WHOSE MESS, CONGRESSMAN FRANK?

By Jeff Jacoby



"The private sector got us into this mess. The government has to get us out of it." That's Barney Frank's story, and he's sticking to it. As the Massachusetts Democrat has explained it in recent days, the current financial crisis is the spawn of the free market run amok, with the political class guilty only of failing to rein the capitalists in. The Wall Street meltdown was caused by "bad decisions that were made by people in the private sector," Frank said; the country is in dire straits today "thanks to a conservative philosophy that says the market knows best." And that philosophy goes "back to Ronald Reagan, when at his inauguration he said, `Government is not the answer to our problems; government is the problem.' "

In fact, that isn't what Reagan said. His actual words were: "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Were he president today, he would be saying much the same thing.

Because while the mortgage crisis convulsing Wall Street has its share of private-sector culprits -- many of whom have been learning lately just how pitiless the private sector's discipline can be -- they weren't the ones who "got us into this mess." Barney Frank's talking points notwithstanding, mortgage lenders didn't wake up one fine day deciding to junk long-held standards of creditworthiness in order to make ill-advised loans to unqualified borrowers. It would be closer to the truth to say they woke up to find the government twisting their arms and demanding that they do so -- or else.

The roots of this crisis go back to the Carter administration. That was when government officials, egged on by left-wing activists, began accusing mortgage lenders of racism and "redlining" because urban blacks were being denied mortgages at a higher rate than suburban whites.

The pressure to make more loans to minorities (read: to borrowers with weak credit histories) became relentless. In 1977 Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act, empowering regulators to punish banks that failed to "meet the credit needs" of "low-income, minority, and distressed neighborhoods." In 1995, under President Clinton, the law was made even more stringent. Lenders responded by loosening their underwriting standards and making increasingly shoddy loans. The two government-chartered mortgage finance firms, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, encouraged this "subprime" lending by authorizing ever more "flexible" criteria by which high-risk borrowers could be qualified for home loans, and then buying up hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of the questionable mortgages that ensued. Some state and local governments added pressure of their own.

All this was justified as a means of increasing homeownership among minorities and the poor. Affirmative-action policies trumped sound business practices. A manual issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston advised mortgage lenders to disregard financial common sense. "Lack of credit history should not be seen as a negative factor," the Fed's guidelines instructed. Applicants lacking sufficient savings to cover a down payment and closing costs should be allowed to rely instead on "gifts, grants, or loans from relatives, nonprofit organizations, or municipal agencies." Lenders were even directed to accept welfare payments and unemployment benefits as "valid income sources" to qualify for a mortgage. Failure to comply could mean a lawsuit.

As long as housing prices kept rising -- and with millions of otherwise unqualified borrowers adding to demand, they did -- the illusion that all this was good public policy could be sustained. But it didn't take a financial whiz to recognize that a day of reckoning would come. "What does it mean when Boston banks start making many more loans to minorities?" I asked in this space in 1995. "Most likely, that they are knowingly approving risky loans in order to get the feds and the activists off their backs . . . When the coming wave of foreclosures rolls through the inner city, which of today's self-congratulating bankers, politicians, and regulators plans to take the credit?"

Not Barney Frank. And yet his fingerprints are all over this fiasco. Time and time again, Frank insisted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in good shape. Five years ago, for example, when the Bush administration proposed much tighter regulation of the two companies, Frank was adamant that "these two entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not facing any kind of financial crisis." When the White House warned of "systemic risk for our financial system" unless the mortgage giants were curbed, Frank complained that the administration was more concerned about financial safety than about housing.

Now that the bubble has burst and the "systemic risk" is apparent to all, Frank blithely declares: "The private sector got us into this mess." Well, give the congressman points for gall. Wall Street and private lenders have plenty to answer for, but it was Washington and the political class that derailed this train. If Frank is looking for a culprit to blame, he can find one likely suspect in the nearest mirror.

Source

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The bailout: McCain is the Man who Got Action

He secured the compromises without which there was no way that House Republicans would have supported the bill

Weisman's article sums up the objectives of both McCain and Obama:

"McCain has been trying to help the House guys, trying to get their ideas into the broader bill," said a senior Republican Senate aide. "If McCain can do that, he can bring 50 to 100 House Republicans to the bill. That would be a big damn deal." . One Republican in the room said it was clear that the Democrats came into the meeting with a "game plan" aimed at forcing McCain to choose between the administration and House Republicans.

If Democrats did succeed in forcing McCain to choose between House Republicans and President Bush McCain choose wisely. President Bush is effectively a lame duck and without the support of House Republicans John McCain cannot be elected President. But more to the point, without McCain's action to stop the runaway freight train that the Obama-Dodd-Frank-Paulson bill had become, the bill might very well have failed to gain passage in the House causing further panic in world financial markets.

In an orchestrated attempt to showcase Obama's leadership ability, it's clear that instead, Obama only served to foster division by stoking the unease House GOP leaders felt over being pressured to sign off on what they knew was a bad bill. Weisman described Obama's participation at the White House meeting as a "hectoring performance" certainly not one designed to win over converts to the Democrat plan.

McCain's performance was much more presidential. Instead of doing all the talking, he LISTENED to what House GOP leaders were saying instead of trying to browbeat them into a bad agreement. And in the end, McCain is motivated by lifelong principles dedicated to protecting the taxpayer from big government boondoggles which is exactly what the Democrat plan pushed at the White House had become. If the current compromise passes, as many insist it must to avoid financial disaster, there will be only one man to thank: John McCain!

Much more here

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A stupid priest who is so far out of his depth he is drowning "The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams has spoken up in support of Karl Marx, defending key aspects of his critique of capitalism. Dr Williams warns that in the face of the credit crisis, the financial world needs new regulation and says that our society is running the risk of idolatry in its relationship with wealth. In an article in Friday's Spectator, Dr Williams compares today's debtors and financiers to the feckless young clerics and landowners described in the novels of Anthony Trollope. He writes: "Individuals find that their own personal financial decisions and calculations have nothing to do with what is happening to their resources, in a process for which a debt is simply someone else's wholly disposable asset."

No Funds for Squirrely ACORN: "Given that the bailout bill is largely agreed upon as a necessary "crap sandwich" that "sucks," it is worth noting that conservative outrage did succeed in stripping the most egregious pork from the bill- funds in an "affordable housing trust fund" that could have gone to Democrat-allied and often nefarious advocacy groups like ACORN. All possible proceeds from the sale of these toxic assets will now go toward the national debt, not to affordable housing groups that pressure politicians to pressure banks to offer risky loans to low-income families, so those families can get into mortgages they can't afford. Hmmm, doesn't that sound familiar? Unhappy with the revocation of another round of gorging at the government teat, ACORN is releasing angry press releases, which is at least one reason to smile"

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Newt gets it: Let the financiers sort themselves out

Republican Newt Gingrich: "You have an administration which, in my judgment, has lost its mind." And I agree wholeheartedly.

President Bush is so worried about his legacy - he is so afraid of being looked at as Herbert Hoover - that he is doing the very things that Hoover did: Intervene, intervene, intervene. He should do what Ronald Reagan did in 1981 and 1982 and 1987: Let the market play it out.

