The US Economy and Current Financial Crisis

[SuperJerk 0]

I think this stimulus money is a terrible idea, now please give me some.

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

Buried in the $410 billion catch-all appropriations bill now before the U.S. Senate is a provision that would end a program that has allowed Mexican truck drivers to deliver goods to destinations inside the United States....

 

Under current restrictions, goods coming into the United States from Mexico by truck must be unloaded inside the “commercial zone” within 20 miles or so of either side of the border and transferred to U.S.-owned trucks for final delivery. U.S. goods going to Mexico face the same inefficient and unnecessary restrictions.

 

The Bush administration established a pilot program that allows certain Mexican trucking companies that meet U.S. safety and other standards to deliver goods directly to U.S. destinations, while the Mexican government has agreed to allow reciprocal access to its market. But the Democratic Congress and the new Democratic president have vowed to finally kill the program, and the provision inside the appropriations bill will probably deliver the final blow.

 

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/03/04/...-while-mexican/

 

[Dobbs 3K 0]

New stories this morning are casting significant doubt on GM's future (even more so). Can we not please give them any more money? Just make them declare bankruptcy already.

[EricMM 0]

The argument against that is one phrase, "Lehman Brothers"

[Obi Chris Kenobi 0]

Bank of England has pumped £75 Billion into the UK Economy today and cut interest rates to 0.5%. Money was traded to banks for assets and bonds.

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

Man, Czech's gonna hate me for this, but Jon Stewart was owning CNBC and other financial media douches the other night.

[SuperJerk 0]

Perhaps you could provide us with a clip of that which you refer?

[EricMM 0]

Here:

 

http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/...pisodeId=220250

[Nightwing 0]

That's only half as good as Stephen Colbert's Doombunker.

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

Werewolf Congress.

[EricMM 0]

What is the hangup?

 

This is not the time to delay spending bills.

 

Is it really hinging on raises for Congress!?

[SuperJerk 0]

Fun with Polls:

 

84 percent saying the national economy is in poor shape and just 3 percent viewing things positively.

 

I guess 13% were all like "WTF is an economy?"

 

More than a third (37 percent) of the public expect economic conditions to improve in the next 12 months, compared with 29 percent who think things will be worse.

 

And 33% doesn't know.

 

Majorities of Americans think too much has been spent so far to help rescue large banks in danger of failing and domestic auto companies facing bankruptcy. A somewhat surprising majority (56 percent) supports nationalizing large banks at risk of failing—a policy the Obama administration has shied away from.

 

ZOMG SOCIALISM~!!!!!

 

And fewer than half of those polled (49 percent) say they support Obama's proposal to allow the expiration of tax cuts for those with incomes above $250,000 at the end of next year. (Forty-two percent say they oppose ending these cuts.)

 

And 9% just shrugged their shoulders and went back to playing Halo.

 

58 percent of Americans believe that Republicans who have opposed Obama's economic-rescue plans have no plan of their own for turning the economy around.

 

The other 42% just started saying "Ronald Reagan" over and over.

 

by a large margin—51 percent to 40 percent—Americans say they value bipartisanship in Washington over getting things done quickly.

 

> the financial well-being of 300 million Americans.

[Crimson G 0]

Man, Czech's gonna hate me for this, but Jon Stewart was owning CNBC and other financial media douches the other night.

 

I disagree. He was being a dick to Santelli for canceling on his show, but didn't show any clips of Santelli to criticize. It was mostly CNBC anchors, rather than financial commentators, which means that these people weren't even "experts" on what they were talking about. Don't get me wrong. Almost no one on that network has been remotely right about the situation (and at least Stewart had the decency of not playing a bunch of Steve Liesman quotes back-to-back), but taking a bunch of out-of-context and ill-thought-through remarks and making snide comments about them does not constitute an "owning."

 

Really? Resorting to Jim Cramer quotes? There's whole youtube collections of Santelli actually owning Cramer on his bad calls and his backtracking.

 

See here: Rick Santelli VS Cramer Unedited Clips

[At Home 0]

Re: Santelli

 

http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2009/03/is...ll-streets.html

 

[Guest Czech please!]

