What say we try a little “trickle up” economics?
The right view of the financial mess is that an enormous fraction of subprime lending should never have occurred in the first place. Someone has to pay for that. That someone should not be, and does not need to be, the U.S. taxpayer.
-Jeffrey A. Miron, Senior Economics Lecturer at Harvard
How To Fix The Mortgage Mess 101 by Peter Dreier begins:
Here’s the problem with the nation’s troubled financial system in a nutshell: Americans don’t have enough money to pay their mortgages.
President Bush’s plan to bail-out the banks by having the US government buy troubled mortgage-backed securities is the wrong way to fix this problem. This is like handing a $700 billion blank check to the people — bankers and investors — whose greed and risky behavior caused the problem in the first place. The right way is to help homeowners who’ve already lost their homes buy them back and to help homeowners on the brink of foreclosure from losing their homes. (And then adopt strong regulations so it won’t happen again.)
He advocates a simple solution that would not only work economically by putting money into banks and the economy through giving people money to pay their mortgage or repossess their homes, but also socially by keeping people in their homes. Why is this not the only solution being talked about?
The photo is Home Foreclosures; Banks Refuse U.S. Home Loan Bonds. Oil Magnates Arrested; Break N.R.A. Code by Joe Crawford (artlung), and it’s part of his Coit Tower Murals set (slideshow). Joey’s blog is at artlung.com and looks pretty cool. I mean, it’s got Rollerskating Ninjas and everything.
Sunday Funnies: The October Surprise Gang
Is it an October Surprise if you are expecting it?
The more I read the daunting litany of the challenges facing the McCain Campaign, the repeated missteps and almost comic cluelessness, the secrecy surrounding his medical condition and the awesomely bad selection of Sarah Palin, the more certain I become that there is no way that McCain-Palin will be the Republican ticket when November rolls around.
Palin’s nomination cleared the way for a complete reset of the ticket when it becomes clear that McCain cannot continue due to health issues or simply being 20+ points down in the polls.
I don’t even see this as requiring the tinfoil hat anymore – the deck is so obviously stacked against McCain right now that it seems delusional to believe it can make it to November. I think the questions are “when” (shorter is probably better, Oct. 15 is my bet) and “who” (Michael Bloomberg plus some respected military figure).
That hooplehead who weedwacks the knoll
I didn’t feel that Obama did as well as he could have last night, but I felt better after reading McCain’s Economic Plan: Blurt Out Random Crap by Bob Cesca. After taking a good look at the pattern of McCain’s apparently incomprehensible strategy which appears to be “behave incomprehensibly”, Bob concludes:
So what will a McCain administration economic policy look like? From the lack of foresight and leadership we’ve witnessed so far, we can assume that McCain might choose a new economic policy totally at random, depending on how saucy he feels from minute to minute. “I’ll have a muffin with my Egg Beaters, and replace Bernanke with that hooplehead who weedwacks the knoll.” Two minutes later… “Hey Phil, we don’t need the Nasdaq anymore. Kill it.” Two minutes later… “My God! What have I done! Quickly — nationalize the paintball industry! Go!”
One thing is for sure. Expecting a workable solution to this economic meltdown from a man as knee-jerk, dishonest and incomprehensible as John McCain would be an exercise in national self-destruction. He doesn’t have anything real to say, and what he does say, he can’t sell. He simply can’t do the gig. A vote for McCain-Palin is absolutely a vote for the end of America as we know it.
The photo is Untitled, as are all of Brooke’s photos. I’ve found that unlike say … VP nominees … it doesn’t matter where you begin with his photography. His work is golden all the way through. So start here.
The Iceberg Theory of War
The Hidden Cost of War from GOOD Magazine is something to keep in mind as we contemplate a bailout that will “only” cost $700 billion. And if we’re socializing business, how about the green energy business?
GE: Google Electric?
Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO, Google interviews Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman and CEO, of GE about what needs to be done regarding renewable energy in Electricity 2.0.
Jeffrey says that solving the energy problem is not hard (as compared to say health care). Hilarious Al Gore cameo. Esther Dyson too!