From the Atlantic Journal-Constitution, Gingrich wants Hank Paulson canned and Gingrich said, "They may have to, in the end, tolerate some of this. Because in the end, you have the Democrats desperate for socialism now. You have an administration which, in my judgment, has lost its mind. That gives you two big elements. And you have Senate Republicans desperate to go along. I'm just being truly candid. Because I think the country ought to know what the pressures really are like.

"And you've got the House Republicans and John McCain prepared to stand on as much principle [as possible] - but in the end, I don't think they're going to be prepared to do nothing. Because they understand that next week, as long as the current situation. stays the way it is, you're going to have a genuine credit crisis."

Either Republicans start behaving like conservatives or they can kiss it all off. Look for the return oif the '70s and it ain't very pretty.

Source

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Replenishing ACORN's Account: Keeping the Housing Mess Going

Like me the WSJ thinks it's outrageous that the Democrats are trying to find money in the bailout to keep their friends in ACORN well nourished:

Acorn has promoted laws like the Community Reinvestment Act, which laid the foundation for the house of cards built out of subprime loans. Thus, we'd be funneling more cash to the groups that helped create the lending mess in the first place.

This isn't the first time this year that Democrats have tried to route money for fixing the housing crisis into the bank accounts of these community activist groups. The housing bill passed by Congress in July also included a tax on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to raise an estimated $600 million annually in grants for these lobbying groups. When Fannie and Freddie went under, the Democrats had to find a new way to fill the pipeline flowing tax dollars into the groups' coffers.

This is a crude power grab in a time of economic crisis. Congress should insist that every penny recaptured from the sale of distressed assets be dedicated to retiring the hundreds of billions of dollars in public debt that will be incurred, or passed back to taxpayers who will ultimately underwrite the cost of the bailout.

Update from Clarice Feldman: Tom Maguire catches how outrageous the Dodd payoff plan to ACORN is:

Jim Lindgren points out multiple problems with Chris Dodd's original draft. My only reassurance - the current plan has moved beyond that. I had derided the Dodd approach to equity stakes last week but Lindgren has more trashing from a different direction.

And his insight on the housing slush fund is an eye-opener -- the original Dodd language called for 20% of the profit on each sale to be diverted to the Dem slush fund; this is far different from 20% of *net* profits. In a net profit scenario, losses on some sales would offset gains on others. Under Dodd, any profit is immediately subject to diversion, regardless of whether there are other, greater losses. That is not taxpayer protection. What it is is absurd

Source. More on ACORN here

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They've Reached a Deal on Bailout

House and Senate negotiators have reached tentative agreement on a financial rescue plan after a marathon Capitol negotiating session that started Saturday afternoon and stretched into early Sunday morning. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said their "breakthrough" still had to be "committed to paper," a process that was expected to continue through the night. "We have something verbal," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.).

Republican Whip Roy Blunt, the chief negotiator for House Republicans, said he was "looking forward to what we're going to see on paper" and was optimistic that it would be something House Republicans could support.

Said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson: "We've been working very hard on this and we've made great progress toward a deal which will work and will be effective in the marketplace and effective for all Americans . . . .We've still got a lot to do to finalize it, but I think we're there." The plan would likely give Paulson a relatively free hand accessing the first $350 billion of the $700 billion he sought. It was not clear when the remaining $350 billion would become available, but Treasury apparently agreed that a future Congress could block its release though a joint resolution signed by the president.

The agreement would also include much greater oversight than the Bush administration had initially proposed; an opportunity for the government to take an equity share in the companies it helps, either through warrants or options to buy stock; and a provision limiting the compensation paid to executives of those companies.

To help win the support of House Republicans, the agreement also would likely include an option under which Paulson and future Treasury secretaries could choose to sell companies government-backed insurance to cover securities - thereby improving their value - rather than buy the assets as initially proposed.

A vote in the House could come as early as Monday seemed, Emanuel said.

Source. Much more here. It is rumored that ACORN misses out!

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The last straw for South Africa: "A wave of alarm swept through middle-class South Africa last week as President Thabo Mbeki was sacked by the ruling African National Congress and replaced by Kgalema Motlanthe, who has already presided over sweeping cabinet changes. The new president is still remembered as a communist militant who urged that the country's youth be "taught to hate capitalism". The real winner in the coup against Mbeki is Jacob Zuma. He will lead the ANC into next April's election and is strongly backed by the powerful Communist party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, both of which favour radical left-wing policies. Polls show that business confidence has slumped to a seven-year low. There has long been considerable evidence of "white flight" to cities in Britain, Australia, America and New Zealand. It is estimated that up to 20% of South Africa's whites have emigrated since the advent of democracy in 1994. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Zuma's rise, coupled with nationwide power cuts and a continuing crime wave, has led to a further massive brain drain"

Americans Revealed To Have Lives on Friday Nights: "Ratings for last night's debate were average, by some counts lower than Bush-Kerry. Shouldn't be shocked, really; Americans have much better things to do on a Friday night in September - high school football, go out to the movies, hit the bars, splurge with their Friday paycheck coming in. The baseball playoffs are being set, the NL East and AL Central are still up for grabs, as is the NL wild card...

Anti US paranoia flares in EU over Irish vote : "FIRST it was the sheer ingratitude of the Irish, then it was the failure of the Dublin government to mount a successful yes campaign. Now Brussels has found a new explanation as to why Ireland voted down the European Union treaty in June - a CIA and Pentagon-backed plot, devised by American neoconservatives to weaken the EU. The European parliament wants an inquiry into whether Declan Ganley, the multi-millionaire chairman of the Libertas group that campaigned against the treaty, could be in the pockets of US defence and intelligence services. The calls have been led by Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the firebrand 1968 student leader turned Green MEP"

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Liberalism is an Addiction

by Burt Prelutsky

It occurred to me the other day that in spite of a bad back and his marriage vows, JFK chased everything in skirts; that Gary Hart allowed his libido to sink his political career; that even nerdy Jimmy Carter confessed to having lust in his heart, although nobody in recorded history has ever been so silly or sanctimonious as to suggest that lust resided anywhere above the belt; and that Bill Clinton, like a spooky version of Mr. Rogers, patiently explained to America's kids that oral sex isn't really sex.

With all that in mind, doesn't it strike you as hypocritical for the Democrats to get up in arms over a married mother of five running for the vice presidency? Doesn't it seem at least slightly absurd that the only sexual activity that liberals frown upon is the sort that actually leads to babies being born? ...

I'm certain that by this time most people have seen the photos of the American flags that were left for the trash collector after the Democratic convention in Denver. Even though I have a flag outside my front door and hate to think of a flag, the symbol of a nation that inspired my two sets of grandparents to travel 7,000 miles so I could be fortunate enough to be born an American, I wasn't as troubled by the photos as I would have been if they'd been misused after the Republican convention. Liberals, after all, are always insisting that they're as patriotic as conservatives, but I don't believe it. If they were, they'd respect the military far more than they do, they wouldn't nominate someone like Barack Obama and they certainly wouldn't keep saying how much America is despised around the world, while ignoring the fact that it's a badge of honor to be despised by the likes of Russia, China, Iran, Yemen, North Korea, Venezuela and the PLO. They would also acknowledge that there must be a darn good reason why millions of people who weren't as lucky as we were to be born in America are, literally in some cases, dying to come here.

So, when I see that the Democrats disrespected the flags, I understood that to them the flags were only cheap props like the balloons, the bunting, the confetti and those corny Greek columns. The real problem isn't that the left trashed a few flags, but that they keep trashing the country.

