A Totally Unscientific Survey

OK, for those of you who don't have the time to read an extremely long post but who would like to know what the editorial boards of the nation's newspapers are saying about the proposed bailout of the robber barons, here's a quick list of links: the NY Times; the Washington Post; the Los Angeles Times; the Boston Globe; the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

There's nothing magical about this list. It represents the top three newspapers I read every morning, plus the other three I read at least a couple of times a week because I'm interested (for one reason or another) in that area of the country. What I believe all six show, however, is that most of the editorial boards in major metropolitan areas have been embarrassed by their failure to cover just what has been happening in this country the past ten years. Here's what they said.

the NY Times:

Nearly everyone agrees that the there will have to be another very big bailout. The financial system, gorged on its own excesses, cannot stabilize without intervention. The $700 billion would be used to buy up the bad assets that are presumably clogging the system.

To protect the American taxpayer, Congress must ensure that the bailout comes with clear ground rules and vigilant oversight. In an appalling, though familiar fashion, the ground rules proposed by the Bush administration are wholly unacceptable — as are its tactics. ...

The only way to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest is for Mr. Paulson to welcome full and transparent legislative and judicial review.

A counterproposal now being developed by the Democrats would require firms that sell their troubled assets to the Treasury to give the government stock — an idea that has populist appeal but also needs to be vetted carefully. It also would try to help homeowners, who are left out of the administration’s plan entirely, allowing them to have their mortgages modified under bankruptcy court protection. That step that should have been taken long ago to avert the foreclosures and house price declines that are at the root of the crisis.

the Washington Post:

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. clearly believes that the way to get the maximum number of financial institutions to unload as much distressed paper as possible, as quickly as possible, is to keep it simple: announce that the U.S. Treasury is open for business and let the fire sale begin. That is essentially what he advocated when he asked Congress for the power to purchase troubled mortgage-backed assets from financial institutions at whatever price he and hired experts saw fit, with only minimal congressional supervision and complete immunity from lawsuits.

The problem, of course, is that this raises the risk that the government will get fleeced by the debt-sellers, raising the ultimate cost to taxpayers. It was also politically unrealistic, in that members of Congress were quite properly concerned that financial institutions accept limits on executive compensation in return for their federal lifeline. There was no provision in Mr. Paulson's proposal for taxpayers to enjoy any of the profits that financial institutions may enjoy once they have been restored to health. A new proposal by Senate Democrats seeks to correct this by requiring would-be asset-dumpers to give the government equity if Uncle Sam winds up having to sell the paper at a loss. Of course, at the margin, the proposal could deter some firms from ridding themselves of the bad loans in the first place. And that would slow the process. Democrats are also insisting on various forms of mortgage relief for the homeowners who are about to find themselves in debt to Uncle Sam. Mortgage relief might help stabilize home prices, but since the government would now own so many mortgages, taxpayers (most of whose mortgages are not in trouble) would have to foot the bill once again.

the Los Angeles Times:

The bailout that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has proposed for the U.S. financial system could cost as much as $700 billion, or about $2,300 for every American man, woman and child. Taxpayers rightly expect to receive something tangible in return for such an investment, and there are at least four things policymakers can and should deliver.

Paulson's proposal would let the Treasury Department buy mortgage-related assets from financial firms with few constraints on how the power would be used. For an administration accustomed to overreaching, such a request for unfettered authority is neither surprising nor welcome; the Bush White House is in no position to ask for that kind of trust. Congress should make the Treasury's bailout efforts subject to the same oversight -- by Congress and the courts -- as its nonemergency actions, while also requiring that banks compete for aid and that taxpayers be protected against wasteful spending on overpriced assets.

...lawmakers should make it easier for lenders to help borrowers who can afford to stay in their homes until the housing market rebounds. The Treasury should lead the way by agreeing to write down loan values and reduce mortgage interest rates, and by taking other steps to keep the mortgages it acquires out of default wherever practical. Doing so wouldn't just help homeowners, it would lower the bailout's ultimate cost to taxpayers. ...

Wary of the political backlash, some congressional Democrats want to leaven the aid for Wall Street with money for infrastructure projects, more tax rebates and low-interest loans for automakers. The political appeal of such proposals isn't matched by any broad economic benefits, however. A simpler and more sensible approach is to extend unemployment benefits, which would stimulate consumer spending and boost the economy.

Finally, more needs to be done to protect against another subprime mortgage fiasco. The Federal Reserve Board took an important step in July when it updated its “truth in lending” rules to guard against some types of predatory lending.

the Boston Globe:

Not so fast. While Congress shouldn't drag its feet in formulating a systematic response to the financial crisis, neither should members abdicate their responsibility to protect taxpayers' interests. Maybe, just maybe, companies that allocated their money recklessly shouldn't be rewarded by simply having the government take soured investments off their hands.

A central question is what, if anything, financial institutions will have to give up in return for help from Washington. Mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and insurer AIG got an infusion of capital from the federal government, but had to submit to government control. Lawmakers need to consider making similar demands of companies that take part in a broader buyout.

the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Congress can demand protections for taxpayers and can demand that any entity holding the bad debt be short-lived and that the government do its best to make the taxpayer whole. It should insist that top management doesn't benefit directly from the bailout.

Congress should insist on assistance for average people, too - think an extension of unemployment benefits, additional food stamp assistance, perhaps even a second stimulus payment.

After that, Congress needs to get back to the hard business of reforming the regulatory system that was supposed to oversee financial institutions. And here's a hint on that one: You can't catch up to a Jaguar when you're driving an Edsel.

the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

U.S. taxpayers are angry about the fraternity party excess on Wall Street that helped create the bailout frenzy we’re in today, and executive compensation that rewards position over performance has become a national symbol of lost priorities. The nation’s four largest investment banks — including Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers — paid out a total of almost $30 billion in bonuses in 2007.

That’s why Democrats in Congress are justified in pushing for sensible restrictions on compensation paid to executives whose firms will be taking advantage of the proposed $700 billion bailout of the U.S. financial system by dumping their bad debt on the taxpayers.

Hmmm...I see a trend. I just hope that Congress has time to do some critical reading to see the same trend.

Better late than never, eh?

Reconsidering Retirement

As this article in today's NY Times points out, people in their forties can't be thrilled with the volatility of the market and the troubled financial world, but at least they have the time to wait for a recovery. People in the sixties and seventies don't have that luxury.

