Conservatives in print, broadcast, and online have tried to make hay about the market going down in the last few weeks - trying lamely to tie it to Obama’s election despite the evidence to the contrary that the market downturn for the past year to year and a half is a clear outgrowth of Republican [...]
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Economy News
Yesterday on CNBC conservative icon, activist and inside man Grover Norquist blamed the economic meltdown on the election of a Democratic congress. He did so with a straight face, apparently totally serious about it and in no way working in the employ of Ashton Kutcher for a wicked PUNK’D. He seems to actually believe it [...]
Yay! $20 billion more of our tax dollars to bailout MBAs and Captains Of Capitalism who don’t know how to run a profitable business.
WOOOT.
So, let’s say you’ve gone through a rigorous hiring process and now you’re the CEO of one of the Big 3 automotive companies. What, in a rational world, do you do? You look at the finances, you match that up with market research and listen to what I assume is a bunch of supposedly smart [...]
I have not yet seen one good comprehensive reason why taxpayers should bail out the big 3 automakers.
These are giant, decades old corporations who have no clue how to go about their core businesses. That isn’t the sort of corporation that you hand money to. I saw Sen. Carl Levin on Meet the Press this [...]
This whole thing is to prop up MBAs who don’t know how to run a business so that down the line they can fail and get bailed out again. Just let these companies fail and spend the billions on the people who are affected.
Please stop giving these morons billions and billions of our tax dollars and let them slide into the oblivion they deserve.
With the auto industry now the latest to belly up to the bar for a corporate handout, I think we need to just let these companies fail. It won’t absolve us of a financial hit, but the money we would bail the corporate types out with would far better be spent on providing a cushion [...]
I was 15 years old in 1992 when Bill Clinton was elected to clean up the Reagan-Bush mess of our economy. 16 years later, Barack Obama has to do the same with George W. Bush.
The nation’s unemployment rate bolted to a 14-year high of 6.5 percent in October as another 240,000 jobs were cut, [...]
It’s hilarious how the current desperation-based attack on Sen. Obama is how he, in concert with Reid and Pelosi, will create a left-wing socialist majority that will crush America.
First off the attack using who will be in control of congress is among the most desperate, a version of it was used in 2006 when [...]
While I’m not a big Nader fan (that is, not at all), he hits one out of the park today in this appearance on MSNBC where he makes fun of James K. Glassman’s “Dow 36,000″ book that came out right before the market tumbled in the early 2000s. Glassman is currently an Undersecretary in the [...]
Oh no, the facts!
As the economy worsens and Election Day approaches, a conservative campaign that blames the global financial crisis on a government push to make housing more affordable to lower-class Americans has taken off on talk radio and e-mail.
Commentators say that’s what triggered the stock market meltdown and the freeze on credit. They’ve specifically [...]
Does this mean America is being retconned? We better hope we’re on Earth-1 then.
This is why they’re losing.
Asked on a just-ended conference call about his candidates’ lack of daily campaign statements on the plummeting of global markets in recent days, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said that too much focus on the stock market could be redundant if repeated every day.
‘I don’t know if you really want [...]
Conservative columnist George Will hits the nail on the head
But the McCain-Palin charges have come just as the Obama campaign is benefiting from a mass mailing it is not paying for. Many millions of American households are gingerly opening envelopes containing reports of the third-quarter losses in their 401(k) and other retirement accounts — telling [...]
Oliver Clark questions McCain
There are not a lot of guys in America named Oliver. There are even less black guys in America named Oliver.
So when one makes the news, I have to give him props.
I tried to get in touch via Facebook with Oliver Clark, the man who McCain said probably didn’t know what Fannie [...]
Behold, the predictive powers of Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds.
You gotta be kidding me.
McCain: Ayers! Chicago Politician! Black Guy!
When America goes through adversity they need a steady hand at the helm. Part of the reason we’re on such shaky ground is that we are being led by the least popular president since polling began.
Any more of this and there won’t be an America to bail out.
We nation of suckers.