A friend of mine has come up with what I regard as a wonderful solution to the problem of leftist influence. She proposes that liberals be offered an incentive to leave the country, as they are constantly threatening to do whenever it appears that a Republican might be elected president. The sum she came up with is a million dollars per person That sounds like a lot until you realize that nowadays people casually toss around sums in the trillions when discussing federal budgets and deficits. Still, I think there is room for negotiation. The point is, these left-wing whiners would get a deal similar to the one the protagonist received in Edward Everett Hales's short story, "The Man Without a Country." Unlike Philip Nolan, though, they wouldn't be sentenced to spend the rest of their lives sailing the seas, but they would be denied the opportunity to ever set foot again on this sacred ground. Not even for a visit. Even if only a relatively small number of leftists accepted the deal, I, for one, would consider it money well spent.

Liberals have an impossible time defending their beliefs, which is why they rely on slogans and catch phrases, unfounded rumors and ad hominem attacks, on those who, like Sara Palin, think clearly and live according to Judeo-Christian principles.

The brains and values of left-wingers have decomposed to the point where they actually believe Keith Olbermann, Rosie O'Donnell and Chris Matthews make sense and that people like Whoopi Goldberg, Al Franken and Bill Maher, are funny. That is why I say that liberalism is an addiction -- and why, as with other addictions, I'd like to see it kicked. Kicked good and hard.

Source

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Palin and wolf hunting

A wildlife group's ad attacks Palin for supporting the shooting of wolves from airplanes. She does, but there's more to it than that. Killing a few wolves stops lots a caribou calves from being killed. What have the animal lovers got against caribou calves? No mercy for calves? Are some animals more equal than others? Maybe the animal lovers concerned think caribou are a type of vegetable. They seem dumb enough. Real animal lovers would SUPPORT Palin

A new ad from Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund shows the pursuit and shooting of a wolf from a small plane and tells viewers that Sarah Palin "actively promotes" such killings. It's true that she does, and in 2007 she offered $150 payments for anyone who brought the left forepaw of a wolf to state officials. The ad calls the practice "brutal and unethical" but doesn't tell the whole story.

* Alaskan officials call it "predator control," not aerial hunting, and use it to keep the populations of moose and caribou high for subsistence hunters.

* The program is limited to just 9 percent of the state's land mass, or five of 26 Department of Fish and Game districts.

* Far from being endangered, as they are in the Lower 48 states, gray wolves number between 7,000 and 11,000 in Alaska.

This TV spot isn't for the squeamish, especially not squeamish animal-lovers. Its visuals include sinister-looking photos of Gov. Sarah Palin juxtaposed with footage of a wolf trying to outrun an airplane, then being shot and writhing in pain. Finally we see a small plane taking off, a wolf carcass tied to one of its wing struts.

There's a lot of emotional huffing and puffing in the ad. It says "Sarah Palin actively promotes the brutal and unethical aerial hunting of wolves and other wildlife" and says she encourages "cruelty" and "champions ... savagery." But strip away the emotional characterization and we're left with a description of Palin's position that is essentially factually correct, though incomplete....

If you think the explanation above implies a more complicated landscape than the ad shows us, you're correct. In the first place, while gray wolves are listed as an endangered species in the Lower 48, and great efforts have been made to reintroduce them in some Western states, they are abundant in Alaska. Ron Clarke, assistant director of the Division of Wildlife Conservation at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, says the state is home to between 7,000 and 11,000 of them. Wolf populations in Alaska have bounced back since the 1950s, when federal agents conducted an extensive poisoning and aerial shooting campaign; moose and caribou proliferated as a result, in some cases leading to severe degradation of their own habitats.

Second, it's not for nothing that wolves have acquired their big, bad reputations. Studies indicate that predators (wolves and bears) often take 70 percent to 80 percent of the moose and caribou that die each year in Alaska. Research by the state Department of Fish and Game shows that "a single wolf eats 12-13 moose in a typical year and/or 30-40 caribou, mostly calves."

More here

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Deal for Financial Bailout Disintegrates as Obama, McCain Look On: The fate of the Bush administration’s $700 billion Wall Street’s bailout package was thrown into doubt Thursday evening, after congressional leaders left a landmark White House summit on the economy hurling accusations at each other and declaring there was no deal. Congressional leaders continued into the evening negotiating the proposed bailout of the financial industry with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s participation, but the negotiators ended the night without a deal. The summit at the White House, which included Barack Obama and John McCain, was intended to be a consensus-building exercise - one of the final stops on the rocky road to approving the controversial rescue package. Congressional leaders just hours earlier had announced they had reached an agreement in principle on the rescue package. But as Obama and McCain left, officials and aides who had attended the meeting said the summit ended on a very low note. “This meeting ended bad - real bad,” one source told FOX News. Others described the tone as “angry” and “heated,” saying Democrats were upset with House Republicans in particular who would not drop their opposition to the administration’s proposal."

John Rosenberg has an interesting post on why the Democrats don't pass the "bailout" bill that they seem so heavily to favour. They do after all have a majority in both houses. Why, then, do they insist on Republicans joining in them in passing the bill? I think it is obvious that they know it is a bad bill and do not want to be saddled with the blame for it at election time.

Data security? Unknown in Britain: "Files containing the personal records of thousands of serving and former RAF staff have been stolen, the Ministry of Defence confirmed last night. Three computer hard drives storing the information were taken last Wednesday in a raid on a high-security area at the Service Personnel and Veterans Agency at RAF Innsworth, Gloucester. The agency provides support for about 900,000 current and former RAF personnel. The loss of the data comes in the same week as a disk containing the names and addresses of almost 11,500 teachers went missing in the post. The Government has already come under scrutiny for its data protection procedures since the details of 25 million child benefit recipients were lost in transit by a courier almost a year ago. Earlier this month, Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, ordered an inquiry into the loss of a computer hard drive containing the details of up to 5,000 employees of the justice system."

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Bailout Could Deepen Crisis, CBO Chief Says

Asset Sales May Lead to Write-Downs, Insolvencies, Orszag Tells Congress

The director of the Congressional Budget Office said yesterday that the proposed Wall Street bailout could actually worsen the current financial crisis. During testimony before the House Budget Committee, Peter R. Orszag -- Congress's top bookkeeper -- said the bailout could expose the way companies are stowing toxic assets on their books, leading to greater problems.

"Ironically, the intervention could even trigger additional failures of large institutions, because some institutions may be carrying troubled assets on their books at inflated values," Orszag said in his testimony. "Establishing clearer prices might reveal those institutions to be insolvent."

In an interview later yesterday, Orszag explained using the following example: Suppose a company has Asset X, whose value is recorded on the books as $100. Because of the current economic decline, Asset X's real value has dropped to $50. If the company takes part in the government bailout and sells Asset X for $50, the company has to report a $50 loss on its books. On a scale of millions of dollars, such write-downs could ruin a company. Such companies "look solvent today only because it's kind of hidden," Orszag said. "They actually are insolvent" already, he said.

In hearings on Capitol Hill so far this week, criticism of the bailout plan put forward by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke has largely been restricted to the shape of the $700 billion proposal, how the money will be spent and what sort of oversight Treasury should have.

