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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
 Posted - 09/15/2008 : 15:32:36
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Wall St.'s Turmoil Sends Stocks Reeling
So, while Wall Street is reeling, McCain said today that the economy is "fundamentally sound" at a rally this morning. Sound familiar?
Democrats always do better on economic issues. Unless I am completely wrong, I think this news will be very very bad for McCain.
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 16:08:42 [Permalink]
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I think you got that right. I certainly wasn't hoping for bad news -- for one thing, my own nest egg, in the form of IRA mutual funds, is taking a mighty beating. But if anything should wake up voters to the long-term effects of the Bush years of Shoot and Loot, it should be this huge collapse. McCain's perceived strength in foreign policy just withered on the vine. The domestic economy has now become the main election issue.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 09/15/2008 16:11:20 |
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moakley
SFN Regular
USA
1888 Posts |
 Posted - 09/15/2008 : 16:35:58 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Kil
So, while Wall Street is reeling, McCain said today that the economy is "fundamentally sound" at a rally this morning. Sound familiar?
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Are you suggesting that John McCain may have been channeling Herbert Hoover? |
Life is good
Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned. -Anonymous |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 16:49:45 [Permalink]
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Kil...
The fuckwits have been on TV all evening BLAMING DEMOCRATS. Most of the talking heads aren't even calling their guests on this bullshit... and, of course, it works its way around to them making the false claim that Obama will RAISE TAXES. OHHH NOES! YOU CAN'T RAISE TAXES NOW! NOT WITH THE ECONOMY LIKE THIS! AAAAHHHHHHHHHH!
Its fucking disgusting.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Orwellingly Yurz
SFN Regular
USA
529 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 16:53:28 [Permalink]
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YO: Never under estimate the doofusness of the the Bush Lovers and the Undecideders. The mainstream media are still having an orgasm over 'Pit Bull' Palin. It's my hope, and I think it will happen,that these ratings-seekers in "News" Land will tire of da gov and start covering more of the important aspects of the campaign. The debates are really important, but the folks who have a comic book, celestial peeping-Tom type of god may not, as they say about McCain, get it, even when the arguments about real issues surface.
I wonder if we could get Sarah to put lipstick on a pitbull for us.
That might be a good news piece for Entertainment Tonight.
OY! |
"The modern conservative...is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy. That is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
--John Kenneth Galbraith
If dogs run free
Then what must be,
Must be...
And that is all
--Bob Dylan
The neo-cons have gotten welfare for themselves down to a fine art.
--me
"The meek shall inherit the earth, but not the mineral rights."
--J. Paul Getty
"The great thing about Art isn't what it give us, but what we become through it."
--Oscar Wilde
"We have Art in order not to die of life."
--Albert Camus
"I cling like a miser to the freedom I lose when surrounded by an abundance of things."
--Albert Camus
"Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes."
--Oscar Wilde |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 16:59:04 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dude
Kil...
The fuckwits have been on TV all evening BLAMING DEMOCRATS. Most of the talking heads aren't even calling their guests on this bullshit... and, of course, it works its way around to them making the false claim that Obama will RAISE TAXES. OHHH NOES! YOU CAN'T RAISE TAXES NOW! NOT WITH THE ECONOMY LIKE THIS! AAAAHHHHHHHHHH!
Its fucking disgusting.
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That's not what I'm seeing so far on CNN with the exception of Lou Dobbs who is blaming everyone but himself. I haven't yet checked other networks because it's still early here. |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 17:16:07 [Permalink]
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Yeh, Wall Street dropped like it was sucker-punched. Which it was, but they should'a seen it coming. It's their job, or at least was their job.
And that, in one form or another, is what letting industry regulate itself will get you, Every time.
The Republicans can squall all they please about Democrats, but even the dullest can easily see who was in office when the shit started and ultimately went down.
It is my understanding that there will be no more government bailouts -- everybody's screwed. Oh well, there are lots of lamp posts to hang greedy CEOs from.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 17:31:18 [Permalink]
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Krugman's column today in the NY Times talks about this. Indeed, it's an issue he's talked about for awhile. It seems that the whole "shadow banking" system really is the clusterfuck that's causing the problem. And this all came about when Wall Street was bitching about "regulations" (the far right hates regulations), and so law makers created financial institutions that worked around those.
Clinton, to his discredit, seems to have signed some of this into law. But Greenspan seems to have been the evil genius behind all this, so perhaps it's not surprising... |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 20:21:23 [Permalink]
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Krugman compared McCain to Herbert Hoover. OUCH!
I'd say that dems need to get out and run some ads that compare McCain to Hoover... but 80% of the country would just say... Hoover? What do vacuums have to do with the economy?
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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astropin
SFN Regular
USA
970 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 21:04:35 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dude
Krugman compared McCain to Herbert Hoover. OUCH!
but 80% of the country would just say... Hoover? What do vacuums have to do with the economy?
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That's so pathetic it would have to be true (at least in America) |
I would rather face a cold reality than delude myself with comforting fantasies.
You are free to believe what you want to believe and I am free to ridicule you for it.
Atheism:
The result of an unbiased and rational search for the truth.
Infinitus est numerus stultorum |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 09/15/2008 : 23:12:31 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Cuneiformist
Krugman's column today in the NY Times talks about this. |
The name Krugman rang a bell, but I don't think I ever really read any of his stuff in depth. However, going through the last few days, his analysis seems pretty spot on to me. Take his comments on the "angry right" for example:What's the source of all [the Right's] anger?
Some of it, of course, is driven by cultural and religious conflict: fundamentalist Christians are sincerely dismayed by Roe v. Wade and evolution in the curriculum. What struck me as I watched the convention speeches, however, is how much of the anger on the right is based not on the claim that Democrats have done bad things, but on the perception — generally based on no evidence whatsoever — that Democrats look down their noses at regular people.
