This AIG thing would be funny, if it weren’t actually happening.  After eight years of conservatives getting everything they’ve ever wanted, in terms of business and financial regulation policy, we’ve ended up with massive public bailouts of our largest private financial institutions. Maybe I misunderstood that whole “ownership society” mantra. Who knew Bush was talking about socialism?
Category: Policy Page 21 of 35
Not good for anybody, this:
Pakistan’s military said today its forces had received orders to fire on US troops if they entered Pakistani territory, after a cross-border raid inflamed public opinion.
The country’s civilian leaders, who have taken a tough line against militants, have insisted Pakistan must resolve the dispute with the US through diplomatic channels. But the military has taken a more robust line.
General Athar Abbas, an army spokesman, told the Associated Press that after a cross-border assault in the south Waziristan region earlier this month, the military told its field commanders to take action to prevent any similar raids.
Not good at all.
I’m sure it will shock you to learn that there are, in fact, fervent supporters of political candidates that don’t really know much about those candidates.  I know that politics is merely a team sport, for some, but it still disappoints me every time I encounter someone who’s knowledge of a candidate is far outstripped by their enthusiasm. That said, none of us know *everything* (including the candidates themselves). So, with all that in mind, I’m going to recommend every Barack Obama supporter take the time to at least scan through this incredibly useful and supported summary of his career and positions.  I suspect a number of readers will end up bookmarking and revisiting it a number of times (I’ve not finished it, myself, as I keep following the links . . .).
Yes, he’s coming back for next year. Despite lots of evidence to the contrary, I don’t feel like I’ve really got much to say about it. He’s an amazing athlete who has my respect. I also think he’s a doper and a liar. Go on and square those, if you can. He says that this return is (in part) about pushing the cancer research mission of the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Well, if that’s what’s it’s really about, good for him and all of us. If not, well . . .
Anyway, all that said, there’s no doubt that he’ll bring public attention back to cycling. Nike wouldn’t make this video about anyone else:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjcZNR6MiRE[/youtube]
But that wheel, in the last seconds of the video? I hope it catches him, this time.
And so would I. Read.
My first draft of this turned into a paen to This American Life. But we’ll just have to save that for another time. Instead, I’m just going to recommend that you listen to this episode.  It was something that I thought I should post about the day it was aired, and has since been recommended by readers at either end of the traditional political spectrum (thank you Tyler and Sasha).  What’s so special about it? Well it:
lays out how the finance guys and the people facing foreclosure are connected by a chain of middlemen, and that together, they all brought about the current housing and credit crisis.
And it does it in a very personal way – a few minutes talking with each person in the chain, from borrower to the final Wall Street guy that sells the resulting securities to global moneymen. If you’ve ever found yourself glazing over when you hear news stories about Fannie Mae, subprime loans, Countrywide Finance, etc., you owe it to yourself to spend 50 minutes on this radio show.  You can stream it for free from the linked site, but I highly recommend setting This American Life up as a regular (free) podcast subscription via iTunes.
Special request: if you actually end up listening to it, would you mind posting back here with a couple of lines on what you thought about it? Even if it’s “Eh, just couldn’t hold my interest”, I’m quite interested in what you think about it.
Let me admit up front: while I understand the mechanics of the parts involved in the Fannie/Freddie rescue, I’m not fluent enough in the involved markets to truly appreciate the various big picture results.  So I’m turning to sources that I trust to understand these things better than me. The first place I go is the Wall Street Journal – their Op-Ed page may be run by poo-flinging monkeys, but their financial reporting is consistently excellent (and their general reporting is reliably good, too). So here we get the outline of the rescue plan:
[C]ontrol of [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac go] to their regulator and allow[s] the Treasury Department to purchase billions of dollars of the firms’ senior preferred stock.
The plan, offered jointly by the Treasury Department and Federal Housing Finance Agency, also gives the Treasury authority to purchase mortgage-backed securities from the firms in the open market and a lending facility through the Treasury from its general fund held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Again, I understand the mechanics, but need a little help on the meaning. Jerome a Paris provides quite a bit of help. He explains what the second paragraph above means:
This is huge. This is the federal government taking over the “toxic waste” in a way that will have an impact not just on Freddie and Fannie, but on the whole market. By “buying” mortgage-backed securities instrad of taking them as collateral, the Treasury does two things at the same time:
- it takes off the assets and liabilities off the balance sheet of the two companies in a definitive way (rather than temporarily) and assumes, for sure, the associated risk;
- it sets a price on these securities. This has been the biggest problem to solve the credit crisis: nobody has been willing to set a price on these assets, because of the uncertainty on the real value of the underlying assets (or because everybody could see that they were falling by the day). By setting such a price, the government creates a highly significant precedent – and, in all likelihood, provides a floor to these prices, ie an implicit commitment (or at least the expectation of a commitment) to buy more such securities.
I quite recommend reading both articles, but the takeaway is:
This would seem to be an incredibly ambitious gambit: a nationalisation, an attempted bailout of ALL the banks, and an open-ended commitment of taxpayer money to save the financial world.
US Treasury Secretary Paulson’s no idiot, but neither is he much of a public servant. This is worth worrying over.
Next week will bring DC’s primary for the DC City Council. Washcycle, impressively enough, was able to get most candidate to respond to his question on cycling issues. Check it out. For a perspective beyond cycling, check out (my increasingly regular read) Greater Greater Washington.
(And to my former classmates that occasionally drop by here, yes, that’s the same Cary Silverman.)
This is just hilarious. Apparently, before Palin snagged the mayorality of the metropolis of Wasilla, she was a paid-up member of the Alaska Independence Party. The primary aim of the Alaska Independence Party is, it seems, secession from the United States and nationhood status for Alaska. Now, as someone who – as a general rule – believes that if people want to run off and form their own country they ought to be allowed to, I can’t say that I’m personally troubled by this. But in light of the hypernationalistic bent of the GOP these days, don’t you think it should be an issue? Or is patriotism just one more principle they’ll jettison in pursuit of victory?
Update: Apparently Palin was *not* a paid up member of the AIP. That was her husband, see. But she was still “sharing [their] vision” in 2008.  Ah well. That’ll teach me to rely on the word of a winger party official.