting all the Obama contacts in bulk and resetting the entire market. The markets then organically climb back upward until the rogue trader strikes again six or eight hours later. The volumes on these contracts have been very high for the past week as a result.
Most likely, this is just some idiot degenerate gambler who is trying to have some fun. Between the Obama and McCain contracts, there appears to be about $400,000 in contracts changing hands every day, which is a lot by Main Street standards, but minuscule by either Vegas or Wall Street Standards.
What’s a little weird, however, is that this rouge trader is not only selling Obama contracts and buying McCain contracts …. they also seem to be buying Hillary Clinton contracts[.]
This is the exact mirror image of the Obama trading — in fact, the trades seem to be occurring at exactly the same times. So someone is betting on some sort of disqualifying event happening to Obama.
I don’t think this is any cause for alarm… if Joe Biden contracts were being bought up as part of this scheme, that might be more concerning, but they aren’t. Still, if I were the
Secret ServiceFBI (**), I would probably want to know the identity of this trader.
Two criticisms. First of all, I don’t think this is the work of someone having a little bit of demented fun; this has all the hallmarks of a classic Republican ratfuck. Second, in his link, Nate picked the wrong idiot degenerate gambler to use as an example.
Yes, Virginia, There Is A Foreign Policy Debate Friday
by dday
The first Presidential debate is scheduled to focus on foreign policy, and I imagine those tuning in, whose knowledge of the subject is limited, would rather hear the candidates talk about the current economic mess. But the past week or so has also revealed a series of crises in global hotspots around the world. This includes but is not limited to Iraq, and I would hope that Jim Lehrer understands the full spectrum of global decisions that the next President will have to make, and really make a sustained effort to force the candidates past simplistic slogans and into the heart of what they would do in foreign policy.
• First we have the Marriott bombing in Islamabad, Pakistan, the second big suicide attack in the Muslim world in the space of the week (along with the bombing of the US embassy in Sanaa, Yemen). Given that the Marriott is typically home to international businessmen and Western dignitaries, so those similarities exist as well. This was a signal from the Taliban in response to the recent spate of US forays into the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) region. Given that the Pakistani Prime Minister was due at the Marriott, it could have been worse.
Clearly there’s a real problem with Pakistan. At least 300 have died in suicide attacks just this year. We’ve launched something approaching a shadow war in the FATA region, without any partnership and in fact increasing resistance from elements in the Pakistani government and the military, which is actively repelling raids. It threatens a split between the Army and the leadership of Prime Minister Zardari, and that has potentially disastrous results. In short, the country is on the brink.
More than any other terrorist attack in this volatile country, the devastating truck bombing of the Marriott Hotel over the weekend has presented government and military leaders here with a stark choice: Go all out against extremists or risk the nation’s collapse into chaos.
That is the growing consensus among many Pakistani analysts and commentators, who fear that without rapid, determined and ironfisted action by officials and security forces, this nuclear-armed land is in danger of becoming a failed state, with Islamic radicals in control.
Brandon Friedman has more on this, and he believes that John McCain will end up altering his position on Pakistan with one more broadly in line with Barack Obama. But the question is how to best articulate that policy – maintaining a stance that respects Pakistan’s national sovereignty, but one which understands that a safe harbor for those who wish to do Americans harm is not advisable. This is best accomplished by the locals, not yet another occupying force. But the locals may have competing interests. It’s a complex, dangerous situation that represents the most dangerous trouble spot on the globe, and it demands attention.
• Across the border, Afghanistan is falling apart because the central government is weak and the Taliban has figured out how to fill in the cracks.
The new Taliban movement has created a parallel government structure that includes defense and finance councils and appoints judges and officials in some areas. It offers cash to recruits and presents letters of introduction to local leaders. It operates Web sites and a 24-hour propaganda apparatus that spins every military incident faster than Afghan and Western officials can manage.
“This is not the Taliban of Emirate times. It is a new, updated generation,” said Waheed Mojda, a former foreign ministry aide under the Taliban Islamic Emirate, which ruled most of the country from 1996 to 2001. “They are more educated, and they don’t punish people for having CDs or cassettes,” he said. “The old Taliban wanted to bring sharia, security and unity to Afghanistan. The new Taliban has much broader goals — to drive foreign forces out of the country and the Muslim world.”
