dajafi wrote:
I hear ya. Just (clumsily) making a case that actual knowledge and expertise--bounded by democratic vigilance (as should have been the case all along) to ensure responsible behavior--is preferable to having, say, a panel of "American Idol" winners, or their political equivalents, managing the economy with the force of their authenticity.

as I understand the current situation, m'boy Dodd (DODDS!! ?) is in the position of deciding if Henry & Ben's excellent misadventure gets off the ground in the form they've planned it.

I'm not sure he's as sharp as he once was, but just hope he keeps them and their surrogates on a very short leash. As I've said before the whole thing is a sorry spectacle. If I were Dodd I would not pass on any opportunity to call any or all of them on the carpet on a regular basis, for the least little thing ("hey, Henry, your tie's askew this morning - did you miss curfew last night? Huh? Huh? Did you?")

Joe Biden's denunciation of his own campaign's ad to Katie Couric got so much attention last night that another odd note in the interview slipped by.

He was speaking about the role of the White House in a financial crisis.

"When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the princes of greed," Biden told Couric. "He said, 'Look, here's what happened.'"

As Reason's Jesse Walker footnotes it: "And if you owned an experimental TV set in 1929, you would have seen him. And you would have said to yourself, 'Who is that guy? What happened to President Hoover?'"

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0908/Biden_garbles_Depression_history.html?showall

jerseyhoya wrote:

Joe Biden's denunciation of his own campaign's ad to Katie Couric got so much attention last night that another odd note in the interview slipped by.

He was speaking about the role of the White House in a financial crisis.

"When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the princes of greed," Biden told Couric. "He said, 'Look, here's what happened.'"

As Reason's Jesse Walker footnotes it: "And if you owned an experimental TV set in 1929, you would have seen him. And you would have said to yourself, 'Who is that guy? What happened to President Hoover?'"

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0908/Biden_garbles_Depression_history.html?showall

truthfully, in the grand scheme of things, is this a more or less important slip up than your presidential candidate thinking that al qaeda was being trained by iran, at a time when he also jokes about "bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb iran".

Biden, in the last 24 hours, said that we wouldn't build any more coal plants in America, that FDR addressed the nation on TV when the stock market crashed, and called an ad by the Obama campaign terrible.

In the grand scheme of things, the dude is a treasure.

Imagine Biden's cosmetically perfect smile, his mouth full of gigantic, gleaming, pearly whites constrasted against a face covered in coal soot. You wouldn't want that to happen now, would you?

Should we build more coal plants?

Obama thinks so.

Develop and Deploy Clean Coal Technology.

Obama’s Department of Energy will enter into public private partnerships to develop five “first-of-a-kind” commercial scale coal-fired plants with clean carbon capture and sequestration technology.

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/newenergy_more#jobs

Houshphandzadeh wrote:Should we build more coal plants?

i think you mine coal

jerseyhoya wrote:Obama thinks so.

Develop and Deploy Clean Coal Technology.

Obama’s Department of Energy will enter into public private partnerships to develop five “first-of-a-kind” commercial scale coal-fired plants with clean carbon capture and sequestration technology.

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/newenergy_more#jobs

If these are similar to plants in Japan and a couple other countries, it's a great idea

jerseyhoya wrote:

Joe Biden's denunciation of his own campaign's ad to Katie Couric got so much attention last night that another odd note in the interview slipped by.

He was speaking about the role of the White House in a financial crisis.

"When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the princes of greed," Biden told Couric. "He said, 'Look, here's what happened.'"

As Reason's Jesse Walker footnotes it: "And if you owned an experimental TV set in 1929, you would have seen him. And you would have said to yourself, 'Who is that guy? What happened to President Hoover?'"

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0908/Biden_garbles_Depression_history.html?showall

You have to admit; he got an impressive amount of stuff wrong in one sentence.

The political problem for McCain is that the more his campaign talks about Biden's flubs and misstatements and factual errors when speaking with the press, the more people might become mindful of the fact that in terms of media availability, his running mate has done a damn fine Greta Garbo impression.

dajafi wrote:The political problem for McCain is that the more his campaign talks about Biden's flubs and misstatements and factual errors when speaking with the press, the more people might become mindful of the fact that in terms of media availability, his running mate has done a damn fine Greta Garbo impression.

You should watch the Clean Coal thing.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rXyTRT-NZg&e[/youtube]

Biden toots his own horn, then goes on to run through his stance on the issue, which is different from Obama's. Impressive work really.

Obviously we can't attack too much, but I imagine "my opponents oppose clean coal technology" will work its way into speeches in WV, western PA and Ohio.

I'm at the office, so no video... but Biden looks creepily like LBJ in that still.

Just saw Stephen Pearlstein on MSNBC while at the gym. I had to read the subtitles, but he basically hit the nail on the head regarding the bailout, with Cramer agreeing with him in the split screen. Essentially this bailout is to relieve the financial pressure on these massive companies that lots of average americans depend on every day. This crisis really is hurting institutions that lend money. No one is willing to lend money right now, not even to corporations (like McDonalds) who want to use the money to make improvements in areas that affect the average consumer. The more Congress drags its feet on this trying to murk up the waters, the bigger the impact.

