WHO IS GAIUS CHANNELING?

Over at Blue Crab Boulevard, Gaius writes:

We are being told - over and over - that things are as bad or worse than they were in the Great Depression.

OK, Gaius, exactly who is saying this?

RICE LIES AGAIN...

A long time ago, she lied and said no one could've anticipated that terrorists would use planes as weapons and now she comes out with this howler:

And you now have an Iraq that's at the center of the Middle East, that's a bulwark against Iran...(video here)

Um, would somebody tell our Secretary of State that Iraq and Iran are NOW allies?

THE REAL "NO SPIN ZONE"

It'a FAIR's weekly radio show, CounterSpin. I just stumbled on it today and it seems to be a sober analysis of how the news media is covering the issues.

KUDLOW IS STUCK ON STUPID

Despite massive evidence that the free market failed us, he's still pushing for tax cuts:

President-elect Obama has been cagey about the details of his massive $700 billion infrastructure spending plan and whether he'll raise taxes on successful earners. But this new New Deal, including Obama's middle-class tax credits, will not create permanent economic growth incentives.

What will? A genuine supply-side growth agenda to reduce tax rates across-the-board.

If the Republican party wants to put bailout nation to rest it should campaign for lower corporate, individual, and investment tax rates. It should make clear that the Democrats are the government-spending party while the Republicans are the tax-cutting party.

We will not bailout our way into prosperity. Nor will we spend our way into prosperity. Somebody has to stand up and yell: It's time to cut tax rates on the supply-side. That will reinvigorate growth and infuse new spirit into a demoralized economy.

ROSS DOUHAT IS A LYING WHORE

Despite that, he gets an op-ed piece in the NY Times about abortion in which he repeats the Fundie LIE that abortion is currently unrestricted. I've heard some of the radio gasbags also make this false claim and here I presume it is an "official" part of Fundie propaganda. Let's review what Roe v. Wade said about restrictions on abortion:

c) For the stage subsequent to viability the State, in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life, may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother. Pp. 163-164; 164-165.

In Douhat's alternative world, it's Roe v. Wade that is absolutist, not the Fundies who want to prohibit ALL abortions:

But no such compromise is possible so long as Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey remain on the books. These decisions are monuments to pro-choice absolutism, and for pro-lifers to accept them means accepting that no serious legal restrictions on abortion will ever be possible — no matter what the polls say, and no matter how many hearts and minds pro-lifers change.

I ♥ BARRY RITHOLTZ

There's an article in the NY Times about one of the criminal ratings agencies and I COMPLETELY AGREE with Barry's idea about what these crooks need to face:

All of these motherfuckers need to be thrown in prison, where they will be sodomized on a daily basis for the rest of their lives.

We've tried fines for many and jail time for a few but right now we need to send 3,000 or so MOTU straight to a maximum security Federal prison for a LONG time.

THIS IS TERRIFIC NEWS

Obama sees that we have to clamp down on the Free Market Fairy. I'm sure the wingnuts will start braying about "freedom" but I don't think many Americans are going to buy it.

Obama vows strong new financial regulations
Sun Dec 7, 2008 11:08am EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama said on Sunday he would put strong new financial regulation at the center of his economic recovery program to force more accountability on the banking industry.

"As part of our economic recovery package what you will see coming out of my administration, right at the center, is a strong set of financial regulations," Obama said in a taped appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" television show.

"Banks, ratings agencies, mortgage brokers, a whole bunch of folks (will) start having to be much more accountable and behave much more responsibly.

"We've got to have transparency, openness, fair dealing in our financial markets and that's an area where I think over the last eight years we've fallen short."

BOUNDLESS IGNORANCE

There are certainly limits to the benefits of rational discourse and here's one reason why: profound ignorance.

JFrost7736

09:31 PMDec 07 2008

He is totally clueless!! this empty suit you elected.Building roads? how does that benefit the middle class and the unemployment??? So of the 350,000 who have lost their jobs in clean industry will now be apprentices on bridge and roadways jobs??? Does this Obama read the paper or understand the issues in this country.... Create jobs??? I think not, Create more minimum wage earners... for sure!

Highway Maintenance workers average $16.21/hr, Paving Equipment operators average $17.04/hr and Construction Laborers average $14.88/hr.