But Orszag yesterday questioned the wisdom of the plan itself, testifying that "it therefore remains uncertain whether the program will be sufficient to restore trust." In yesterday's interview, Orszag said, "The key question is: What are we buying and what are we paying for it?"

More here

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Bill Clinton Defends John McCain's Debate Decision-- Blames Dems For Meltdown!

ABC News' Nitya Venkataraman Reports: Former President Bill Clinton defended Sen. John McCain's request to delay the first presidential debate, saying McCain did it in "good faith" and pushed organizers to reserve time for economy talk during the debate if the Friday plans move forward.

Appearing on Good Morning America Thursday, Clinton told ABC News' Chris Cuomo that McCain's push to postpone the debate would only be a good political move if both candidates agreed. McCain announced on Wednesday that he would "suspend" his presidential campaign to come to Washington to help negotiate a financial bailout bill.

"We know he didn't do it because he's afraid because Sen. McCain wanted more debates," Clinton said, adding that he was "encouraged" by the joint statement from McCain and Sen. Barack Obama. "You can put it off a few days the problem is it's hard to reschedule those things," Clinton said, "I presume he did that in good faith since I know he wanted -- I remember he asked for more debates to go all around the country and so I don't think we ought to overly parse that."

Also... During the interview Bill Clinton blamed the Democrats for blocking reform of the mortgage giants, via Patriot Room:

Going very much against the media meme that the current financial crisis is all George W. Bush and the Republicans' fault, Bill Clinton on Thursday told ABC's Chris Cuomo that Democrats for years have been "resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was President to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac"

True. President Bush warned about reforming Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae 17 times this year alone. John McCain's reform bill was blocked by dems in 2005. Thank you, Bill Clinton!

Source

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And they accuse Republicans of being the party of big business!: "The House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a $25bn package of low-cost loans to help hard-pressed carmakers and their suppliers finance plant modernisation at a time of restricted access to public capital -markets. The automotive loans are separate from the proposed $700bn bail-out for the banking sector, which is still being debated in Congress. The House approved the measure 370-58, setting the stage for Senate approval within days".

MURTHA SUED!... Innocent Haditha Marine Files Slander Charges Against Dem Leader: "A Marine Corps lance corporal from Pennsylvania has sued U.S. Rep. John Murtha, saying the Democrat lawmaker slandered him by saying he and other marines killed 24 Iraqis in Haditha in "cold blood." Justin Sharratt has filed the suit in federal court in Pittsburgh. In the lawsuit, Sharratt claims the comments Murtha made in 2006 about the Haditha killings also violated the Marine's constitutional rights to due process and presumption of innocence."

Another Grim Milestone For Democrats In Iraq- Election Law Passes Parliament: "Iraq's parliament overwhelmingly approved a provincial elections law Wednesday, overcoming months of deadlock and giving a boost to U.S.-backed national reconciliation efforts... U.S. officials have complained privately that Iraqi politicians have failed to take advantage of the sharp drop in violence - down 80 percent since last year, according to the U.S. military - to forge lasting power-sharing agreements. The legislation had been bogged down in a complex dispute between Arabs and Kurds over power sharing in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, which Kurds seek to incorporate into their semiautonomous region. Lawmakers acknowledged the delay in passing the measure would make it difficult for the electoral commission to organize the vote and pushed back the deadline for it to be held until Jan. 31, 2009."

McCain campaign on the financial crisis: "At today's cabinet meeting, John McCain did not attack any proposal or endorse any plan. John McCain simply urged that for any proposal to enjoy the confidence of the American people, stressing that all sides would have to cooperate and build a bipartisan consensus for a solution that protects taxpayers. However, the Democrats allowed Senator Obama to run their side of the meeting. That did not work as the meeting quickly devolved into a contentious shouting match that did not seek to craft a bipartisan solution. At this moment, the plan that has been put forth by the Administration does not enjoy the confidence of the American people as it will not protect that taxpayers and will sacrifice Main Street in favor of Wall Street. The bottom line is that as of tonight, there are not enough Republican or Democrat votes for the current plan. However, we are still optimistic that a bipartisan solution will be found. Republicans and Democrats want a deal that will protect the taxpayers."

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Oh My God, Sarah Palin Might Be ... Normal?? Gasp!

Saw this YouTube at Politico - which is sounding more and more like Obama Central everyday.

Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric, the first portion of which airs tonight, won't give Republicans any reassurance that she's ready for prime time. It will, however, reassure McCain aides that they're following the right course of action by keeping her shielded.

I honestly think the media just continues to parade its elitism as regards Palin and doesn't understand her grassroots appeal at all. Jonathan Martin:

She is what she is -- not a seasoned politician who knows how to dodge every question. It's bracing but it also could be spun as normal.

Yeah, it could also be that, you know, she is normal and it doesn't have to be spun. Just think! People might actually like seeing someone that's normal in Washington for a change. (insert collective media shudder here)

Another note, when you start thinking that it's a crime for someone or something to be "normal," or that it's an impossibility, ... maybe you're the one with the problem? Ya think?



Source

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Paulson just didn't have a clue

By Anatole Kaletsky, a prominent British economics writer

THE Emperor has no clothes. If you want to know why American capitalism is on the brink of disaster, but also want to understand what will save it, then log on to the C-Span congressional website and watch the interrogations of Henry Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary, by the Senate and House banking committees.

Until last week, I was in a minority of one in arguing that Mr Paulson was personally responsible for suddenly turning the painful but manageable credit crunch that had been grinding away 18 months in the background of the US economy into a global catastrophe. Mr Paulson's appearances on Capitol Hill, marked by the characteristic Bush-era combination of arrogance and incompetence, are turning my once-outlandish view into conventional wisdom: Henry Paulson is to finance what Donald Rumsfeld was to military strategy, Dick Cheney to geopolitics and Michael Chertoff to flood defence.

Mr Paulson may be a former chairman of Goldman Sachs, but as US Treasury Secretary he does not know what he is doing. His recent blunders, starting with the "rescue" of Fannie Mae, have triggered unintended consequences around the world, resulting in the death-spiral of financial values. But last Friday Mr Paulson outdid even these Rumsfeldian achievements, when he demanded $700 billion from Congress for a "comprehensive and fundamental" solution to the global financial crisis, without apparently having any idea of what he would actually do.

The good news - before I return to the perils of Mr Paulson - is that his blunders no longer matter very much. There will still be a huge US government bank bailout, which will probably avert a disastrous slump in the US and global economies. But because Mr Paulson has lost the political initiative, this bailout will now be led by the Democratic leadership in Congress and will be structured around its priorities - relief from mortgage foreclosures, restrictions on bankers' pay and big government shareholdings in US banks. For President Bush it is a disaster, dashing his last faint hope of having a tangible achievement to his name before he leaves office.

How did things come to such a pass? When Mr Paulson announced his $700 billion "plan" last Friday, everybody in the financial world (myself included) heaved a sigh of relief. Finally, it seemed, the US Government was going to do whatever it takes to stabilise the world financial system. The universal assumption was that Mr Paulson would present a detailed plan of action over the weekend, putting a safety net under the value of homes, mortgages and related assets.
Yet all that appeared by Saturday evening was a three-page legislative outline, with no hint of the mechanisms to be used. The only substantive clause in the draft was a swaggering demand for untrammelled power: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to this Act are non-reviewable and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."

