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McCain’s mortgage plan

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Last night, John McCain pulled something that has now become a bit of a debate trademark with him: announce in vague terms a solution to a major problem. Last time it was a spending freeze, announced and forgotten until last night when he repeated it again. But he added something last night, a proposal that the government buy up mortgages as a way of aiding homeowners. Of course, there was no way for Obama to respond; he had no idea what McCain was talking about. I was watching at headquarters and I remember blurting out that he had never said that before.

Per usual, the devil is in the details, and the details, which a McCain lackey dribbled out this morning, aren’t pretty. What might make sense is to have some sort of program to allow the homeowners to reduce the principal of their loan to market value. What doesn’t make sense is to have the government buy up the mortgages, thereby giving the banks who got us into this mess a bonanza. Of the two foregoing possibilities, guess which one McCain chose? Brad Delong explains:

The McCain plan is:

Take $300 billion.
Pay double current market value to banks that have troubled mortgages on their books, thus:
Give a present of $100 billion to the bankers who made the loans.

Acquire and regularize the mortgages of only two-thirds as many homeowners as could have been accomplished if the $300 billion were invested wisely.

There’s a big difference here: Democrats want to prevent depression and support the financial markets by investing taxpayer money in banks with troubled assets. Republicans want to give taxpayers money away to the shareholders and managers of banks with troubled assets.

Another minor point that I noticed last night. McCain said we have to keep housing prices up. Housing prices are artificially high. It makes no sense to try to sustain an artificial situation.

Filed in Presidential Politics, The Real McCain | | Comments (0)

Who could have known that the SEC would roll over for Wall Street

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Just finished watching Joe Courtney and waiting for Obama.

Just time to note this article (Impartiality of S.E.C. Is Questioned). The article relates the story of an SEC investigator who was fired for being too aggressive in an investigation he was conducting. The inspector general has concluded, per usual, that there was misconduct involved in his firing. What struck me was this:

In a statement Monday, the chairman of the Senate finance committee at the time, Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, who held hearings on the matter, said: “Gary Aguirre told it like it was and lost his job. Today we’re all paying the price for an S.E.C. culture of deference to Wall Street.”

When Bush nominated Chris Cox to head the SEC there was no secret about where Cox would take the agency. The Senate voted to put him there. How surprising can it be that there is a culture of deference to Wall Street. What did they expect?

Filed in Economics | | Comments (1)

The Keating Story

Monday, October 6, 2008

Obama is doing what Kerry and Gore never did. Hitting back. He was ready for the attacks and now that McCain has started spreading lies, Obama is spreading truth. What’s great about this is that it resonate so well with what’s going on right now.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDofbll86dY[/youtube]

In yet another sign of his total psychological meltdown (not to mention the disappearance of the last shred of honor, if he ever had any) McCain is now claiming that the Keating Five scandal was a partisan witch hunt, despite the fact that the other four were Democrats and he himself has said over and over again that did, in fact, acknowledge making mistakes on Keating. It’s obvious Obama has had this tape in the can for a while, holding it back for when the smears came. In the wink of any eye they had a whole website up about the scandal.

Filed in The Real McCain | | Comments (1)

Brush up your Shakespeare

Monday, October 6, 2008

Great bit on Colbert:

Stephen knows his Shakespeare.

Filed in Presidential Politics | | Comments (0)

Breathtaking

Monday, October 6, 2008

According to the New York Times (Lehman Managers Portrayed as Irresponsible) Lehman executives were looting the company just days before it went belly up:

One Lehman document among thousands reviewed by the House committee showed that four days before the bank filed for bankruptcy protection, Lehman’s compensation committee was asked to grant $20 million in “special payments” for three executives who were leaving, Mr. Waxman said. An e-mail exchange recommending a delay in bonus payments was apparently brushed aside.

Another document showed that executives were warned in a January 2008 meeting that the company was facing liquidity problems. Yet the firm moved forward with capital outlays, including $5 billion in bonuses, $4 billion in shares and $750,000 in dividend payments between 2007 and the firm’s bankruptcy filing on Sept. 15.

I am just a country lawyer, and I stopped doing bankruptcies when the law was “reformed”, but I think I know a preference (and an insider preference at that) when I see one. It is to be hoped that the trustee, whoever he or she may be, will be contacting these folks post-haste to ask for that money back.

