UPDATE: The first tremors of the Obama-Ayres connection are showing up on CNN. We’ll see how much more comes out in the next four weeks.
The financial turmoil of the past two weeks has scrambled the race for the presidency so that no one knows where it goes from here. The political left is ecstatic thinking their man has it won. Maybe they are right. Sorry, maybe they are correct. I don’t know.
McCain seems to be paying a price for the interruption of his campaign. Ironically, the House Republicans, by refusing to vote for the bailout bill last week, may have torpedoed their own re-election by damaging McCain and adding to the anger of the voters about the bill. They made him look weak and gave Obama cover when he stayed out of the mess. Of course, Obama had the Congressional majority and the press to cover for him.
Clumsily, a McCain campaign functionary spoke about “turning the page” on the economic crisis and described plans to attack Obama’s associations with Ayres, et al. With campaign aides like that one, McCain doesn’t need opponents. Announcing political strategy is what amateurs do.
What has happened is that, rather than an example of deregulation, the financial mess is an example of government interfering in free markets. Even the New York Times admits what happened, although avoiding any blame for the real culprits.
When the mortgage giant Fannie Mae recruited Daniel H. Mudd, he told a friend he wanted to work for an altruistic business. Already a decorated marine and a successful executive, he wanted to be a role model to his four children — just as his father, the television journalist Roger Mudd, had been to him.
Now, why do you think Fannie Mae would recruit the son of a well known TV figure ? They also recruited Barney Frank’s gay lover. A previous lover was running a gay prostitute ring from Barney’s house, as this item confirms, indignantly correcting an error. No, it wasn’t Frank running the ring but it was his house.
I grew up in Chicago and my old neighborhood was an idyllic urban setting. There was a mixture of single family homes and apartments in three flat buildings plus some larger apartment blocks. The pattern was a commercial street every three or four east-west streets and every eight north-south streets. Those patterns assumed that people walked from public transportation that ran along those streets, either buses or the Illinois Central commuter train. My mother shopped for groceries and had them delivered to our home. I walked to school, even in kindergarten. In the 1960s that began to change. The movie Death Wish shows a home invasion robbery by young men posing as grocery delivery boys. I had moved to California by that time, but my father was assaulted on the front porch of our home in the early 1960s by boys who followed him to the front door. He managed to get the door open and the family dog attacked the assailants, driving them away. Soon the house was sold and both my parents moved into apartments for safety. That neighborhood now has almost no local business. Those shops are empty shells.
Now we have a financial crisis brought on by social engineering and the people who created the crisis look confident that they will be elected to deal with it. Today, I watched the Stephanopolis TV show and saw Katrina van der Heuval discussing the implications of Obama’s election. She said that a “progressive” president will be in position to supervise a complete restructuring of the American economy. I’m sure that Katrina, whose magazine The Nation, is a far-left journal, has big plans. Note the author of the lead article on Obama’s “bailout strategy.”
Congress, Wall Street and the media have little interest in our fine ideas unless we have a plan to do something.
That “something” is to frame the crisis clearly as the voters’ verdict on failed free-market fantasies, elect Barack Obama and a few more members of Congress, then demand emergency action to address the Wall Street crisis and its $700 billion twin, the war in Iraq.
I have no problem with Barack Obama supporting the bailout package as long as it keeps him on track to the presidency. He needs to be critical, to offer amendments, and to promise to return to the crisis the day after November 4.
Here it comes.
We need a November electoral mandate rejecting reckless unregulated free-market capitalism as a model for our century. Every minute we carry that message in these days before the election, we are building that mandate. We need a peace mandate, too.
Now, the question is whether Obama is as “progressive” as his supporters think he is. I doubt he knows. So far, he seems to have vague yearnings to make something of himself and “do good.” Running for office seems to be the only thing he’s good at and, with the uncritical support he has gotten this year from the media, we can’t even be sure of that. If he were white, no one would have heard of him. If these progressive advisors and supporters get control of him, and they may, we are in for rough times ahead. Maybe the voters will finally balk at this dangerous experiment in affirmative action. Here are some of his advisors.
His only “executive” experience was running the Chicago Annenberg Challenge with Bill Ayres. They spent $150 million and the Chicago public schools did not improve. Some radical groups got a lot of the money and what they did with it is unknown. The story is here, but few will read it.
I wish they could all see Katrina making plans for the Obama administration.
[…] Read the rest of this great post here […]
If Obama is elected, he may screw up so badly that the country will swing right again in four years.
Keep hope alive!
There may not be enough left to swing right. Roosevelt failed to do anything to end the Depression. It didn’t keep him from being re-elected although he was far more able than O.
The Repubs are so clueless. Today I got a forwarded email from one of them – a retired professor – blaming in ALL CAPS the current crisis on Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Congress since 2006. After all, everything seemed to be okay a year ago!
If the credit crisis is too complicated for even the more educated activists, imagine how confusing it is for the average voter. The Dems are hanging this around our neck because of GOP “deregulation” and I’m afraid it’s going to stick.