When further details of the Paulson plan failed to appear on Sunday it was assumed that the details were being untangled in late-night political negotiations. When there was still no plan on Monday, the view was that Mr Paulson must be holding back the details for his testimony to the Senate Banking Committee the following day. But then, to everyone's astonishment, Mr Paulson turned up to the committee on Tuesday morning with only the briefest opening statement, which simply repeated what he had already said the week before: the sky was falling and the only way to stop it was to give him authority over $700 billion in public money, to be spent in unspecified ways.

And suddenly the sky did fall down - not on the world economy, but on Mr Paulson. Consider the reactions from American politicians, including Republicans: "Stunning and unprecedented in its lack of detail"... "a $700 billion blank cheque to Wall Street"... "neither workable nor comprehensive"... "foolish waste of massive taxpayer funds"... "eerily similar to the rush to war in Iraq". Best of all was John McCain's comment: "When we're talking about a trillion dollars of taxpayer money, `trust me' just isn't good enough."

More here

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ELSEWHERE

The Left have been shrieking for years about how evil it is to view women as sex objects. But portraying Sarah Palin as a dim bimbo is fine, apparently. See here

Democrat dummy can't tell the difference between animals and people: "Rep. Alcee Hastings told an audience of Jewish Democrats Wednesday that they should be wary of Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin because "anybody toting guns and stripping moose don't care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks."

Leftist racism: "As an African-American, I have never supported a Democratic presidential candidate. Why? Because I have always believed that the Democratic Party's and the liberal media's marked propensity to stigmatize the Republican Party as racist is a disingenuous attempt to deflect any criticism about the Democratic Party's own shortcomings in this regard. Much of what the DNC and the liberal media say about its commitment to stamp out racism in America rings hollow, because they never miss an opportunity to fan the flames of bigotry. If one needs proof about where racism lies, whether consciously or not, all one has to do is to take a close look at some of Joe Biden's comments in recent years."

Coalition Has Entered `Endgame' in Iraq, Gates Says : "Amid an 80-percent drop in violence and with further withdrawals of U.S. forces in sight, the coalition in Iraq has reached the "endgame," Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said here today. "I believe we have now entered that endgame - and our decisions today and in the months ahead will be critical to regional stability and our national security interests for years to come," he told the Senate Armed Service Committee during a hearing on Iraq and Afghanistan. Highlighting success in Iraq are reductions in U.S. casualties and overall violence, and the handover of Anbar province this month to Iraqi authority. Anbar, the 11th of 18 provinces now under Iraqi control, once was a hotbed of the Sunni insurgency and the scene of some of the war's most contentious fighting."

A good time to kick the United Nations out of New York?: "Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo on Tuesday introduced legislation aimed at that: "The legislation is being introduced amid incessant anti-American and anti-Jewish political grandstanding from the podium of the General Assembly."

Newt on Senator McCain's Decision to Suspend His Campaign to Forge an Agreement on the Financial Crisis: "Today john McCain showed what it meant to put country first. He put everything on the line to try to put together a bipartisan sizable economic package to replace the failed Paulson bailout package. This is the greatest single act of responsibility ever taken by a presidential candidate and rivals President Eisenhower saying, `I will go to Korea.' Every House and Senate Republican should join him in seeking the best ideas and the best solutions from across the country. This is the day the McCain-reform Republican Party began to truly emerge as a movement which puts country first, solutions first, and big change first."

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Bush held firm on Iraq and got it right when all about him were wobbling

History will speak well of him

Now that even Barack Obama has acknowledged that President Bush's surge in Iraq has "succeeded beyond our wildest dreams," maybe it's time the Democratic nominee gives some thought to how that success actually came about -- not just in Ramadi and Baghdad, but in the bureaucratic Beltway infighting out of which the decision to surge emerged.

Consider what confronted Mr. Bush in 2006. Following a February attack on a Shiite shrine in the city of Samarra, Iraq's sectarian violence began a steep upward spiral. The U.S. helped engineer the ouster of one Iraqi prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, in favor of Nouri al-Maliki, an untested leader about whom the U.S. knew next to nothing. The "Sunni Awakening" of tribal sheiks against al Qaeda was nowhere in sight. An attempt at a minisurge of U.S. and Iraqi forces in Baghdad failed dismally. George Casey, the American commander in Iraq, believed the only way the U.S. could "win" was to "draw down" -- a view shared up the chain of command, including Centcom Commander John Abizaid and then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

From the State Department, Condoleezza Rice opposed the surge, arguing, according to Mr. Woodward, that "the U.S. should minimize its role in punishing sectarian violence." Senior brass at the Pentagon were also against it, on the theory that it was more important to ease the stress on the military and be prepared for any conceivable military contingency than to win the war they were fighting.

Handed this menu of defeat, Mr. Bush played opposite to stereotype by firing Mr. Rumsfeld and seeking advice from a wider cast of advisers, particularly retired Army General Jack Keane and scholar Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute. The President also pressed the fundamental question of how the war could actually be won, a consideration that seemed to elude most senior members of his government. "God, what is he talking about?" Mr. Woodward quotes a (typically anonymous) senior aide to Ms. Rice as wondering when Mr. Bush raised the question at one meeting of foreign service officers. "Was the President out of touch?"

No less remarkably, the surge continued to face entrenched Pentagon opposition even after the President had decided on it. Admiral Michael Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went out of his way to prevent General Keane from visiting Iraq in order to limit his influence with the White House.

The Pentagon also sought to hamstring General David Petraeus in ways both petty and large, even as it became increasingly apparent that the surge was working. Following the general's first report to Congress last September, Mr. Bush dictated a personal message to assure General Petraeus of his complete support: "I do not want to change the strategy until the strategy has succeeded," Mr. Woodward reports the President as saying. In this respect, Mr. Bush would have been better advised to dictate that message directly to Admiral Mullen.

The success of the surge in pacifying Iraq has been so swift and decisive that it's easy to forget how difficult it was to find the right general, choose the right strategy, and muster the political will to implement it. It is also easy to forget how many obstacles the State and Pentagon bureaucracies threw in Mr. Bush's way, and how much of their bad advice he had to ignore, especially now that their reputations are also benefiting from Iraq's dramatic turn for the better.

More here

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Democrats' hair of the dog remedies

"The private sector got us into this mess. The government has to get us out of it," said Barney Frank, which illustrates why conservatives often say liberals have a socialist bent.

Free market conservatives understand that many problems have been caused by government's officious intermeddling in the private sector. The subprime mortgage crisis is no exception. History has shown that liberal prescriptions don't work, but when they fail, liberals invariably not only deny responsibility for their do-gooder manipulation but also insist on even more government intrusion. Think of it as "the hair of the dog" remedy on steroids.

For example, many of our health care problems can be traced to increased government control and the reduction of market forces. Yet the liberal solution is full-blown nationalized health care. Never mind that it doesn't work anywhere in the world and always leads to waiting lines and inferior health care. Never mind that the United States has the best health care in the history of the world, notwithstanding admittedly serious problems.

Another example is Social Security. Instead of creating a trust fund segregated from general revenues, congressional liberals with an insatiable appetite for spending raided Social Security revenues from day one. The system has been one big Ponzi scheme funded by IOUs from one arm of government to another. Bill Clinton and Al Gore had the audacity to propose a "lockbox" to secure Social Security, when their ideological predecessors happily breached their promise for the original lockbox.