Older Americans with investments are among the hardest hit by the turmoil in the financial markets and have the least opportunity to recover.

As companies have switched from fixed pensions to 401(k) accounts, retirees risk losing big chunks of their wealth and income in a single day’s trading, as many have in the last month....

Today’s retirees have less money in savings, longer life expectancies and greater exposure to market risk than any retirees since World War II. Even before the last week of turmoil, 39 percent of retirees said they expected to outlive their savings, up from 29 percent in 2007, according to a survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, an industry-sponsored group in Washington.

“This really highlights the new world of retirement,” said Richard Johnson, a principal research associate at the Urban Institute in Washington. “It’s a much riskier world for retirees, because people don’t have defined-benefit plans. They have pots of money and they have to worry about making it last.”

And things are even worse for those who have to rely solely on Social Security because some of the other factors in the economic meltdown, including dramatically higher energy and food costs, means they have to stretch those few dollars even further. Even if they own their homes, many have taken part in the refinancing boom of the last ten years just to make ends meet so that their equity has declined dramatically just as the housing sector bubble has burst. Until local assessments catch up with the lower valuations, many can't pay the property taxes and face foreclosure for a different reason than those who purchased homes they now can't afford.

And for those of us on the cusp, not yet retired but nearing that day, "that day" has been pushed further into the future:

Surveys by AARP, the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies and the Employee Benefit Research Institute have found that more workers nearing retirement age are putting off their plans to retire, curtailing contributions to their 401(k) accounts and borrowing from the accounts to pay for living expenses, including credit card and mortgage debt.

Getting old has never been easy in this culture, but now it's become much harder. Hopefully any deal that Congress makes with the robber barons keeps that in mind.

(202)244-3121

That's the number for the House switchboard. You can also send emails. Mine read "Please do not give any more of my hard earned money to the crooks in the White House. Thank you."

Please call the members of Congress who represent you. Tell them NO. What has been so pathetically mismanaged will not be managed better if the war criminals in office get more money. That is all.

Meanwhile, Back In Congress

The financial crisis the US is facing and the bailout proposed by the current administration have taken up everyone's attention the past several days, and rightfully so. While I don't think the situation is quite as dire as Messrs. Bush, Bernanke and Paulson would have us believe, it is serious and Congress should move quickly (rather than hastily) towards a reasonable response to the crisis.

Congress has other issues facing it, however, and many of them are are not being reported on. One of those issues is a retooling of the 1973 War Powers Act now being considered. That law was passed in response to the Viet Nam war, which was waged without Congressional approval. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed by Congress did not authorize the military action taken by the executive branch, but presidents involved used the ambiguities of that resolution to prosecute the war. By 1973, the American public had had enough of that war, and the 1973 Act was a direct response. It made clear that approval for war-making had to come from the Congress, which is what the US Constitution mandated.

Two members of the Congress that passed that 1973 War Powers Act (Paul Findley, R-Ill., and Don Fraser, D-Minn.) have an op-ed piece in today's Los Angeles Times about the updating of the 1973 act and they are outraged at one proposal which has issued.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee is conducting hearings on proposals to amend the War Powers Act of 1973. One proposal, House Joint Resolution 53, would wisely tighten restrictions on executive war-making by the president. Another, proposed by a 12-member commission led by two former secretaries of State -- Republican James Baker and Democrat Warren Christopher -- but not yet introduced as a bill, would dangerously expand the authority of the president to order acts of war without authorization by Congress. Baker and Christopher are scheduled to testify before Congress on Wednesday about their proposal. ...

...the Baker-Christopher panel urges scrapping the War Powers Act of 1973 in favor of a so-called War Powers Consultation Act of 2009, which would increase the war powers of the president far beyond the limits allowed by our Constitution. This commission is asking Congress to approve legislation that would enable the president to start a war -- or in any way use military force -- without even a report to Congress, much less consultation. The proposed legislation has loopholes big enough to allow major military operations by the president alone.

Among these loopholes we find that "limited acts of reprisal against terrorists or states that sponsor terrorism" are exempt from reference to Congress. But who identifies "terrorists"? Who defines "terrorism"? Who determines which are "states that sponsor terrorism"? Who defines "limited"? The president alone. Congress is consigned to the role of an uninformed, unconsulted bystander.

Under this exception, the president could, without even a nod to Congress, ignore historic rights of national sovereignty and commit acts of war against any country that he determines is a haven of suspected terrorists. He could, for example, declare Iran a state that sponsors terrorism and carpet-bomb its nuclear facilities. The language is sufficiently ambiguous to enable a willful president to start a major war without constitutional authority, exactly as occurred in Vietnam.

Another expansion of presidential war powers proposed by Baker and Christopher would allow "acts to prevent criminal activity abroad." But who defines "criminal activity"? Who decides what "acts to prevent" such activity should be used? Again, the president alone decides.

Still another loophole is the exclusion of "covert activities" from approval by Congress. With recent revelations of CIA bombings in Pakistan and the scandals at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo fresh in mind, it must be obvious that the country needs more oversight, not less.

It's time for Congress to step up to their constitutional responsibilities and to quit passing them over to the executive branch. If the past eight years has taught us anything it is that giving the president unlimited power has been disastrous, from the current Wall Street debacle, to the one in Baghdad and Guantanamo Bay, from the unwarranted domestic spying to the scrapping of regulatory oversight of polluters.

Yes, a president has to be able to respond expeditiously to attacks, but he or she must consult with and gain the approval of Congress before taking the country to war. The US Constitution requires it. The 1973 Act has worked for 35 years. It may need updating, but it doesn't need trashing.

Sunday Poetry: T.S. Eliot

From The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old . . . I grow old . . .
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind?Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

T. S. Eliot

Al Qaeda's Birthday

Rami Khouri reminds us that this month is the twentieth anniversary of the founding of Al Qaeda in his column in the Jordan Times. It's initial founding came with the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, but it has certainly outlived that historical period. Mr. Khouri looks at the reasons why Al Qaeda is still around and in many respects still thriving.

The several phenomena that Al Qaeda represents - defensive jihad, militant self-assertion, a puritanical interpretation of religious doctrine, cosmic theological battle and political struggle to purify tainted Islamic societies - appeal to a wide variety of individuals who gravitate to its call in the same manner that zealots join any other such movements of true believers.

