By Spencer John McCain showed up without running mate Sarah Palin, which is a shame because she actually has a lot of experience with financial matters. You know, she lives right next to a bank.

The NYT carries a graphical map of Congress, the votes, and real information on election patterns. A shift of twelve votes does not seem overly ambitious to effect in the next 48 hours…feels like a television show, does it not?

Brenda Rosser at Econospeak has a great post here: What was it about 1995 and the US Federal Reserve? 1990 – 1992 era. The changes began then that led to the elimination of the reserve requirement. 1992 The Fed Reserve ratios were lowered. 1995 – The US Federal Reserve effectively eliminated the fractional reserve ratio. […]

by cactus Voting Your Bedfellows In a few months it will be time to go to the polls. Remember, there are people who told you eight years ago, and then four years ago, about the wonderful things GW’s policies were going to do for the economy. Most of them also told you how bad things […]

Robert Waldmann OK what now ? Unless someone has just submitted a post, AngryBear doesn’t have a post on what to do now that the House Republicans (and some Democrats) have voted down the Paulson-Dodd-Frank bailout bill. The contingent consensus of the Left Blogosphere seems to have been to go for the Swedish solution if […]

by Ken Houghton Claudia asks the question of the day of the previous post: When you say “the coming harvest” are you speaking from a purely literal standpoint, or are you also speaking metaphorically? I was starting from the literal. When you get to the consequences, then you get to think Buffy the Vampire Slayer. […]

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, […]

Joseph Stilgitz asks tough questions at The Nation: The champagne bottle corks were popping as Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced his trillion-dollar bailout for the banks, buying up their toxic mortgages. To a skeptic, Paulson’s proposal looks like another of those shell games that Wall Street has honed to a fine art. Wall Street has […]

The Center for Policy and Research sent us a note on a new report about whether we are better off now than eight years ago.

by cactus Rent Control and the Current Financial Mess – A Look at an Incredibly Silly Story There’s a trope going around among libertarians and many Republicans– I’ve seen it in a few places – that the mess on Wall Street is due to excessive regulation. This tripe by Richard Epstein in Forbes.com is a […]