But what did liberals do when President Bush proposed that people be allowed to set a portion of their Social Security funds aside in private accounts? They called it a risky scheme to benefit Wall Street. Barack Obama is the latest in a long line of liberal demagogues to make this claim, but his ad on this subject was so distorted as to earn a reprimand from FactCheck.org.

When liberalism causes a problem, by all means, don't allow the natural equalizer of the free market to cure it. Insist on more government intervention under the theory that the problem is a result of too little government. It's kind of reminiscent of the Marxist promise of the withering away of the state, is it not? Just give us totalitarian control and we'll eventually unshackle the proletariat from government bondage. Right. There's also a bridge to the Kremlin they'd like to sell you.

Which brings us back to the current subprime mortgage crisis. When we strip away all the complexity, we discover that social planning largely led to this debacle. Government politicians and bureaucrats forced lending institutions to make un-creditworthy loans and helped create unnatural demand in the housing market by priming the pump on bad loans. This created an unnatural price bubble in real estate, which was securing these ill-advised loans. When the bubble inevitably burst, the mortgages secured by the artificially inflated real estate plummeted in value, which left us with an epidemic of grossly under-secured loans.....

The Democrats will never take responsibility for the mess they made and they would rather look for scapegoats than a solution. When a solution is designed you can expect that Democrats will be trying to get their hands in the cookie jar for more for their constituents instead of solving the problem.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

An interesting post here about Pinochet and Allende in Chile. A point that I had missed is that Pinochet was actually appointed to the top army job by Allende himself!

Feminist Naomi Wolfe lapses into full-blown paranoid schizophrenia: "Almost everyone I work with on projects related to this campaign for liberty has been experiencing computer harassment: emails are stripped, messages disappear. That's not all: people's bank accounts are being tampered with: wire transfers to banks vanish in midair. I personally keep opening bank accounts that are quickly corrupted by fraud. Money vanishes. Coworkers of mine have to keep opening new email accounts as old ones become infected. And most disturbingly to me personally is the mail tampering I have both heard of and experienced firsthand. My tax returns vanished from my mailbox. All my larger envelopes arrive ripped straight open apparently by hand. When I show the postman, he says "That's impossible." Horrifyingly to me is the impact on my family. My childrens' report cards are returned again and again though perfectly addressed; their invitations are turned back; and my daughters many letters from camp? Vanished. All of them. Not one arrived."

Obama vs. Biden: "So in the last 24 hours we have seen Joe Biden call an Obama campaign ad terrible and say it would never have happened if he had known about it; Barack Obama say Joe Biden should not have opposed the AIG bailout last week; and Joe Biden disagreeing with Obama's position on clean coal and telling a voter (rather unpleasantly) that his view, not Obama's, is the campaign's position. Not a great sign from the guys who argue that running a campaign is a substitute for executive experience."

The Palin surge shows up the feminists: "McCain's hand grenade has exploded the rot at the core of today's feminists; and by exposing the inner emptiness of feminism, she has also torn apart the center of all the victimhood/identity politics that have driven the Democratic Party for a generation. The Party of Nothing--with all their pious intonations about victimhood and diversity; hope and change--stands before us in the pseudopersona of the Obamessiah and his dedicated minions, who will do anything for him. Meanwhile, Sarah continues to draw in the crowds and revitalize the Republican conservative base. How frightening that must be for the "progressives" of the left."

Follow the money: Barack Obama Edition : "Writing at the American Thinker, Mac Fuller describes the flow of funds around Barack Obama in an exquisitely documented article. Did you know that the Reverend Jeremiah Wright has received $15 million in federal funds? Yep, that's the same Wright who accompanied Nation of Islam chief Louis Farrakhan on a trip to Libya (and the Pan Am 103 mastermind Muammar Gaddafi), published Hamas propaganda in his newsletter and espoused racially divisive, anti-American rhetoric for decades. All the while, he was collecting millions in taxpayer funds from "G*dd**n America, the USKKK of A" (his words). Unsettling to say the least."

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

****************************

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Clubbing the Bailout

The Club for Growth condemned the massive government bailout proposed by the Treasury and the Bush administration as unnecessary, unfair to taxpayers, and fraught with serious costs to the American economy

Eighteen months into the credit crunch, many largely capitalized financial services firms are experiencing serious difficulties but the overall economy continues to grow. GDP growth over the past 12 months was 2.25 percent and 3.5 percent when excluding the drag imposed by the housing sector. Even within the financial sector, many banks are doing well.

Regional bank indices had risen significantly since the lows of last July-prior to the bailout announcement-and thousands of community banks are thriving. It is extraordinary that a massive government intervention in the economy is considered inevitable when the economy is not even in a recession.

At the same time, socializing economic risks come at a great cost to the American economy by misallocating capital, inviting political manipulation, and putting taxpayers on the hook for possibly a trillion dollars. Such a large takeover by the government will surely be accompanied by adverse, unintended consequences. Already, other companies and industries are lining up at government's door asking for their own bailout. And if the government incurs $700 billion in debt to finance the purchase of bad bank assets, the danger that it will eventually monetize that debt and trigger dramatic inflation is very worrisome

"The Treasury's bailout proposal will likely cause more harm than good," said Club for Growth President Pat Toomey. Instead of launching the largest government bailout since the Great Depression, the government should be implementing policies to stimulate the economy. These include, at a minimum, cutting the tax on capital gains, cutting corporate taxes, reviewing and considering repeal of FAS 57 which requires banks to mark-to-market most securities, and emphasizing the need for a strong dollar."

"Finally, many politicians are using the current struggle to make free-market capitalism the scapegoat for the economy's troubles, when in fact, government played a major role in getting us into this mess in the first place. Free-market capitalism is alive and well, and we should be embracing its tenets, not rejecting them."

Source

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Why Henry Paulson must be "contained"

Both parties in Washington are about to screw us over on an unprecedented scale. They are threatening us with fiscal apocalypse if we don't fork over $700 billion to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and allow him to dole it out to whomever he chooses in whatever amount he chooses - without public input or recourse. They are rushing like mad to cram this Mother of All Bailouts down our throats in the next 72-96 hours. And right there in the text of the proposal is this naked power grab: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."

Stop. My question for fellow conservatives: Do you trust this man? I don't. Do you trust Hank Paulson's judgment? I don't. Listen to what he said about the subprime crisis in April 2007:

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said... the housing market correction appears to be at or near its bottom and that troubles in the subprime mortgage market will not likely spread throughout the economy. "We've clearly had a big correction in the housing market. Retail housing was growing for some time at a level that was not sustainable," Paulson said in a speech to The Committee of 100, a business group in New York promoting better Chinese relations. "I don't see (subprime mortgage market troubles) imposing a serious problem. I think it's going to be largely contained," he added.

Much more here

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Former Clinton Staffers Jump to McCain Camp

MSNBC reports on the former Hillary staffers now supporting McCain and making strong arguments against The One. One must wonder if (officially) pro-Obama Hillary urged these loyal staffers to not do this. It would be unusual for Clinton loyalists to do something against her wishes. Some gems from the former Clinton supporters:

"Obama really doesn't have the experience," said Miguel Lausell, senior national political advisor to Hillary Clinton. "We don't know what he's going to be doing. We don't really know where he's coming from, and that's the big difference."