That’s just distressing. From a humanitarian standpoint alone we have a responsibility to keep the Taliban on the run. But if they’ve become the de facto government in much of the country, military force against them will take on the look of an invasion, and it will have trouble succeeding. In fact, the US considers that violence will worsen in the country over the next year, due to a winter offensive, and the troops simply aren’t going to be available to stop that. In fact, the latest report on Afghanistan is so bad that the Administration won’t release it:
U.S. intelligence analysts are putting the final touches on a secret National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Afghanistan that reportedly describes the situation as “grim”, but there are “no plans to declassify” any of it before the election, according to one US official familiar with the process. […]
According to people who have been briefed, the NIE will paint a “grim” picture of the situation in Afghanistan, seven years after the US invaded in an effort to dismantle the al Qaeda network and its Taliban protectors.
There’s talk of a joint security force between the Afghans, the US and the Pakistanis to police the border, but it’s unclear why the Pakistanis, who are resisting foreign actions in their territory, would agree to that.
• Ehud Olmert has been forced to resign as Israeli Prime Minister resulting from a bribery scandal, and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is set to take over as head of Kadima and the favorite to be the next leader. Needless to say, any turmoil in Israel impacts the greater Middle East. Livni has been the chief negotiator with the Palestinians, but if she can’t form a government, there will be early elections, and a return to Likudnik power would be a disaster for any hopes for peace. Yet polls are showing that Bibi Netanyahu would be the victor if elections were held today. That’s genuinely scary. And what’s worse is that John McCain considers Middle East peace a low priority and would discourage Israeli-Syrian peace talks. This is the same neocon boorishness that has decreased our standing in the world and made us less safe, and it should absolutely be a part of any debate where Americans are trying to assess the candidates on foreign policy.
• Africa is at a crossroads. Much of East Africa is susceptible to extremism and has been ignored by the Bush Administration for years. Somalia, where a proxy force from Ethiopia raided a couple years ago and took down the Islamic Courts Union, is becoming increasingly unstable as the insurgents regroup, and if a harbor is established it could be another opportunity for attacks to be launched. The southern region, where a modicum of stability appeared to exist, has been rocked by the resignation of Thabo Mbeki in South Africa amid allegations of corruption, as well as eleven members of the cabinet (UPDATE: That was a false alarm). Mbeki has spent lots of time and political capital trying to put together a unity government in troubled Zimbabwe, which is incredibly tenuous. A forgotten Africa is both vulnerable to extremism and Chinese influence.
• The headline here is that North Korea is backing away from the nuclear deal with the United States, but the reality is more complex. The US was dragging their feet in removing North Korea from a list of state sponsors of terrorism, and with the instability surrounding the possible illness of Kim Jong Il, there could also be a jockeying for power among competing forces in Pyongyang. We have bought ourselves a little time, but it seems like both sides are stalling. With Pyongyang asking the IAEA to remove seals at their largest reprocessing facility, the gains of the past couple years are almost entirely lost, and this is a failure of the Bush Administration to live up to their commitments. Will that get mentioned?
• Meanwhile, the lax standards in Chinese manufacturing are still killing people, and the chemicals that are put into our foods, our supplies and most everything we buy (at a cheap price) are toxic. Can we have a serious argument about trade and relations with China without recognizing this?
• And then there’s Iraq, of course. We now have a fair bit of proof that the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad is what led to the drop in violence, not the surge. There’s more to Iraq than Baghdad, of course, but there are also more explanations for the security gains in those outlying areas (the Sunni Awakening in Anbar, for example). Meanwhile the political situation remains stalemated, as legislation for the provincial elections has failed for the fifth time. And the Awakening forces are growing more violent, which will get worse if the Maliki government follows through on locking them out of the security forces. As long as the debate here is played out over whether the surge was a success, we won’t be having a real argument about the future of Iraq. It’s dishonest.
It’s time to get serious. The belligerent Bush foreign policy is making a dangerous world more dangerous. Our shrinking moral authority and lack of cooperation with allies has enhanced this. I don’t know if we’re losing the war on terrorism because I have no idea what a war on terrorism is, but the public thinks we are. And the choice in this Presidential election is between the same old neocon know-nothingism or a measured approach that recognizes both the challenges we face and the best way to combat them. That is more than important enough to fill 90 minutes on Friday night. I just hope (against hope) that the debate is about the real issues.
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This Has Got To Stop
by digby
The late selection of vice presidential nominees has led to a gaffe-filled contest in which each campaign is pointing the finger at its rival’s running mate.
Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) has, in recent days, lived up to his reputation as a gaffe machine, breaking with his running mate on a few occasions and, in at least once instance, drawing a soft rebuke from Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
Democrats would no doubt like to return fire, but are left to lament the bubble Republican candidate John McCain’s campaign has erected around his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, and note her limited record is hard to contrast with McCain’s 26 years in Washington.