Coming to grips with the phenomena it represents - especially the continuing threat of terrorism - requires grasping the combination of social, economic and political conditions in local societies from which Al Qaeda recruits emanate - mainly in the Arab world, South Asia and immigrant quarters of urban Europe. ...

Over the past two decades, Al Qaeda seems to have evolved in line with trends impacting the wider world of Islamist movements, including local crackdowns in many countries, and the American-led “global war on terror” that has been defined heavily, but not exclusively, by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

These pressures to disrupt Al Qaeda have been offset by a continuation of the stressful conditions at local and national levels in many Arab-Asian societies that nourish these Salafist jihadi movements in the first place. So a more useful question than “What is Al Qaeda’s condition today?” concerns the wider trends in Arab-Asian societies that bolster Islamist radicalism by spurring five related forces:

1. The slow political fragmentation and fraying at the edges of once centralised nation-states like Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Lebanon, Sudan, Afghanistan and Algeria, creating vacuums of authority that Islamists and others quickly fill.

2. The continued sharp disparities in local delivery of basic social services, job opportunities and security throughout much of the Arab-Asian region, creating urgent needs that Islamists are very good at meeting.

3. The impact of major nationalist issues such as the Arab-Israeli conflict or the Anglo-American-led war on Iraq.

4. Police brutality and political oppression at the local level in many Arab-Asian countries (the birthplace of Al Qaeda was both Afghanistan and the prisons of Egypt).

5. Occasional external and mostly Western stimuli to those who see themselves fighting a defensive jihad to protect both the honour and the physical existence of the threatened Islamic umma, such as the Danish cartoons, Pope Benedict’s speech in August 2006, virulently anti-Islamic movies and books, and a tendency by leading politicians (such as John McCain and Sarah Palin today) to repeatedly speak of an undefined “Islamic radicalism” as a great threat to Western civilisation that must be fought for decades, if not lifetimes.

Karl Rove's sneering statement of liberals' response to terrorism aside, it's clear that the Bush administration's response to Al Qaeda has been a total disaster. BushCo's Global War on Terror has failed not only to stamp out the Al Qaeda movement, it has aided in the recruitment efforts and expansion of the group. As many have pointed out, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay have done more for Al Qaeda than any call to martyrdom and all that implies.

What does Mr. Khouri suggest?

Any militant movement that endures for 20 years and spurs dozens of smaller clones is not only a consequence of its own organisational prowess. It reflects the persistence of enabling conditions that breed militants and militancy.

If we don’t want to go through this again 20 years from now, we would do well to grasp and change the wider degrading conditions that feed recruits into terror movements, including Arab jails, socio-economic disparity and abuse of power, Israeli occupations, Anglo-American wars and Western Islamophobia. [Emphasis added]

It's a daunting task, and an expensive one, but it certainly has to be less expensive in money and lives than the road chosen by the Bush administration.

121 days

The Big Guys, $700 Billion ...

The Little Guys, Nothing.

Yep, that's right. Those who lost everything in the mortgage scam will get nothing from Paulson's proposal to bail out the hot shot financial geniuses who caused the meltdown but an increased tax burden and an even shakier economy. Joan Vennochi made that clear in her column published today in the Boston Globe.

Some aspects of the Wall Street crisis are tough to understand. But one economic principle is pretty clear.

When a really big company goes bust, the little guy pays with his home or job. But those CEOs and money managers who boldly march their corporate empires into bankruptcy just get paid millions and millions of dollars more.

From Washington, inconsistency is the policy order of the day. ...

But no one wants to help taxpayers who are losing homes and jobs. In the grand scheme of American capitalism, they are overreaching specks, too stupid, presumptuous, and inconsequential to spare. ...

The country's conservative moralists shake their finger at low-income home buyers who dared to make a grab for a humble piece of the American dream. When the dream turns nightmarish, the foreclosed-upon are held personally accountable for their bad debt.

But there's no personal accountability for those who actually understood the fine print behind those shaky loans, because they wrote it. No one tells them to hand back their bonuses. If they are eventually forced out, they walk out with huge paychecks.

Exactly so.

I don't know which is more stunning: that Washington really believes that rewarding those who caused this financial crisis will guarantee that it will never happen again, or that Washington believes that the rest of the country is too stupid to notice or to care.

The proposal from Treasury Secretary Paulson, as it stands, stinks, and the Democrats in Congress had better do more than hold their noses and pass it without some huge changes. Earlier today, I suggested one provision that has to be struck in its entirety, the one which gives the Treasury Secretary absolute power over the bail-out with no congressional or judicial review.

Here are a few more suggestions, some of which have been offered by people like Bernie Sanders and Barney Frank, and by people like you and me.

Add provisions that strip the executives of these financial giants of all bonuses awarded in 2008 and of any golden parachute they were counting on should they be forced out.

Add rules and regulations on this seamy part of the market so that robbing the rest of us gets more difficult.

Add a provision that gives bankruptcy judges the power to alter the terms of the mortgages that drove the home owner into that court.

That would be a good start. If this bail-out is so essential, and I admit it may very well be, lets not just give the money away. Let's make those assholes earn it.

Way

I am thinking it is time to go visit right wing sites and tell then You got us into this,now please just don't vote.

For those who don't know, I am telling you now. I worked from my high school years on, and when I worked my salary was deducted from. The social security and unemployment deductions did not come into my pocket, although I had earned them. When I lost jobs and when I got social security recently, that was money I had worked for and earned.

The right wing wants you to think that this is charity. They are liars. I will pay taxes on my social security payments, although I already paid taxes on them.

I bought my house without your help. Now I am being taxed for mortgages that are irresponsible that were given by right wingers I voted against.

The right wingers who said that regulations were bad for business have been disproved. completely.

This is totally wrong. I am being made to pay for mistakes that the right wingers made, that were obviously wrong, and that I fought against.

I am begging you to vote for Obama, even though he isn't your color and though he says rational things you fought against. And if you can't get to that degree of rational behavior, just don't vote.

Election? Why Bother

Yesterday the administration sent Congress an emergency proposal to bail out Wall Street. The President spoke briefly about the mammoth disaster about to happen and just why he believes the government needs to pour $700 billion in order to save those financial institutions about to go under because of the mortgage debacle. Henry Paulson, Treasury Secretary, spent the day in conference with dozens of congress critters urging them to act quickly to enact the proposed bill because the crisis was so severe that our very way of life was threatened.