Much more cool video at Zeitgeist of 2008 from the GoogleTube.
Stomp those grapes!
1st Annual … 2001, photo by lpwines (well, actually by me)
If you’re up in Leelanau this weekend, check out the Harvest Stompede Vineyard Run/Walk & Wine Tour. Here’s some more photos I took last year – it’s a great event for watching, with or without camera. Race starts at 8 am 9 AM at Ciccone Winery.
Note: The wine tour part comes AFTER the run/walk. 
Tax your brain with chartjunk
In addition to lies, damn lies and statistics, there’s also charts and graphs that are so bad you can’t understand the data they’re trying to convey.
I got this image from a post about Tax Plans of McCain & Obama (click through to see it bigger) from a cool blog called chartjunk. The author writes:
There’s a graph (visible at the link above) that Obama supporters are sending around, showing the differences between the Republican and Democrat tax cut proposals. It shows that Obama is not in fact planning to raise taxes – he’s planning to cut them for all but the very, very rich. I couldn’t help but notice though – the graph is still massively weighted towards the interests of the super-rich. For example, the bottom two-thirds of the population are given only a third of the space on the graph, while the top 0.1% of the population – one in a thousand people – gets almost 10%. What’s more, an “average tax cut” is then given, which seems to have been derived from taking a total of the nine income brackets shown and dividing it by nine. Journalists should really volunteer to take remedial arithmetic, you know. Once again, this ignores that one of the brackets represents one thousandth of the population.
In the very informed comments, it’s noted that folks making less than $66,354 make up nearly 2/3 of the population (63.4%). Those folks will be getting a less than 1% cut from the McCain plan. I suppose that they can just hope for a little trickle-down…
I think the thing that’s most interesting to me about the graph is that the McCain plan proposes to continue the cut, cut, cut mantra of recent years while simultaneously committing to ongoing (and expensive) military operations.
Where will the money come from, Mr. Wizard?
Look away from the Gorgon
Godchecker’s Gorgon Advisory: If confronted by Gorgon, avert eyes. Produce mirror from pocket. Show mirror to Gorgon. Her reflection will turn her to stone and she will perish. Return mirror to pocket. Give self well-deserved pat on back. Repeat as necessary.
Despite how tremendously unprepared I feel Sara Palin is to be President, Vice President or In Any Position That Is in Any Way in Charge of Me, I’ve realized that she’s in the race right now for one overiding reason: to drag it down into the mud. Once there, it can become about our nation’s irreconcilable personal and emotional images on matters like family, religionand our unspoken dislike of each other instead of about real and concrete discussions of our economic & political state and the future of our civilization.
The image is a slightly tweaked version of one of the images under The Gorgons at Wikimedia Commons. Dig the shoes.
Issues? We don’t need no steenking issues!
In Slate’s Political Gabfest for September 12, David Plotz says that he’s sickened by the state of our nation’s economy and place in the world and the world’s own hazardous plight. Sickened by the notion that anything the press says is now suspect, by the thought that what was going to be a rich and interesting about real and substantive issues is going to become a discussion of Palin’s personal life.
As a prologue to what appears to be becoming the scariest election is likely the most terrifying video I have ever seen.
I think this is part 2 of the interview. Then again, it may be part 1
I will try to get my deer conciousness out of the headlights of this election, but I tell you it’s almost impossible when a candidate like this is in reality and not on Saturday Night Live.
The Numbers Game
There’s been a lot said against Obama’s line-forming, stadium-packing, arena-shaking star power, and I confess that it definitely gives me pause when I hear chants of “O-ba-ma, O-ba-ma, O-ba-ma” ring out. Again and again, I hear him say “This is not about me, it’s about you.”
This election is about you. And me. And all of us and what we want from the future.
Every political campaign in history has been about the numbers game – how many spears, how much money, how many votes. This election is no different … unless of course you’re thinking it’s about time to stand up and take a little responsibility for our future.
PS: If you’re in the Traverse City area, go see Bill McKibben at Lars Hockstead in Traverse City tonight!