On Tuesday, as Washington and much of the world were focused on the proposed financial bailout for Wall Street and the gathering of world leaders at United Nations headquarters in New York City, the influential website Drudge Report was dominated by the back-and-forth between Biden and Obama.
This is really getting ridiculous. The Drudge Report is a right wing oppo laundering site. It always has been. I really cannot believe that it has seriously morphed into an “influential” website that reporters use to gauge the importance of current events.
Of course, the Drudge Report is covering the “back and forth” between Obama and Biden. It’s creating a drumbeat to benefit the Republican ticket. It’s what he does! His raison d’etre. When did the Washington press corps decide he was Walter Cronkite?
Now none of this is to say that Biden shouldn’t shut his trap. He should. But the fact that anyone in the media gives a damn about this stupid, trumped up story at a time like this is mind-boggling, particularly since Sarah Palin is parading around like a beauty contest winner instead of a serious candidate for national office, the world is blowing up and the economy is melting down.
The political media need to spend a little less time reading the Drudge Report and a lot more time doing their job. Drudge is not a source, fellas. He’s a hack. What’s on his web site all day isn’t indicative of anything but what the Republicans want you to think is important.
Instead, why don’t you read this and then go forth and be reporters instead of obsessing over what Drudge is emitting every half hour.
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They’ve Been Listening
by digby
Perhaps the American people have been paying closer attention than we think:
By a 2-to-1 ratio, Americans blame Republicans over Democrats for the financial crisis that has swept across the country the past few weeks, a new national poll suggests. That may be contributing to better poll numbers for Sen. Barack Obama against Sen. John McCain in the race for the White House.
In a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey out Monday afternoon, 47 percent of registered voters questioned said Republicans are more responsible for the problems currently facing financial institutions and the stock market; only 24 percent said Democrats are more responsible.
Twenty percent blame both parties equally and 8 percent say neither party is to blame.
It occurs to me that all the years of Democratic fecklessness may finally be paying off. Who could believe that a group so lame could have engineered something this complicated? Perhaps there was a method to their madness after all…
Seriously, this is really the only logical point of view. The Republicans are the ones who’ve been robotically repeating their mantra of deregulation, free markets and the horrors of Big Government for a quarter century. There is no one alive on the planet who doesn’t associate all those things with conservatism — they proudly run on it every election and regurgitate it like mama birds every time they go on television. They can run, but they can’t hide.
McCain is going to try to say he’s always been against the great malefactors of wealth, but let’s just say he doesn’t have a lot of credibility on that either.
Here’s Jonathan Alter, doing a great job yesterday on MSNBC on laying out exactly what’s wrong with McCain’s reformer image:
JONATHAN ALTER: [Y]ou remember the Keating Five scandal that he was a
part of, which, by the way, it’s crazy but there’s been very little
about it in the press in the last few weeks. And McCain thinks he’s
getting a hard time, he’s really getting a free ride on the fact that he
was in the middle of the last great financial scandal in our country.
But his reaction to that, you would have thought, would have been more
regulation of the financial services industry. Instead he moved forward
on campaign finance reform after being caught in that scandal, but did
nothing – nothing – to try to prevent another savings and loan crisis
from happening down the road. He was missing in action when it came to
even learning the basic lessons of a scandal that he said taught him all
kinds of things that he would never forget.
It’s been 20 years since Keating. McCain has built his reputation as a reformer on the back of that scandal, presenting himself as a man who came too close to the fire and became a zealous convert to reform. But lest Americans’ ever become persuaded that McCain is somehow “different” than other Republicans, it’s probably a really good time to remind them about this episode.
McCain’s role in that scandal was very specific: he pressured regulators into going easy on his friend Charlie’s savings and loan. And he’s done nothing but promote the virtues of deregulation ever since then, spending most of his time warmongering and tilting at windmills on campaign finance reform (which he’s conveniently abandoned in his own presidential bid.) His reformer image is a total fraud.
And I don’t think anyone needs to make the case that the Republican party is completely and irrevocably corrupt and inept. Who would hire the guy who drunkenly rammed his truck into your living room to take their kids to school? It’s time for them to go.