The proposal, which the NY Times has published in its entirety here, is dramatically simple. Written in comparatively straightforward English (unlike most legislation), it runs to only three pages. The President, Treasury Secretary, and Fed-head, Ben Bernanke all urged the Congress to act swiftly because time was of the essence.

This Los Angeles Times article is typical of the coverage being given to the financial crisis, and it focuses on some of the more important provisions contained in that three-page document prepared for Congress.

A draft of the plan was delivered to Congress early today, and lawmakers will spend the weekend poring over it. As written, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson and his successor would be handed expansive authority, beyond the reach of U.S. courts, to attempt to rescue staggering financial markets. ...

At the White House, President Bush acknowledged the immensity of the plan, which would give the Treasury secretary enormous control and bypass many of the traditional checks and balances of government.

"This is a big package, because it was a big problem," Bush said in the Oval Office as he met today with the president of Colombia. "I will tell our citizens and continue to remind them that the risk of doing nothing far outweighs the risk of the package, and that, over time, we're going to get a lot of the money back." [Emphasis added]

It sounds a great deal like the rush to pass the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) and The Patriot Act, doesn't it? Well, that's only because this same kind of pressure is being applied in the same way. That alone should raise suspicions in Congress. And some of those people and their advisers are suspicious.

"It's got to be done right away, but they won't make any concessions in order to get it to happen," said Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks), who sits on the House Financial Services Committee.

"They are playing Russian roulette in the hopes that if the economy gets shot, the Democrats get blamed," Sherman said. ...

Robert E. Litan, a Treasury official with the Clinton administration who is now a senior analyst with the Brookings Institution, said the new plan seemed to invite banks and securities firms to dump their very worst assets on the government with no clear way for Washington to get rid of them.

"What they're going to get is the financial equivalent of radioactive waste," he warned.

Several in Congress have already started complaining that the massive bail-out does plenty for Wall Street and absolutely nothing for Main Street, and, since it's the people of Main Street who are putting up the money, those Congress Critters are uneasy about the proposal as it stands. They want to include relief for the actual victims in the whole mortgage scams, those who have or about to lose their homes.

But here's the part of the proposal that has me aghast:

Sec. 8. Review.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency. [Emphasis added]

That's right. What Secretary Paulson (and his successor) want is absolute and unfettered authority to do whatever they want with what will probably end up to be over $1 trillion. No Congressional oversight, no judicial review. Their actions will carry a conclusive presumption of appropriateness.

How's that for striking at the heart of Constitutional government?

No wonder the administration is in such a rush. Hopefully Congress will notice at least this provision in the short proposal and strike it immediately. If it doesn't, then we might as well cancel the November elections. It won't matter who the President is, he won't be the chief executive. The Treasury Secretary will.

Bonus Critter Blogging: Cheetah

(Photograph by Chris Johns and published at National Geographic.)

Gott Mit Uns

That the rest of the world has an amazing fascination with our election is clear, if Watching America is any indication. One of the most intriguing articles from that international site is from Norway's Aftenposten and is titled "God as Denial of Responsibility."

In the article, the author examines what for him is the peculiar role of religion in American politics, especially over the last decade. He begins with George W. Bush.

When God is on your team, the world can be dangerously simple. ...

For the past eight years, secularised Europe has been watching with increasing astonishment a president who for the most part is guided by religion; who has had a very difficult relationship with the English language; who has systematically prioritised loyalty over competence, and who seems to be without any intellectual curiosity.

From there he moves on to the GOP's vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin:

Take Sarah Palin. The Alaskan governor with great skills at carving up big game, McCain's snapping hound with lipstick. With her American conservatism she has torn away its last shred of political civilization (read what she said about foreign policy at the convention). We are risking having a woman who sees God's hands in all she does just a heartbeat away from the oval office. A unholy mixture of ignorance and vulgarity. We know this “Gott mit uns” - mentality all to well from European history. Save us from the Alaskan version! [Emphasis added]

The article's author is smart enough to realize that much of the religiosity displayed by the GOP is just that, rather than true piety. The religion card plays well, especially since it serves to provide a handy and cynical facade to cover what actually lies behind it.

...The dangerous psychological impact of toying with religion are all too rarely pointed out, especially the encouragement of fanaticism and denial of accountability biblical quotations can lead to. It is easy to be confident when you can use simple rationalization because God is on your side. To say that you will do “what Jesus did” can be a simple excuse to avoid studying the issues at hand. ... [Emphasis added]

This kind of analysis has indeed been sorely missing in the US discourse, especially during the election season, because most Americans are somewhat loathe to criticize another's religion (unless, of course, that religion is Islam). This is dangerously unfortunate for the very reasons the article points out. No amount of lipstick can cover the results of such religiosity, as we have discovered the past eight years.

God help us if we have to go through another four years of this.

What Avedon Said

For those of you who missed it, I'm posting The Sideshow yesterday about bad times. A.K.A. Republican maladministration. and there's a one-pager to go with it.

I understand why people don't think much about this - we're always being told that the Republicans are "fiscally responsible" and good for business and so on, and we're also encouraged to think that our own experience is isolated and that out there in the rest of the world things really are better under the Republicans. Sure, it was easier for you to find a job in the '60s or the '90s, but the corporate media is always there to tell you that things are really fine with the Republicans in charge. Totting up the numbers takes a lot of research and time, and it's only recently that it's become relatively easy to do all that research on the internet instead of spending hours, days, even weeks, sniffing dust in libraries. Even so, it's still dry, time-consuming work.

But we repeat it for a while in our small numbers, and sooner or later more and more people are looking at the numbers and remembering that, by the gods, things really are better under Democrats!

The Republicans always have a lot of "responsible"-sounding reasons why they are better for the economy, but honestly, they are lies. The Republicans don't want to help "families", they don't want to help you avoid moral hazard, they don't want you to do your best and try to achieve, they don't care whether their policies hurt you.

Their end game isn't to make you a harder-working and better person, it's to avoid having to show you any respect. They don't respect you and they don't want to have to pretend they do. They want you to show them deference and they know you won't do that if you feel like a free person in a free society who doesn't have to take crap from some petty tyrant who thinks you should feel honored to kiss his ring. Republicans are pissed off because it's so hard to get good help these days - help that knows they are just the help, that knows their place, that uses the servants' entrance and calls them "sir" and doesn't question them. A strong middle-class - that is, a secure workforce - gets bolshy and tells abusive employers to bugger off, and the ruling class doesn't like that.