ON IRAQ, ALL HANNITY HAS IS A LIE

Hannity's response to criticism of the immoral and illegal Iraq War is to chirp about freedom and the evils of Saddam. Even Paul Wolfowitz knew that the second was not a justification for the invasion and the freedom Hannity refers to is a mirage for most Iraqis. Here's Hannity's latest reprise of his position¹:

CHOPRA: FOX and yourself have wholeheartedly cheered on the disastrous war in Iraq so I can understand why you continue to mount...

HANNITY: Deepak, I didn't understand. You said...

(CROSSTALK)

HANNITY: Hand on a second. I didn't hear what you said.

CHOPRA: You wouldn't let me finish.

HANNITY: No, no. I didn't understand.

CHOPRA: We have a conversation.

HANNITY: No, no. What did you say about FOX. We what on...

CHOPRA: Wholeheartedly cheered the disastrous war in Iraq, and that was a disastrous war.

HANNITY: I disagree with you. It liberated a free -- liberated people...

CHOPRA: Liberated. Have you -- just go to Wikipedia, and you'll see the conservative estimate is 400,000 Iraqis dead, and you know, the other estimate is a million. We don't even include that in our conversation. What did those guys do to cause this jihad attack?

HANNITY: Well, and you might have forgotten...

(CROSSTALK)

HANNITY: Deepak, wait a minute. Wait a minute. But you forgot, those people -- there were rape rooms and torture chambers, and the people were living in misery and -- in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

Hannity has deployed another of his standard tactics when dealing with criticism of the Iraq War - accuse the person of "blaming America." Chopra took offense at this smear and had a reply published in HuffPo.

¹Fox News Network
December 1, 2008 Monday
SHOW: FOX HANNITY & COLMES 9:21 PM EST
Interview With Deepak Chopra, Enhanced Coverage LinkingDeepak Chopra, -Search using:
Biographies Plus News
News, Most Recent 60 Days
William Cohen
BYLINE: Sean Hannity, Alan Colmes
GUESTS: Deepak Chopra, William Cohen
SECTION: NEWS; Domestic
LENGTH: 1565 words

THIS IS A BAD HEADLINE

Here's how AP decribes the recent indictments of Blackwater guards:

Blackwater guards: Mercenaries or decorated vets?
Dec 6 04:15 PM US/Eastern
By LARA JAKES JORDAN and MATT APUZZO
Associated Press Writers

There's no need to make this a choice because the guards are in fact both mercs and vets.

PRETTY NERVY

Toll Brothers. Inc. makes luxury houses and like the rest of the housing industry, isn't doing very well these days. Their solution to drum up more business among those who have benefited most from the belief in the Free Market Fairy? - GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION. (h/t Atrios)

Toll ends fourth quarter with fix-rate plea

By Alan J. Heavens

Inquirer Real Estate Writer
Posted on Fri, Dec. 5, 2008

Home builder Toll Bros. Inc. coupled its fourth-quarter earnings announcement yesterday with a plea for federal action to push fixed-rate mortgages down to a buyer-stimulating 4.5 percent.

Chief executive officer Robert I. Toll said he supported an idea being considered by the government to guarantee mortgage-backed securities, which would bring rates down to 4.5 percent from the current 5.53 percent.

Toll said he believed the federal government should go further, however, and sweeten the pot with a $20,000 tax credit per home buyer.

Chief financial officer Joel H. Rassman did say that it is estimating delivery of 2,000 to 3,000 homes in fiscal 2009 at an average delivered price of $600,000 to $625,000 per home.

The average price in fiscal 2008, when it delivered 2,927 homes, was $664,000.

MORE RATING AGENCY NONSENSE

The ratings agencies played a key role in the Crunch and deserve to pay some penalty. And perhaps they should be elminated completely because their incompetence is a threat to the economy.

Municipal Upgrades by S&P Show Inappropriate Scale (Update1)
By Darrell Preston and Christine Richard

Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Between 2005 and 2008, Pigeon, Michigan’s unreserved general fund balance fell 29 percent and debt per capita rose 18 percent. That didn’t stop Standard & Poor’s from increasing the village’s credit rating by three levels in September.

The community of 1,100 near Lake Huron in northeastern Michigan’s “Thumb,” touted as the home of the state’s largest grain elevator, is one of more than 600 municipal borrowers New York-based S&P has raised in 2008 as the economy became mired in a recession. Almost 15 percent of some 250 increases in October and November were for borrowers in California and Michigan, two of the four states with the most job losses in October.

