Dive into the archives.
- Rationale for a nightmare
“This notion that the economy is self-stabilising is usually right but it is wrong a few times a century. And this is one of those times….” Lawrence Summers, Obama economic advisor in today’s Financial Times.
This is the wrong argument, one that supports unregulated markets most of the time. Rather, we’ve learned that the balance of market and regulatory power is something that cannot remain static over time, that constant retooling is needed. IF we want to think differently, it’s time to acknowledge that mixed markets are the healthiest and that, once this crisis is over, there is no “going back,” because the unregulated economy has demonstrated it is a ruinous economy.
Warren Buffett agrees: “We want to err on the side next time of not allowing big institutions to get as unchecked on leverage as we have allowed them to do.”
- Where is conservative “country first?”
The American Spectator derides conservatives who met with President-elect Barack Obama in a headline and short posting yesterday: Obama Meets With Ex-Conservatives.
Talking to Obama apparently confirms the failure of these commentators, including George Will and William Kristol, in their conservative orthodoxy. In other words, they are “talking to the enemy.”
Whether The American Spectator likes it or not, Obama won the election. Rather than proclaiming, as one Vice President Dick Cheney did, that winning an election gives the party in power the right to collect “our due,” Obama is talking to everyone.
That’s what democracy is, leading rather than commanding.
But our co-countrymen on the right seem to think that, if they do it, refusing to talk to or cooperate with the President, is not disloyal or traitorous. Country after party is their motto. Unlike them, I will not ask them to leave the country that they clearly love less than the power that country occasionally grants them.
In related news, the Republican Senators who now claim they won’t give a “blank check” to the incoming president, the same blank check handed to their man when he was in office, are playing politics with TARP money. All the problems with Washington politics conservatives decry when become standard operating procedure when they are out of power.
- Happy democracy, America
Now, let’s get to work. McCain’s was his best speech of the entire campaign, that tone throughout the campaign would have made it closer.
President-Elect Obama (feels good to write that) gave a speech that underscores the serious challenges before us. It’s bracing to hear he is beginning transition immediately. It will be important that every step is measured and deliberated and, while that represents a refreshing change from the past eight years, only the election night parties are over. The real work begins now.
- What if we just declare “jubilee”?
I’ve been thinking about something a realtor friend told me last night. Yesterday, three homeowners called a banker she knows and said that, if the banks were going to be bailed out, they weren’t going to pay their mortgage. These were regular mortgage payers with no history of credit problems. They have simply given up on the relationship between the economy and themselves that they’ve believed all their lives.
So, I looked into the total US debt, the total of debt owed by low-income countries, the total mortgage debt in the United States and other factors, such as total consumer debt, in the clusterf*^%$k we call the economy.
The United States has $10.2 trillion dollars of national debt as of today. Only $5.9 trillion of that is held by the public, the rest is intragovernmental debt, held by various government entities as part of borrowing conducted to keep things going.
As of August, there was $2.5 trillion in U.S. consumer revolving and nonrevolving debt. Low-income nations owe about $523 billion to rich countries, including the United States.
What if we call it all even? Just erase all debts, including all debts owed by developing nations, except those U.S. Treasury notes held by the public
Click to continue reading “What if we just declare “jubilee”?”
- Our “CEO President” and the economic record
George W. Bush liked to call himself a “CEO President”—though even that conceit has passed away now—so let’s look at the record of the performance of our economy to see what his results look like.
Here is the Dow Jones Industrial Average from the first business day after Inauguration Day in 2001 through today.
You can check this yourself here. Unfortunately, we are not done, yet.
By the time Bush leaves office, his team of cronies and their lax approach to regulation will have managed to do worse damage to the economy than the 9/11 terrorists—who were trying.
- My Twitterscript of the debate tonight
Mitch I’m getting back to work on a project now…. debate over, Obama took this one.via Twitter - 7:37pm - Comment
Mitch “Our country’s business” is so much more than war, but that is all I hear McCain talk about when he talks about America: fighting.via Twitter - 7:34pm - Comment
Mitch Terry Scherry nodded to Obama at the end of Obama’s answer, suggesting he won that one with the questionner.via Twitter - 7:30pm - Comment
Mitch Obama’s “all the tools/scalpel” vs. McCain’s I’ll-take-hammer-to-it generalties is the story of this debate.via Twitter - 7:29pm - Comment
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