Less than a week after the federal government committed $85 billion to bail out AIG, executives of the giant AIG insurance company headed for a week-long retreat at a luxury resort and spa, the St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, California, Congressional investigators revealed today.
“Rooms at this resort can cost over $1,000 [...]
Republicans on economics.
The top congressional budget analyst says pension plans have lost as much as $2 trillion in the past 15 months.
Peter Orszag told a House panel on Tuesday that the losses are likely to force many workers to hold off on major purchases and delay their retirements.
Robber Baron 2.0
Days from becoming the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history, Lehman Brothers steered millions to departing executives even while pleading for a federal rescue, Congress was told Monday.
As well, executives who feared for their bonuses in the company’s last months were told not to worry, according to documents cited at a congressional hearing. One [...]
Currently.
John McCain: Umm…. Tony Rezko! William Ayers! Jeremiah Wright! Stay-Puft Marshamallow Man! Boogedy Boogedy Boogedy!
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was 10,587.59 on the day George W. Bush was first sworn into office.
Great story from 60 Minutes explaining how Wall Street lost its mind over mortgage-backed derivatives and how the spiral was aided and abetted specifically by the rampant deregulation championed for decades by Republicans and conservatives (like George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and John McCain).
(If you click the button on the bottom right, you can make [...]
The Republican party is just trying out the latest version of the Southern Strategy.
First of all, even if Fannie and Freddie were the most awful companies in the history of the planet, its books chock-a-block with non-performing loans, none of the financial contagion—none of it—would have happened had not greedy financial institutions invented the risky [...]
Count the embarrassing Rep. Michelle Bachman among the con Republicans trying to push the line that Wall Street’s failure is because of poor minorities. Give me a break.
In this clip from 2006, an analyst forecasts the housing market crashing in 2007. The Fox News panel laughs at him.
Oh well.
Truth hurts
Christopher Cox, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and a longtime proponent of deregulation, acknowledged on Friday that the voluntary supervisory program of Wall Street’s largest investment banks had contributed to the global financial crisis and abruptly shut the program down.
The agency’s oversight responsibilities will largely shift to the Federal Reserve.
The commission’s [...]
That’s who National Review’s Mark Krikorian is blaming for Washington Mutual’s failing. Blaming minorities for the screwed up economy is now an official Republican/conservative talking point. Heck of a job, guys.
It’s something of a joke in liberal circles that conservatives think tax cuts are a cure all like Robitussin. But it’s not a parody if its true.
COURIC: And, Bob, I understand that John McCain actually floated an alternative plan. What can you tell us about that?
ORR: We’re told at the White House Senator McCain offered [...]
This is not a face that promotes trust, security, or a sense that we can get through this crisis. When you look up Epic Fail in the dictionary, this is what you get.
118 days. Pray we make it.
Scared yet?
The director of the Congressional Budget Office said yesterday that the proposed Wall Street bailout could actually worsen the current financial crisis.
During testimony before the House Budget Committee, Peter R. Orszag — Congress’s top bookkeeper — said the bailout could expose the way companies are stowing toxic assets on their books, leading to greater [...]
Bush will be addressing the nation about the financial crisis he and his party fiddled through. You see, if the president hadn’t spent the last eight years lying to us about everything under the sun, he would have the kind of political capital more succesful presidents do. The problem with the hype from the White [...]
That’s the Republican strategy to deflect the blame from the Bush administration being asleep at the wheel on the economic crisis.
The McCain campaign makes the unusual step of being bought off in advance by having an inside man in McCain campaign manager Rick Davis.
One of the giant mortgage companies at the heart of the credit crisis paid $15,000 a month to a firm owned by Senator John McCain’s campaign manager from the end of 2005 [...]
Bush on Monday
President Bush sought to assure anxious world leaders on Monday that the United States is taking ‘bold, aggressive, decisive action’ to rescue the crisis-ridden economy with a $700 billion bailout package. ‘The whole world is watching to see if we can act quickly,’ Bush said, prodding lawmakers in Washington to approve his plan.
Bush, [...]
