This is an American revolution?

Change at any cost.  Change of the guard.  Bush and Congress thought they could scare the people into the bailout bill, just like with the Patriot act and the war in Iraq.  Not this time.  Maybe the American people do not care if they lose money, but rather want the government and markets to work properly.  Maybe Americans are looking past the short term hurt and toward the healthy functioning of democracy and capitalism for many future generations to come.  The government and the investment institutions all failed us, and maybe now we want them to fail so that better, more effective entities will take their place.  Maybe we want to clean house and have new politicians and bankers.  Maybe we are sick of all the ineffectiveness we have been seeing for the past decade.

Or . . .

Maybe we are just too stupid to see the bailout as anything but a life preserver for Wall Street.  If so, no one really sold it as much more than that.  The government was too scared to tell us the actual consequences of not passing the bailout bill, for fear that markets would respond poorly.  But maybe they should have tried to educate the American people, so we would respond properly.  Maybe they played the fear card one time too many.

Either way, America needs change!

Choking Obama Off?

Is it possible that this bailout “plan” for Wall Street is really just a way to leave Obama with no money to spend on any of the programs he’s proposed if he’s elected president?  Paulson & Bernanke are Bush appointees, and you have to think they feel some loyalty to him and his party.  I wonder if the 700 billion dollars won’t actually be spent or needed on Wall Street if McCain becomes president?  One cannot discount that bipartisan politics are not at play here.

Bailout?

Ok, the bailout.  So we buy up the bank’s and brokerage’s non-liquid (worthless paper) assets.  We do this with the hope that these institutions will start lending out money again and the economy will grow again.  But isn’t that what got us here in the first place, loose credit?  I am not convinced that the institutions will make credit available after they sell off their worthless assets.  What’s to prevent them from selling these liabilities to the Fed, then still keep their credit belts tight, and the economy still stalls?  And shouldn’t the lesson of the past 58 weeks be that credit was given too freely for too long for too many people?  Credit should now be hard to get, not easy to get.

This bailout is starting to look like a raid on the national coffers (which are empty) to shore up an industry that needs to severely revise its business model, not be thrown a life preserver.  And then we are supposed to accept the bailout with no means of accountability, transparency, or oversight.  The proposal seeks immunity from prosecution if the plan is poorly or unsuccessfully administered.

All Paulson & Bernanke keep offering as upside to the bailout is that certain institutions probably will not fail, and credit will probably be available again, and unemployment will probably not grow, and the market will probably stabilize.  700 billion dollars doesn’t come with any guarantees these days.  Bernanke has not seemed to considered how this plan would affect inflation, inflation being one of two prime concerns of the Federal Reserve.

Why not let the vacuum that these failed companies will create be filled by other companies, perhaps even new companies, that will strive to perform better and don’t have the these liabilities holding them down.  Not every single financial company has these liabilities on their books.  Most do, sure, but not every single one across the globe.

There are plenty of small, local, solvent financial institutions willing to write loans to businesses.  Okay, Bank of America will not lend to a MacDonald’s franchisee anymore, but there are many other institutions that would be happy to offer them credit.

So much for Schumpeter’s theory of creative destruction.

Kudos to Dodd for standing up to Paulson & Bernanke

Posts 1 and 10 are worth reading.

United America

While many are going on and on about how we need to bring America and Americans back together again, recent evidence suggests that most American’s are united about a few things. Recent (and not so recent) polls show that nearly two-thirds (and sometimes many more) of Americans agree about the following . . .

1. Bush is a lousy president

2. Cheney is a lousy vice-president.

3. Congress is pretty lousy too.

4. The Iraq war sucks, and we should get troops out of Iraq right away.

5. The economy also sucks, and America is in a reccesion.

6. Oil prices are too high and are affecting American’s bottom line, and America needs to reduce it’s dependence on oil.

7. The world needs to lower the amount of greenhouse gases released into the air.

8. Americans would like to see a decrease in the number of illegal immigrants entering America.

9. The health care system in America needs revision.

10. FEMA could be doing more to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

That’s right TWO-THIRDS of American’s agree on the above things! Two-thirds is a landslide mandate in American politics these days. America seems rather united to me, despite what you see going on in the debates in both houses of congress.

(poll data source: pollingreport.com)

Barak O’gone-a?

Is this the beginning of the end for Barak Obama? His recent problems . . .

