Economy

Will The Bailout Work?

This entry was posted in Periodic Posts and tagged Economy on by

Follow this link to Paul Kugman’s comment in the New York Times about the proposed financial bailout.

On his front page that leads to this article, he says,

Even if you have full faith in Henry Paulson, Intrade currently gives John McCain a 48 percent chance of being president. Are you willing to give essentially unlimited discretion over the use of $700 billion — with explicit protection against any review by Congress or the courts — to Phil Gramm?

Is this just another boondoggle so that the Bush administration can give another $700 billion to its friends?  I hope not, because, so far, this bailout has done a wonderful job for my portfolio.  Never before have I lost so much money, on paper, in two days and gained it back in the two days after that.

I guess Paul Krugman was only getting warmed up on Sunday.

Follow this link to his Cash For Trash column on Monday, September 22.

Rescued by Barney Frank

This entry was posted in Periodic Posts and tagged Democratic Record Economy on by
So here’s the record – 12 years of Republicans, including John McCain being a committee chairman for much of that period. Zero – zero enactment of any reform. Democrats take power, and in a year and a half, we have passed a bill that did everything the administration asked for, in terms of enhancing the regulatory structure.

Can You Stand Four More Years Of This?

This entry was posted in Periodic Posts and tagged Economy finance on by

Follow this link to the New York Times story on the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the sale of Merrill Lynch, and probable troubles for AIG.

On Friday, the news was that Lehman Brothers was in much better shape than Bear Sterns had been when they went belly up.  I guess that story was like the predicted $200 per barrel oil. As soon as you start hearing stories like this, you check to make sure your wallet is still safe.

Can you stand four more years of this stellar performance by the regulators, the treasury, and the Federal Reserve? How about the proposition that Sarah Palin knows what to do? I think it is time to get serious, folks.  The situation is far too dire to keep fooling around.

Greenberg’s Law of the Media

This entry was posted in Greenberg's Law of The Media Periodic Posts and tagged Economy statistics on by

Follow this link to see The Worcester Telegram & Gazette’s publication of my letter that states Greenberg’s Law of the Media, “If an item has a number in it, it’s probably misleading.”

I was taking them to task for an editorial that misused numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to make the case that Bush’s performance on unemployment has not been too bad.

It’s All In Your Head

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Follow this link to view the video of McCain/Bush explaining that it is all in your head.

Don’t worry if you cannot pay for your sub-prime mortgage.  It’s all in your head. You are not actually homeless.  Oh, and those hundreds of billions of dollars of write downs the banks will take – all in their heads.  You’re not really spending $50 to fill your gas tank.  It’s all in your head.

Obama’s Thoughts on Economic Matters

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MSNBC’s Maria Bartiromo interviewed Barack Obama mostly focusing on economic and business matters.

If you follow the above link, you will find videos of parts of the interview and a link to the full transcript of the interview.

The interview shows why I favor Obama over Clinton on these issues. His articulate answers make me believe that he really understands how things work and how they can be made to work better. He shows that he is not dogmatic and is willing to listen to ideas other than the ones that he has settled on at this time.

Specific proposals are always good. However, they may have a limited lifetime and they may get altered as they work their way through the political process. That is why I think it is more important to know that candidates understand how the world works than it is to know that they can regurgitate a specific proposal that advisers may have come up with.

It is important to know that Obama’s aim is to make the economy work for all instead of concentrating the benefits on a few. Whatever twists and turns his proposals have to take due to shifting circumstances, knowing the underlying principal gives me something to hold onto.

What If They Fix Iraq and Ruin The U.S.A.

This entry was posted in Periodic Posts and tagged Economy Iraq War on by

I have heard a report that Ford Motor Company is going to sell the Jaguar and Land Rover divisions to Tata Motors of India. It struck me as extremely ironic that a company in a former colony of Great Britain would take over two iconic British automobile brands.

I tried to think of a similar scenario that could occur in the United States to make it more clear to a domestic audience the full import of this chain of events.

What I finally came up with is the United States continuing the war in Iraq until success. This would mean that Iraq would finally stabilize and its economy could once again flourish given their vast oil resources.

Unfortunately the cost to the United States for this success was a hollowing out of the U.S. economy. Our own companies would end up struggling more and more for survival. The dollar would continue to slide and the price of oil denominated in dollars would continue to rise. Eventually a company in the wealthy country of Iraq would have to come to the rescue of General Motors by buying up its Cadillac division.

I wonder if anyone in Great Britain in 1950 would think that an Indian company would ever own Jaguar and Land Rover. I wonder if anyone in the U.S. in 2008 could conceive of the possibility that the downfall of the U.S. began with the Iraq war. What could we do to prevent this from happening? Or is it too late?