Liberal Media Elite

I will hold off on any snarky remarks about right wingers wearing native american garb and protesting taxation with representation and referring to it as “teabagging”.

I will point out this quote from one of the West Coast organizers (from the AP…I seem to keep screwing up the link)…

“What is happening now is unfair,” said Alice Broich, who was organizing a protest in Palm Springs. “When you see mom and pop businesses going under and people losing their homes while these big businesses and CEOs are getting bailed out, it’s wrong.”

Apparently, to Ms. Broich, the people going out of business and losing homes are being taxed out…or something.

And, as proof of the wingers assertion that this is the beginning of a new grassroots Republican effort that will rival the Dems…

Several dozen people in Boston rallied, footage from CNN television showed.

That’s right, y’all. Several whole dozen. If that ain’t a groundswell then I don’t know what is.

Great (and sad) photo series by two french photographers.

Ladies and Gentlemen: The Republican Apology Machine.

I took some pictures yesterday, but am just now getting around to posting them. I was too busy weeping, working and nursing that nasty hang over.

Election Day 2008 in Uptown:

Yes, another YouTube sing along. This stuff just makes me happy right now.

So…we had this big ass bailout get passed and what happened?

Shit got worse.

To put it into context, the Dow Jones this week cratered by dropping 18% (18.2 if you want to get all technical and precise). In July of 1933, a watershed point in the Great Depression, the Dow went down around 17%. So, you know, that’s bad.

As near as I can figure, here’s why…

1. Banks know they’re full of shit. The fundamental problem is banks aren’t lending. They fundamental reason is they know the bullshit accounting techniques they used to value their assets are totally misleading and assume (probably correctly) that all the other financial institutions did the same thing. Meaning that Bank A doesn’t really know how bad it’s situation is and certainly has no idea how bad Bank B’s situation is. Meaning that it has no idea if Bank B is going to still be solvent in a few days which means that Bank A is reluctant to risk loaning a damn thing to Bank B. So when Bank B asks Bank A for a loan, Bank A suddenly finds it has terribly important meetings to attend but it swears it’ll call Bank B back just as soon as it can.
2. Investors are waiting to sell their assets until the government bailout kicks in. The bailout package will buy up the crap assets that banks (when I say banks I’m referring to any and all financial institutions that qualify…so, banks, and investment banks and insurance funds and all sorts of other bankish entities) have. So, they want to find out how much they can get from the government before they try selling anything off on the market.
3. Buying crap assets doesn’t actually improve the bank’s position: All it does is give them the cash that they claim their paper assets are worth. This would work fine, or probably would, if the problem was, as the government has hoped, illiquid banks (they ain’t got enough cash right at the moment). The problem arises from the emerging information that banks aren’t so much flirting with a lack of liquidity but that they’re flirting with outright insolvency (they don’t have enough money and assets to cover how exposed they are to crap assets). With insolvency being the problem, banks need to be reimbursed for their fictitiously valued crap assets and have some more cash piled on top of that to cover their exposure. If they don’t, they will continue to not lend.
4. Investors don’t believe the government knows what the hell it’s doing. A point on which they’re absolutely correct. The bailout as Paulson wanted it originally (and one can presume how Bush wanted it…although that implies he even understands the problem and I sincerely doubt he does) dealt with, as mentioned above, liquidity. Which, it turns out, ain’t the problem. As a result, investors are saying fuck you and your bailout. What investors want is something along the lines of what Britain just did and what Sweden did in the 90’s…direct capital injection into the banking system through the purchasing of preferred shares in selected banks. Meaning the government has partial ownership. Which is also called “nationalization”. The ideological vapor lock of the neo-cons (markets are always good, they can self-regulate, and government sucks) made such a proposal impossible for Paulson, or anyone from the Bush Administration, to even consider as viable. Until now. ‘Cause their cute little laissez-faire mewling isn’t working.
5. It’s a global economy - it requires a global solution. Using our example from above, let’s say Bank B is in Iceland. It needs cash. It needs cash because it invested in a bunch of exotic securities that bundled up crap mortgages on over-priced condos in Florida. Those condos turn out to be worth about half of what they bought said exotic securities for and a huge percentage of them are in default. I mean, it needs cash really, really bad. Bank A, based in the US ain’t giving out any money, and neither is anyone else. Bank B fails. Bank C, in Ireland, has loans out to Bank B from way, way back (like, August) when no one knew Bank B was totally fucked. Now, Bank C is in deep, deep trouble, ’cause it had alot of money it was owed by the now defunct Bank B (and Banks B1, B2, B3…Bn). Bank C tanks. Bank A, which wisely chose to stay the fuck away from Bank B has a whole lot in loans it had made to the Irish Bank C. And now Bank A is hosed because Bank C failed. Houston, we have a situation. It is primarily the global nature of this crisis that makes things like the utterly daft House Republican proposal of a few weeks ago, and the equally daft Lefty proposal pushed by Kucinich (headed up by William Isaac a former hondo with the FDIC…Isaac has been all over the op-ed pages in the last couple of weeks pushing a plan that would have been really good in 1933…and his assertion that we need to re-regulate these markets is one I agree with but while that is neccesary later it doesn’t do shit for the crisis unfolding right now) useless. They ignore the fact that the world economies are now interconnected to a degree never seen before and, as such, there is global exposure to a problem originating in one country. We’ve seen shit like this in the last few years with some relatively small economies in Asia. However, the country of origin this time around is, well, us. Which means it requires a big, coordinated response.

