economy
j7uy5 | October 10, 2008In this video, Hannity
href="http://www.newshounds.us/2008/09/11/hannity_has_a_bullyboy_meltdown_at_suggestion_economy_is_in_trouble.php">tells
us the economy is in fine shape, wonders if it is reasonable
to think that people would really vote against the Republicans due to
the economy.
Granted, it was a month ago, at which time the market was only down by
20%. But he seriously believed that the
economy was in great shape.
I thought it was hilarious when I first saw it. It's even
funnier now. His guest,
href="http://www.squanderingofamerica.com/squandering.cfm">Robert
Kuttner,…
revere | September 29, 2008A lot of people, especially in the media, have had a hard time reconciling John McCain's past reputation as an honest reformer with his current dishonest and dishonorable campaign behavior. Now that he is in the harsh spotlight of a national campaign, dogged investigators are beginning to lift the rock and what's come crawling out isn't very attractive. Two of the most recent creature sightings involve McCain's campaign director, Rick Davis, and McCain's assurances that Davis had long ago severed ties with his old lobbying firm that was intimately tied to the failed mortgage enterprises,…
j7uy5 | September 27, 2008From
href="http://londonbanker.blogspot.com/2008/09/quotable-on-bank-balance-sheets.html">London
Banker:
"The problem with financial institution balance
sheets is
that on the left hand side nothing is right and on the right hand side
nothing is left."
It's pretty obvious that financial institutions are struggling.
We've had
href="http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/banklist.html">16
banks taken over by the FDIC in the past two years, 13
so far this year. Other
failing banks have been taken over or merged, lest they too
have the FDIC take them over.
href="http://ml-…
j7uy5 | September 27, 2008Large Wall Street independent investment banks had a nice thing going.
Because much of what they did was not depository banking,
there was little Federal oversight. Instead, the SEC let them
run voluntary oversight programs.
Now, the SEC chairman, Christopher Cox, has
href="http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/09/26/ap5478528.html">assessed
the performance of their voluntary oversight program:
The financial upheaval of
the last six months has "made it absolutely clear that voluntary
regulation does not work" for the bank supervision program, Cox said in
a statement. The program "was…
revere | September 26, 2008I don't know how many of these you received yesterday, but here's one more:
Dear American:
I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.
I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.
I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as…
revere | September 25, 2008Leaving aside the absolute disingenuousness of John McCain's claim he is elevating the financial crisis to a non-partisan issue by plopping the Presidential race into the middle of the negotiations in Washington, it wouldn't seem that the whole thing needs that much thought -- at least from his engagingly simplistic point of view. After all, his solution to the millenium old Gordian Knot that Iraq's Sunnis and Shias have entangled themselves in is to tell each side to "":
For all the national attention surrounding John McCain's two highly anticipated, protest-ridden commencement speeches in…
j7uy5 | September 22, 2008No, this is not a conspiracy hypothesis. There really is a
href="http://money.cnn.com/2007/11/27/news/newsmakers/gross_banking.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2007112810">shadow
banking system. There is even a
href="https://www.aei.org/research/projectID.15/project.asp">Shadow
Financial Regulatory Committee (although the Committee is
really a study group, not a regulatory body of any sort).
The System is said to be falling apart. This might explain
why the Fed and the Treasury decided to
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/21/AR2008092102060.html…
revere | September 22, 2008Mrs. R. made the very same comment that Echidne of the Snakes did regarding John McCain's prescription of how to fix the US health care system:
Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation. (Quoted by Paul Krugman, New York Times, from McCain's article Better Health Care at Lower Cost for Every American, just published. Bad timing?)
Oh good, Mrs. R. said. Now we'll finally get socialized medicine.
I…
j7uy5 | September 21, 2008The economic crisis is reported to be responsible for a recent increase
in calls for mental health services:
href="http://delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080920/BUSINESS/809200314">Economy
worries driving more people to seek help
By ROB WATERS and DAVID OLMOS
September 20, 2008
A tidal wave of anxiety is washing over America, from
Wall Street's concrete canyons to the lettuce fields of California,
propelled by the mortgage industry collapse, high gas prices, tight
credit and rising unemployment.
Operators of telephone help lines, insurers, hospital administrators…
j7uy5 | September 17, 2008Within the past few days, I've noticed quite a few bloggers and news
writers make comparisons between the hurricanes and the financial
meltdown. It just occurred to be that there is another facet
to this analogy. This has to do with a very real problem that
has been stirred up, literally.