Moody’s and Fitch have said they’ll implement widespread upgrades to municipal bonds once credit markets stabilize so the ratings reflect the same chance of default whether they’re applied to corporate or municipal obligations. S&P is alone in insisting its ratings are comparable and no across the board adjustments are needed.

ANOTHER GREAT ADAM SMITH QUOTE

Mark Thoma quoted part of it and here I'll fill in a little more so you can be sure about Smith's real meaning.

Adam Smith
An Inquiry into the Nature And Causes of the Wealth of Nations
1776

Book One

Of the Causes of Improvement in the Productive Powers of Labour, And of the Order according to which its Produce is Naturally Distributed among the Different Ranks of the People.

CONCLUSION OF THE CHAPTER

The whole annual produce of the land and labour of every country, or what comes to the same thing, the whole price of that annual produce, naturally divides itself, it has already been observed, into three parts; the rent of land, the wages of labour, and the profits of stock; and constitutes a revenue to three different orders of people; to those who live by rent, to those who live by wages, and to those who live by profit.

But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity and fall with the declension of the society. On the contrary, it is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin. The interest of this third order, therefore, has not the same connection with the general interest of the society as that of the other two.

The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens. The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.

A DELUSION PROTECTING A DELUSION

And this is from the chairman of the Republican National Committee!

RNC chair discloses comeback plan
By MIKE DUNCAN- RNC CHAIRMAN 12/4/08 4:49 AM EST

Sen. Saxby Chambliss’ reelection this week was a tremendous victory for the people of Georgia. ... Georgians refuted any notion that the ideology of the country has shifted to the left.

Yeah, we all know that Georgia is a bellwether state.

THIS IS REALLY BAD NEWS

McClatchy (formerly Knight-Ridder) may be history within a year or so. Their coverage of the run-up to the Iraq War and it's prosecution were superb.

'Several Cities' Could Have No Daily Paper As Soon As 2010, Credit Rater Says
By Mark Fitzgerald
Editor & Publisher
Published: December 03, 2008 10:55 AM ET

Fitch rates the debt of two newspaper companies, The McClatchy Co. and Tribune Co. as junk, with serious possibilities of default. It also assigns a negative outlook to both the companies and the newspaper sector, meaning their credit ratings are likely to deteriorate further.

YES, MAISTRE IS STILL WITH US

This time in the person of gasbag pastor Rick Warren. In appearance on Hannity & Colmes, he seems to biblically justify war whores like Hannity:

HANNITY: Can you talk to rogue dictators? Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust, wants to wipe Israel off the map, is seeking nuclear weapons.

WARREN: Yes.

HANNITY: I think we need to take him out.

WARREN: Yes.

HANNITY: Am I advocating something dark, evil or something righteous?

WARREN: Well, actually, the Bible says that evil cannot be negotiated with. It has to just be stopped. And I believe…
HANNITY: By force?

WARREN: Well, if necessary. In fact, that is the legitimate role of government. The Bible says that God puts government on earth to punish evildoers. Not good-doers. Evildoers.

ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF MARKET FAILURE

This time it's the cost of an old drug that has been re-purposed.

British Balance Benefit vs. Cost of Latest Drugs
By GARDINER HARRIS
Published: December 2, 2008
RUISLIP, England —

Take the case of Celgene, the maker of Revlimid, a drug for multiple myeloma, a bone-marrow cancer, that in a preliminary ruling on Oct. 28 the institute said was too costly.

Celgene’s first big seller was thalidomide, a decades-old medicine now used as a cancer treatment, which is so cheap to manufacture that a company in Brazil sells it for pennies a pill.

Celgene initially spent very little on research and priced each pill in 1998 at $6. As the drug’s popularity against cancer grew, the company raised the price 30-fold to about $180 per pill, or $66,000 per year. The price increases reflected the medicine’s value, company executives said.

In 2005, the company introduced Revlimid, a derivative of thalidomide that is supposed to be less toxic, but may be no more effective. Celgene priced it at about $260 per pill, or $94,000 per year.

THIS is the market that Andrew Sullivan worships:

One reason I'm a conservative is the British National Health Service. Until you have lived under socialism, it sounds like a great idea. It isn't misery - although watching my parents go through the system lately has been nerve-wracking - but there is a basic assumption. The government collective decides everything. You, the individual patient, and you, the individual doctor, are the least of their concerns. I prefer freedom and the market to rationalism and the collective. That's why I live here.