Does Jon Stewart get to condemn people for being populist panderers? Honest Q.

[SuperJerk 0]

The point Stewart made was that Santelli was saying the home buyers (i.e. "losers") should have known better, when the public was being bombarded with bad information by the network he works for. He was right, too. I have a big fucking problem with putting all the blame on individuals following the advice of experts and getting screwed, while the so-called professionals who traded the bad debt around the financial industry and told us all that everything was going to be fine are treated like innocent victims.

 

And there was nothing populist about being an ignorant Social Darwinist loudmouth.

[Art Sandusky 0]

To be fair, Stewart also mentioned their populism angle over the course of the segment. To say that it wasn't acknowledged is a little silly.

[At Home 0]

They totally missed the signs. It doesn't take Jon Stewart to discover that.

[SuperJerk 0]

To be fair, Stewart also mentioned their populism angle over the course of the segment. To say that it wasn't acknowledged is a little silly.

I believe it was mentioned ironically. I know Czech thinks Stewart panders to populism himself, but going for a cheap laugh and calling victims of a nationwide mortgage scam "losers" aren't equal in my book.

 

They totally missed the signs. It doesn't take Jon Stewart to discover that.

 

Jon Stewart shouldn't have to be the one to point out the hypocrisy of condemning others for not seeing things you didn't see yourself, but unfortunately cable news isn't very good at policing itself.

[At Home 0]

I don't have tv, but from what I have seen, it's bad. They're cheerleading.

[Crimson G 0]

The point Stewart made was that Santelli was saying the home buyers (i.e. "losers") should have known better, when the public was being bombarded with bad information by the network he works for. He was right, too. I have a big fucking problem with putting all the blame on individuals following the advice of experts and getting screwed, while the so-called professionals who traded the bad debt around the financial industry and told us all that everything was going to be fine are treated like innocent victims.

 

And there was nothing populist about being an ignorant Social Darwinist loudmouth.

 

You cannot hold Santelli responsible for everything that goes on on the network he happens to work for. He doesn't run the thing and can't tell people like Jim Cramer to stuff it unless he's given a chance to respond to Jim's comments. This is asinine.

 

Rick Santelli is no more responsible for the quality of reporting on CNBC than Jon Stewart is for the quality of programming on Comedy Central. Should Jon Stewart be denigrated because Larry the Cable Guy works on the same network as him?

 

Regardless of who is spouting what information, people can't just blindly take what "experts" have to say and follow it. They have to do some investigating of their own and, if they don't, they receive the punishment that ignorance brings. The real losers are the people who bought into the lie that homes had inherent equity that would always remain at the same level, if not increase over time. It should just be common sense that when dealing with a commodity (like a home), prices rise and fall according to the market. Not believing prices will ever fall is either willful ignorance or sheer stupidity. And yes, it was precipitated by even stupider sales pitches and incentives, but those came from the government, not the TV networks. The Fed is to blame.

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

No one said Santelli was responsible for everything on CNBC. Stewart was making fun of the whole network.

[Jobber of the Week 0]

I think when you refer to Chicago floor traders as part of a majority you're a douche to begin with.

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives...s_over_time.php

[At Home 0]

The Fed is to blame.

 

For not curtailing a horribly runaway financial industry that flooded the entire world with toxic waste, yes. Let's not forget that the collapse of the financial and lending industries were precipitated on the backs of private enterprises, namely, the ones offering subprime loans with wildly ranging interest rates. While the borrower does have to take responsibility for taking on such risk, it's the system as a whole that profits off of them doing so. Then the whole aspect of predatory lending enters in, which is like designing a game based entirely off of your opponents weaknesses.

[SuperJerk 0]

The point Stewart made was that Santelli was saying the home buyers (i.e. "losers") should have known better, when the public was being bombarded with bad information by the network he works for. He was right, too. I have a big fucking problem with putting all the blame on individuals following the advice of experts and getting screwed, while the so-called professionals who traded the bad debt around the financial industry and told us all that everything was going to be fine are treated like innocent victims.

 

And there was nothing populist about being an ignorant Social Darwinist loudmouth.

