Political Bloviation

Has a continuing player of Survivor: Cubicle Edition, this makes absolutely perfect sense to me:
The Dilbert Strategy - New York Times
Anyone who has worked in a large organization — or, for that matter, reads the comic strip “Dilbert” — is familiar with the “org chart” strategy. To hide their lack of any actual ideas about [...]

David Seaton’s News Links: Milton Friedman turns in his grave: our Berlin Wall
“Until recently, it was possible to tell the Chinese, the Indians or those who suffered significant financial crises in the past two decades that there existed a financial system both free and robust. That is the case no longer.”
In the same way [...]

All-stars - Paul Krugman - Op-Ed Columnist - New York Times Blog
Krugman nails exactly what I was thinking when I heard that Clinton wants Greenspan on a blue ribbon commission to find a solution to the mortgage crisis. Hey, let’s appoint Wiley E. Coyote to build effective road-runner traps! That will solve everything!! Hooray, let’s [...]

E. J. Dionne Jr. - The Street on Welfare - washingtonpost.com
Never do I want to hear again from my conservative friends about how brilliant capitalists are, how much they deserve their seven-figure salaries and how government should keep its hands off the private economy.
The Wall Street titans have turned into a bunch of welfare clients. [...]

Krugman smells smoke and likens the financial crisis to bank, except they aren’t banks. They just operate them without the regulation that the banking sector rightly garners.
Shouting fire in a crowded theater - Paul Krugman - Op-Ed Columnist - New York Times Blog
In some cases, the bank run is a pure self-fulfilling prophecy: the bank [...]

The Face-Slap Theory - New York Times
Krugman is nervous, well more so than usual. He reports the Fed may end up taking $200 billion in mortgage backed securities that no one wants and that may not be enough to make difference. Margin calls all around.

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Basically: borrow around a trilllion from the Chinese to give Iran a new client state next door, occupy it for the next thirty years, and still keep oil at $106 a gallon barrel. Yes: lots to debate.
Death, strategic and financial disaster, way to go Bushie.

Can we muster the political will to do away with this kind of narrowly focused tax subsidy that benefits a narrow strata of the nation while hurting those who can least afford it?
Oils End - Outposts - Op-Extra Columnist - Opinion - - New York Times Blog
And then on Wednesday of this week, oil reached [...]

McClatchy Washington Bureau

McClatchy Washington Bureau | 02/27/2008 | Nobel laureate estimates wars’ cost at more than $3 trillion
The questions are:

Are we better off for this huge cost in blood and treasure?
Did we buy better security?
What were the opportunity costs of going into Iraq?

I’d argue that we are less secure, and less able to respond to terrorist threats [...]

Credit Woes Hit Funding For Loans to Students - WSJ.com
Yesterday, the Michigan Higher Education Student Loan Authority, a state agency, said on its Web site that “due to the current and unprecedented capital-markets disruption” it will stop making loans under the state’s Michigan Alternative Student Loan, or MI-Loan, program. More than 100 Michigan colleges and [...]

A compromise passes:
Congress Votes for a Stimulus of $168 Billion - New York Times
The plan will provide tax rebates of up to $600 for individuals and up to $1,200 for couples filing jointly, with an additional payment for families of $300 a child, and a minimum payment of $300 for individuals who pay less than [...]

Fed Makes Emergency 0.75% Rate Cut - New York Times
And the NYSE responds by opening 400 points lower
There’s a profound fear of recession in the air. American consumption is the engine that drives much of the global economy, when US consumers cut back on purchases business across the world suffer. When the Fed makes [...]

Stimulus? Never mind - Paul Krugman
What a bunch total of wankers. So they’re going to hold a stimulus package up until the Dems agree to make the Bush tax cuts permanent. I mean they worked soooo well before. Obviously we need to bankrupt the federal government because the ultra wealthy aren’t ultra wealthy enough and [...]

The economy seems to be circling the drain. Check out Paul Krugman’s op-ed column from today’s NY Times:
The unemployment report on Friday was brutally bad. Unemployment rose in December, while job creation was minimal — and it’s highly likely, for technical reasons, that the job number will be revised down, showing an actual decline in [...]

The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush: Politics & Power: vanityfair.com
Writing in Vanity Fair Joseph Stiglitz, former head of Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers, offers a blistering exposition of the long term damage done to the American economy by the Bush administration. Sadly I don’t think the current political environment lends itself to making the tough [...]

Bush tax changes wreck budget
All true believers in in the tax fairey (GOP candidates I’m talking to you) should be forced to view the graphs in this EPI story like Alex in “A Clockwork Orange” until they’re eyes bleed. It’s not Medicare, Social  Security or Medicaid that truly threatens our national fiscal future. It’s the [...]

If the WaPo editorial page say the Tax Fairy ain’t real, then it ain’t real.
Mr. Giuliani and the Tax Fairy - washingtonpost.com
“I KNOW THAT reducing taxes produces more revenues,” Republican presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani declares in a new television ad launched Thursday. “Democrats don’t know that. They don’t believe it.”
There’s a good reason for [...]

Harsh words for Bushies from the high priest of free-market capitalism:
Former Fed Chief Attacks Bush on Fiscal Role - New York Times
“They swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose” in the 2006 election, when they lost control of the House and Senate.
Interestingly, he goes on to offer kudos to, [...]

From the “No Shit Sherlock” Department:
2005 Incomes, on Average, Still Below 2000 Peak - New York Times
Robert S. McIntyre, the director of Citizens for Tax Justice, said that even though he expected a few very wealthy people to reap most of the tax savings generated by lower tax rates on dividends and capital gains, the [...]