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The Horror, The Horror
by digby
I don’t know who this guy is, but you have to admit that he’s got at least some of it right. And he does have a way with a phrase:
Press TV interviewed Paris-based financial analyst Max Keiser on the US financial meltdown on September 20. What follows are his free-wheeling comments on the US government bailout of Wall Street and the potential consequences for America:
• • •
“We have a treasury secretary in America – Hank Paulson. I’m afraid he’s gone insane. He’s become like the Colonel Kurtz of Treasury Secretaries. He’s gone native. He’s co-opted trillions of dollars of American taxpayers’ money and he’s playing hedge fund like a rogue trader. We have got a rogue trader in the Treasury Secretary’s office. He’s being aided and abetted by Ben Bernanke who’s been discredited as the entire Federal Reserve Bank has been utterly discredited. We’re looking at a possible inflationary depression in America and the worse is yet to come, much worse is yet to come.”
“To pay for all this insanity from Hank Paulson, they have two options. They can either raise taxes or they can inflate the money supply. They can destroy these things US dollars [waves a dollar bill at the camera]. Dollars 30 years ago used to be backed by this stuff – gold [waves a gold coin at the camera]. Now thanks to Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke US dollars are backed by these – bananas [waves a banana at the camera]. They’re absolutely worthless. Anyone buying US dollars today is going to lose money.”
“For the average American, this is what they will experience. The price of food and oil are going to skyrocket due to hyperinflation. The only way they can possibly pay for all these bailouts is to inflate the money supply. This means hyperinflation in America like you had in Germany in the 1920s. This is what the average American will experience: destitution, poverty, social unrest due to flagrant bank mismanagement – and it could have been avoided. But unfortunately the banks in the USA are run by greedy, insane private marketeers and this is the result.”
[…]
“Unfortunately the fear at this point is that is that the laws have been changed. Hank Paulson has done a power grab. When George Bush came into office he did a power grab. When 9-11 happened they did another power grab. They have dictatorial powers now. So now you’ve got this lunatic, Hank Paulson with a multi-trillion dollar hedge fund who’s basically running the economy like a rogue trader.”
“Hank Paulson has a multi-trillion dollar hedge fund and he doesn’t appear to be in control of his own mental faculties. He appears to have gone insane.”
[…]
“The problems are here but the people who created this nightmare are gone. Cheney has already got his Halliburton corporation headquartered in Dubai. He’s already out of the picture. All these crooks are going to be leaving this country. They’re not going to stay for all of the rioting there’s going to be in America.”
Nah. We don’t riot in America. We shop. Of course this time, some people may call it looting, but it’s still shopping to us. We’ll just be packaging our debt and selling it to someone else to worry about. Nothing wrong with that.
And Paulson does have some resemblance to the Col. Kurtz so memorably portrayed by Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now.
H/t JBF
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Lipstick On Their Collars
by digby
Boehlert has a masterful column today about the media’s failure to report on this impending crisis as it developed. While they were obsessed with puerile, campaign trivia, the economic system was melting down — and the public, according to poll after poll, was clamoring for information.
The press had its Story of the Year, thank you very much, and it wasn’t going to budge off it, not even a little.
Preoccupied with covering a presidential campaign that reporters and pundits deemed to be fun and entertaining, the press, for much of the year, walked away from its responsibility to inform the public about an array of different topics simultaneously. Instead, the press, and especially television news, pretty much announced that it could only (or would only) cover one big story at a time (the campaign), unless a hurricane arrived, and then it would cover two.
“Rather than focus, in those [preceding] days and weeks, on the incidents that led to today’s [stock] plunge, general-interest news outlets focused fairly myopically on … the presidential campaign,” noted Megan Garber at CJR.org.
And that wasn’t just a hunch. It was a fact. Here’s what the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism concluded last month after undertaking an extensive study of the media’s handling of economic news: “While the public considers the economy its No. 1 concern, for instance, the media have been far more interested in the presidential campaign — by a factor of nearly 5-to-1 between January 2007 and June 2008.”
Talk about a disconnect.
That’s for sure. But then, when you have a Village punditocrisy led by people like Chris Matthews, who believes we should just give the treasury secretary monarchical powers, there’s really no reason to report on all that boring “financial skigamadoo.” let Daddy take care of it and we’ll all go back to talking about just how much Michelle Obama hates America.
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“He Won’t Be A Problem”
by digby
Some senior Democrats on Capitol Hill have voiced concern that McCain will continue to oppose the Bush administration’s plan as a way to position himself as a critic of Wall Street and the Bush Administration.
If McCain doesn’t vote for the legislation, other Republicans might follow suit, leaving the Democratic-led majority to fight in Congress to pass the risky bailout plan.