ODD CONNECTION

Both the Limbaugh & Hannity shows air the same anti-liberal "commercials" during breaks and there is no identification of the source or sponsor. I've heard spoofs of Daschle, Rangel and a few others I can't recall right now.

UPDATE: I just heard another spoof commnercial and this one includes Cindy Sheehan and George Soros.

UPDATE II: Another one, this one about Hillary Clinton as "The Dominatrix"

UPDATE III: The Mark Levin show also carries the same spoofs.

THIS SUCKS...

One part of a proposed stimulus plan would boost infrastructure spending and I thought that was a great idea and I still do except it looks like it won't have much of an effect until next Fall.

Worries about next year
December 4, 2008, 9:07 am
Paul Krugman
NY Times

2. Infrastructure spending will take time to get going — a new Goldman Sachs report suggests that projects that are “shovel-ready” are probably only a few tens of billions worth, and that a larger effort would take much of a year to get going. Meanwhile, it’s very questionable how much effect tax rebates will have on consumer demand. So it may be hard for stimulus to get much traction until late 2009 — and that’s even if Congress goes along, which may be a problem given all the bad analysis and disinformation out there.

In the meantime, the city I live in is experiencing budget difficulties:

City must cut $31M more, Hein says
Parks-rec classes, Sun Tran service, police academy included in targets
By Rob O'Dell
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona Published: 12.04.2008

In a memo sent to the City Council on Wednesday, the manager outlined $31 million in immediate cuts and fee increases, in addition to $51 million slashed in earlier rounds of budget reductions for the fiscal year, which ends June 30.

PLUMBERS LIE TOO!

I caught something about this on the radio and I thought I had misheard because who in their right mind would think Joe the Plumber has read von Mises. This is more absured than Palin's claim that she reads The Economist.

This is the book recommendation Joe wrote:

The Theory of Money and Credit (Ludwig von Mises): "It brought monetary theory into the mainstream of economic analysis. It is important reading for these troubled times."

MORE ON THE CRA AND THE CRUNCH

The FRB has released a study on poverty that included an analysis of the CRAand the Crunch. Here's a speech summarizing the results:

Governor Randall S. Kroszner
At the Confronting Concentrated Poverty Policy Forum, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Washington, D.C.
December 3, 2008
The Community Reinvestment Act and the Recent Mortgage Crisis

Some critics of the CRA contend that by encouraging banking institutions to help meet the credit needs of lower-income borrowers and areas, the law pushed banking institutions to undertake high-risk mortgage lending. We have not yet seen empirical evidence to support these claims, nor has it been our experience in implementing the law over the past 30 years that the CRA has contributed to the erosion of safe and sound lending practices. In the remainder of my remarks, I will discuss some of our experiences with the CRA. I will also discuss the findings of a recent analysis of mortgage-related data by Federal Reserve staff that runs counter to the charge that the CRA was at the root of, or otherwise contributed in any substantive way, to the current subprime crisis.

The CRA does not stipulate minimum targets or goals for lending, investments, or services.

Over the years, the Federal Reserve has prepared two reports for the Congress that provide information on the performance of lending to lower-income borrowers or neighborhoods--populations that are the focus of the CRA.³ These studies found that lending to lower-income individuals and communities has been nearly as profitable and performed similarly to other types of lending done by CRA-covered institutions. Thus, the long-term evidence shows that the CRA has not pushed banks into extending loans that perform out of line with their traditional businesses. Rather, the law has encouraged banks to be aware of lending opportunities in all segments of their local communities as well as to learn how to undertake such lending in a safe and sound manner.

Recently, Federal Reserve staff has undertaken more specific analysis focusing on the potential relationship between the CRA and the current subprime crisis. This analysis was performed for the purpose of assessing claims that the CRA was a principal cause of the current mortgage market difficulties. For this analysis, the staff examined lending activity covering the period that corresponds to the height of the subprime boom.⁴

The research focused on two basic questions. First, we asked what share of originations for subprime loans is related to the CRA. The potential role of the CRA in the subprime crisis could either be large or small, depending on the answer to this question. We found that the loans that are the focus of the CRA represent a very small portion of the subprime lending market, casting considerable doubt on the potential contribution that the law could have made to the subprime mortgage crisis.

