Visualizing $1 trillion

McClatchy Washington Bureau | 09/26/2008 | Economists say House GOP plan would be ineffective, costly

...it wouldn't reduce the crush of homes in or near foreclosure, said Simon Johnson, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That's a problem that will surely grow worse if the U.S. economy enters recession, leading to greater job losses, which feed a vicious downward spiral of even more foreclosures and defaults on car loans and credit-card debt.

Americans are spooked by talk that financial Armageddon awaits.

The global financial system nearly melted down last week when investors pulled out en masse from money market funds and the short-term debt markets that help corporate America fund its day-to-day needs.

These traditionally have been viewed as safe investments for ordinary Americans, so the flight from them struck fear in the hearts of policymakers.

Few economists, including Galbraith, are willing to discount completely the chance of a financial collapse, given the turmoil in credit markets and banking.

"My sense is it will delay a disaster, given that you only have three months left in this administration. But it will not cure the problem in the (financial) industry or prevent the shakeout and downsizing of the industry," Galbraith said.

Many lawmakers also expressed skepticism.

Coming out of the White House on Thursday, the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, Alabama's Richard Shelby, held up what he said was a five-page list of economists opposing the rescue plan.

"This is not me. This is economists at Harvard, Yale, MIT, University of Chicago, our leading universities," an exasperated Shelby told reporters. He called the administration plan "flawed from the beginning."

Read it all from good old McClatchy, the best mainstream news service left standing. Click on the graphic for a bigger version.

Graphic: (c) 2008 MCT; source: Dallas Morning News Research; Troy Oxford, the Dallas Morning News

There's a lot of lies going around in the presidential campaigns

Here are two resources for sorting out the truth. They scold both candidates for lies and distortions.

FactCheck.org
Politifact.com

By the way, FactCheck.org has disavowed claims made by the McCain campaign about FactCheck's findings.

Bailout is a scam

More treasonous legislation by unelected officials. Will the public care?

Text of Draft Proposal for Bailout Plan - Text - NYTimes.com

Sec. 8. Review.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Walk this way

It turns out that walking is not so simple. If you change any aspect of the way you walk, everything gets messed up.

After my accident, I spent some time scooting around the house in my office chair. Then I got hold of a cane, and was able to walk by not putting weight on my injured side. Walking got gradually easier to do, and my right leg was hurting less and less. A few weeks into the cane, though, my LEFT leg began hurting. And it got worse. Soon, even though my right leg wasn't bothering me anymore, I could barely walk at all.

Enter the physical therapist. "Stop using the cane," he ordered, "and walk normally."

That meant no limping, no shuffling, no walking slowly. He gave me some exercises to help the process along. It turns out, with walking, that if you favor the injured side, you'll injure the other side and end up having to go to a physical therapist.

The first few days were pretty painful. On my LEFT side. But it got gradually easier. Two weeks later I returned to the therapist walking smoothly without limping--if I concentrated. There's a tendency to limp if I'm not paying attention, and as he pointed out, if you keep limping, it will become a habit.

I wonder how many people you see limping from old injuries really wouldn't have to limp if they practiced walking normally?

Pathetic...

So Kevin Drum is saying Sarah Palin can reveal utter ignorance about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and still gain support because it sounds so good.

Further, that Democrats don't dare point out her mistake because we'll be derided as picking on her.

Why are we such cowards? The Republicans warn people about what we're going to do, so we're afraid to do it, even if it's the right thing to do.

I say, come out fighting. As it is, we're doing exactly what the right wing wants.

Kevin Drum - Mother Jones Blog: Gaffe Watch

GAFFE WATCH....Sarah Palin, peeking out from a thicket of pre-scripted talking points in Colorado Springs, goes off message briefly and explains what went wrong in the home mortgage market:

The fact is, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, they've gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers.

A gaffe! But how does it measure up? On a technical basis, I'd say it's impressive. Until now, Fannie and Freddie haven't cost the taxpayers a dime and their current problems aren't really related to their size either. This leaves only a few conjunctions and proper names as sensible parts of this sentence.

On artistic merit, however, the judges have to score this one for Palin. Nobody cares about the minutiae of how GSEs work, after all, and liberal attacks on this score are almost certain to backfire because (a) we're obviously harrassing her unfairly over trivia because she's a small town mom and (b) we're just trying to show off how smart we are. Besides, as Palin said, John McCain is in favor of "reforming things," so he's obviously the right guy to tackle whatever problem it is that Fannie and Freddie suffer from. For liberal critics, then, there's no there there.

Actually, what's really impressive about this is that even though Palin obviously didn't know what she was talking about, she managed to dig smoothly into the standard movement conservative playbook to say something pleasing to the base anyway. Got a problem? It must be government's fault! Something somewhere got too big and too expensive and conservatives need to rein it in. Nice work.

Let's hope the price of gas doesn't drop too much

Americans try to see the bright side of high gas prices

"I found that a permanent one-dollar rise in gas prices is associated with a seven percent drop in overweight and a nine percent drop in obesity," he said.

In poundage terms, a one-dollar rise in gas prices was associated with about four to five pounds (1.8 to 2.3 kilograms) in lost weight across the population, his research showed. More...

Wow! There's more...

High gas prices have also raised a call for car-makers to produce more fuel-efficient vehicles, and that would create tens of thousands of jobs, enhance US energy security, and boost local economies, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) said.

"Achieving just the minimum 35 miles-per-gallon fleet-wide average by 2020 ... would cut oil use by 1.1 million barrels a day," UCS senior engineer Jim Kliesch said in a statement.

Using less oil would translate into "cutting the cost of gasoline at today's prices by more than a dollar per gallon," he said.

And that would mean that, rather than pumping their disposable income into the oil industry when they fill up their cars, Americans would probably spend the money saved locally, thus boosting local economies, he said.

"Further... achieving a 35-mpg fleet-wide average would create 149,000 new jobs nationwide in 2020," added Kliesch.

And say! Isn't it great not to have your gas-sipping compact surrounded by skyscrapers on wheels that completely block your view of the road?

Of course, I am still recovering from my bicycle accident. If my collarbone would just finish putting itself back together, I could get back on my bike.

If you're rich and you want to get richer, vote Republican

Economic View - Is History Siding With Obama’s Economic Plan? - NYTimes.com

My synopsis:

Under Democratic presidents, the economy has grown faster and income inequality--the difference between earnings for the rich and the poor is slightly lower, that is, more favorable for the poor.

Under Republican presidents, the economy has grown more slowly, but income inequality has massively favored the rich.

So the question is, if you're not rich, why on earth would you vote Republican????