1. Seems to be against new primary elections for the people in Florida and Michigan.

2. Has not completely disassociated himself from Reverend Wright.

3. His wife Michele’s recent comment about being proud of America for the first time.

Oddly the press does not seem to think these issues will have much effect on Obama moving forward. I disagree. I think the Clinton campaign will jump on this soon; she’s already all over the Florida/Michigan issue. And once McCain returns to the states and shakes off the jet-lag, he’ll be all over it too. But worst of all, if Obama does win the DNC nomination he will be eaten alive in a national election by the GOP and the far right as they are sure to accuse him of being less than patriotic and American. It would be naive to think that they will not attack his character and patriotism about the above three things. Hell they were giving him heat over his middle name, for Christ’s sake! A neo-con 527 group is sure to put together a real spicy and negative ad against Obama using the above three things, and perhaps more. Normally — and if it were earlier in the primary elections — the above three things would end a candidate’s campaign. Too risky too controversial, people would think, and vote for someone else.

Personally, I don’t think these things are all that bad. What does trouble me is that Obama has not made it a number one priority to dismiss these blunders as just that, blunders. Okay, he gave a world-class speech yesterday, but unfortunately it did not go far enough to squelch his detractors now and probably into the future. Rev. Wright is going to haunt him for a long time. Especially since Obama has made his judgment the central theme of his campaign. All one has to do is say, “what does having had Rev. Wright as your pastor for over 2o years say about Obamas judgment”? I think Obama needs to show what it takes to win a national campaign and put issues like these way behind him and unequivocally assure American’s that he is the real deal and truly patriotic –and perhaps more so — than his opponents. Unfortunately this requires a type of non-academic, non-intellectual speech that Obama has yet to master. He better start wrapping himself up in the American flag. Or at least start wearing an American flag pin on his lapel.

I predict Obama’s campaign will lose momentum right away. The only question is how much and for how long.

Where are the social darwinists now?

This is a great article about the hypocrisy of conservatives and federal handouts. The neo-cons say: Working-class entitlements? No way! Brokerage bailouts? Yes please!

Waiting for Kristen . . .

CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO: “Waiting for Kristen”

CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO: “Waiting for Kristen”

I was walking from work down 6th Avenue headed to Staples to get printer ink and postage stamps. At the corner of 25th & 6th I saw a small crowd gathering in front of the new luxury apartment building there. News vans and crews, cameramen, photographers were all gathered around. People were curious what was up. A pedestrian asked one of the Univision cameramen what was going on. He said, “the hooker, she lives there, on the ninth floor”. Of course today that could only mean one thing: I was in front the building of Kristen’s, the home of Ashley Alexandra Dupre. She’s the alleged call girl that Eliot Spitzer allegedly hired to have sex with. You know, the whole Client 9 thing.

The press were gathered at the door to this building waiting for Dupre to enter or exit. The news stations were conducting their 5 o’clock stand-ups here, “live from the Kristen condo” style. Struck by the minor media circus, I decided to go get my own video camera to shoot a little footage. I have a paying video shoot coming up on April 9th that I need to practice for as I am really a video editor, not a shooter. Plus maybe I’d even catch that million dollar shot? So I went back to my studio, got may camera and shot for a bit. Nothing was really going on and I started to get cold and bored. So I stopped shooting after a few minutes. I then continued on to Staples and finally bought the ink and stamps.

When I got back to my studio, I cut together the little clip linked above. I like to think it makes a statement on the absurdity of the media’s obsession with this story. Or at least a statement on my absurd obsession with the media’s absurd obsession on the story. Enjoy!

Footnote 3/14/2008, 5:00pm: The press is still there. Photographers are now staking out the rear service entrance right across the courtyard from the building I work in. Hopefully they will not take over the public courtyard as it is a cool place to go and chill for a while.

Footnote 3/17/2008, 5:00pm:  The press is gone!

Obama No. 2?

Why the hell did Obama say (essentially) he will not consider a v.p. spot if Clinton were to win? There’s still a fair chance that Clinton will win the nomination, as the two candidates are essentially tied. And when the Clintons say that he would make a good vice president, but isn’t ready to be president, yes they are being hypocritical. But if you say you won’t consider a v.p. spot, aren’t you giving that argument a bit of credence? Saying you won’t take the v.p. spot doesn’t convince anyone of your drive to become president.

Obama needs a bit of reality check; he is just barely the front-runner. There’s a very good chance that neither him nor Clinton will win enough delegates to lock up the DNC nomination by convention time. Florida and Michigan may decide this race, and those states have indicated a preference for Clinton already. And here’s another hypocricy: Obama campaigns on his ability to bring people together. He has not shown that skill in this episode.

Al Gore and John Edwards must be feeling a touch better about all this.

