Enoch

Here's a pretty good rundown. Essentially, it's a "Wall Street Bailout," and the voter-on-the-street hates Wall Street. Throw in that there's an election in 5 weeks, so the politicians who support it haven't sufficiently put their necks on the line to convince the public that it is in their long-term best interest.

The problem isn't the bad loans in themselves. They were just the straw that broke the camel's back. The problem is that banks are very reluctant to loan to each other because they can't trust what those other banks have on their balance sheet (due to so many of them being heavily invested in difficult-to-value derivatives and potentially toxic mortgage-backed securities). If banks can't count on overnight lending from other banks to meet their reserve requirements, they are susceptable to runs. And they're sure as heck not going to be making new loans to businesses and individuals.

Addendum on the "people make mistakes" bit: As I mentioned earlier (might have been in the other thread), the mistakes were made because of a failure of leadership and forsight from an entire generation of financial and governmental elites.

Once again, no banks were commanded to make loans to any particular applicants. The Government Sponsored Entities (GSEs), a.k.a., Fannie and Freddie, were compelled to buy and securitize subprime mortgages. If a bank decided that it wanted to keep higher standards, not securitize its lending, and accept lower short-term profits in exchange for lower long-term risk, they were perfectly free to do so (Hudson City Savings Bank, in the NY region, has become famous for this). In hindsight, it looks quite misguided for the government to use the GSEs as they did to achieve policy goals, but they are, at their core government sponsored, so one can hardly object on moral grounds to the government ordering them around a little bit. Although I don't share taks' view on economic rights (outside of the confiscatory extremes), I do agree that markets are phenomenally useful and powerful tools that can be extraordinarily beneficial for a society. The current crisis does not represent a downfall of capitalism or anything close to it. When you get down to it, markets (and governments) are nothing more than groups of people, and people make mistakes.

OK, that's a reasonably fair point from an economic history point of view. For example, among other things, many of those financial panics were illustrations of the problems associated with specie-backed currency. (E.g., Big gold rush? Inflation! A decade of growth without a major gold find? Deflation!) But still, 19th-Century America was the most laissez-faire major economy the world has seen, and it does illustrate some of the advantages (growth fueled by innovation and entrepreneurship) as well as the disadvantages (labor problems, monopoly, and some very crippling depressions) of such an approach. Interestingly, your above post rightly acknowledges that economies are very complicated creatures, and that no one cause can be said to be responsible for any one effect. But the same doesn't seem to apply in your thinking when the big bad government is that cause: First off, Fannie & Freddie don't make any loans themselves. They buy loans from private loan originators (banks and such), package them together in various forms to make mortgage-backed securities, and sell these securities on financial markets. They've gotten in trouble because they put a guarantee on certain aspects of most of the securities they sell. Second, it's naive to suggest that government's regulations on lending to poorer customers is anywhere close to the only reason for the problems in the mortgage industry. Regulation was a factor in this crisis, and if you're looking for a way to blame government for everything and absolve the decision-makers in the private marketplace, it makes for a convenient scapegoat. But a more thorough inquiry finds plenty of blame to go around for all parties involved. Yes, Fannie and Freddie were forced to buy and securitize these loans, but it was still up to the individual banks to make them. They did so because higher risk borrowers pay higher interest rates, and because they were disastrously wrong about two big assumptions: 1) that real estate prices would keep going up, and 2) that by swapping their loans for mortgage-backed securities, they diversified all their risk away. We agree on this at least: I don't think it's a result of "capitalism"-- I think it's a result of human nature. Lastly, and once again, the current financial problems are much broader than just real estate. It happened to be the sector that was hit first, but in time anyone who saves or borrows money for whatever purpose is going to feel the effects. The bigwigs on Wall Street were too captivated by their own brilliance to notice that overly leveraged transactions, even with hedges, were a bomb waiting to go off. Plus, the huge growth in derivatives greatly obfuscated the balance sheets of lots of big firms, making them even more vulnerable. (Derivatives can be very difficult to value accurately, so when a company's balance sheet has a whole lot of them on the "assets" side, nobody really knows what that company is actually worth.) Throughout all this, the Fed, the Treasury, and the Congress were basically dancing to Wall Street's tune (as is usually the case when the markets are riding high), repealing restrictions on investment banks and keeping the cheap credit flowing to fuel the leveraged investment boom.

It will come to the rest of the world in time. The over-leveraging of the big investment banks was concentrated in the States and Britain (and a few spots in Asia), and the failure of a few of these institutions will of course hit those economies first in immediate ways (i.e., they lay people off; companies that partner and contract with them lay people off, etc.). But the financial industry is global, and a bank doesn't have to fail in your neighborhood for it to be affected by chaos in the financial sector. The greater consequence of the events of the last few weeks will be that credit will simply become very hard to get, all over the world. When businesses can't get loans, the economy is stifled.