Second, we asked how CRA-related subprime loans performed relative to other loans. Once again, the potential role of the CRA could be large or small, depending on the answer to this question. We found that delinquency rates were high in all neighborhood income groups, and that CRA-related subprime loans performed in a comparable manner to other subprime loans; as such, differences in performance between CRA-related subprime lending and other subprime lending cannot lie at the root of recent market turmoil.

3. See Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (1993), Report to the Congress on Community Development Lending by Depository Institutions (Washington: Board of Governors), pp. 1-69; and Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2000), The Performance and Profitability of CRA-Related Lending (147 KB PDF) (Washington: Board of Governors, July), pp. 1-99.

4. The staff analysis focused on loans originated in 2005 and 2006.

Mark Thoma has more evidence that the CRA wasn't to blame.

HANNITY GETS CONTRADICTED, SAYS NOTHING

Yesterday on his radio show, Hannity had a spokesman for GM on and the spokesman told him that GM workers DO NOT make $70 hour, something the wingnuts have been trying to spread. Hannity did not follow-up on the statement and moved on to another "issue."

HM...SLOTS AND SETH DIDN'T KEEP THEIR WORD

I wrote before the election that Bill Bennett and his on-air sidekick promised to donate to Michelle Bachmann's re-election campaign but according to the FEC, neither one did as an individual. (No Bennett, no Leibsohn)

CRONY CAPITALISM ON WALL STREET

Robert Rubin was hired by Citigroup and was very well paid - $115 million since 1999. He also pushed Citi into riskier business that ultimately caused the Federal government to intervene and bail it out. As the Wall Street Journal put it:

What is clear is that Mr. Rubin encouraged changes that led Citi to the brink of collapse.

Even if Rubin didn't cheerlead Citi into disaster, the WSJ points out that:

As a great man of finance, Mr. Rubin would be paid CEO money -- a total of $115 million since 1999, not including stock options -- but without having to run a business or be accountable for the results. For years, journalists tried to figure out exactly what Mr. Rubin's job was at Citigroup

Why did Citi's owners, the shareholders, put up with this obvious BS?

PROFESSORS HART & ZINGALES GET IT WRONG

Writing in the WSJ, they assert:

Without principles, policy makers inevitably make mistakes and succumb to lobbying pressure. This is what happened with the Bush administration.

The Bush regime DID have a principle: Belief in the Free Market Fairy.

THE REAL CONSERVATIVE PRINCIPLES ARE...

God, guns and gays. (Variant: Guns, Babies, Jesus) No matter how they prattle on about the Free Market Fairy, these are the 3 core GOP principles and they try to shoehorn almost any problem into one of the three. For example, this morning War Whore Laura Ingraham was talking about the Mumbai tragedy and said things would've been different if Indians had 2nd Amendment rights. Way to make use of a tragedy to pander to the NRA freak shows, Laura!

RETROACTIVE TELCOM IMMUNITY IS STILL AN ISSUE

The EFF and other groups are challenging the constitutionality of the revised FISA that gives the telcoms retroactive immunity. Judge Vaughn Walker has asked the attorneys to provide answers to these 11 questions and I found 3 of them that I think are VERY important to the rule of law in America:

1. Given the extensive information about the telecommunications carriers’ cooperation with the government in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks that is publicly known and acknowledged by the government, how is the national security harmed if this cooperation is certified on the public record?

3. Is due process not compromised by the lack of an open adversarial process? How can national security concerns warrant such a compromise here? What is the harm in disclosing past cooperation in connection with adjudicating immunity for that past cooperation?

7. To the extent that section 802(a)(5) requires dismissal of an action against a person who did not provide assistance if the Attorney General submits a
certification under that provision, is the Act simply one that provides the Attorney General unlimited discretion? Inasmuch as the Attorney General can provide immunity under section 802(a)(5) to a person who did not provide assistance, is not his authority under the FISA amendments essentially boundless?

Emptywheel has a post about this trial and there are good comments. Threat Level has been live blogging the hearing.

HOW DOES HITCHENS KNOW THIS?

In an appearance on Hardball on Dec. 1st, Christopher Hitchens made a couple of interesting claims:

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, "VANITY FAIR": Well, I think you have the left-right bit wrong. I mean, General Petraeus isn't a right-winger. He's the guy who's defending secular democracy in Iraq. And I think it's tolerably well known that he hoped very much for an extension for Gates.


