Strap In

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The bailout package has failed.  The Dow is currently down 525... Enjoy the ride. Update:  It occurs to me that this could be a case of crying wolf!  Several times…

Could the bar be set any lower?

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Thursday night is rapidly approaching, and I must confess to conflicting emotions.  One the one hand, I fully expect Sarah Palin to be a complete disaster.  On the other hand, so does everyone else.

So, how does Joe Biden handle the situation of being on stage with a person who has no right to be there?  I’d advise against the McCain approach of completely ignoring your debate partner even though Joe would have every right to view Sarah Palin with contempt.  Maybe his best approach would simply be to give Palin enough rope and hope that her debate performance mimics the Gibson and Couric interviews.  

But what worries me most is how much of a curve will the media grade Palin?  And is it fair to hold one VP candidate to higher standards than another?  Will one gaffe by Joe Biden carry more weight than fifty by Palin?  Does she win simply by not blinking?

Does the VP debate even take place? 

The Next Stunt

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The McCain campaign is not a campaign of ideas.  It is not a campaign based on a ideology.   It is not a campaign based on a strategy.   All the McCain…

Gee, who’d have guessed?

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The study, released yesterday, tested the physiological responses of 46 participants to various threatening images, like bloody faces. It found that people who self-identified as “in favor of socially protective…

Bailout Nation — the Latest Deal

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So after John McCain went to DC last week to collect his credit for the prior deal (and certainly without having one of his own), the news today is that there is apparently a new framework for a new bailout deal:

  • The total is still $700 billion, but is structured to allocate in 3 phases — $300 billion now, $100 billion at the President’s discretion, $350 billion only with Congressional approval;
  • Institutions selling assets to the government have to issue warrants, providing taxpayers an asset stake as a way to get back some of the bailout funds;
  • They expanded the pool of institutions who could participate, including small banks, pension funds, local governments
  • Executive Golden Parachutes are cut for institutions that get bailout funds;
  • An oversight board is created and that board has some accountability to and oversight by Congress;
  • Judicial review is preserved;
  • Private insurance funded by the banks to insure MBS;
  • The Government would somehow renegotiate bad mortgages that it owns either directly of via the securities.

From the Department of Stuff We Would Have Told You For Free

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“The last six months have made it abundantly clear that voluntary regulation does not work.”

-Christopher Cox, Chairman Securities and Exchange Commission in NYT last Friday

More from the same article:
“The chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a longtime proponent of deregulation, acknowledged on Friday that failures in a voluntary supervision program for Wall Street’s largest investment banks had contributed to the global financial crisis, and he abruptly shut the program down . . .