Here’s another great piece by one of our newest and most favorite Mudflatters, Alaska Representative Les Gara. He’s not only a great legislator, with a real insider’s perspective on the surreal world of the Alaska Legislature, but he’s a pretty entertaining read. Enjoy!Since Monday the McCain camp has stepped up its personal attacks against Alaskans. […]

Lifted from comments from reader H-Bob: What was the actual precipating event causing the collapse of Lehman, Merrill and AIG at this time ? On September 8th, the news was about Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac without any hint about Lehman, Merrill and AIG. While the subprime mortgage bonds have been an issue all year, […]

by cactus Reuters totaled up the cost of the bail-out so far, and their figure sits at 900 billion. Since GDP last quarter came in at 14 and a quarter trillion, we’re talking about the federal government and the Federal Reserve putting up an amount equal to about 6.3% of the economy. Sure, most of […]

I have posted a deliberately unsophisticated discussion at my other blog After the jump, I try to add something to Tom Bozzo’s post below (which you should read first because he actually knows something about the issues). Here I take as fact Buchmueller et al’s assertion (as summarized by Bozzo but at least I admit […]

Wick Allison, editor-in-chief of D Magazine and who succeeded William Rusher as the publisher of the National Review says what I’ve been saying for months about Barack Obama. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. He continues: Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, […]

by divorced one like BushUpdate below. The other day, reading the comments got me thinking about the relationship of peoples income vs their presidential candidate choice. I think it was about how the economy is doing. Well, we all say it is bad because all these big, humongous finance institutions are having troubles. But, my […]

If Barclay’s had bought Lehman over last weekend, would the Fed still have (needed to) intervened in the case of AIG? Discuss amongst yourselves.

The BBC notes that General Odierno replaces General Petraeus as commander of the Iraqi occupation.

Kathryn finds a gem. (title ref)

OSO writes a quiet note: In all this confusion, here’s some CPI figures. -0.1% in August, which is 5.4% annual. 2008 Q3 is looking more and more like a substantial contraction. With August unemployment at 6.1%, the Misery Index is 11.5, the highestsince June 1991. OSO