Monkeyboy wrote:
I hate Bush as much as anyone, but I wouldn't have thought there was anything wrong with him speaking to kids about staying in school, working hard, and staying off drugs. If he used the opportunity to talk up the war and tax cuts, well, then I would have been pissed.

Rosner, the Wall Street analyst who foresaw the crash, says that the Fed's ideological dominance of the journals hampered his attempt to warn his colleagues about what was to come. Rosner wrote a strikingly prescient paper in 2001 arguing that relaxed lending standards and other factors would lead to a boom in housing prices over the next several years, but that the growth would be highly susceptible to an economic disruption because it was fundamentally unsound.

He expanded on those ideas over the next few years, connecting the dots and concluding that the coming housing collapse would wreak havoc on the collateralized debt obligation (CDO) and mortgage backed securities (MBS) markets, which would have a ripple effect on the rest of the economy. That, of course, is exactly what happened and it took the Fed and the economics field completely by surprise.
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When Rosner was casting his paper on CDOs and MBSs about, he knew he needed an academic economist to co-author the paper for a journal to consider it. Seven economists turned him down.
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Together, the two papers offer a better analysis of what led to the crash than the economic journals have managed to put together - and they were published by a non-PhD before the crisis.

Banks market it as overdraft protection, and the fees it generates have become an important source of income for the banking industry at a time of big losses in other operations. This year alone, banks are expected to bring in $27 billion by covering overdrafts on checking accounts, typically on debit card purchases or checks that exceed a customer’s balance.

In fact, banks now make more covering overdrafts than they do on penalty fees from credit cards.
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But because consumers use debit cards far more often than credit cards, a cascade of fees can be set off quickly, often for people who are least able to afford it. Some banks further increase their revenue by manipulating the order of a customer’s transactions in a way that causes more of them to incur overdraft fees.
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Michael Moebs, an economist who advises banks and credit unions, said Ms. Maloney’s legislation would effectively kill overdraft services, causing an estimated 1,000 banks and 2,000 credit unions to fold within two years. That is because 45 percent of the nation’s banks and credit unions collect more from overdraft services than they make in profits, he said.

Werthless wrote:Overspending on Debit Cards Is a Boon for Banks

45 percent of the nation’s banks and credit unions collect more from overdraft services than they make in profits, he said.

Monkeyboy wrote:I hate Bush as much as anyone, but I wouldn't have thought there was anything wrong with him speaking to kids about staying in school, working hard, and staying off drugs. If he used the opportunity to talk up the war and tax cuts, well, then I would have been pissed.

dajafi wrote:Amusing sex scandal ends dumbass CA Republican

dajafi wrote:Amusing sex scandal ends dumbass CA Republican

She goes, 'I know you like spanking me.' I said, 'Yeah! Because you're such a bad girl!'

Trent Steele wrote:

dajafi wrote:Amusing sex scandal ends dumbass CA Republican

BAHAHAAAA

You $#@! idiot dumb $#@!

While many Obama critics advertise themselves as "libertarians" who distrust any message from Big Brother in Washington, that healthy skepticism cannot be the reason for the current outcry -- because two of the past three Republican presidents spoke directly to the nation's schoolchildren without provoking any significant reaction at all.

In the fall of 1991, President George Herbert Walker Bush delivered a speech in a classroom that was broadcast live nationwide by the Pubic Broadcasting System, Mutual Broadcasting and NBC Radio Network. The blanket media coverage was arranged by the Education Department (which gave rise to a few grumpy remarks by Democrats in Congress that were duly noted but mostly ignored by the press).

"Thanks for allowing me to visit your classroom to talk to you and all these students," he said politely to the teacher who was hosting him, "and millions more in classrooms all across the country." He went on to tell his audience: "Make your teachers work hard. Tell them you want a first-class education. Tell them that you're here to learn. Block out the kids who think it's not cool to be smart. I can't understand for the life of me what's so great about being stupid."

His predecessor, Ronald Reagan, addressed students directly on at least two occasions -- once in a broadcast speech in 1988 and once in a session with high-school students at the White House in 1986. Both times, the Gipper seized the chance to promote his own policies, with particular attention to cutting taxes and his "vision of economic freedom." In fact, Reagan's remarks were entirely political, if not partisan. He did precisely what the right has wrongly attacked Obama for doing -- but that was a message that conservatives like to hear, so they didn't object to the "indoctrination" of students at the public's expense.

The irony of this tempest of idiocy is that the same blowhards who constantly slander and slur President Obama were telling us, not too long ago, that criticizing the commander in chief during wartime was tantamount to treason. But of course, they are patriots of political convenience -- with no allegiance to anything except their own power and their extreme ideology.

CalvinBall wrote:Of course my most obnoxious Republican friend's facebook status says "<3 Rep. Joe Wilson. He was the one who shouted out "You lie!" during Obama's speech.

CalvinBall wrote:This speech is awesome. The joint session is more like a typical house of commons.

traderdave wrote:Agreed on both fronts. I had to check to make sure I didn't have the BBC on by mistake last night. I think it would be hard to characterize Obama's speech as anything other than a home run. The Rep. Wilson thing was an absolute disgrace.