Which is why Alan Greenspan, secure himself in the knowledge that Ronald Reagan et al. had already severely weakened the middle-class to the point where they could actually say this stuff out loud, publicly stated that he regarded it as his job to increase economic insecurity. Your economic insecurity.

Liberal economic policies do what Republicans claim they want to do for you - to make your own money and efforts work for you. For example, having the government coordinate a program that uses some percentage of our earnings to give us an unemployment insurance program is more efficient, more stable, and far, far less expensive, than forcing us to look independently for commercial unemployment insurance. It also has knock-on effects that benefit you - even if you, personally, never need to collect on that insurance, and know that means someone who was unsuccessful will probably get the best use of the taxes you paid for that insurance, that makes your own success more likely. It helps to stabilize the economy as a whole, it spreads the wealth through the community bloodstream and keeps it flowing in a more healthy fashion.

Programs like Social Security and Medicare don't just help old people, they also help their children, whose own futures don't get sucked away by having to take care of aging parents (both physically and economically) - parents who might otherwise have to live with you if you don't want the misery (or at least shame) of having them sleep on grates. Parents who might become a burden on your marriage, on your finances (forget sending the kids to college), and an impediment to all of your hopes to give your kids a better life.

In other words, these "wasteful" liberal programs make it more likely that you will be successful and can pursue life, liberty, and happiness a little more hopefully - and they save you money. You would never be able to afford these things if you had to spend that same money yourself on the commercial market.

And you wouldn't save it anyway, because employers aren't going to suddenly start giving you more money. Your take-home pay (after payroll taxes) is $50,000 a year? Fine - now that there are no more payroll taxes, you can live on that - we can pay you $50,000 a year and you now have the "freedom" to figure out how to spend it. Oh, you refuse? Well, I'm sure we can hire newer, younger staff who will find a way....

And what the oligarchs never want you to think about is that heavily taxing the rich - especially things like estate taxes - also make the economy richer, improve your opportunities, increase the likelihood of innovation, and all that other good stuff that America is supposed to be especially good at. Because without estate taxes, wealthy families can keep accumulating wealth for their unproductive offspring and keep that money out of the economy, making them stronger and you proportionately weaker, until the vast majority of people are little more than serfs and slaves working for a tiny number of Malefactors of Great Wealth. Money is like blood in the economy's body, and if it doesn't circulate - if it all accumulates at the top - the body withers while the head becomes stuffed up and bloated, and neither part functions very well.

Now, I'm not saying Democrats have been blameless in allowing the Tories to take over - hell, some of them are Tories themselves. But the Republicans have always been "the party of business" - by which they mean big, bloated business, and not family-farm-and-local-shop business. And the more successful they've been, the more completely they control anything that could get in the way of big, bloated business taking away what you've worked hard for, including your family farm and local shop.

As a person whose memory has always been spotty in the best of times, I'm surprised that I remember watching these patterns so much better than most people do. But I'm hoping you'll all remember it, now that others are talking about it, and repeat it, and spread the knowledge, before they finish closing all the libraries and taking the internet away from us and deleting that knowledge once and for all.

Get out there and make the phone calls, knock on doors, get the country back on track if you can.

Great Galloping Hoover!

No, not Herbert, J. Edgar.

While we have one eye on the November elections and the other on the nation's financial meltdown, it's pretty easy to overlook some of the other news developing out there. And that's dangerous, especially given the current administration. Sure, BushCo will soon be over, but its friends and backers will still be around, and history has shown that such characters will surface just as soon as the time is right.

An editorial in today's Los Angeles Times warns us about one plan in the works. The FBI has decided it needs to loosen the already loose restrictions on its domestic spying.

Citing a post-9/11 change in its mission, the FBI is planning to relax guidelines for the surveillance of groups and individuals who might -- and the key word is "might" -- harbor terrorists or spies. Because the actual wording hasn't been released, it's difficult to make a definitive judgment about whether the new guidelines for initial investigative "assessments" would revive the bad old days when the FBI engaged in massive and unjustified spying on Americans. But explanations from Bush administration officials are unsettling.

... the FBI wants more leeway to send agents or informants to public places and conduct "pretext interviews" -- FBI jargon for conversations in which an investigator asks questions without identifying himself as an agent. This first-stage surveillance doesn't require reasonable suspicion that those under surveillance are terrorists; it could take place on the basis of speculation or rumor. [Emphasis added]

Security letters and warrantless wire taps aren't enough. Now we get have to have agents drop by the local pub to sniff out any unAmerican chatter. Well, probably not just any local pub, or even just a pub. One assumes that the gathering is one of those suspicious kinds, filled with long-haired hippie types, Quakers, or (gasp!) Middle Easterners.

The LA Times editorial points out one of the intended effects of this new and improved "investigation tool":

... under the rules proposed by the FBI, agents and informants could insinuate themselves into mosques and political organizations whose only "suspicious" behavior is to criticize U.S. policy toward Iraq or support the Palestinian cause. That treads dangerously close to violating free speech and religion rights guaranteed under the 1st Amendment.

Well, yeah, along with free assembly and privacy rights. The new rules hit out at a whole bunch of civil liberties, but, after all, the Bill of Rights is so 9/10.

We really have become a Third World Nation.

Friday Catblogging

Hidey on a blackberry day. Many, many more are wished for you, Hidey.



Cleo with those green green eyes, wishing Hidey well

Living Rough

There is an exciting quality to pitching a tent, building a fire, cooking with metal pots and pans, seeing the sky overhead and grass under your feet. After a couple of months of it, somehow I fear the excitement would not keep you going. I've camped out, but I never actually have had nowhere to live. It's happening all around us, as people lose their homes.

If I had lost a job and my house, and had no one to take me in, I don't know that I wouldn't have wound up in a tent city, as so many have. The problem is growing, and the shelters are full.

From Seattle to Athens, Georgia, homeless advocacy groups and city agencies are reporting the most visible rise in homeless encampments in a generation.

Nearly 61 percent of local and state homeless coalitions say they've experienced a rise in homelessness since the foreclosure crisis began in 2007, according to a report by the National Coalition for the Homeless. The group says the problem has worsened since the report's release in April, with foreclosures mounting, gas and food prices rising and the job market tightening. iReport.com: What are tough times forcing you to give up?