In addition to the analogy noted above, another analogy that I've been
seeing is to liken innovative financial products to toxic waste, as in
this Bloomberg article:
href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&refer=home&sid=aW5vEJn3LpVw">Banks
Sell 'Toxic Waste' CDOs to Calpers,…
j7uy5 | September 12, 2008There have already been several posts about
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/11/AR2008091100263.html">hurricane
Ike on Scienceblogs (
href="http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/09/ike_texas.php">1
href="http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/09/ike_friday_pm_texas_as_categor.php">2
href="http://scienceblogs.com/authority/2008/09/hurricane_ike_storm_surge_in_p.php">3
href="http://scienceblogs.com/catdynamics/2008/09/hurricanes_bad_scenarios.php">4
href="http://scienceblogs.com/deepseanews/2008/09/hurricane_websites_getting_coo.php"…
j7uy5 | September 8, 2008Toward the end of last week, the
href="http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gHs5OM3gFG_DytQQZFbWfgPT08MAD9303VJ01">US
stock market declined precipitously. Within the
space of a few days, we learned that
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/business/economy/06econ.html?partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all">unemployment
is way up, more than
href="http://www.housingwire.com/2008/09/05/prime-arms-set-tone-for-troubled-mortgages-in-q2-mba/">nine
percent of U.S. mortgages were delinquent or in foreclosure,
the
href="http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/…
j7uy5 | August 21, 2008Just in case you thought you were having a good day, here is a
href="http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/BOGNONBR?cid=123">graph
from the Fed that shows how much money the banks have:
Don't panic. The final number is from 1 July 2008.
I'm sure they've fixed the problem by now.
HT:
href="http://www.rgemonitor.com/financemarkets-monitor/252626/looting_the_vaults_at_the_central_banks">London
Banker, on Roubini's Global EconoMonitor (
href="http://www.rgemonitor.com/index.php">RGE Monitor).
grrlscientist | August 17, 2008tags: book review, economic insecurity, politics, social programs, insurance, poverty, employment, education, housing
What ever happened to the American Dream? Well, if you are like me, you will admit that your pursuit of the American Dream is like chasing after a mythical horse that disappeared out the barn door literally decades ago. For example, even though I did everything right -- staying out of trouble, staying out of debt, avoiding all chemical and behavioral addictions, postponing pleasure by working hard and sacrificing so I could earn a top-notch education doing something I love and…
revere | June 16, 2008Our post on what is behind the Right Wing attack on science drew a lot of attention and numerous comments. I'd like to emphasize some key points that may have gotten lost in the details (for the details, please see the original post). We'll use climate change skepticism as an example, but the principles hold for other kinds of assaults, for example, on public health concerns regarding bis phenol A.
The cardinal point is that the attacks aren't about science. Refuting false statements about whether CO2 is or is not a driver of global warming may seem (and be) necessary, but it is not the…
grrlscientist | May 14, 2008tags: Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill), economy, politics, corporate welfare, David Cay Johnston, book review
America was built on the premise that hard work would be financially rewarded, but unfortunately, more than 37 million people are part of the growing ranks of the "working poor": people who work two or three jobs yet are unable to pay their living expenses. What's wrong with all these people that makes them unable to achieve even a modest level of comfort in this Land of Opportunity where the streets are…
revere | March 21, 2008They say politics makes strange bedfellows, so now that John McCain and Joe Lieberman are in bed together I hope they screw each other's brains out. John McCain may have sparked a little lover's spat yesterday when he encouraged Americans to go to Canada to buy lower priced drugs, something Joe Lieberman (the Senator from Big Pharma) looks on with horror. I sure don't object, but some McCain's other health care ideas strike me as politically suicidal (of course it also doesn't both me if he sends himself down the toilet, either):
John McCain is bolstering his reputation as a maverick by…
revere | March 19, 2008I don't know whether to laugh or cry. A bit of each, I suppose. When I was a young man, traveling in Europe was great for Americans. For starters, everybody didn't hate us (thanks George!). For another, everything was cheap. The dollar was strong so the exchange rate favored us. Now the dollar is moribund and travel in Europe is becoming prohibitively expensive for Americans. And in some places the dollar isn't just moribund. It has already died:
The U.S. dollar's value is dropping so fast against the euro that small currency outlets in Amsterdam are turning away tourists seeking to sell…