I tried to post this on the CNN AC 360 blog, but the moderator didn’t allow it:

Saying you won’t take the v.p. spot doesn’t convince anyone of your drive to become president. I feel Obama made a huge political mistake here. Don’t be surprised if Hillary uses this against him. If Obama wants the presidency so much, he should be willing to take a v.p. spot on any presidential ticket. Also, Obama is exhibiting his own hypocrisy here since he campaigns on being the person most able to unite people and America. Yet he can barely bring his own political party together. He is just barely the front runner as the race is essentially tied. Clinton may still win. If the delegates and super-delegates have to elect the party’s nominee, they may not be so thrilled by Obama’s indignation at the idea of serving the party and America as vice president.

Rx in the Water

Prescription drugs in the water? Duh. That’s why I only drink rain water or grain alcohol. POE.

Bike Bomber

Can will call him/her the Bicycle Bomber now? Bike Bomber? UnivegaBomber? Ross Bomber? Lance Bomber? Critical Massive Attack Bomber? Chinese Delivery Bomber? VeloBomber?

Bush Supports Torture

Bush vetoed a bill that would make illegal for the CIA to use waterboarding as an interrogation technique, refusing to to hold the CIA to the same standard as the military and law enforcement.

The education president has become the torture president.

Apparently McCain knew Bush was going to do this when him appeared with him earlier in the week. McCain has been against torture since the days he was subjected to it as a POW in the Vietnam war. Yet McCain urged Bush to veto the bill, saying it would hamper the CIA’s ability to gather intelligence if the bill were signed into law. McCain’s contradiction as being against torture but for CIA waterboarding will surely have a negative effect on his presidential campaign. His critics will be wise to point to this hypocrisy.

“The fact that we have not been attacked over the past six and a half years is not a matter of chance,” said Bush in his Saturday radio address, ignoring the bombing in New York City’s Times Square on Thursday.

A Look at Barak Obama

Interesting article on Barak Obama in The New York Times, click here.

DNC = Do Not Count

Okay, the post below (Fuck Off Florida, pt.2) is not meant to let the DNC off the hook.

Why did they insist on punishing Florida and Michigan on what seem to be harmless offenses? Why did the DNC not want these two states to hold their primaries early? What problem did that cause? I know rules are rules, by why was this rule made? What was it trying to prevent? And why did the DNC decide to strip Florida of its delegates once the republican controlled senate and republican governor decided to move the primary up? How would this serve the democratic voters in Florida and the DNC? I think the DNC really fucked up this time. They should pay to hold the primaries again, with new soft money.

One things is for sure: no one can blame the voters in Florida and Michigan, they did the right thing.

Fuck Off Florida, pt. 2

Alright, new rule: no more elections in Florida. Florida has proven time and time again (okay, twice) that is has no clue how to run an election. We need to revoke Florida’s right to have elections. They are embarrassing the US and the world. From now on, all votes needed in Florida will be cast by the citizens of Alaska, in a proxy vote.

The Florida and Michigan Primaries

First off, I don’t really understand why the DNC (and the RNC) felt it had to punish Florida and Michigan for moving up their primary dates. I think the DNC has yet to offer a substantial reason why it felt compelled to do this. As punishment for breaking the rules, to me, is an insufficient reason. The DNC looks like a bunch of cry babies right now. How did moving up the dates have an adverse affect on anything? Dean needs to make his case quite a bit stronger on this point

My solution for the Florida situation is to simply count the votes there and seat the delegates. Both Clinton and Obama were on the ballot and both did not campaign there. So as I see it, neither candidate had an advantage over the other, and a fair election occurred. I actually think it’s interesting that there was an election were the people had to vote strictly off the records and accomplishments of the candidates rather than off stump speeches. And it’s remarkable that so many voters turned out even though they knew their votes would essentially have no impact on the races. Kudos to these honorable and responsible citizens.

Neither the DNC nor Florida wants to pay the estimated $18 million for a new election. So why not use the votes that occurred there already? Of course Obama will say it’s not fair to do that since he did not get to campaign there. But neither did Clinton. So all things are equal, no? But Obama is sure to fight using the votes of this election since he lost to Clinton. But is that really a reason to disallow Florida’s citizens of their votes?

The Michigan situation is a bit more complicated. First off, I think it showed a serious error in judgment by Obama to not have his name put on the ballot, especially when he knew Clinton was on the ballot.  A lot of second-tier candidates put their names on the ballot. It’s not like the Obama campaign was short of money and resources to do so. Leaving your name off the ballot does not seem like a very presidential thing to do. The Clinton campaign should make this point, as they probably can get a lot of political mileage off it.

