Change you can Depends on!
McCain - Candidate of Change whatever he said Yesterday
McFLIP-FLOP
what a terrible candidate.
Posted by T2 at September 17, 2008 01:44 PMMcDope's "change" depends on whatever the last advisor tells him to say. From "We cannot!" to "We had to".
So conservatives demand no regulation of financial companies, but authorize taxpayer bailouts of historic proportions for those companies when they fail. That's great government, great "stewardship" of the taxpayers' money, right, McFool?
All these bailouts need to be added to the "cost" of Bushco and our nation's addiction to the fraud of "conservatism".
But what mavricky goodness! A possibly dumber Bush, with even a worse impulsive, petulant temper. Why do conservatives hate America?
Posted by euzoius at September 17, 2008 02:10 PMAmazing what a good old fashioned market meltdown can do to the troll infestation....gone; war with Russia over Georgia....gone...the Surge has worked and ooops gone and now McMansion is tongue tied and flip flopping over big government...no smaller government...no bailouts...must bailout...maybe he'll just flip and say Vote for Obama as I'm too fucking stupid to be preznit.
Should be a great set of debates....wonder if Johnny boy wants a few town hall meetings to 'splain his-self?
No more jj, muck, petey hubris...
Posted by Goyo at September 17, 2008 03:24 PMThe reason that McLame can flip flop back and forth is because he knows that the MSM is not going to call him on it.
Speaking of asses, where are the trolls with their cut and pasting Repug LYING POINTS?
Posted by angryman at September 17, 2008 04:50 PMin all fairness to Tweety, he just worked over GOP Congressman Cantor pretty good. If I was in Cantor's district, I be embarrassed x 100. What a loser..but of course, he's a GOPer. By the way, despite constant baiting by Tweety, Cantor refused, REFUSED, to say the word "Bush".
Posted by T2 at September 17, 2008 04:53 PMI guess it's Kantor...anyway TPM beat me to it. You westcoasters check it out. pretty sad and funny...in a GOP way
Posted by T2 at September 17, 2008 04:55 PMS190: Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005; passed the House, died in the Senate.
Blocked by Democrats; died in committee; no hearings/discussions called for by committee chairman Dodd.
According to OpenSecrets.com, Senator Dodd received the highest amount of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: $165,400.
The second highest senator funded by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae?
Senator Barak Obama: $126,349.
Posted by Mary at September 17, 2008 05:02 PMS190: Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005;...
You mean that bill that John McCain sponsored that would have completely "privatized" accountability for home loans? Never made it out of committee, for a reason, thank god:
"Amends the Federal Home Loan Bank Act to establish the Federal Home Loan Bank Finance Corporation. Transfers the functions of the Office of Finance of the Federal Home Loan Banks to such Corporation. Excludes the Federal Home Loan Banks from certain securities reporting requirements. Abolishes the Federal Housing Finance Board."
In a 1/2 billion dollar presidential campaign..do you really think $127 thousand influences anything?
Posted by allansfca at September 17, 2008 05:27 PMHere's some fun with fundamentals:
http://reasonsnottovoteformccain.blogspot.com/2008/09/fundamentals.html
or
http://snipurl.com/3racm
Gotta keep hitting McCain on this symbolic stuff, over and over again.
dk
Posted by dk at September 17, 2008 05:50 PMOlbermann and Maddow tonight. Trust me.
Posted by phidipides at September 17, 2008 06:10 PMSenator Barak Obama: $126,349. From Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae?
Yippee you go Obama!
he he he...
Posted by angryman at September 17, 2008 07:15 PMGreed that he helped engineer while in the Senate:
[In 1999] McCain had joined with other Republicans to push through landmark legislation sponsored by then-Sen. Phil Gramm (Tex.), who is now an economic adviser to his campaign. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act aimed to make the country’s financial institutions competitive by removing the Depression-era walls between banking, investment and insurance companies.
That bill allowed AIG to participate in the gold rush of a rapidly expanding global banking and investment market. But the legislation also helped pave the way for companies such as AIG and Lehman Brothers to become behemoths laden with bad loans and investments.
Man, it's dead tonight.
Posted by idiosynchronic at September 17, 2008 09:43 PMThis is all similar to 1998's Long Term Capital Management. The stock market whoooshed down on that much further than folks expected.
Now, we have the addition of higher energy prices and a slower economy. Just lots of panic out there. All the radio shows are talking about. Relatives are talking about. Everyone wants to sell their stocks now.
Posted by Muck at September 17, 2008 10:24 PMJust lots of panic out there.
Muck channeling Kevin Bacon in Animal House.
Posted by Simp at September 17, 2008 11:47 PM"I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole." Congressional record
And it is telling that Obama ranks behind only Dodd in contributions from Freddie/Fannie. Dodd's been there for 19 years. How long has Obama been there? He even exceeds Kerry, another who's been there for a long time. Obama's in the pocket of Big Mortgage. He looked the other way, just as he wants you to look the other way today.