"It's clear that poverty and homelessness have increased," said Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the coalition. "The economy is in chaos, we're in an unofficial recession and Americans are worried, from the homeless to the middle class, about their future."
Don't Miss

* iReport.com: Feeling the pain
* iReport.com: What are you giving up?
* TIME.com: Government redefines 'homelessness'
* McCain calls for new agency to fix crisis
* CNN/Money: Bailout aimed to fix credit crunch

The phenomenon of encampments has caught advocacy groups somewhat by surprise, largely because of how quickly they have sprung up.

"What you're seeing is encampments that I haven't seen since the 80s," said Paul Boden, executive director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, an umbrella group for homeless advocacy organizations in the California cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Oakland -- and in Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington.

The relatively tony city of Santa Barbara, California, has given over a parking lot to people who sleep in cars and vans. The city of Fresno, California, is trying to manage several proliferating tent cities, including an encampment where people have made shelters out of scrap wood.

In Portland, and Seattle, homeless advocacy groups have paired with nonprofits or faith-based groups to manage tent cities as outdoor shelters. Other cities where tent cities have either appeared or expanded include include Chattanooga, Tennessee; San Diego, California; and Columbus, Ohio.

Bushvilles, anyone?

High Office and Criminal Conduct

When this maladministration showed its true colors, by refusing to acknowledge authority of the International Criminal Court to prosecute offenders in this country, maybe I was not the only one to see we were in trouble. Now I have company in recognizing that bad character is affecting this country in its most basic operations, and its well-being. Stealing from the public has become a way of life to deregulated industry, and those funds are not being put back into our economy.

Unfortunately, she describes moral underpinning as the old "Protestant ethics" (white men is understood in this sentence) and deplores diversity - ignoring the rapacity with which the western world has treated the rest of the world. Her main point, that greed without the rule of law has deprived our formerly prosperous society of its operational system, however, has validity.

No more are there wise men at the top, who take pride in running an honorable financial world that makes the world safe for everyone. Those who took their place, as the moral principles of the country also fell, were the new wise guys, often up from nothing and replacing the idea of public service with greed and ignorance. Analysts say that we have had more corporate scandals in the last five years than during the entire 20th century.

The new book The World Is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy , by longtime investment counselor and wise man David Smick, has intellectually taken apart this distraught era. His title, of course, plays upon Thomas L. Friedman's well-known book praising globalization, The World Is Flat. But Mr. Smick takes issue with this. To him, the world is curved, uncertain, with no one really knowing what is ahead unless we rethink our principles.

He finds that "our leadership must reform today's dangerously flawed financial architecture." It is, he says, "a tale of greed, hypocrisy and sheer folly," in which the young brokers and investment bankers created their own private markets. As the banks repackaged individual loans and mortgages for the global market, banks moved further and further away from the borrower "or any need to worry about whether he or she would repay a loan." In short, the money-crazed wise guys of the new world cared only for themselves, and in the end, of course, lost themselves, as well as everything else.

The elements of its own destruction are evident in this wistful classic punditry op-ed, which insists that some of the creators of systemic injustice were noble and we need to have their kind back in power. There is much to be gained by plowing under the elites that simply kept out of power those who didn't look like them. A true test of the disempowerment of working classes has been the past almost eight years. We have failure on every front.

High standards of behavior, which the Geyer mantra assumes belong to the very rich, are what we have had wiped out to our great loss in the current occupied White House. She is correct that criminal conduct has hurt even the criminals.

The Sticking Point

Meanwhile, back in Iraq, the Bush administration still hasn't nailed down a security agreement with Iraq which would allow US troops to remain in that country beyond the end of the year, which is when the United Nations mandate for the occupation runs out. The sticking point? Immunity for US troops and security contractors from Iraqi law, which should come as no surprise. It has been sticking point in the negotiations right from the start.

This article in today's NY Times makes it clear that more is going on than just an insistence on asserting Iraq's right to enforce its own laws. President Maliki knows the Bush administration will soon end, and he's counting on getting a better deal from the next administration. He also knows he can't possibly get the agreement approved by the Iraqi Parliament if immunity is part of the deal.

Even so, the Iraqi stance certainly is understandable, given the last 5+ years of Blackwater, Abu Ghraib, and the shoddy treatment of Iraqi civilians by US forces.

The major remaining point of contention involves immunity, with the United States maintaining that American troops and military contractors should have the same protections they have in other countries where they are based and Iraq insisting that they be subject to the country’s criminal justice system for any crime committed outside of a military operation, the officials said. ...

Ali al-Adeeb, a member of the Dawa party and deputy head of Mr. Maliki’s political bloc in Parliament, spoke in an interview of repeated American offenses, both real and symbolic. He cited the use of palaces and cultural sites as American bases and headquarters, disrespect for Iraqi women during searches and killings of Iraqis who ventured too close to patrols.

He said the Iraqis were insisting on limiting immunity “because the Americans are moving about in a chaotic way in Iraq without consulting with the Iraqi government.”

He added, “They arrest whomever they want, and they commit all sorts of mistakes without being accountable.” [Emphasis added]

In other words, the US has been behaving as a typical occupying force without any restraints. Unfortunately (or, fortunately, in the Iraqis' view), at year's end, that behavior will no longer be shielded by the facade of international law. It's pretty hard to fault the Iraqis on their insistence that full immunity from the consequences of criminal behavior is off the table.

I just wish that our Congress would show such spine.

Thursday Birdblogging

This is a roadrunner chanced upon in the Albuquerque Botanical Gardens by Feral Liberal last week. This New Mexico trip was a first time for him, and those horizon-wide views were a treat. He still likes green though.

Please note that the roadrunner has found a treat, and doesn't mind showing it off for the camera.

Who Pays?

There were several questions about who is paying for our mounting buyouts, and of course the answer is you and me. As tax revenues decline, of course, the returns to use up are diminishing. Like U.S. families, the government is losing buying power as income declines along with the value of the dollar, and prices rise.

One interesting suggestion is the extension of insurance categories to include losses due to business malpractice.

As venerable American financial institutions topple, the concept of "too big to fail" is being sorely tested. Bear Stearns gets help. Lehman Brothers does not. The Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department are acting like insurance-claims adjusters, selectively providing assistance when a company's failure seems too much for the financial markets to withstand.

