My Brain, Slowing Down

[elfs]

First an apology and a retraction: as ideaphile pointed out, I wrote incorrectly about Rick Davis' relationship with Freddie Mac. He was not receiving $15,000 a month; the firm he owns received the money. Both Davis and the firm have stated that Davis is not drawing money on the equity and income of his firm, so technically no money has been flowing from Freddie Mac to Rick Davis' pocket while Davis has been managing McCain's campaign.

Ideaphile accused me of lying for political gain, but the answer is simpler: I was sloppy and went for the most salacious reading possible. In the twenty minutes I have between my home and the first transit center, when the bus is too packed to write porn, I scan through my RSS feed at high speed, going through almost two hundred articles a day to tag maybe twenty-five for a re-read. From those I then re-tag the URLs, which get sent to a python script to create the skeleton for my braindumps. As in the case of the NYTimes articles about Davis-- and as I frequently do-- I scanned it to assess its credibility, but I relied on other bloggers to give me the precis and meta of the material. Ideaphile wants to attribute my summary to mendacity, but it was ordinary sloppiness and stupidity. I'm sorry if you feel misled.

With that in mind, I shall be more careful with today's readings. Onward, then.

Where did the $700 billion figure come from?

A U.S. Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday: "It's not based on any particular data point. We just wanted to choose a really large number."

Are you ready to hand over your hard-earned cash to people who pulled a number out of their collective ass? And was Tony Fratto lying when he claimed the plan had been in the works for weeks and months?

Meanwhile, in another universe...

This Administration deserves to be trusted because it has kept us safe from terrorist attack since 9/11, has fought and won two wars, has presided over eight years of economic growth, has appointed two stellar justices to the Supreme Court, and has even learned how to do Louisiana's job of protecting that state from hurricanes. The day will come, and not before long, when Americans will wish that George Bush was still president.

(via Andrew Sullivan)

Bush Scares Nation, Bailout Gains Momentum.

We listened to the speech last night. Even Yamaraashi-chan, who's studying political cartoons this week, thought it was bewildering: "Did George Bush just blame homeowners for the problem? Why is he blaming homeowners?" What I took away from it was Bush's classic complete lack of introspection, and a bit of standard fare. It was all-fear, all-the-time. No appeals to our better nature (cue Lazarus Long), no dignity at all. "Do this or we will all suffer!" There was no mention of anything his administration did or could have done to recognize, regulate, or prevent the problem.

Steve Benen on the McCain M.O.

Benen relates a story about how, in 2007, McCain "parachuted," at the last moment, into negotiations on an immigration bill that Congressional leaders had been working on for weeks. John Cornyn, a fellow Republican, told McCain, "I've been sitting in here for all of these negotiations and you just parachute in here on the last day. You're out of line."

McCain's response to Cornyn was classic: "Fuck you! I know more about this than anyone else in the room."

McCain later went to the press and took credit for closing the deal in committee, then went back to the (primary) campaign and didn't stay around to actually vote on the bill. As the Washington Post drily noted, "Later that day, McCain missed his 43rd straight vote."

Now, to be fair to McCain, he has always had an intense interest in immigration issues, and he's hardly the only man to have uttered "fuck" in a crowded Congress. But he is not a member of the Banking or Finance committees, and by his own admission he knows very little about the way the economy works, so what he's doing here is, well, Drama Queen stuff.

My fear is that he's going to take credit for "saving the economy" (read: looting the treasury to bail out his buddies). And the press will play it up while claiming that Obama "just sat by and did nothing."

McCain loses the Wall Street Journal's OP ED page!?

As some of you might know, there's a "firewall" at the Wall Street Journal between the editorial board and the journalism sector. The people who write the opinions on the back pages of the WSJ are almost universally derided as right-wing economic ideologues, while the occupants of the journalism floor are frequently lauded as exemplars of the profession.

So imagine my shock when I read this in a WSJ op-ed:

Last week, Republican presidential candidate John McCain called for a commission to "find out what went wrong" on Wall Street. It was an excellent suggestion: Public inquiries into Wall Street practices served the country well in the 1930s.

And Mr. McCain has a special advantage to bring to any such investigation -- many of the relevant witnesses are friends or colleagues of his. In fact, he can probably get to the bottom of the whole mess just by cross-examining the people riding on his campaign bus.