Read it all..

*Except when she starts talking.

Someone took her up on the “stump the candidate challenge” and she lost.

Here’s the story from the AP.

Can we vote already or what?

Here’s a little end of the week quiz:

Can you name the maverick Republican Senator that said this about Gov. Sarah Palin? You know “The ONE.”

“She doesn’t have any foreign policy credentials. You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don’t know what you can say. You can’t say anything.”

Press the “Read It All” button for the answer.
Read it all..

First it was Bear. Then Fannie and Freddie. Now comes word that Lehman and Washington Mutual are in trouble…big ass trouble. Once again we have the financial analyst types talking about how this is a crisis and bold action and big steps and blahblahblahblah.

These two firms are headed for a bailout. More taxpayer money will be required. Fannie and Freddie’s bailout has generally been met with positive reviews as neccesary and repeatedly compared to a bankruptcy. There was one critical difference…in a bankruptcy shareholders get wiped out. This is sensible. Buying shares in a company is speculative and, as such, the buyer is considered to have taken on that expectation of risk. In Frannie and Freddie’s bailout, shareholders could be wiped out but probably won’t be. The government has to exercise a warrant to wipe their asses out. Hmm…what do you think the likelihood is that the rich folk lobbying machine is already working on Congress to make sure that warrant is never exercised? Probably pretty good since there’s about $200 Billion in play.

At every step of the ongoing crisis in financial services the press has generally treated these things as weird one-offs that aren’t inter-related and by (of course) vapidly repeating the Administration’s spin on things. All of these things are inter-related. They are the result of the Right’s campaign to defund government, castrate regulatory oversight, and stop legislative oversight. It has worked. All of this comes from the same source, a lack of regulation on high risk and complex financial instruments that are now killing the mortgage industry. Regulation absolutely inhibits the upside promise of investment. It also, when done well, significantly reduces the downside risk to the economy at large…which is a way of saying us guys who pay taxes but don’t have enough money to open up million dollar accounts with an investment bank. I see little no willingness on Capitol HIll to take on the banking industry and the conservative noise machine on this one. Which means it’s gonna keep unfolding like it has and we’ll have done nothing to diminish the likelihood that it will again down the road.

Neither can I.

Here’s a little insight into what the moderator thinks of what is going on now:

Ifill: Reporter’s Notebook.

Just a quick note – I’m currently on the road doing political comedy, and I’m keeping a tour diary of the experience over at http://libertarianrage.blogspot.com. It’s pretty meta, in that it’s more about the experience of writing political comedy than it is necessarily political in and of itself: but the meandering musings may be of interest to readers here.

James McGreevey and his wife were having ménages-à-trois since at least 1999. With a boy.

So maybe Dina Matos McGreevey isn’t much a martyr after all.

The Minnesota House’s Republican “leader,” Mary Seifert, is stripping leadership positions from the six GOP House members who voted to override Vice Pres… er… Gov. Tim McCa… er.. Pawlenty. The slash-and-burn technique is parochial to be sure but then, it wouldn’t be the Minnesota House if it wasn’t embarrassingly parochial, would it?

“We’re not taking anyone’s secretaries away. I’m not throwing their computers down the Capitol steps. I’m not severing their phone lines and all the other rumors that are going around here,” said Seifert.

“I’m not shooting their wives or husbands. I’m not starving their pets. I’m not urinating into their best china.”

No, Marty, you’re just pouting.

WJC confuses himself with HRC.

Today in Portsmouth, Ohio, he said, “So Hillary says, in 2005, the United States Congress adopted the Bush-Cheney energy bill, which gave $27 billion in subsidies to nuclear, oil, and gas and coal. The only thing that was justified was clean coal, because countries are going to be using that. We have to figure out how to take the carbon dioxide out of it. The rest of it is waste. If you elect me, I’ll repeal those subsidies. And put them into a strategic energy fund that will create American jobs for America’s future with clean energy.”(emphasis mine)

MMMMM. Dynastic.

Keep hitting refresh to see what else he does just for you. It will make you smile.

(Hat Tip: Wendy)

Tonight is the big night. DO IT.

Find you caucus location here

Be there between 6:30 and 8:00

YOU MUST BE THERE BY 8 TO VOTE.

YES WE CAN.

YES WE CAN!!!!

This video rocks.

Obama remixed.

Barack Obama is holding a rally in Minneapolis.

Details via the Campaign Blog

Rally with Barack Obama in Minneapolis

Target Center
600 First Avenue North
Minneapolis, MN

Saturday, February 2
Doors open: 1:30 p.m.

The event is free and open to the public but tickets are required, so sign up now:

http://mn.barackobama.com/minneapolis

Admittedly, Matthew and I were distracted by the good news coming from our neighbors to the south. We let this one slip by. So on top of the first African American winning the Iowa Caucus, apparently the Minnesota DFL now has a veto-proof majority in the state senate. Kevin Dahle defeats Ray Cox in SD25 special election. And handily, too.

Even though it’s 2007 called and wanted it’s word back, all I got is one big w00t for the night.

I’ll even say it again.

w00t.