economy

In 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,…
A 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,…
From 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-…
Large 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…
I 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…
Leaving 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…
No, 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…
Mrs. 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…
The 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 and…
Within 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,…
There 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">5…
Toward 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/…
Just 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).
tags: 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…
Our 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…
tags: 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…
They 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…
I 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…