However a Democratic congressional leadership source tells ABC News’ Jake Tapper that Paulson went so far as to assure Democratic leaders that McCain “won’t be a problem” — in other words that McCain will vote for the proposal.
Trust ’em?
Look, McCain has a long history of playing both sides. The most egregious example was when Harry Reid allowed him to carry the ball on torture (surely this honorable man wouldn’t go back on his word on something so important!) and he ended up enabling it. More recently he backed the legislation that exempted the CIA from following the Army Field manual which prohibits torture. Earlier this year he ranted like Huge Chavez on crack against the Boumadiene decision. And yet, he still claims publicly that he is against torture. If the most famously tortured ex-prisoner in the world can play both sides on that issue, then is there any doubt that he is a bad faith actor on the economy when his political future is at stake? Please.
If McCain feels the political need to vote against this measure, he’ll have no compunction about stringing along the Democrats until he gets them so far out on a limb that they can’t backtrack before he decides that he just can’t betray the hard working people of America by voting for it. He sold his soul long ago. He’s not going to rediscover it a month before the presidential election.
Update: Via Kos, I see that Newtie is already laying the groundwork for McCain on this.
You’ll notice he says that he expects Obama to back the plan…
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Well That Could Have Gone Better
by dday
I watched almost all of the hearings in front of the Senate Banking Committee, and I have to say that the mood I gauged from the public comments of the Senators is extremely damaging to President Paulson’s hopes of a quick pick-up of $700 billion. Chris Dodd came out and called the Paulson plan unacceptable. Richard Shelby, the Republican ranking member, is skeptical that the plan would even work. I didn’t hear really any positive comments, and Sherrod Brown’s were pretty representative:
To Bernanke: “I haven’t received one phone call from a constituent that’s been positive. I don’t think people making $50,000 a year are interested in bailouts out executives whose country club fees are many times that. Does Wall Street owe the American people an apology?”
The anger in the Dirksen Senate office building reflects the anger in the country at the prospect of giving a significant portion of the Federal treaasury away, no-strings-attached, to those rich people who created the problem in the first place. The CEO compensation issue may be somewhat irrelevant, but if ordinary Americans see the through-line between their wallets and billionaire executives’ luxury racing craft then the deal is politically impossible and will face a great revolt. What’s more, the big banks are threatening not to participate in the bailout if their bonuses are taken away, so it is a factor, and I think Senator Obama is exactly right:
First, the plan must include protections to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not used to further reward the bad behavior of irresponsible CEOs on Wall Street. There has been talk that some CEOs may refuse to cooperate with this plan if they have to forgo multi-million-dollar salaries. I cannot imagine a position more selfish and greedy at a time of national crisis. And I would like to speak directly to those CEOs right now: Do not make that mistake. You are stewards for workers and communities all across our country who have put their trust in you. With the enormous rewards you have reaped come responsibilities, and we expect and demand that you to live up to them. This plan cannot be a welfare program for Wall Street executives.
There are bigger issues, however, and that’s whether or not taxpayers get equity stakes in these banks who are relieving their distressed assets. In arguing against that, Ben Bernanke gave the game away.
“I believe that under the Treasury program, auctions and other mechanisms could be devised that will give the market good information on what the hold-to-maturity price is for a large class of mortgage-related assets. If the Treasury bids for and then buys assets at a price close to the hold-to-maturity price, there will be substantial benefits.
First, banks will have a basis for valuing those assets and will not have to use fire sale prices. Their capital will not be unreasonably marked down …”
This should be read in the context of Brad Setser’s calculations: he finds that if Treasury pays a price that seems appropriate given the poor quality of the assets, “The hit to the banks balance sheet might be too big” — the losses would be much larger than the amounts banks have already acknowledged, so that their capital position would be severely weakened.
So the plan only helps the financial situation if Treasury pays prices well above market — that is, if it is in effect injecting capital into financial firms, at taxpayers’ expense.
What possible justification can there be for doing this without acquiring an equity stake?
The Wall Street Journal sees the same issue. And Markos finds a key quote that connects the executive pay issue and the equity stake issue and proves that this is really about making rich people richer.
Straight from the horses’ mouth, the White House’s press lackey:
“With respect to executive pay, again, I’m not going to get into specific, point-by-point details on what our views are on that, other than the Secretary of Treasury said it would make more difficult to make this plan work and effective if you provide disincentives for companies and firms out there who are holding mortgage-backed securities and other securities from participating in the program. You have to remember, these are not all weak or troubled firms that own mortgage-backed securities. A lot of them are very successful banks and investment houses that have done very well, have been responsible, are holding performing assets that have value. They were not necessarily irresponsible players, and so you have to be careful about how you deal with them.”
