Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

How Not to Build a Bailout Proposal

Let’s see. There are a bunch of people ready to riot on the streets—or at least do the White Person version of rioting and vote Republican, mainly because of the lies of several House Republicans. And there are a precious few people who believe action needs to be taken and—while they might prefer, say, The […]

Republicano Delenda est *

by Ken Houghton Brad DeLong lays out the breakdown. When 2/3 of your party believes that taking the Dow down 600 750+ points is a Good Idea, claims such as “the party of fiscal responsibility”—or even the “party of Wall Street”—fail the free market test Big Time. If I weren’t worried about the coming harvest, […]

The WSJ editorial page slams…John McCain

by Ken Houghton It was five degrees (C) warmer here this morning than the previous two days of taking the Eldest Daughter to her school bus. Presumably, this is balanced out in part by record-low temperatures in Hell, as the WSJ editorial page (well, Thomas Frank, but still…) summarizes the McCain Position: Last week, Republican […]

David Leonhardt needs to retire, having abdicated responsibility

by Ken Houghton I don’t believe David Leonhardt is an idiot, but that’s not based on the evidence at hand: There are really only two [questions]: What steps are most likely to solve the immediate crisis? And how can the long-term cost to taxpayers be minimized? Everything else — reducing executive pay on Wall Street, […]

Credit Default Swaps Again

by Robert Waldmann My post on “what the hell are credit default swaps for” got lots of comments and I learned a lot from the comment thread. I continue my effort at remedial education via blogging. First a very simple article by Martin HutchisonDoes this guy know what he is writing about ? Key quote […]

Chris Dodd knows how to play Chicken

by Ken Houghton I had the same reaction to his “we have to do something” comments on Sunday as Dr. Black. But we both, clearly, forgot the game that was being played. Monday is a day of work, and Dodd has clearly prepared well: Sec. 1. Short title; table of contents.Sec. 2. Authority to purchase […]

The Safest Senator

When calling Congresscritters tomorrow, especially for those in NY State, please feel free to remind Senator Schumer’s office that he and Barack Obama were the two people [in contested elections] who finished with the widest margin of victory in 20062004 [h/t to my Loyal Reader and Kohole in comments]—about a 50% margin in both cases. […]

While some liberals have a problem with Obama/Biden…

…how are people who, eight years ago, were proudly displaying “Sore/Loserman” bumper stickers going to react if/when McCain announces Loserman as his pick for VP?* UPDATE: Otoh, if the NYT and Reuters are correct, any claim that Obama is “too inexperienced to be President” just went out the window. *This is not necessarily going to […]

Polling Margins: The Myth of "Double-Digits"

There is a strange meme in the blogsphere—most recently made in comments here by Movie Guy—that Obama “should have a double-digit lead over McCain at this stage as has been the case with previous presidential primaries.” So I went searching for double-digit leads among two-person Presidential races in the past several elections. August 2004 (Bush […]