Spotted on Craigslist's M4M Casual Encounters:

Dignified older man seeks second-tier foreign leaders, ambassadors and has-been foreign policy wonks to meet with his young, comely apprentice and soulmate. Must be willing to engage in polite conversation with previously mentioned soulmate while being filmed and photographed. Absolutely no snickering allowed. Must also be willing to ignore questions and keep the content of all conversations private and confidential no matter how many times she mentions being able to see Russia from her breakfast nook. No freaks.

Sorry, we need laughs today.

Meanwhile, another $25 billion dollar bailout is underway.

While we're fretting over $700 billion over here, Congress is quietly putting the wrap on a $25 billion loan to GM, Ford, and Chrysler to "re-tool their assembly lines" using modern techniques. This bailout is so much bigger than the Chrysler bailout of 1980, and yet is getting very little press. As the article points out, "This year's $25 billion is just a down payment. The automakers now plan to ask the government for another $25 billion in loans next year." Eh, what's $50 billion dollars? As the article concludes, compared to the proposed looting of the Treasury to save Wall Street, "It's just spare change."

A dark laugh: Don't Lie to David Letterman.

Great clip from the Letterman show last night where Dave rips McCain for cancelling his appearance on Dave's show, claiming he was going to DC immediately, but was then seen live over on Katie Couric's show in an attempt to distract the nation from the utterly disastrous Couric/Palin interview. Letterman shouts at the monitor, "Hey, John, would you like a ride to the airport?"

How bad was the Couric interview of Sarah Palin?

Gods, it's bad. It's incredibly bad. She doesn't have any clue about the economic priorities; she hasn't read enough analysis to know that yes, "inaction" is an option. She's not interested. It'll hurt; the only question is will it hurt worse than the $700 billion debt we'll invoke. She's dishonest about her "Americans are waiting for John McCain, not Barack Obama" line. She wants us to believe that McCain is "leadership in a crisis," but we're getting used to thinking of McCain as a Drama Queen. Couric hammers Palin "one more time" on what McCain has done that's important in terms of responsible regulation of economic issues, and Palin goes for the "maverick" talking points and finally capitulates, "I'll try to find ya some and I'll bring 'em to ya. [SIC]" It's painful to watch.

Also, I don't have a link, but after Bush's speech last night, I heard NPR's finance reporter say, "I was down on the [stock market] floor today. These people are so desperate for this money."

My money. Your money.

Count me as one of those people convinced that "doing nothing" might, in fact, be the best of all possible actions. James Pethokoukis at US News and World Report (you know, the more serious version of Time and Newsweek) quotes an analyst who documents the currently known risks, compares it equivalently to the last two recessions, and writes today

I'm sorry. Spending $700 billion (which is really $2.5 trillion [after interest - Elf] since you are borrowing the money) to stop a recession-- no worse that what we saw in 1990-91 (one quarter of -3 percent growth and one quarter of -2 percent growth) or even 2001 (one quarter of -1.4 percent growth)-- seems nutsy. If they want to get this thing passed, Paulson and Bernanke better be more explicit about the risks.

Comments

[solarbird]

Doing nothing would be much better.

But there are things that could be done. Subjecting CDSes to standard accounting regulations would be good. Enforcing pre-existing leverage controls that the Bush administration ordered not be enforced would be good. Allowing states to regulate when the Federal government won't (as opposed to suing to stop it) would be good. Those would all help.

I disagree with James Pethokoukis about the severity of this recession, but do agree that letting it happen is better than this $700B+ insanity, in no small part because this insanity will make it worse, not better.

[shunra.livejournal.com]

A really big number?

Actual number didn't matter?

This was satire, right? Please tell me it was satire, Forbes just has a new satire column that I didn't know about. Right?

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Elf, you're doing better than a lot of professional journalists there.... stepping up when you've been called out and trying to do better. Speaking as a once and future professional myself, good on'ya.

[amythis.livejournal.com]

The Palin clip, jeez!

[(Anonymous)]

"we're getting used to thinking of McCain as a Drama Queen."

That is just wicked. Much, much better than the lame "McSame". I hope it catches on.