<sigh> Once again, current economic troubles do not fit squarely into the narrow views of either ideology. Unregulated capitalism, although it's great for growth and efficiency, creates a pretty regular cycle of booms and panics in financial markets (see: the entirety of U.S. economic history before 1932). Government intervention and regulation, if done well, sacrifices a little bit of growth and efficiency in exchange for more stability and predictability. (Which is usually a good tradeoff for the well-being of the citizenry as a whole when done properly.) In this particular event, the business elites miscalculated, the private-sector checks on them (audits; rating agencies; the business press) failed, and the government similarly failed to notice/address the problem before it boiled over. The bailout is essentially damage control-- to help stop the bleeding and, if possible, minimize the degree to which the financial panic harms the broader economy.

All the stuff with the financial crisis gets very complicated, and it certainly doesn't fit neatly into the mindless ideological shouting match between "It's all the government's fault!" and "It's all the greedy corporations' fault!". (It probably doesn't fit into a thread on the Presidential Election particularly well, either.) Did government fail by giving the investment banks pretty much anything they wanted during the good years? Of course. Did the powers-that-be at said investment banks fail even worse in the management of their business? Aboslutely. Did the independent institutions in both the public and private sector (bond rating agencies, auditing firms, audit standards-setters) fail to keep up with changes in the way the financial industry was being run? You bet. Housing happened to be the area that got hit first, but that's merely a symptom of the larger problem-- the combination of of too much freely available credit, too much leveraged investment, and too little clarity in the public disclosures of the major players in the financial industry. The current crisis is really the result of the failure of a generation of leadership among the nation's business and governmental elites.

uh, no, at least, not really. the president is not officially voted into office until the electoral college meets in december, and their votes are passed on to congress. inauguration is then held on january 20 of the following year. all of this is in some ways rather silly, but it does provide for time to deal with issues such as those that went down in the last election (er, two elections ago). taks Yeah, but as soon as the outcome of the election is certain, the winning campaign begins it's "transition team" effort, opening lines of communication with the appointees they'll be replacing and the civil servants and military commanders they'll be overseeing so that they can be up-to-speed on the important issues before they show up for work in January. While they aren't responsible for any of the decision making in the interim, the president-elect's people generally have someone at the table in all the major meetings, and all but the most immediate of crises tend to be put off until the new administration anyway. (By this point, the exiting appointees are usually more interested in getting their resumes out to their favorite think tanks, lobbyist firms, media companies, etc.)

For my money, Brian Westbrook is the best running back in the NFL. (And I'm a Giants fan.) I have no idea how one can meaningfully compare players who play different positions, so I'll leave it at that. Wow, the Raiders are a seriously screwed-up organization. I mean, there are other teams that suck worse than they do, but, outside of teams with GMs whose names rhyme with "Schmatt Schmillen," is there any franchise out there with less hope of turning it around in another season or two? Volo: A quick question-- if an employee folding shirts at the Gap spends her entire shift chatting with customers about the company's suppliers' sweatshop labor practices, can/should the Gap management discipline or fire her? Or is that too repressive of her "free speech" rights?

Devs should listen to fans, but that doesn't mean they should take fans at their word. Ultimately, fans need to be protected from themselves. If the devs give them everything they want, the game usually sucks royally ("We needz Epik Levulzzz!!!1!"). Devs should listen to fans, but listen carefully, trying to hear the underlying reasons that are motivating the fans' (or critics') statements. Then they need to decide for themselves if there is a way to address those complaints in a way that works with their overall concepts for the game.

We've had this fight before, and your arguments haven't improved. The NFL is an entertainment business that makes most of its money by selling broadcasts to TV networks who, in turn, sell advertising space during those broadcasts. As with any other business in the entertainment industry, the NFL is quite rightly very conscious of its public image. Part of that consciousness includes paying attention to what its employees say to the media. This is no different than any other entertainment industry-- if an actor in a stage play expressed his opinion publicly that the script they're working with completely sucks, you better believe that the producers would have some words with him, if not fire him outright.

Against the spread.