Posted by peter at September 18, 2008 04:04 AM"I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation..."
Those were words John McCain spoke in 2005. Where are Barry Obama's words? Oh, that's right he just got sworn in that year! He didn't know anything yet. The top five receivers of Freddie/Fannie money were Democrats. Funny where Biden and MCCain fall on the list. McCain only was obliged a paltry $20,000 for all his years of service. Yeah, Barry was fast tracked up their list for favors.
Posted by peter at September 18, 2008 04:44 AMYou know, death by a thousand cuts is horrific. Let's elect McCain and get it over with. I will go down the tubes, but with the knowledge that every motherf*cker who voted for McCain will go down with me. That might put a Democrat in the WH for the next sixty years.
Posted by Judith at September 18, 2008 05:48 AMCampaign Momentum Shifts Back To Obama
CBS, in its write-up of the poll, pointed to additional evidence suggesting that McCain's VP pick is not wearing well: "Palin's favorable rating stands at 40 percent, down 4 points from last week. Her unfavorable rating, which stands at 30 percent, has risen eight points in the same time period. Her favorable rating among women has fallen 11 points in the past week." Palin's favorability ratings have also dropped steadily in tracking polls conducted by Hotline/Diageo and Research2000.
As Obama regains momentum in national surveys, the real question becomes: what will trends be over the next 48 days in the key battleground states that will, in fact, determine the outcome in the Electoral College?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/18/campaign-momentum-shifts_n_127338.html
Posted by Judith at September 18, 2008 06:07 AMIn an interview with ABC recently, Mr. Obama said, "If we're going to ask questions about who has been promulgating negative ads that are completely unrelated to the issues at hand, I think I win that contest pretty handily."
McCain said today that if we were to judge a candidate on who is the best qualified to handle the economy, I would have admit it would be Obama.
See how easy it is?
Posted by Judith at September 18, 2008 06:32 AMJeez, who ran the senate in 2005? Oh yeah, the GOoPs--by a 10 senator margin! The GSE reform Bill never made it out of the GOOP RUN banking committee. Yet posters think Dodd was running the show.
Have you noticed that the financial markets went south way ahead of the GSE bailout? And that a complete bailout of the GSEs hasn't done ONE thing to solve the problem? That's because the GSEs are a SYMPTOM, not the cause. They went under as a result of the real cause---which was an out of control housing bubble and essentially fraudulent mortgages written by the private sector and bundled into risky securities.
The cause of the meltdown is not the GSEs, they just bought the bad mortgages, just like many big financial firms were doing. Indeed, Bush's HUD demanded the GSEs buy even MORE subprime mortgages starting in 2004.
The real cause of the meltdown is the massive conservative deregulation of private financial firms in 2000 (Gramm's bill) and Bushco's failure to regulate the securities markets (allowing the explosion of derivative securities) and the basically fraudulent lending practices of the private mortgage lenders, which Bushco also turned a bline eye to. The GSEs just bought the shit.
Posted by euzoius at September 18, 2008 06:45 AM"deregulation of private financial firms in 2000 (Gramm's bill)", said Euz. So does Congress get this 'credit' or the president who signed this into law?
Dodd is chairing a hearing later this morning to examine the events surrounding the Bear Stearns bailout. "I think they made the right decision," Dodd said in a television interview. (WSJs Market Watch, by Greg Robb) - Senator Chris Dodd on April 3, 2008
Dodd said he opposed the government's decision to guarantee the sale of Bear Stearns to JPMorgan Chase in March. (Courant, by Eric Gershon) - Senator Chris Dodd on Sept 16, 2008
Now that's guidance for ya...
Posted by peter at September 18, 2008 06:56 AM"The Democratic-controlled Congress, acknowledging that it isn’t equipped to lead the way to a solution for the financial crisis and can’t agree on a path to follow, is likely to just get out of the way.
Lawmakers say they are unlikely to take action before, or to delay, their planned adjournments — Sept. 26 for the House of Representatives, a week later for the Senate. While they haven’t ruled out returning after the Nov. 4 elections, they would rather wait until next year unless Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, who are leading efforts to contain the crisis, call for help." From Bloomberg
More guidance for ya.
The "conservatives" who pushed for the deregulation of financial markets for 20 years get the "credit" for Gramm's now disastrous bill. Clinton gets another blot on his unfortunate record of frequently accommodating conservative claptrap.
Although had Clinton been president in 2001-08, he wouldn't have ignored the exploding housing bubble, dubious mortgages and the creation of the fake derivative securitie by the "free market", that's my guess based on his generally good record of regulating industries while he was prez---again, unlike "conservative" presidents.
Posted by euzoius at September 18, 2008 07:46 AMHe's flipping so fast that he'd better fit himself for a neck brace to deal with the whiplash.