One of the roles for the presidency is as National Leader.
Americans ask their presidents to do more than govern; they expect them to lead. No aspect of the chief executive’s job is more important than articulating the nation’s principles, taking on new challenges, providing comfort and inspiration in times of crisis, and, in Abraham Lincoln’s [...]
That’s right, John McCain’s campaign manager was paid $2 million by Fannie Mae to specifically lobby John McCain. They were trying to fend off regulation and I guess they wanted to curry favor with the self-described “deregulator”.
Then he hired him as his campaign manager.
This bailout plan just seems worse and worse. Why in God’s name would we spend American tax dollars to prop up foreign banks? It’s bad enough that we’re going to be operating as sugar daddy for multimillion dollar corporations who have proven they don’t know how to do business, but at least the idea that [...]
Hate to say I told you so… but I (and many others) did.
Wall Street turmoil left John McCain scrambling to explain why the fundamentals of the U.S. economy remained strong. It also left him defending his support for privately investing Social Security money in the same markets that had tanked earlier in the week.
The Republican [...]
Via Paul Krugman, comes this awesome bit of wisdom from MaverickTM in the current issue of Contingencies magazine.
Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.
That’s right [...]
If the government called average citizens up and said “Hey, you may have all maxed out your credit cards and tapped out your bank accounts, but here is some free money with a fuzzy repayment scheme” you would be pretty happy too. This bailout plan smells to me, and it removes risk from megacorporations in [...]
USA TODAY: “From McCain, an erratic response to crisis”
In many ways he reminds me of Bush’s deer in the headlights look on 9/11.
John McCain said he would get rid of the FEC chairman to address the economy. It is the SEC that has oversight of the trading industry.
I’m tempted to say that CNBC’s Larry Kudlow came to this conclusion because he’s back on drugs, but it’s even worse than that. Kudlow, and many conservatives, are not in fact chemically imbalanced but seriously believe this crap.
In this clip from Morning Joe, Kudlow details how he believes that the poor multibillion-dollar firms on [...]
Joe Biden, 2008
“Catholic social doctrine as I was taught it is, you take care of people who need the help the most,” he said. “Now it’d be different if you could make the case to me that by giving this tax cut to the very wealthy, everybody else was going to be better off. We [...]
At first glance that’s how this sounds to me.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is working on a plan that would set up a government facility to take on bad debts from financial institutions, preventing a worsening of the global credit crisis, Wall Street sources have told CNBC.
The facility would be similar to the Resolution Trust Corporation, [...]
McCain says he would fire the SEC chairman. Now, aside from the fact that this crisis in the markets goes beyond the actions of one person (ie. FEMA was incompetent not because of Brownie but because George Bush neglected the basic function of government), the President does not have the power to fire the SEC [...]
Dow Jones Industrial Average
Bush Inauguration: 10,587.59
Second Bush Inauguration: 10,471.47
Today: 10,609
Net change: +21.41
Clinton Inauguration: 3,241.95
Second Clinton Inauguration: 6,843.87
End of Clinton presidency: 10,587.59
Net change: +7,345.64
Historical
Bush I Inauguration: 2,235.36
End of Bush I presidency: 3,241.95
Reagan Inauguration: 950.69
Second Reagan Inauguration: 1,227.36
End of Reagan presidency: 2,235.36
Carter Inauguration: 1,029.12
End of Carter presidency: 950.69
Ford assumes presidency: 814.12
End of Ford presidency: 1,029.12
He’s been on the commerce committee since Adam went on his first date with Eve, yet he does not know what the committee does.
Yes, lets put Mr. Magoo behind the steering wheel. What could possibly go wrong?
That’s what John McCain called himself a little over a year ago. But you should totally totally totally believe him when he promises today to bring regulatory oversight to the collapsing financial system.
Real believable.
“Wall Street is filled with robber barons and thieves, that’s why I voted for us to put your social security in their hands!”
The right wing message machine is pretty powerful. The problem is it keeps shooting out the wrong message.
Flashback ‘06: “Stay The Course”
So fast your head spins.