I'm not going to bother picking the over/unders: At Atlanta -6 Kansas City (Much like my OAK-KC pick last week, when both teams completely suck, take the points.) At Buffalo -9.5 Oakland At Tennessee -5 Houston At NY Giants -13.5 Cincinnati (Cincy's offense is better than they've showed so far. Giants by 10, but not by 14.) At Washington -3 Arizona At New England -12.5 Miami (Too many points to give.) At Chicago -3 Tampa Bay At Minnesota -3.5 Carolina At Seattle -9.5 St. Louis At San Francisco -4 Detroit (See KC@ATL) At Denver -5.5 New Orleans (Denver's big weakness is run defense. NO is a great passing offense and pretty much nothing else.) At Philadelphia -3.5 Pittsburgh (The Steelers' first encounter with a quality front-seven will leave their OL exposed.) At Indianapolis -5.5 Jacksonville (Battle of the backup OLs! I'll give Indy the edge because they're less reliant on inside running.) At Baltimore -2 Cleveland Dallas -3 At Green Bay At San Diego -9 NY Jets

Ha! Let us know if you get a response. He claims that he's responding to all the hate mail.

Or more to the point, can anyone think of an instance where someone substituting for the original author didn't produce utter crap? Jesus. New Testament ftw! Well, there are theological arguments that he was not technically a new author "substituting" for the original (holy trinity and all that).

I think CAR-CHI counts as a push, at the spread you posted. (I was 9-5-1 ) Anyhow, I was more curious as to whether you spent the last few nights lurking outside of Ed Hochuli's house.

I can certainly appreciate cheering for a team based on longstanding familial and geographic loyalty. But if you don't think college ball is a business, you're fooling yourself. I respect that the NFL is honest about its businesslike nature. Big-time NCAA sports, though, strike me as an enormous hypocrisy-- a clever way to run a sports league without having to pay players' salaries by pretending that the sports are somehow a part of the schools' core educational mission. (For OU and about 30 or so other major programs, it's certainly a good business to be in, as it returns significantly more funds to the school than it costs them. For most colleges fielding football teams, though, those athletic scholarships and stadiums end up jacking up the tuition for all the other students.)

I'm the exact opposite. I'm from the Northeast (defined as being north of Blacksburg and east of State College), where we see college football for what it really is: the minor leagues. Just like minor league baseball, it's probably more fun (and cheaper) to go to a game in-person than it is in the NFL/MLB, but the ultimate interest is in which players will eventually be called up/drafted into the real thing. Also the whole "what the hell are major educational institutions doing giving scholarships to dunderheads who happen to play a game well and pouring millions of dollars into running a sports league that only turns a profit for a few dozen programs" question has always bugged me. Plus, my wife would not be particularly happy with me if I spent Sunday and Saturday watching football.

Talking Heads -- Life During Wartime (Live)

Score! I have managed to not-so-subtly invite myself over to my sister-in-law's house to watch the games tomorrow. The Giants game I want to watch isn't being televised in my area, and she and her husband have the satellite package that gets all the games. In return, I will bring lunch. I'm gonna roast a whole chicken for dinner tonight, and use the leftovers to make a chicken salad tomorrow morning. I think I'll make some guacamole, too.

Ella Fitzgerald -- Puttin' on the Ritz "Come, let's mix where Rock-a-FELL-ers Walk with sticks or um-ber-ELL-as..."

Favorite Spread Underdog 9/14 At Kansas City -3.5 Oakland (Both these teams look incredibly bad, so I'll take the points.) At Cincinnati -1 Tennessee Indianapolis -1.5 At Minnesota (Which is the bigger mismatch? Peyton v. MIN's secondary, or Peterson v. IND's run D? I'll say Peyton gets a late score to win it.) At Washington PK New Orleans (I don't like NO's run defense, but they should be able to outscore the Redskins.) Green Bay -3 At Detroit At Carolina -3 Chicago NY Giants -8.5 At St. Louis At Jacksonville -5 Buffalo (The Jags are pulling guys out of the stands to play Guard. They're a better team than BUF is, but 5 points is too many.) At Tampa Bay -7 Atlanta (Unfortunately for Altanta's offense, they can't play the Lions every week.) At Seattle -7 San Francisco At Arizona -6.5 Miami At NY Jets -1.5 New England (The Jets barely beat the Dolphins last week-- even with Cassel at QB, NE is a much tougher nut to crack.) At Denver PK San Diego (I don't trust Denver's D yet. But if they can improve up front, they might take this one-- Cutler looks very good, and Rivers, well, doesn't.) Pittsburgh -6 At Cleveland (The Steelers' OL is going to hurt them when they play a team with a good front-7. But that's not this week.) Monday Night Football 9/15 At Dallas -7 Philadelphia (This is my biennial "root for a meteor to crash into the stadium" game.) At Houston -4.5 Baltimore (I think Houston has a good shot, but 4.5 points is too many here.)

Leonard Cohen -- First We Take Manhattan

I bet he alternated every other tooth.