Posted by The Creator at September 18, 2008 08:20 AM"It was Black Monday. Banks going bust. Stock markets in turmoil. A nosedive in the share price of HBOS, Britain's biggest mortgage lender. The brainboxes who come up with complex models of how financial markets work say that these sorts of things are supposed to happen only once in a blue moon. But at the moment it is a case of another week, another crisis.
A week ago it was the effective nationalisation of the American mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Yesterday, jobless bankers at Lehman Brothers were clearing their desks. With the virus spreading, there were doubts yesterday as to whether Washington Mutual, America's biggest savings and loan company, and AIG, the country's biggest insurer (and a leading sponsor of Manchester United), would survive the week. This was the week the crash of 2007-08 went nuclear" the Guardian.uk
***
"LONDON: Mortgage lending in Britain was down 36 per cent in August compared to a year ago, the Council of Mortgage Lenders said on Thursday.
Gross lending of 21.8 billion pounds ($39 billion) was down 12 per cent compared to July of this year, the report said.
The council said it was the lowest total for August in six years and the lowest figure for any month since April 2005.
Lenders reacting to a global credit crunch have tightened up on lending, requiring larger deposits which have frozen many potential buyers out of the housing market. That in turn has added to downward pressure on house prices."
from economictimes.com
***
"Bank of Japan governor Masaaki Shirakawa on Wednesday hailed the US bailout of AIG, noting his own experiences in the central bank in the 1990s when Japan was accused of being too tepid in fixing its financial sector" breitbart.com
***
"MOSCOW (AFP) — Trading on the Russian stock market was suspended for a third day on Thursday after the worst plunge in share prices since the 1998 financial crisis, a market spokesman told AFP."
Seems to me Euz, this isn't just a local problem. Try global
McCain is the candidate of change. Watch him change before your very eyes.
Posted by Mister Go at September 18, 2008 09:04 AMThe Alaska Disasta....Palin has fallen and she can't reach her scotch...from +17 to -4 in a week. Zapatero has nothing to worry about....old Smokey will be a pile of trash by Nov 4.
Date Positive Negative Net
9/11 52 35 +17
09/12 51 37 +14
09/13 49 40 +9
09/14 47 42 +7
09/15 47 43 +4
09/16 45 44 +1
09/17 44 45 -1
09/18 42 46 -4
Who is this "peter?" He's pretty funny. Of course Congress isn't going to do useless flag-waiving right now. If the Fed needs help, they'll come back. However, it's smart economics to not panic and do stupid things and it's smart politics to let the Republican chickens come home to roost.
After all, it was the REPUBLICANS (including McCain) who passed this bill gutting the protections that kept us safe from unchecked corporate greed. And it's the Republicans that need to be made a "permanent minority" so the grown-ups can fix the problems the Republicans engineered.
Posted by Moses at September 18, 2008 09:44 AM"March 29, 2007, New York Times: “[The Center for Responsible Lending] estimated that in 2005, a majority of home loans to African-Americans and 40 percent of home loans to Hispanics were subprime loans. The existence and spread of subprime lending helps explain the drastic growth of homeownership for these same groups. Since 1995, for example, the number of African-American households has risen by about 20 percent, but the number of African-American homeowners has risen almost twice that rate, by about 35 percent. For Hispanics, the number of households is up about 45 percent and the number of homeowning households is up by almost 70 percent.”And do not forget that the vast majority of even subprime borrowers have been making their payments. Indeed, fewer than 15 percent of borrowers in this most risky group have even been delinquent on a payment, much less defaulted. When contemplating ways to prevent excessive mortgages for the 13 percent of subprime borrowers whose loans go sour, regulators must be careful that they do not wreck the ability of the other 87 percent to obtain mortgages.”
September 23, 2007, Slate: “If you want to make money off the housing bubble, you’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way: Buy a place with a no-money-down mortgage and then flip it.”
September 23, 2007, New York Times: “[P]eople who refuse to sell their houses for less than they paid for them are violating a cardinal rule of the market: stuff is worth what it’s worth. It doesn’t matter what you paid for it…”(B)y being hung up about whether your condominium will sell for what you paid for it, you aren’t just driving yourself crazy trying to get a buyer. You may be threatening the very performance of the economy and driving up the unemployment rate — provided that many others behave in a similar way.”" Austan Goolsbee — presidential adviser on economics to Barack Obama.
As Jake Tapper notes, Obama has Franklin Raines as one of his advisers, the former CEO of Fannie Mae who had to return some of the money he made by overstating Fannie Mae’s earnings. Obama also had James Johnson as an adviser, who chaired Fannie Mae and hid up to $19 million of his compensation package from regulators during his tenure — until the Fannie Mae connection got too embarrassing for Obama.
Moses, as you can see from the above collection of tidbits, peter is a little GOoPer squirrel that collects small nuts from various wingnut garbage troughs and studiously stores them in a dirty ragbag.
Posted by euzoius at September 18, 2008 12:23 PM