Why not make investment banks and other companies pay premiums for this catastrophic-risk insurance? The government already provides flood, bank and crop insurance. Unlike participants in those programs, however, the companies that qualify for "too big to fail" insurance do not pay for the privilege.

Designing this too-big-to-fail insurance would be tricky but feasible. The potential economic impact of financial companies' failure and the risk in their portfolios would have to be evaluated to determine which companies would be required to obtain this protection, and to calibrate premiums.

The goal should be to limit the contagion of failure, rather than to prevent failure itself.

The squeal of businesses desperate to avoid any expense while suckling on the public teat can well be anticipated. From 20% of revenues in 2000 the share of tax revenues that business contributes to our national till has declined, but no longer is the actual figure given out. Like all public interests, the business contribution has been severely crimped by right winger government.

The disembowelled public interest has become a casualty that the country can't do without. Without a consumer, there are no sales, a concept so simplistic only the determined ignorance now in power could have refused to acknowledge it. Now sales figures show the effects. Unemployment insurance was devised to set aside some of earnings to insure against the kind of loss that has been visited on workers by sending their jobs abroad.

Simultaneously, our plummeting financial system shows what happens when consumers haven't got the means to supply their basic needs; value is made into no more than a mindgame. There can be insurance against this kind of loss as well.

Businesses cannot afford to ignore the effects of their malfeasance, and should be required to insure against it just as are the workers. It is their own source of income that they are destroying, and the institutions should be guarding against the decimation of wealth that they are creating.

Our Ms. Brooks: Welcome To The Third World

The latest column from Rosa Brooks (published in the Los Angeles Times) is a remarkable bit of analysis with snarkitude. Composed as a letter to the US from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, it quite accurately describes our current economic situation and details just how it is that what was once the super-engine of the world is now spiralling downward.

We thus want to acknowledge the progress you have made in your evolution from economic superpower to economic basket case. Normally, such a process might take 100 years or more. With your oscillation between free-market extremism and nationalization of private companies, however, you have successfully achieved, in a few short years, many of the key hallmarks of Third World economies.

Your policies of irresponsible government deregulation in critical sectors allowed you to rapidly develop an energy crisis, a housing crisis, a credit crisis and a financial market crisis, all at once, and accompanied (and partly caused) by impressive levels of corruption and speculation. Meanwhile, those of your political leaders charged with oversight were either napping or in bed with corporate lobbyists.

Take John McCain, your Republican presidential nominee, whose senior staff includes half a dozen prominent former lobbyists. As he recently put it, "I was chairman of the [Senate] Commerce Committee that oversights every part of the economy." No question about it: Your leaders' failure to notice the damage done by irresponsible deregulation was indeed an oversight of epic proportions. [Emphasis added]

Sen. McCain tried to cover his unbelievable statement in the midst of this carnage that "the fundamentals are sound" by proclaiming that what he really meant was that the American worker was the fundamental he was referring to, and he believes that the American worker would lead us out of the morass. Well, that would be true, but only if the American worker had a job with decent pay and benefits and a home to which he or she could return at the end of the work day. Sadly, that is just not the case, thanks to the efforts of the greed class, freed from any regulation.

And we should have seen it coming, although many of us did. The signals were all there, right out in the open. The greed class was that arrogant.

... Income inequality has increased, as the rich have gotten windfalls while the middle class has seen incomes stagnate. Fewer and fewer of your citizens have access to affordable housing, healthcare or security in retirement. Even life expectancy has dropped. And when your economic woes went from chronic to acute, you responded -- like so many Third World states have -- with an extensive program of nationalizing private companies and assets. Your mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are now state owned and controlled, and this week your reinsurance giant AIG was effectively nationalized, with the Federal Reserve Board seizing an 80% equity stake in the flailing company.

So, this is what the unrestrained free market finally leads to: a Third World Country.

Heckuva job, GOP.

Constitution Day Losses

Today we celebrate Constitution Day, when our nation was established. Under the Constitution, the executive branch was empowered with the role of carrying out the laws. This is a very dismal day, that sees huge losses in our financial system because the occupied White House abdicated its role, though it did not leave office. Instead, the nation has been subjected to loss upon loss because the Constitution has been violated, rather than protected and defended. Today's great losses are financial, but they are much, much deeper than that. Trust of every kind has been betrayed.

This talk about burying the dollars in a can in the backyard, except that you don't have a backyard any more, isn't the big giggle that it was even just last week. I admit I do have an account at Chase Bank (Morgan Stanley offshoot) and am just as glad it is not that big an account. I do have a backyard, though for many of us that is no longer true. The debacle around us is growing, and it is shocking.

Underlining all the good news (an impressive quarter of earnings) lies the same issue Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) is going to have to acknowledge in the coming months and years: The future of the investment banking world is bound to look absolutely nothing like it does today.

For Morgan Stanley and Goldman, that could mean one of a few things. Either they end up merging with a retail bank like Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) or Washington Mutual (NYSE: WM) to gain access to deposits that provide a stable source of capital, or they're going to get regulated into the floor by a government that's been caught asleep at the wheel. Former independent investment bank Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER), which executed an emergency sale to Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) over the weekend, took the first approach, which may have been its only option after the land mines left by Lehman.


Please don't wait until it's too late
Both Morgan Stanley and Goldman expressed their reluctance to give up their current independent structures. For both firms' shareholders, that's probably not the best of news. If the prevailing thought that the current investment banking system is broken turns out to be correct, holding onto the past and not addressing problems until the last second is a recipe for shareholder destruction. Every financial collapse this year -- Bear Stearns, Lehman, Mac 'n Mae, and AIG -- came extremely suddenly and with little warning. After a wretched week of financial failures, let's just hope the remaining survivors won't bury their heads in the sand.

The reluctance is understandable, these are responsibly managed banks that are caught up in the massive collapse of a system that was betrayed by unprincipled investment purveyors using worthless paper to create an illusion of wealth where there was no value. Mortgages given to obviously uncreditworthy buyers were a vitiation of credit underpinnings, and has made all credit precarious. Your money is declining in value too.

The investment banks are tumbling down, but the real crooks are those regulators who took the opportunity of this lawless maladministration to do away with the regulations created to protect the banks, the investors, and the public. We are only protected if the laws are kept, and they have not been observed or administered.