Filed in Economics | | Comments (2)

Shocking news

Sunday, October 5, 2008

We’re going to miss the big fella.

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A bit more on the debate

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Thanks to a reader, who pointed me to this from Rachel Maddow:

And, for anyone who hasn’t seen it, check out the SNL sketch from last night. You can view it here. For reasons I can’t fathom, the embed code doesn’t seem to work on my site.

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Congratulations to Joe Courtney

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Joe voted against the second bailout bill, for which he should be applauded. He was right on the merits with his first vote, and there was no logical reason for him to change his vote for the second bill, which by any measure important to a Democrat was worse than the first bill. Joe’s to be commended for sticking to his guns.

In a few weeks or months we’ll be hearing that more needs to be done. Hopefully, at that point, the Democrats will be in a position to dictate the response and they’ll have the willingness to pass something that will benefit the people of this country.

UPDATE: I had heard from one well placed person that one of Joe’s problems with the bill was the fact that it did nothing to limit executive compensation. I repeated that to a few people, all of whom thought that it did, and I myself had not heard anything independently to suggest that the limits had been deleted from, for instance, what Dodd had proposed. I don’t know if this was one of Joe’s problems, but it does look like the executive compensation limits are of the Potemkin variety:

For supporters of the Bush administration’s $700-billion Wall Street bailout, it stands as a key selling point: a provision that limits pay packages for the heads of companies helped by the taxpayer-funded rescue program.

There’s just one problem: It would do little to cap executive pay or rein in the enormous retirement packages – the golden parachutes – that have come to symbolize corporate excess.

Not only is the compensation provision vague, it is punched full of loopholes and leaves many issues of executive pay for the White House to decide later. Legal and political experts say the bill will do almost nothing to limit CEO compensation – even for companies that benefit handsomely from the taxpayers’ generosity.

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Friday Night Music-Bela Fleck

Friday, October 3, 2008

I can’t begin to even categorize this guy, but his music is great. A couple of examples:

Big Country:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXHOyqHzupk[/youtube]

A Moment So Close:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFwrJ1rd_xQ[/youtube]

Filed in Music | | Comments (0)

For it, before he’s against it.

Friday, October 3, 2008

Via Thinkprogress:

Yesterday during an interview with the Denver Post, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) claimed, “I will not and have never supported renegotiating the Colorado River Compact,” an agreement that “governs how seven Western states, including Colorado and Arizona, share the Colorado River“:

MCCAIN: And by the way, whatever misinterpretation there may have been, I will not and have never supported renegotiating the Colorado River Compact. … Never, Never would I support a renegotiation of the Colorado River Compact. Please. No. Got it?

But in August, McCain did exactly that. He told the Pueblo Chieftain that the compact “obviously, needs to be renegotiated“:

MCCAIN: I don’t think there’s any doubt the major, major issue is water and can be as important as oil. So the compact that is in effect, obviously, needs to be renegotiated over time amongst the interested parties.

Now, I know nothing about the compact, and have no idea whether it should be renegotiated. But the above quote, taken in the context of a number of statements in recent weeks in which McCain has tailored his positions to suit his audience, often in direct contradiction to what he has said to others (e.g., here), leaves us with two alternatives regarding the straight talker:

1. He will say whatever he must say to please his immediate audience, and is fully conscious of that fact. If we accept this alternative, then McCain is one of the most deeply dishonest persons ever to run for the office. Sure, they all trim their language a bit to suit the audience, but this isn’t trimming. This is chronic lying.

2. The alternative is that McCain has descended so far into senility that he really doesn’t know what he is saying from one moment, or one day, to the next.

I’m not sure which is worse. It pains me to say that it is probably better to have a chronic liar for president, rather than a man mired in dementia, especially with the airhead Palin waiting in the wings.

There is a third alternative, a sort of middle ground between the two. Perhaps McCain’s mind is relatively sound, but he just doesn’t care to keep track of his positions, preferring instead to say whatever his audience wants to hear at any given time. That theory would lead us to conclude that he is not, strictly speaking, a liar. It would however, reveal him as a deeply cynical and unprincipled human being. Nowadays, on the national lever, there’s another name for that type of person. They’re called “Republicans”.

Filed in The Real McCain, Uncategorized | | Comments (0)