HITCHENS: Is it left or right for Hillary Clinton to get her husband, after a huge Pakistani fundraiser-I'm speaking about something very important to us right now-a few years ago-huge Pakistani fund-raiser in New York, organized for her by Lanny Davis-she got him to change his plan to visit India and to build in a visit to Pakistan on the way, in return for a huge campaign donation. Everyone in Pakistan knows she's open for business.

How does Hitchens KNOW these two highlighted "facts"? Aside from his terrible 2004 op-ed in the WaPo, I think Petraeus has been keeping his political preferences to himself. BTW, isn't it illegal for a candidate to accept donations from foreigners?

SO, WOULD THIS APPLY TO THE CLEANING LADIES?

I have some sympathy for efforts to give people the right to choose NOT to provide a medical service, as long as the patient has a reasonable alternative. The criminal Bush regime seems to be pandering to the Fundies one last time by greatly expanding the scope of this "conscience" law.

Broader medical refusal rule may go far beyond abortion
The Bush administration plans a new 'right of conscience' rule that would allow more workers to refuse more procedures. Critics say it could apply to artificial insemination and birth control.
By David G. Savage
December 2, 2008
LA Times

Since the 1970s, Congress has said no person may be compelled to perform or assist in performing an abortion or sterilization. One law says no person may be required to assist in a "health service program or research activity" that is "contrary to his religious beliefs or moral convictions." The HHS rule says that law should be enforced "broadly" to cover any "activity related in any way to providing medicine, healthcare or any other service related to health or welfare."

I SEE WHY THEY ARE FRIENDS

Some time ago, Bill "Slots" Bennett said on his radio show that Likud politician Benjamin Netanyahu was one of his friends. Bennett is a neo-con and I suspect he likes Netanyahu ("Bibi") because he's a hawk. Josh Marshall has this description of "Bibi":

(It's ironic that Netanyahu, who's got a thin national security resume by Israeli standards, should be seen in that light since verbal and policy aggression are his only real calling cards. But that's another story ...) But Netanyahu is not only the voice of Israeli territorial maximalism, albeit in its current more limited form, he's also fundamentally unreliable person -- a charlatan.

The portions in BOLD also apply to Bennett, so it's no wonder they're friends.

THIS IS SOME OF THE CHANGE WE NEED

So far, the Paulson/Bernanke "plan" to deal with the Crunch hasn't been very effective and seems to neglect the real economy. Prof. Elizabeth Warren, who used to post at TPM, chairs the panel that is suppposed to oversee the "plan" and I think she understands that a top-down approach isn't enough.

Bailout Monitor Sees Lack of a Coherent Plan
By DIANA B. HENRIQUES
Published: December 1, 2008
NY Times

“You can’t just say, ‘Credit isn’t moving through the system,’ ” she said in her first public comments since being named to the panel. “You have to ask why.”

If the answer is that banks do not have money to lend, it would make sense to push capital into their hands, as the Treasury has been doing over the last two months, she continued. But if the answer is that their potential borrowers are getting less creditworthy with each passing day, “pouring money into banks isn’t going to fix that problem,” she said.

Meetings with Treasury officials so far have made her question whether they understand that “household financial health is profoundly tied to the economic health of the nation,” she said. “You cannot repair this economy if you can’t repair those families, and I’m not sure the people directing the bailout see that as their job.”

In her view, the government should be trying to create more reliable customers for those banks by shoring up the fragile finances of the millions of American families that could not save, borrow or spend even if their banks were flush with capital.

“Any effective policy has to start with the households,” she said. “Years of flat wages, low savings and high debt have left America’s households extremely vulnerable.”

BUSH FLIP-FLOPS AGAIN

In an interview with Charlie Gibson of ABC, Bush claims not to know if there would've been an Iraq War IF the intelligence said Saddam didn't have WMD:

GIBSON: If the intelligence had been right, would there have been an Iraq war?

BUSH: Yes, because Saddam Hussein was unwilling to let the inspectors go in to determine whether or not the U.N. resolutions were being upheld. In other words, if he had had weapons of mass destruction, would there have been a war? Absolutely.

GIBSON: No, if you had known he didn't.

BUSH: Oh, I see what you're saying. You know, that's an interesting question. That is a do-over that I can't do. It's hard for me to speculate.