If the Constitution had been respected and followed, your dollar would not be worth less today than it was in 2000.

Funny, I was out taking pictures of New Mexican ghost towns this past week, below is one of Grand Quivira. Reminds me of what Lehmann must feel like now, and maybe next week Chase Bank.

Coming Soon To A Pocket Of Yours

It was with absolutely no sense of satisfaction that I watched Ike illustrate the reason not to locate on coastal islands, and wipe out Galveston. As previously noted here, sharing the cost of rebuilding hazardous living isn't fair to those who didn't choose that risk.

I love the ocean too, walking on the beach at sunrise is one of the greatest of pleasures, but I'm not asking you to take a chunk out of your kids' college funds to send me there. After Hurricane Rita took that chunk through insurance payments, insurance companies in Texas chose to opt out of insuring hazardous living on our coast. The state stepped in, but part of its footprint is a piece of your insurance wherever you live. To insure in Galveston, owners had to sign up for the state plan; part of the state plan, though, involves a bailout from the insurance companies.

If the "insurance" premiums charged by the state don't cover the losses, what then? Among other things, make the insurance companies pay anyway:

Insurance companies are not completely out of the picture in Galveston and the coastal counties. All carriers licensed to sell property insurance in Texas are required to participate in the state insurance pool and pay assessments based on their market share in the rest of the state. The wind pool also has rights on a $500 million state catastrophe reserve fund and reinsurance worth $1.5 billion.

These resources, plus customer premiums, have given the state insurance pool a total of $2.3 billion to cover all of this year’s claims. But smaller storms this year have reduced the total to $2.1 billion.

When that money is depleted, the insurance pool can impose unlimited assessments on insurance companies. They, in turn, can recover the money through state tax breaks, spread over several years. The resulting decline in tax revenue could drain millions from the state’s general revenue fund.

In a related story, the Times describes the devastation on the Bolivar peninsula across from Galveston. The Times talks with several people who rode out the storm there, including Deeann and Frank Sherman and Robert Isaacks. They are now taking certain facts into account about living on the coast:

“We take a chance living on the beach — everybody does,” said Robert Isaacks, the Emergency Medical Services coordinator for Crystal Beach.

Mr. Sherman said his car repair business could not be insured because it was not elevated above ground. He tried to insure his home this year, he said, but insurers rejected the home because of the aviary the couple built out of bullet-proof glass, to protect it from storms.

The Shermans said that their life on the coast had been rich, but that it was over. They will sell their land on Bolivar to someone “younger and braver,” Ms. Sherman said, and go elsewhere. “There is a passage in the Bible that says, woe be to those who live on the coast,” she said. “I’m taking that to heart now.”

The fact that insurance companies refused to insure property located on storm-wracked coasts is not an instance of market failure. A market failure supposedly occurs when the price of goods and services do not reflect the true costs of producing and consuming those goods and services. That's clearly not what happened here. The market is practially shouting at people, "Don't build something you can't afford to lose where hurricanes periodically crash ashore." (Emphasis added.)

The plan that is taking money out of our pockets to subsidize irrational risk has some of the qualities of our ongoing bailouts in the financial community. While there is some appearance of letting us off, factors built into the package overreach practical considerations. Losses are covered that do not merit coverage. Like violating the law to create investments that cannot return a profit, the Texas legislature created a sham. Insurance companies refused to use their assets to cover inevitable, avoidable loss. They were sucked in by legislators who were trying to create an illusion, the illusion that you the standard low-risk policy owner was being shielded from losses.

Sitting in a house on a hill, with a windbreak between me and any storm that comes by, I am going to have to help pay for the homeowner who located on those shifting sands in Galveston. Even though in 1900 the worst natural disaster in our country's history wiped out the original town, my insurance cost will be affected. I am involved despite my own caution - and all of us are involved in our new $85 million insurance company, AIG.

If nothing else will make us get involved in politics, this should.

**************************************************

Incidentally, another little adventure is looking less and less like a good idea, since those geniuses have chosen Galveston for the location of a laboratory doing research into some really deadly germs. Still feel like a walk on the beach?

Biosafety experts at the University of Texas Medical Branch say the $175 million Galveston National Lab and their other high-security research labs are sturdy enough to withstand almost any natural disaster. They note that Ike, which washed away whole sections of Galveston, left the university's biodefense research facilities completely intact.

But opponents of the new lab, which will research some of the world's most dangerous diseases, say housing it in a major hurricane zone is just asking for accidents. Biological agents stored at the lab, which is less than a mile from the sea wall, could leak out after damaging winds or flooding, they say – or could be looted by rioters in post-disaster mayhem.

"What happens if there's a hurricane that's even stronger than what they've designed for?" asked Edward Hammond, a lab safety watchdog. "Lab accidents happen despite our best efforts to build systems that are immune to them. The location seems to almost dictate that, at a minimum, you'll have a big setback in the research agenda nearly annually."

Where do we get these ideas? Irrational exuberance seems to be catching.

Senator Flip-Flop

Sen. McCain is having a hard time keeping his story straight, as this article in today's NY Times makes clear.

On Monday morning, as the financial system absorbed one of its biggest shocks in generations, Senator John McCain said, as he had many times before, that he believed the fundamentals of the economy were “strong.”

Hours later he backpedaled, explaining that he had meant that American workers, whom he described as the backbone of the economy, were productive and resilient. By Tuesday he was calling the economic situation “a total crisis” and denouncing “greed” on Wall Street and in Washington. ...

As recently as January, Mr. McCain argued at a Republican debate that Americans were better off than they were eight years ago; by this summer he had released an advertisement that said “we’re worse off than we were four years ago.”

His first big speech on the mortgage crisis warned against excessive government intervention; a month later he released his plan for government action to help people keep their homes. ...

Mr. McCain’s economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, told reporters Tuesday that the senator, who has often favored deregulation, would push for new regulations as president.

Sen. McCain, who served for years on the Senate Commerce Committee, worked with his dear friend Sen. Phil Gramm to roll back the regulations which had kept the greed in financial circles in check. Now, when the results of deregulation are starting to manifest in horrific fashion, he suddenly thinks maybe some new regulations are in order.

It occurs to me that Sen. McCain was actually being honest that one time he admitted that economics was not his strong suit.

It also occurs to me that he hasn't been terribly honest or perceptive since then.