It could be the slogan that was, “let capitalists be capitalists.” It likely will be again, soon enough. But the “bailout” is coming soon with restrictions that Wall Street and others haven’t seen for awhile. Don’t hold your breath that the pending legislation will reverse much of the effects of deregulatory fervor that swept the Congress [...]
Obama will tell you it’s Bush and his buddy McCain that helped make the current money morass happen. He is not entirely wrong but he is not entirely right either. Congress facilitated the mess by repealing the Glass-Steagal Act that kept the insurance, investment and banking businesses firewalled from one another. Institutional investors, including the [...]
Treasury Secretary Paulson and Republicans in Congress object to tying limits on executive compensation (especially “golden parachutes”) to bailouts in the legislation now pending. Even with such limits, a taxpayer revolt may be in the offing. Freemarket conservatives jump up and down, stamp their feet and scream “class warfare!” whenever anyone talks of raising taxes [...]
Traveling through Texas on several occasions, it came to my attention that there is a serious shortage of porcelain conveniences in the Lone Star State. In many restaurants, gas stations and other businesses one stops in, there is only one bathroom–rather than a men’s and women’s restroom. But that’s not the real problem. In most [...]
An odd sort of faulty economic impact analysis keeps leaving the lips of TV and radio talking heads. I suppose it is part and parcel of the often observed herd behavior of mainstream media’s first line reporters. High gasoline prices are keeping people home. Vacations will be shortened or limited to local travel. In the end, [...]
Continue reading about Gas Prices–The Real Harm Is NOT Vacations
I can’t resist, having seen a recent ad featuring the candidate himself, talking about his attitudes toward war. In it, John McCain refers to the five years he spent as a POW in Vietnam. For all that time spent there and his vaunted foreign policy experience, why can’t he pronounce the name of the country [...]
Continue reading about McCain Foreign Policy Advantage? Listen Closely
I caught a bit of Good Morning America this AM. They featured a story about the seven month ordeal of Amanda Knox, an American student jailed in Italy without charges–apparently on suspicion of complicity in the death of her roommate. GMA painted a grim story, tugging at the heart strings of viewers by interviewing the [...]
As Earth Day arrives again (okay all you 20-30 year olds, have you even heard of Earth Day–no offense if you are so environmentally conscious, it has not been big news in recent years), an odd couple emerges in a commercial: Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich. Who would of thought? In the ad, the pair [...]
Let no one accuse the Washington Post editorial and news staff of fraternizing with one another or perhaps even of observing the same world around them. This is especially true when it comes to their respective observations of the Bush administration and the war in Iraq.
Continue reading about The Washington Post Says the Surge Is Working AND No It Isn’t
Perhaps I should have noted it then, but in posting my comment on the passing of Martin Luther King and mentioning my mother’s teaching me about the evils of racism, I missed the fact that she died exactly five years before King. As I came to visit her in the hospital that day in 1963, [...]