Back in December 2003, Bush has no doubts: there would've been a war even if there was no intelligence that indicated Saddam had WMD:

SAWYER: But stated as a hard fact, that there were weapons of mass destruction, as opposed to the possibility that he could move to acquire those weapons still --

BUSH: So what's the difference?


SAWYER: Well --

BUSH: The possibility that he could acquire weapons. If he were acquire weapons [sic], he would be the danger. That's the -- that's what I'm trying to explain to you.

A gathering threat, after 9/11, is a threat that needed to be dealt with.

And it was done after 12 long years of the world saying, "the man's a danger." And so, we got rid of him.

And there's no doubt the world is a safer, freer place as a result of Saddam being gone.

[snip]

SAWYER: What would it take to convince you he didn't have weapons of mass destruction?

BUSH: Saddam Hussein was a threat. And the fact that he is gone means America is a safer country.


SAWYER: And if he doesn't have weapons of mass destruction --

BUSH: You can keep asking the question. I'm telling ya, I made the right decision for America.

SOMETHING ELSE YOU WON'T HEAR FROM HANNITY

Hannity talks a lot about how Fannie, Freddie and the CRA are responsible for the Big ShitPile and almost never mentions other factors. particularly the Bush Administration. Barry Ritholtz has managed to get several video clips of Fredo pushing for more mortgage loans and the AP finds that the Administration was told years before the collapse that our financial system was in jeopardy.

AP IMPACT: US diluted loan rules before crash
Dec 1 07:11 AM US/Eastern
By MATT APUZZO
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents.

"Expect fallout, expect foreclosures, expect horror stories," California mortgage lender Paris Welch wrote to U.S. regulators in January 2006, about one year before the housing implosion cost her a job.

Bowing to aggressive lobbying—along with assurances from banks that the troubled mortgages were OK—regulators delayed action for nearly one year. By the time new rules were released late in 2006, the toughest of the proposed provisions were gone and the meltdown was under way.

The administration's blind eye to the impending crisis is emblematic of its governing philosophy, which trusted market forces and discounted the value of government intervention in the economy. Its belief ironically has ushered in the most massive government intervention since the 1930s.

Many of the banks that fought to undermine the proposals by some regulators are now either out of business or accepting billions in federal aid to recover from a mortgage crisis they insisted would never come. Many executives remain in high-paying jobs, even after their assurances were proved false.

In 2005, faced with ominous signs the housing market was in jeopardy, bank regulators proposed new guidelines for banks writing risky loans. Today, in the midst of the worst housing recession in a generation, the proposal reads like a list of what-ifs:

_Regulators told bankers exotic mortgages were often inappropriate for buyers with bad credit.

_Banks would have been required to increase efforts to verify that buyers actually had jobs and could afford houses.

_Regulators proposed a cap on risky mortgages so a string of defaults wouldn't be crippling.

_Banks that bundled and sold mortgages were told to be sure investors knew exactly what they were buying.

_Regulators urged banks to help buyers make responsible decisions and clearly advise them that interest rates might skyrocket and huge payments might be due sooner than expected.

Those proposals all were stripped from the final rules. None required congressional approval or the president's signature.

HANNITY STILL CAN'T ADMIT IT

He used the phrase "heading into an economic slowdown" to describe our current economy instead of admitting that we are in a recession and it began last December.

WE HAVE LOST ANOTHER CLEAR VOICE

Tanta of Calculated Risk has died. She perceived the mortgage crisis extremely clearly and wrote well and entertainingly about it and other economic issues. The NY Times has some more information about her.

THIS IS NO SURPRISE

This news is no surprise, unless you had listened to and believed Sean Hannity, who claimed repeatedly before the election that the economy was OK. Hannity was also wrong about the pre-election polls and I'm beginning to think that his political influence is also in a recession.

Recession in U.S. Started in December 2007, NBER Says (Update2)
By Timothy R. Homan and Steve Matthews

Dec. 1 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. economy entered a recession a year ago this month, the panel that dates American business expansions said today.

The declaration was made by the cycle-dating committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private, nonprofit group of economists based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The last time the U.S. was in a recession was from March through November 2001, according to NBER.

Federal Reserve policy makers at their last meeting predicted the economy will contract through the middle of 2009, in line with private economists’ forecasts. If correct, the recession would be the longest since the Great Depression.

The contraction would be the second under President George W. Bush’s watch, making him the first U.S. leader since Richard Nixon to preside over two recessions.