Careful how you deal with them? How about you LET THE FUCKING FREE MARKET HANDLE IT then? If they want taxpayer funds to bail out their incompetence, they give up equity, they accept limits on executive compensation. If they don’t want those conditions imposed on them, they don’t take our money.
Simple, right? And if they don’t take our money, who cares? They are strong and successful! And the taxpayers don’t have to give up a dime. Everyone wins!
I am now certain that this is all a giveaway to the GOP’s friends on Wall Street and an effort to financially handcuff the next administration. It has little to do with saving the economy. Otherwise, Treasury and White House officials wouldn’t be talking about bribing and arm twisting these banks into taking government handouts.
Not to mention the fact that Paulson flat-out lied about wanting oversight in the bill when he presented a plan that stated his actions would be “non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”
I don’t quite know where this is going to go – the Congress and the White House have ignored the entreaties of the American people before. But the movement is away from the stick-up and toward something with an upside for the taxpayer. Chuck Schumer talked about a short-term plan to test the system and waiting until the next Presidency to make a full solution, so that may be where this is going. Chris Dodd is doing a great job so far, and I don’t think that even Democrats are lunk-headed enough to go this alone with Republicans opposed. This doesn’t totally feel like a steamroll right now, but of course that’s subject to change.
UPDATE: Hilarious. The Republican Study Group – basically hard-right conservatives – have released their counter-proposal for the bailout. It includes suspending the capital gains tax for two years, privatizing Fannie and Freddie, and repealing the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act. In case you thought that the GOP suddenly got religion on economics and wanted to move forward without throwing money at rich people at the expense of the poor.
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Stopping The Bleeding
by digby
An emailer just asked an interesting question, to which I don’t have an adequate answer. He notes, correctly, that this crisis is one of incredible complexity which really requires some thoughtful analysis and discussion rather than a stampede to give Wall Street 700 billion that may not do the job in the month before an historic election. He asks if anyone knows what the congress could do in the short term to stop the bleeding, without giving away the store. It’s hard to believe that the only workable short term measure is to throw as much money at Wall Street as we’ve thrown at the Iraq war.
I can’t repeat often enough how nuts it is to follow the Bush administration over another cliff. It’s possible that this 700 billion is the only thing that stands between us and global financial catastrophe. But the credibility of the people involved is so damaged that we can’t afford to take their word for it.
The only responsible thing to do is to figure out a way to stanch the bleeding until the voters decide which candidate and party they prefer to lead them through this crisis. Ramming this through five weeks before an election, in the same way they rammed through the Iraq war resolution in 2002, with public fear mongering and threats to lawmakers that they will suffer at the ballot box if they don’t go along, is a recipe for disaster.
At this point it appears to me that McCain is doing the predictable thing. He is positioning himself against the plan and I believe he will find a way to vote against it come what may. He’s long needed to distance himself from Bush’s catastrophe and demagogue the Democrats in congress in order to establish himself as the real change agent. This is his opening. (And I don’t think it matters if Obama votes against the bill as well. He’ll be held responsible for the Democratic Party’s “tax and spend” liberal ways anyway.)
I don’t know if it will work. The American people may be too angry to believe him. But it’s a big opportunity for McCain and other endangered Republicans to finally put some daylight between themselves and Bush. The Democrats shouldn’t let them do it. They are Republicans who marched in lockstep with their fearless leader on everything until about five minutes ago and they should pay the price politically. That’s how the system is supposed to work.
This is a scary time. Bush is the lamest of ducks but he is still president for another four months and the damage he could do in that time is incalculable. It’s a big chance to take. But the absolute most irresponsible thing that Democrats could do is allow the election of another Republican administration — all else pales before the prospect of another four years of this kind of governance.
Everyone needs to keep in mind that in spite of everything, the biggest danger to the world economic system and the security of the planet in general is to elect John McCain and his successor, Sarah Palin to preside over the mess that that the conservatives have made of things. We might as well take out money and bury it in the backyard — or get a boat and sail away.
Update: listening to the hearings this morning, it appears that the congress may have learned some of the lessons from the Swedish crisis of 1992.
Of course, the Swedes weren’t in the middle of a hotly contested election campaign that featured a self-described maverick who sees his best route to victory as passage of a plan so he can run against it. That complicates matters immensely.
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