Luchy Secaira, former Sen. Hillary Clinton Delegate-at-Large, said that stance on women's issues is all talk and no action. Secaira said that Obama's rhetoric on the Equal Pay Act is not backed up with hiring practices in his Senate office. "We need to look no further than Sen. Obama's own senate office, where it's been documented that he pays women less on his staff than males on his staff," said Secaira. "He talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk."

"The Hispanic community has nothing to fear, because they know John McCain," Secaira added. "He has fought against his own party on behalf of the Hispanic community and was an integral part in trying to bring forth comprehensive immigration reform."

Source

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ELSEWHERE

Has Sarah swung Mac on ANWR? "Alaska's congressional delegation seemed confident that if Sen. John McCain wins the presidency, he would sign off on a bill opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas development. There are, however, a lot of ifs. The race for the White House is neck and neck, and Congress doesn't have a bill giving the go-ahead to oil development in Alaska's far north."

Inquest into British police shooting: Police ruled victim out as suspect 20 mins before they shot him! "Jean Charles de Menezes was ruled out as a suspected suicide bomber just 20 minutes before he was shot dead by police, an inquest into his death has heard. The innocent Brazilian was killed on a Tube train at Stockwell Underground station on July 22, 2005 after being mistaken for one of the four terrorists who had tried to blow themselves up on London's transport system the previous day. Two firearms officers who shot him in the head a total of seven times at point blank range have said they were "convinced" Mr de Menezes was about to detonate a suicide bomb and that "an instant killing was the only option" otherwise "everyone in the carriage was going to die". Yet an officer in the Metropolitan Police control room directing the surveillance teams who followed Mr de Menezes made a note which said: "Not identical male as above discounted. Surveillance to withdraw to original positions."

Another Dem talking point proven false: "The Democrats want you to believe that the Iraq War turned the world -- especially the Muslim world -- has turned against us because we toppled an evil killer of Muslims. Their prescription was to pull out our troops. So how do we explain this from the Jordan Times? AMMAN - Jordanian Muslims' support for Osama Ben Laden has dropped dramatically this year, with only 19 per cent expressing confidence in Al Qaeda leader, compared to 61 per cent three years ago, according to a study.

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

****************************

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Financial Crisis Came Because Democrats Failed to Act

Let's stop the nonsense. It's an established fact that President Bush began to call for reform for Freddie Mac and Sally Mae long before it was politically fashinonable, and long before the present crisis.

Another fact is that when he did some of the democrats that are squawking now, failed to act. As I said here, back in 2003 The Bush administration recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

What was the response response? NADA. In fact two Democrats, Congressman Barney Frank and Senator Chuck Schumer did more than next to nothing. Via Wake up America who notes this editorial on Frank and Schumer's role in the crisis.

"One month from tomorrow, U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., will be the keynote speaker at the New Hampshire Democratic Party's annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner. It is a coveted and high-profile role previously filled by such notables as Hillary Clinton and Al Gore. The Democrats' choice of House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank is, therefore, very revealing.

The party announced Frank as the keynote speaker on Sept. 11 - three days after the U.S. government took control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, costing taxpayers untold billions. That takeover probably could have been prevented had Frank not worked to thwart every attempt to limit the risks taken on by the two government-sponsored mortgage giants.

For 16 years reformers in Congress have tried to improve oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and prevent the government-chartered companies from putting the housing market and the whole economy at risk. All that time, Frank was involved in efforts to block those attempts, and in the last eight years he was a leader of those efforts.

In 2002, shortly before accounting irregularities were exposed at both companies, Frank said, "I do not regard Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as problems," The Wall Street Journal reported. After the Freddie Mac accounting scandal in 2003, Frank said, "I do not think we are facing any kind of a crisis."

But there was a crisis, thanks in large part to Frank, Sen. Charles Schumer and others on the leash of these companies. In Congress, they made sure there was no additional oversight, no additional limit on executive behavior and compensation, and no further restraint on the growth of the companies' mortgage-backed-securities portfolios, among other changes.

In fact, Frank & Co. made matters worse by pushing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to take on greater risk. They wanted more loans to people who might not qualify for traditional bank financing. And, as The Wall Street Journal has pointed out, Frank "pressured regulators to ease up on their capital requirements - which now means taxpayers will have to make up that capital shortfall."

Even now, after the government took the companies over (which Frank repeatedly said over the years was not a possibility), Frank opposes limits on the amount of money they can risk on mortgage backed securities - the one reform that might have done the most to prevent the current meltdown and probably would do the most to keep it from happening again.

Barney Frank is the very symbol of Washington's deliberate refusal to prevent the collapse - the predicted collapse - of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And this is the guy the New Hampshire Democratic Party showcases at its most prestigious annual event. That ought to tell you a lot right there."

Source

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Jimmah Carter started the rot that led to the present financial crisis

Much as Bush-hating media members conveniently ignore historical events that led to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, their current finger-pointing at the White House, John McCain, and all Republican politicians for the collapse of the financial services industry lacks any honest assessment of decades-old legislation that laid the groundwork for today's problems. In particular, 1977's Community Reinvestment Act which required banks and savings institutions to make loans to the lower-income areas in the communities they served.

Despite how integrally tied the current crisis is to this bill enacted by a Democrat-controlled Congress and signed into law by Jimmy Carter, no major media outlet other than Investor's Business Daily and National Review Online mentioned it during last week's market meltdown. Going against the grain was a highly-informative editorial by IBD Thursday:

To hear today's Democrats, you'd think all this started in the last couple years. But the crisis began much earlier. The Carter-era Community Reinvestment Act forced banks to lend to uncreditworthy borrowers, mostly in minority areas. Age-old standards of banking prudence got thrown out the window. In their place came harsh new regulations requiring banks not only to lend to uncreditworthy borrowers, but to do so on the basis of race.

These well-intended rules were supercharged in the early 1990s by President Clinton. Despite warnings from GOP members of Congress in 1992, Clinton pushed extensive changes to the rules requiring lenders to make questionable loans. [...] Failure to comply meant your bank might not be allowed to expand lending, add new branches or merge with other companies. Banks were given a so-called "CRA rating" that graded how diverse their lending portfolio was. [...] In the name of diversity, banks began making huge numbers of loans that they previously would not have. They opened branches in poor areas to lift their CRA ratings.

Meanwhile, Congress gave Fannie and Freddie the go-ahead to finance it all by buying loans from banks, then repackaging and securitizing them for resale on the open market. That's how the contagion began. With those changes, the subprime market took off. From a mere $35 billion in loans in 1994, it soared to $1 trillion by 2008.

Readers are strongly encouraged to review this entire fact-filled piece to not only better understand the roots of today's financial crisis, but also to get a sense as to just how absurd media accusations of this all being Bush and McCain's fault are.

That said, from 1989 through 1995, I managed branches for two savings and loans: Imperial Savings, which got taken over by the Resolution Trust Corporation during the S&L bailout, and; Great Western Bank which eventually was purchased by Washington Mutual. The pressure to comply with CRA was astounding, especially at Great Western as it was expanding throughout the country. Its ability to acquire other institutions was directly related to its CRA rating.

With this in mind, IBD's views concerning this matter are spot on raising a very important question: if the role of news media is to inform the public, why does a LexisNexis search indicate that as this crisis came to a head last week, its connection to CRA, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton was almost completely ignored?