Yes Obama could do a lot of damage in four years. And continue to blame the worsening problems on his predecessor.
It’s amazing the race is even this close with the media in the tank for Obama. This video could be a SNL skit but it’s reality at CNN.
http://neoneocon.com/2008/10/05/cnn-cant-count-but-is-that-really-a-surprise/#comments
Also, no mention in the media of Palin’s rally in Carson, California. Over 1,000 people and over $2million dollars raised.
There is this pernicious and masochistic trend in many conservatives: since the Republican Party is so far from its goals, why not let the Democrats win and run things into the ground? Then the Republican base will see the error of its ways, and a new and better party will ride the rescue.
Sounds good…except….
1. The pain and suffering that will be felt by many innocent people.
But more importantly:
2. That strategy was tried. Ross Perot was the fellow who everyone knew wouldn’t win, but would teach the Republican Country Club types to reform. It put Clinton in the White House, and didn’t change the Republicans one iota. Oh some people quote Newt Gingrich at me, but look at how all that worked out.
This is why I don’t care for the “Third Party” approach. People who vote Third Party (or sit out elections) are simply voting for the side that wins.
And no matter how much a conservative dislikes McCain, or the RNC, Obama and the current DNC are MUCH farther away from conservative goals.
Think Supreme Court Justices. Think Fairness Doctrine. Most of all, go re-read Jonah Goldberg. And tell me how anything in Barack Obama’s voting history is not in lockstep with the Pelosi-Reid Gang.
So my view is go with the “least bad.” Many Third Party folks are just claiming that they are voting their consciences. But in this election, they are effectively voting for Barack Obama, and they should be up front about that.
Just my two cents.
I don’t know where everyone gets the idea that there was any deregulation of any kind. We’ve had layers upon layers of regulations applied to the principals in the markets. What wasn’t regulated is the issue. And the key to everything in the credit collapse was the huge financial houses and central banks counting on ‘insurance’ of their debt portfolios, credit default swaps, or whatever debt de jour, by such as AIG. That’s what wasn’t regulated. AIG was able to claim they could insure any risk of any portfolio without putting up one dime of reserve fund. Moody’s AAA rating on AIG was all that was needed. And that’s why AIG, an insurance company for godsake was the key player that had to be kept viable, or else the entire world banking entities that had insured their risks with AIG would be slammed beyond comprehension. And for that matter, the bailout is just buying time.
You guys love your politics, but this is gonna be beyond D and R real soon. There may be another bandaid I’m not seeing, but I don’t see any net under this collapse. I’ll give you a little tidbit that is not being talked about. The price of silver and gold is dropping with everything else, but guess what? There are no gold coins, silver coins, bullion or anything to be had from the precious metal dealers anywhere. The govt says they’re out of bullion to sell. What????? The only thing the dealers will sell are the highest premium collector coins. NO Krugs, eagles, nothing. You draw your own conclusion.
And big money people are so frightened now, they are buying govt and agency bonds at a small loss, to avoid larger losses. It’s all panic selling now. That’s one reason the US$ is hitting new highs each week, a huge irrational rush to safety. Scared idiots selling the good with the bad. I just saw the Nikkei down over 450 five minutes ago, and dropping. Yen carry trades unwinding like a marlin on a run. Monday on Wall Street is setting up for another big red day. Like the saying goes, the markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
>>>>Scared idiots selling the good with the bad.
I like to think the good will assert its value in the end. Productive people and enterprises should pull through. The fakers and scam artists need to be flushed.
>>>>I walked to school, even in kindergarten. In the 1960s that began to change.
I often wonder about this. The Depression era was marked by low crime rates. The next generation was marked by a steady march of crime. As late as 1979 you could unlatch some car hoods from outside the vehicle. By 1981 the hood releases were all inside the vehicle.
Bill Ayers and his ilk hate our society, and others have opined that they accepted/encouraged higher crime rates as a way to strike back at “The Man”.
allan, I agree but we all need a little escapism now and then, yes? LOL
Yes, indeed, cassandra. And that why that little ray of sunshine of mine above came after 2 plus hours of whirling a lot of flirty hussies around the dance floor. And the things I write like that aren’t all that much of a complaining nature, just a flashlight on the darker corners that help me get a handle on what’s in there, and what I need to do about it. But I don’t go for escapism. I just call it fun, and it’s why I love living. These ‘problems’ like looming world credit collapse are just challenges to figure out in between the fun. That’s when I go into flashlight mode. Some folks have benefited greatly from this collapse, I missed a bunch from taking my finger off some fabulous short trades that seemed crazy at the time. So I’ve a lot to learn about trusting my instincts.
I am reading The House of Morgan now, about half way through. It is eerie how much this resembles the 1929-1932 period. I read Amity Schlaes book when it came out. This period is very, very dangerous and we are about to elect, I fear, the very worst possible president. A lot of the people around him are fascists and they will see the turmoil as an opportunity to take control.