Since Clinton won the primary in Michigan as she was the only top-tier option in the vote, the idea of using the votes that occurred is not the right thing to do. Michigan needs to hold another vote, or else simply suffer the consequence of having moved up its primary date no matter how inane this consequence may be. On the other hand, one can make a strong argument that the votes should be counted, no matter when they occurred or who was on the ballot, as a vote is a vote, and America is a democracy and the voters are to be respected, no matter what situation created by the officials that ran the elections. Again I ask, why did both parties feel Michigan needed to be punished for moving up its primary election date? How did we let things get this far gone?

I think the Florida primary votes should count and all delegates should be seated at both parties conventions. I think Michigan should hold a new vote and the DNC, RNC, and Michigan should all share the cost to do so.

Simply saying that Florida and Michigan should not be a part of the primary process, to me, is not an option. Why the candidates agreed to allow both parties to strip these states of their delegates is beyond reason. Again, this is very non-presidential behavior. The DNC, RNC, the candidates, and the elected officials in both these states are all to be shamed for not allowing the voters to be heard.

When we say that it is so important to get out and vote, and the people do, then we don’t allow these votes to have any impact sends a horribly wrong message.

Clinton vs. Obama

It’s a tie! Essentially.

On the CBS Early Show this morning, Clinton hinted at Dream Team ticket, suggesting she’d ask Obama to run as her Vice President, or else run as his. This is smart. I think the Democrats would be wise to put forth a Clinton/Obama or Obama/Clinton ticket. It would be historic. It would bring the party together again. It would almost ensure a win against McCain, in my opinion.

What’s interesting to note is that Obama has not made a similar statement. Skeptics are saying the only reason Clinton has made this statement is to let voters know that a vote for her is also a vote for him. Perhaps this is why the Obama campaign has not overtly made a statement that Obama would consider a VP slot if Clinton gets the nomination. He would be a fool if he did not accept such an offer. It would make (again, not just history) him a very, very strong contender for President eight years from now. He’s still a young guy after all. The same can be said of Clinton, though she is not as young. If she were VP, even if for only four years, she would be well placed for a Presidential run in 2016. Ditto for Obama. (Jeeze, are we talking about the Presidential race in ‘16 already? Damn!)

Both candidates should put pride aside and do what’s best for the DNC and for the country, as ultimately it is also what is best for them too. This sliver medal is still quite a trophy: win-win!

Hell’s yeah Willy, payback for Monica: meet my rockstar VP!

McCocaine Takes GOP!

John McCain wins GOP nomination. Let me be the first blog to congratulate him: Congrats John, you really put the grand old in the Grand Old Party! Good luck ya old fart!!

If he wins the White House, do we call it George W. Bush’s third term, or Ronald W. Regan’s?

The Co$t of War

In USD: $3,845 per second!

Cha-ching! And this was supposed to be “the self-financing war”.

Mortgage Crisis

We have to be careful not to reward stupidity.

We are all for foreclosure freezes to try to give people in need a new chance to reorganize their finances and avoid people having to lose their homes. But we must not protect people that tried to live beyond their means. The trouble is, how do you define the difference between the two, especially since housing prices have been so damn high up until very recently?

Anyone who who acquired a non-doc, interest-only mortgage on the house they intended as their primary residence for the long-term played with fire. It is extremely risky to take out such a loan, and is generally reserved for situations of speculation where the buyer intends to sell the property in the short term in a booming market. Such mortgages are like buying stock on margin: you either win big or have to payout more than you bet with.

As tragic as it may be that some people undertook this strategy to finance their home and may have to give up their home, this type of behavior cannot be caught by the safety net that politicians are proposing. This falls into the realm of ideology that the law often uses when it states, “ignorance of the law is not a defense argument”, meaning you cannot say I did not know killing someone was illegal, thus I should not be charged with murder.

Those who took out interest-only loans should have know what they were getting into and that the risk of financial loss was extremely high. Bailing them out because they bet that home prices would always increase and that they would be able to use this increase in equity to refinance into a better mortgage is not the right thing to do. For then it is a slippery slope that leads to the point were one can make the argument that poor investment choices that lead to an under-performing stock portfolio are equally worthy of a bailout. This is simply not the world we live in, for such a world is not economically sustainable.

As with all investments, homes included, buyer beware.

If we reward stupidity, I will become a wealthy man.

Humble Harry . . .

“I would not say I am the hero at all. I am no more hero than anybody else. I mean, everyone, if you think about it there are thousands and thousands of troops out there. There are guys who, you know, two injured guys who came back on the plane with us who were essentially comatose throughout the whole way. One who had lost two limbs, a left arm and a right leg and another guy who was basically saved by his mate’s body being in the way and took shrapnel to the neck. Both out cold throughout the whole of the flight, and you know, those are the heroes,” said Prince Harry to reporters in the terminal building of Brize Norton air force base, north of London.