 

You cannot hold Santelli responsible for everything that goes on on the network he happens to work for. He doesn't run the thing and can't tell people like Jim Cramer to stuff it unless he's given a chance to respond to Jim's comments. This is asinine.

 

No, he isn't to blame for all of the bad information out on his network, and that wasn't the point. The point was given how much bad information was out there, is he really justified to call people who got caught in this mess "losers"?

 

Santelli is basically saying we shouldn't be concerned with people about to be foreclosed on, and completely ignores the negative effects all of these additional foreclosures will have on lending institutions and everyone else's home values.

 

Santelli is saying, "I wasn't immediately affected, so I don't care." Is he too dumb to see the effect this problem will have on everyone else in the long run? (Given the history this country has of not recognizing how the effects of economic and social problems tend to spread to the rest of society...not is he probably really that dumb, but he has a lot of company.)

 

 

Regardless of who is spouting what information, people can't just blindly take what "experts" have to say and follow it.

 

In the medical industry, they call that "malpractice". Lawyers call it "fraud". For some reason its illegal when THEY do it, but not when bankers and stock brokers do it.

[Guest Czech please!]

That Santelli rant (Rantelli?) was pretty silly and wrong, but I enjoyed the weird-haired guy popping in. I think all field correspondents and so forth should have a hype man. It might be the shot in the arm local newscasts need.

 

The Daily Show thing was okay, but was too screamy to really be funny. I think they abandoned funny long ago, anyway. I think it was this summer or last when TIME ran a big Mark Twain feature and claimed that Jon Stewart was the Mark Twain of our generation. I haven't read Twain's biographies, so I might be wrong, but I don't think Mark Twain had his thoughts written for him by a cadre of Harvard grads. Obviously there's nothing wrong with this setup, because I love The Simpsons, but affording Jon Stewart so much respect as this legendary satirist is kind of offensive and dumb. He's just a teleprompter jockey who occasionally says something funny; the same can be said for a local anchor at a CBS affiliate in Lincoln, Nebraska, except the serious anchor doesn't intend to make you laugh at him.

[At Home 0]

His non-Daily Show material falls in line with that, though.

[Crimson G 0]

No, he isn't to blame for all of the bad information out on his network, and that wasn't the point. The point was given how much bad information was out there, is he really justified to call people who got caught in this mess "losers"?

 

Santelli is basically saying we shouldn't be concerned with people about to be foreclosed on, and completely ignores the negative effects all of these additional foreclosures will have on lending institutions and everyone else's home values.

 

Santelli is saying, "I wasn't immediately affected, so I don't care." Is he too dumb to see the effect this problem will have on everyone else in the long run? (Given the history this country has of not recognizing how the effects of economic and social problems tend to spread to the rest of society...not is he probably really that dumb, but he has a lot of company.)

 

I disagree. It's one thing to say we shouldn't be concerned. It's another to say that we shouldn't be propping them up and supporting their bad decision, whether they were properly given the facts or not. People get swindled all the time. And I don't think it's ever a good thing. But, I don't think that I should be forced to pay for their bad decisions or even bad fortune. I am not responsible for insuring their financial success.

 

If there's legal recourse, then take it. But let's not invent ways to prop up people who made poor decisions on the backs of people who are, at this point, still okay in their house/rent/whatever setup. It encourages those who can still afford their mortgages or still have positive equity in their house(s) to make those same mistakes because the people who did so already have profited from them (at least for a little bit.)

 

In the medical industry, they call that "malpractice". Lawyers call it "fraud". For some reason its illegal when THEY do it, but not when bankers and stock brokers do it.

 

The system as a whole is broken, however. The reason is the Fed, government restrictions and guidelines on the banking system, and long-standing banking policies such as seen with the FDIC (which is broke) and the whole fractional reserve system. Additionally, these people are not making prescriptive statements like when lawyers give legal advice and physicians give medical advice. They are making predictive statements. The equivalent would be trying to sue the weatherman because his forecast for sunny skies was wrong.

[Art Sandusky 0]

But unlike the weatherman, their predictive statements might influence events.