Would such a revelation make it difficult for Obama-loving press outlets to point fingers at George W. Bush and, more importantly, John McCain? Yes, that's a rhetorical question.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

One small step: "American Thinker justly can claim credit for legislation to protect Californians against at least one petty tyranny. SB 1491 in on the Governor's desk awaiting signature. It would allow citizens to refuse a remote controlled thermostat in their home or office. It is not all we wanted but it is something. This AT article triggered a national outcry, according to the New York Times. State Senator Tom McClintock deserves credit for SB 1491. He is running for Congress now."

Bush called for reform of Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac 17 times in 2008 alone... Dems ignored warnings : "For many years the President and his Administration have not only warned of the systemic consequences of financial turmoil at a housing government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) but also put forward thoughtful plans to reduce the risk that either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac would encounter such difficulties. President Bush publicly called for GSE reform 17 times in 2008 alone before Congress acted. Unfortunately, these warnings went unheeded, as the President's repeated attempts to reform the supervision of these entities were thwarted by the legislative maneuvering of those who emphatically denied there were problems."

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Our Sister Sarah Palin's Anti-Elitist Charm

By Ralph Peters

I KNOW Sarah Palin, and so does my wife. Neither of us ever actually met the governor of Alaska, but we grew up with her - in the small-town America despised by the leftwing elite. One gal-pal classmate of my wife's has even traveled from New York's Finger Lakes to Alaska to hunt moose with her husband. (Got one, too.) And no, Ms. Streisand, she isn't a redneck missing half her teeth - she's a lawyer.

The sneering elites and their mediacrat fellow travelers just don't get it: How on earth could anyone vote for someone who didn't attend an Ivy League school? And having more than 1.7 children marks any woman as a rube. (If Palin had any taste, her teenage daughter would've had a quiet abortion in a discreet facility.)

And what kind of retro-Barbie would stay happily married to her high-school sweetheart? Ugh. She even kills animals and eats them. (The meat and fish served in the upscale bistros patronized by Obama supporters appears by magic - it didn't really come from living things. . .)

Palin has that hick accent, too. And that busy-mom beehive 'do. Double ugh! Bet she hasn't even read Ian McEwan's latest novel and can't explain Frank Gehry's vision for a new architecture. She and her blue-collar (triple ugh!) husband don't even own a McMansion, let alone an inherited family compound on the Cape. And she wants to be vice president?

The opinion-maker elites see Sarah Palin clearly every time they look up from another sneering article in The New Yorker: She's a country-bumpkin chumpette from a hick state with low latte availability. She's not one of them and never will be. That's the real disqualifier in this race.

Now let me tell you what those postmodern bigots with their multiple vacation homes and their disappointing trust-fund kids don't see: Sarah Palin's one of us. She actually represents the American people. When The New York Times, CNN, the NBC basket of basket cases and all the barking blog dogs insult Palin, they're insulting us. When they smear her, they're smearing every American who actually works for a living, who doesn't expect a handout, who doesn't have a full-time accountant to parse the family taxes, who believes in the Pledge of Allegiance and who thinks a church is more than just a tedious stop on daughter Emily's 100K wedding day.

Go ahead, faux feminists and Hollywood deep thinkers: Snicker at Sarah America's degree from the University of Idaho, but remember that most Americans didn't attend Harvard or Princeton as a legacy after daddy donated enough to buy his kid's way in. Go ahead, campaign strategists: Mock Americans who go to church and actually pray. But you might want to run the Census numbers first. And go right ahead: Dismiss all of us who remember how, on the first day of deer season, our high school classrooms were half empty (not a problem at Andover or Exeter).

That rube accent of Palin's? It's a howler. But she sounds a lot more like the rest of us than a Harvard man or a Smithie ever will. Why does Sarah Palin energize all of us who don't belong to the gilded leftwing circle? Because she's us. We sat beside her in class. We hung out after school (might've even shared a backseat combat zone on prom night). And now she lives next door, raising her kids. For the first time since Ronald Reagan, our last great president, we, the people, see a chance that one of us might have a voice in governing our country. ....

Our country can't afford another one of these clowns. Harvard isn't the answer - Harvard's the problem. So here's the message Palin is sending on behalf of the rest of us (the down-market masses Dems love at election time and ignore once the voting's done): The rule of the snobs is over. It's time to give one of us a chance to lead. Sen. John McCain's one of us, too. He raised hell at Annapolis (quadruple ugh: military!), and he'll raise the right kind of hell in Washington. McCain's so dumb he really loves his country. Sarah Palin's dumb that way, too. How terribly unfashionable.

More here

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Hating Sarah Palin

The left-liberal Webzine Salon has become something of a clearinghouse for rage against Alaska's governor. The latest contribution, from one Anne Lamott, actually uses the H word:

I sat outside a 7-Eleven and had a sacramental Dove chocolate bar. Jeez: Here we are again. A man and a woman whose values we loathe and despise--lying, rageful and incompetent, so dangerous to children and old people, to innocent people in every part of the world--are being worshiped, exalted by the media, in a position to take a swing at all that is loveliest about this earth and what's left of our precious freedoms.

When I got home from church, I drank a bunch of water to metabolize the Dove bar and called my Jesuit friend, who I know hates these people, too. I asked, "Don't you think God finds these smug egomaniacs morally repellent? Recoils from their smugness as from hot flame?" And he said, "Absolutely. They are everything He or She hates in a Christian."

I have been in a better mood ever since, and have decided not to even say this woman's name anymore, because she fills me with such existential doubt, such a sense of impending doom and disbelief, that only the Germans could possibly have words for it.

What's hilarious about this is that, except for the obligatory "or She," Lamott and her unnamed interlocutor fit exactly the stereotype people on the left typically hold of conservatives, and religious conservatives in particular: smug yet insecure, dogmatic and intolerant and filled with hate and rage. Even Lamott's descriptions of Palin more aptly describe Lamott in the act of describing Palin!

Source

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ELSEWHERE

The arty-farties again: "The art world is intrigued by a statue called "Mao Suit," a five-and-a-half-ton steel representation of the dictator's iconic jacket, currently installed on Park Avenue in Manhattan, a choice of location that should merit some kind of Nobel Prize in Irony. Critics have noted that the bottom of the jacket is rather generously cut, suggesting that the chairman was prosperous to the point of being bourgeois. "It suggests that Mao was quite plump," Melissa Chiu, director of the Asia Society's museum, told the New York Sun. She added: "Yes, his policies exacted suffering among his people: There is a common saying about Mao being 70 percent right and 30 percent wrong." Seventy percent right? St,phane Courtois's Black Book of Communism estimates that the Maoist project in China killed some 65 million people, about two-thirds of Communism's worldwide toll of 100 million dead. Somewhere, Mao's ghost is wondering, Does this genocide make me look fat?"

Party of Lawyers : "Barack Obama and Joe Biden are both lawyers. Neither John McCain nor Sarah Palin is a lawyer. Kedwards were both lawyers too, whereas neither George W. Bush nor Dick Cheney is one. Eugene Volokh, a lawyer, extends the pattern further: Of 12 Democratic presidential and vice presidential nominees since 1980, all but two (Jimmy Carter and Al Gore) were lawyers. Of the nine Republican nominees in the same period, all but two (Dan Quayle and Bob Dole) were nonlawyers."

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH (2), TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

****************************

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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