Speaking of the 1929-32 time frame this longish excerpt [apologies] from the Daily Reckoning. I believe you were intimating we are setting up for some similar repercussions in the preceding comment alluding to taking control. I agree, and for the last few weeks endeavoring to reset my strategies to accommodate such likelihoods.
“…W]e might have done nothing. That would have been utter ruin. Instead we met the situation with proposals…of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic… Some of the reactionary economists urged that we should allow the liquidation to take its course until we have found bottom… We determined that we would not follow the advice of the bitter-end liquidationists…”
That quotation comes neither from Paulson nor Bernankes, but from another ghost. Herbert Hoover has gotten the reputation for being a “do nothing” president. Would it were so. When the Herbert Hoover passed the baton to Roosevelt, his can-do meddling had already helped turn a financial crisis into a Great Depression. You see, ghosts are often morons too.
Poor Andrew Mellon was shouldered aside in the early ’30s. Then, Hoover got to work. His first improvement is known to us by two knuckleheads who turned it into law – Misters Smoot and Hawley. The idea was to protect U.S. business by imposing higher tariffs on foreign trade. A group of 1,000 economists, bankers and other notables realized that blocking trade at the onset of an economic slump would be suicide. They urged him to veto the bill. But Hoover believed in tariffs as he believed in almost all other forms of government interference. He signed the bill with approval.
He called on the Fed to provide “an ample supply of credit at low rates of interest,” and initiated a program of public works – including the Hoover Dam, a massive lump of concrete that blocks the Colorado River. He threatened federal regulation of the New York Stock Exchange and attacked short selling.
Hoover’s chief concern seemed to be to hold up the price of labor. He cut off immigration, in an effort to keep out wage competition. Then, he got the business community to pledge that it would not reduce wages. Since the cost of labor was then too high for the closely shaved profit margins, businesses could not hire. Unemployment rose.
Roosevelt was a better politician, which is to say – he was more shameless. He attacked Hoover for spending too much money – won the presidency – and then spent more. He began so many agencies and projects – from the AAA (Agriculture Adjustment Act) to the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) to the SSA (Social Security Act) – he practically ran out of alphabet. He also imposed wage and price controls, as well as limits to executive salaries.
What was the result of all these good intentions? Instead of a panic and quick recovery – a la 1921 – the U.S. economy went into a long, hard on-again, off-again depression that put a quarter of the workforce out of a job. It might have lasted until the ’50s had it not been for the biggest public works program of all time came along – WWII.
And now the ghosts of the Great Depression haunt the Capitol, while today’s Smoots and Hawleys vote on a new plan. They’ve pledged a new bailout program by the end of the week. When last we looked world markets were turning up their faces, hopefully…like a girl expecting a kiss. What they’re more likely to get is a good fright….”
The three stones tied to the economy were Smoot Hawley, Deflation as they tried to balance the budget and the pressure to employers not to cut wages. Now, we have Obama attacking free trade and unions that will fight retrenchment. See GM for the effects.
I promise this is my last comment to clog your thread, Doc. But I couldn’t resist slipping in this paragraph that I just saw referenced….
‘Watch money,’ she [Ayn Rand] said. ‘Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done not by consent, but by compulsion — when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing — when you see that money is flowing to those who deal not in goods, but in favors—when you see that men get rich more easily by graft than by work, and your laws no longer protect you against them, but protect them against you — when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice — you may know that your society is doomed.’”
Don’t know for certain about the doomed part, since we somehow survived several depressions and draconian govt measures, but the rest of that is almost a perfect description of the last 5 or 6 years in the financial and congressional world. Short selling bans, forced liquidations, sweet deals for Buffet, import tariffs on ethanol, just to start the list beyond the obvious bailouts and rescue plans. The only bright spot is the US is at such a high standard of living, we have a much longer fall to the levels of the third world set. Buying time is the priority for now.
Back to my reading…
“Over 1,000 people and over $2million dollars raised.”
Actually there were 15 -20 thousand in attendance. The LAT lowballed it at 8 thousand, soldout at 13,00 tickets and overflow of 5-7…as well as the president of the L.A. chapter of NOW, personally introducing and endorsing Palin.
“Alot of the people around him are fascists and they will see the turmoil as an opportunity to take control.”
Does Obama actually realize this and willfully would allow it or is just clueless enough to trust those who stroke his ego and get him into office?
God, I hope you’re right Nancy – if he gets in, let the miserable 4 years be over with quickly and be so dreadful, that more people than ever will want a conservative in office.
okay, the last 30 days will be nail biters…I can’t even spell my name correctly.
do you know your blog is listed on this blackhat site? blackhatbootcamp.net/listofwordpressblogs/
I’m crossing my fingers and hoping, hoping, hoping that it would only be 4 years. My fear is that our freedoms will be erroded faster than the mid-term reelection. There is much talk of the fairness doctrine coming back, and of limits on the kind of speech allowed in congress. No really.
I had never heard of the black hat site and looked but didn’t find it.