Bailout Plan: $2.5 Trillion and a Strong U.S. Hand Michael Appleton for The New York Times February 10, 2009 The White House plan to rescue the nation’s financial system, announced on Tuesday by Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, is far bigger than anyone predicted and envisions a far greater government role in markets and […]
Leahy: Congress Will Do Truth Commission with or without POTUS By: emptywheel February 10, 2009 As you may have seen last night, one of the more challenging questions for Obama came from the HuffPo’s Sam Stein, who asked Obama if he supported a Truth Commission. Sam’s still busy with this story, today reporting that Leahy […]
GOP, Like Rush, Sees Hope in Failed Stimulus By Meteor Blades DailyKOS Republicans see it as a good thing if only the unemployment rate stays high, if only enough businesses fail, if only enough people lose their homes to foreclosure, file for bankruptcy, have to tell their kids that the money they expected to have […]
Showing Some Discipline By DAVID BROOKS New York Times February 9, 2009 It’s no fun being a leader in a financial crisis. You’ve got to be bold but reassuring, free-spending but disciplined. You must decisively crush the short-term problem without freaking everybody out and leaving a long-term mess. To my mind, the stimulus packages on […]
After watching the testimony of Harry Markopolos in the Madoff Hearing, I commented [cess pool…]: I watched Markopolos testify today in the Congressional Hearings on the Madoff Ponzi Scheme and then as much as I could tolerate of the S.E.C. Officials that followed hime [which wasn’t a lot]. Linda Thomsen, Securities and Exchange Commission Enforcement […]
To the editor: Reading the letters to the editor, I was surprised at how many people cast the current economic crisis as something government caused. The overwhelming evidence is the opposite, that the destruction of our financial regulatory system, the absence of government, allowed speculators to raid and manipulate our financial markets almost exactly like […]
Bankrupt By Josh Marshall On Friday we interviewed Nobel prize-winning economist Joe Stiglitz for an upcoming episode of TPMtv. It was very clarifying on a numbers of topics. And it confirmed for me everything I’d thought to this point about the first and now second bank bailouts. It now seems like we’re going to go […]
The Destructive Center By PAUL KRUGMAN February 8, 2009 What do you call someone who eliminates hundreds of thousands of American jobs, deprives millions of adequate health care and nutrition, undermines schools, but offers a $15,000 bonus to affluent people who flip their houses? A proud centrist. For that is what the senators who ended […]
It was a pretty good day here in the woods. While I posted a few things, mostly about the continued Republican Insurgency, I mostly caught up on a bunch of stuff I’d been putting off for the last three weeks while obsessed with the War in Washington. I still can’t believe that they think that […]
The Grassley-Isakson-Coburn-Collins-Bad Nelson Bill By emptywheel I explained yesterday how the people who crafted the crappy Senate compromise bill were, to a significant degree, Republicans. Republicans who won’t even vote for the bill. But I forgot to credit the guy who really put the stupid in this bill: Johnny Isakson. Isakson is the former realtor […]