Thus Mr. Giuliani asserted that Wasilla, Alaska, isn't “flashy enough” for Mr. Obama, who never said any such thing. And Ms. Palin asserted that Democrats “look down” on small-town mayors — again, without any evidence.
What the G.O.P. is selling, in other words, is the pure politics of resentment; you're supposed to vote Republican to stick it to an elite that thinks it's better than you. Or to put it another way, the G.O.P. is still the party of Nixon
One of the key insights in “Nixonland,” the new book by the historian Rick Perlstein, is that Nixon's political strategy throughout his career was inspired by his college experience, in which he got himself elected student body president by exploiting his classmates' resentment against the Franklins, the school's elite social club. There's a direct line from that student election to Spiro Agnew's attacks on the “nattering nabobs of negativism” as “an effete corps of impudent snobs,” and from there to the peculiar cult of personality that not long ago surrounded George W. Bush — a cult that celebrated his anti-intellectualism and made much of the supposed fact that the “misunderestimated” C-average student had proved himself smarter than all the fancy-pants experts.
And when Mr. Bush turned out not to be that smart after all, and his presidency crashed and burned, the angry right — the raging rajas of resentment? — became, if anything, even angrier. Humiliation will do that. |
Can anyone disagree with any of that?
It's also why I'm not sure we're out of the woods yet. Too many people are begging to get fooled again, it seems, so long as it means they don't have to admit the "liberals" were right all along.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 09/16/2008 : 08:08:51 [Permalink]
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Agreed Humbert,it seems pretty spot on for me.
It ties with the thread about the death of expertise too.
I think that it is a common popularist tactic. Reminds me of the French poujadism if you are curious...
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Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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Rubicon95
Skeptic Friend
USA
220 Posts |
Posted - 09/16/2008 : 11:04:58 [Permalink]
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In doing a little research, in 1999 Gramm-Leach-Biley Act was signed repealing the Glass-Steagle act.
Some economists feel that the repeal of the G-S Act allowed the conditions for the sub prime mess.
Seeing Gramm's name there and figuring who would be the Secy of Treasury in a McCain presidency made me shudder.
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 09/16/2008 : 11:42:19 [Permalink]
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R-95,
Krugman's impeccably accurate analysis also includes speculation that Graham would be appointed Sec. Treasury. He thinks that if this occurs the US will have another major depression, akin to the "great depression".
And the only thing that gets you out of something like that is a major war. Jonny Mac's favorite pastime.
As for his analysis on the "elitism" angle... he is on the money. There is a massive anti-intellectual movement in the US. It is tied to the fundamentalist religious movement, and it is not something to be taken lightly. McCain gets away with calling Obama an elitist snob, and it sticks. Despite the fact that Obama is a guy who was raised by a single mom who was at one point on welfare and food-stamps, who earned his own way into scholarships... while McCain got a free entry into a military academy because his pops was an admiral, McCain owns 9 homes worth millions each, his wife is a member of the uber-wealthy club....
... yet they convince people that Obama is the elitist snob.
That is a problem, and not one that can be overcome easily. You present those facts to people and they will STILL believe the Obama=elite snob thing.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 09/16/2008 : 12:33:28 [Permalink]
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Foreclosure Phil
…Whether or not Gramm had bothered to ponder the potential downsides of his commodities legislation, having helped set off an industry free-for-all, he reaped the rewards. In 2003, he left the Senate to take a highly lucrative job at ubs, Switzerland's largest bank, which had been able to acquire investment house PaineWebber due to his banking deregulation bill. He would soon be lobbying Congress, the Fed, and the Treasury Department for ubs on banking and mortgage matters. There was a moment of poetic justice when ubs became one of the subprime crisis' top losers, writing down $37 billion as of this spring—an amount equal to its previous four years of profits combined. In a report explaining how it had managed to mess up so grandly, ubs noted that two-thirds of its losses were the fault of collateralized debt obligations—securities backed largely by subprime instruments—and that credit default swaps had been "key to the growth" of its out-of-control cdo business. (Gramm declined to comment for this article.)
Gramm's record as a reckless deregulator has not affected his rating as a Republican economic expert. Sen. John McCain has relied on him for policy advice, especially, according to the campaign, on housing matters. The two have been buddies ever since they served together in the House in the 1980s; in 1996, McCain chaired Gramm's flop of a presidential campaign. (Gramm spent $21 million and earned only 10 delegates during the gop primaries.) In 2005, McCain told a Wall Street Journal columnist that Gramm was his economic guru. Two years later, Gramm wrote a piece for the Journal extolling McCain as a modern-day Abraham Lincoln, and he's hailed McCain's love of tax cuts and free trade. Media accounts have identified Gramm as a contender for the top slot at the Treasury Department if McCain reaches the White House. "If McCain gets in," frets Lynn Turner, a former chief sec accountant, "we'll have more of the same deregulatory mess. I like John McCain, but given what I know about Phil Gramm, I wouldn't vote for McCain…" |
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Rubicon95
Skeptic Friend
USA
220 Posts |
Posted - 09/16/2008 : 13:52:32 [Permalink]
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Dude,
I just read the Krugman column. I found him very clear and easy to understand. I gotta read more. (in short, thanx for another favourite writer)
I believe consumerism and political apathy is the main cause of our dumming down - not the rise of fundamentalism. That might be an effect.
If I was Obama, I'd REALLY hammer at McCain with a Phil Gramm-mortgage crisis-banking lobbyist connection.
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Bad news for McCain and the country...
