Bernanke must think it’s essential to save AIG and that this is the only effective way to do it. He’s done his job well so far and I have no reason to believe he would do this frivolously.

But, if things are this bad, then we need to cross our fingers and pray it works.”

We need to understand what AIG represents. It is the largest insurer of Municipal, County and State Pension Plans going — police, fire, teachers, public health workers, garbage collectors — you name it. Many of these pension plans have been invested in derrivatives with the likes of Lehman and the like, sub prime debt and all — and they are being sharply written down. AIG is what stands between that and the legal obligations Cities and States have to their retirees, and for which they would have to either raise taxes or sell assets to meet. Otherwise they declare bankruptcy and leave the elderly civil servants (and everyone who needs their garbage collected,) out in the cold.

2) his influence (as Chairman of Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee 106th Congress, 2000 cycle: Overview) in promoting the 2000 bill that kept regulators hands off.

Link: http://www.opensecrets.org/cmt…..congho=106

To get that I Googled: McCain, Phill Gramm

That site also gives a menu to select the contributors to the members of that Senate Banking Committee. It is an eye opener! Gramm was one of the 3 top hogs at the trough. Contributors were the very financial communities that committee were supposed to “oversee”.

There is also a good article at Mother Jones entitled, FORECLOSURE PHILL, by David Corn in the July/August 2008 issue.

Link: http://www.motherjones.com/new…..-phil.html

John McCain calls Phill Gramm “one of the smartest people in the world on economics”. He also refers to Gramm as “my economics guru”. Seems to me now is the time for Obama to talk loudly about Gramm’s part in the current financial meltdown and Gramm’s being McCain’s campaign economic advisor.

I notice that a few days ago Gramm considered the middle class as a bunch of whiners. Now McCain calls them fine, working people of America (since those taxpayers will pay the bill). Seems McCain is also trying to distance himself from Gramm.

I think, frankly, that Gramm and his wife should both be in jail.

There were four songs and Barracuda was one of them.

Was “It’s fun to be a Mormon!” one of the other 3?

McCain campaign must have known a year ago that Palin would be the pick, because they licensed use of “Barracuda” by Heart a year ago. Sorry for the trivia. Seemed interesting, since it looked like an off-the-cuff, last minute pick. Back to regular programming.

She changed churches even further back. I wonder how long ago KKKarl Rove found her and brought her into “the system”.

I am still flabbergasted that the Fed is letting them use depositors money now for their Ponzi schemes!

Bernanke must think it’s essential to save AIG and that this is the only effective way to do it. He’s done his job well so far and I have no reason to believe he would do this frivolously.

But, if things are this bad, then we need to cross our fingers and pray it works.

i wonder if the presence of a real progressive movement – not one that had been captured and domesticated by the democratic party (wilson but debs in prison for crying out loud) – might not have played a role is the progressive policies fdr was able to put in place?”

FDR was absolutely non-ideological. He was a thorough Pragmatist. He looked at programs only in terms of “what worked” and he had no hesitation throwing things out if they didn’t work.

As for comparisons between now and then in terms of Progressive Movements, lordy, the 30’s was full of them. I don’t see anything on the horizon that even looks like what led up to the CIO movement, which took off in about 1935, and there certainly is no Norman Thomas running as a third party Candidate with a platform that looks a good deal like what FDR did in the Second New Deal. (1934-36). Essentially FDR borrowed most of his programatic ideas, did a bit of re-fashioning, but his success was his ability to do the politics, and get things put in place. Part of that was dealing with Congress — part of it was his ability to unify the nation and get them to work with him, and push Congress.