People see "$700 billion" and just assume its going to be a $700 billion dollar loss. Is that a possibility? If the country tanks and we sink into a 15-20 year Great Depression 2.0, yes. Is it likely? No. These major institutions aren't suddenly bad companies. Wachovia isn't a bad bank. But they have a percentage of their company tied to poison (these bad mortgages), and with it, its bringing down the entire company. You need to get these anchors off the books. The sooner this happens, the sooner the economy will stabilize. Not all mortgages are bad. The percentage of really bad mortgages is probably small. But you have to give incentives to companies to come in and try and fix this mess. Right now, no one wants to take the first step.

NY Times bailout piece quotes elder statesman & rabid lefty Jim Bunning's disdain for the Paulson/Bernanke sugar pill:

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. received an angry and skeptical reception on Tuesday when he appeared before the Senate Banking Committee to ask Congress to promptly give him wide authority to rescue the nation’s financial system.

Mr. Paulson urged lawmakers “to enact this bill quickly and cleanly, and avoid slowing it down with other provisions that are unrelated or don’t have broad support.”...But after hours of back-and-forth, the committee’s leaders said explicitly what had seemed clear all day: that they rejected the administration’s plan....The panel’s ranking Republican agreed. “We have to look at some alternatives,” Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama told The A.P.

One after another throughout the session, senators from both parties said that, while they were prepared to move fast, they were far from ready to give the administration everything it wanted in its proposed $700 billion plan to buy up and hopefully resell troubled mortgage-backed securities.

On the House side of the Capitol, the mood was apparently similar after Vice President Dick Cheney met with Republican members. “Hardly anyone in that room has decided yet how they’re going to vote on this,” Representative Phil Gingrey, Republican of Georgia, told Bloomberg News.

Senator Dodd called the Treasury proposal “stunning and unprecedented in its scope and lack of detail"....

....Another expression of disgust came from Senator Jim Bunning, Republican of Kentucky, who said the plan would “take Wall Street’s pain and spread it to the taxpayers. It's financial socialism, and it's Un-American," Mr. Bunning said. ”

Make no mistake, regardless our solons' inclinations & preferences, their constituents are stuffing their mailboxes with a fairly clear & consistent message that Paulson & Bernanke have not won any election for new sheriff in town.

What do you want smoothy? And talk like a normal person when you lay it out for me, as if I'm at a 5th grade level (which may be about my level of smarts compared to you).

jeff2sf wrote:What do you want smoothy? And talk like a normal person when you lay it out for me, as if I'm at a 5th grade level (which may be about my level of smarts compared to you).

what do I want?

I'm not sure how that's relevant to my observations about what I see taking place.

But sure, I'll humor you.

Paulson & Bernanke (and scores of Wall St suits) want you & me & congress to believe that a solution to the current mess is a simple matter of applied economics, applied according to their tidy, albeit hastily scrawled, blueprint.

which is b u l l s h i t, of course.

in application, economics and politics bleed sloppily into one another, which makes sense, since each are sloppy attempts to abstract (mostly)human behavior for academic study. Leaving out the politics leaves out reality - the slop.

I don't give a damn for 'calming the market', because there is no entity 'the market' - I want all of that sort of nonsensical jabber ceased. Part of me wants these tinhorn econofascists shown up - upbraided, belittled, scorned & humiliated for days on end, because I enjoy it. Others should to, enjoy it until you can't forget what it means, which is they do not know best for you, or me, or anyone really. They know what they want, & they want it because it is good for them, rather than for you, or for me.

Another part of me wants these very smart guys to do a very good, very thorough, very persuasive explanation of why what they want to do is very good for all of us - for "our way of life" - , or at least for an overwhelming many of us.

Might their plan be good for you & me somehow? Sure. They should be prepared to tell you, & me, & everybody, at excruciating, detailed length, how & why.

I'm not gonna be content to believe they know what they're doing. I want to be convinced.

That's what I want.

As long as it does not pre-empt any phillies post-season games.

On NPR the head of the Texas Reserve Bank (or something) was saying that the $700 billion (or $2 Trillion) won't all be laid on tax payers - the Fed will be buying tons of mortgages at fire sale prices and will almost certianly make good profits selling them back or holding them for later.

Or something.

VoxOrion wrote:On NPR the head of the Texas Reserve Bank (or something) was saying that the $700 billion (or $2 Trillion) won't all be laid on tax payers - the Fed will be buying tons of mortgages at fire sale prices and will almost certianly make good profits selling them back or holding them for later.

Or something.

Well, we're told that the taxpayer came out ahead on the S&L bailout some years back. But I have seen any of that money. And, of course, I do expect to start receiving quarterly and annual reports from AIG, and I intend to participate in shareholder meetings.

The Kramer/Pearlstein thing Floppy referenced earlier that was on MSNBC, they said basically it would be a 700 billion investment, with a 200 billion plus or minus range on potential profit/loss for the government, and it was vital to do for stability.