First?

BushCo hates Nobel laureates. It’s just so inconvenient having reality-based research promoted over right-wing ideology.

Always good to see you Ian. Thanks and thanks again for teaching us and hangin’ in. You know, if enough of us learn enough from you, we will no longer be at the mercy of our congresscritters. Do you know of any resource similar to you for Cdn matters?

So when is Bush gonna thank the furriners (Europeans) for helping us?

I’ve lost complete track of the Canadian blogosphere. I will put in a good word for my co-bloggers at http://www.pogge.ca (though co-bloggers would imply I still blog there more than once a year, they are kind enough to leave me on the masthead anyway.)

who if course took the advice of the libruls?

Thanks, Ian, I’ll go have a look at http://www.pogge.ca. Cdn blogoshpere mostly boring. I am still looking for a Cdn homeblog, there’s nothing here like the Lake. Some OK ones but nothing that reaches critical mass. Maybe we’re too polite ;)

i hope the market respondS well to the likes of the economists ian lists…. i’d have to lose some of my cynicism then. *g*

q for ian. what do you think about the proposals obama made today and is your take anything like stirling’s?

Hey Ian!
Does anyone really know what they’re doing?

Will any of these plans really work,seems like alot of flailin’ around at this thing too!!

Hi EvilDr and Hotflash! Long time.

I’m so happy for Krugman. Wonder if he’ll be in Obama’s administration.

I’m so happy for Krugman. Wonder if he’ll be in Obama’s administration.

sweet.

Ian so true…
still a rot pile worth $60 Trillion to be dealt with…
no consumers to drive spending…
consumers are borrowed to the hilt…
local and state governments are in the tank as taz reciepts decline…
jobs are harder to find…
We don’t have the social safety net that Europe has…
We need to capitalize a new green energy industry
Washington and G7 have to create a carbon tax or we will have stagflation

Anthing wrong with this…and you can make the banks well without charging up the economy. So what do you recommend assuming they follow Krugman?

There used to be an old bank ad “Wishing won’t do it savings will.” This bailout seems the opposite.

The next storm on the horizon is Credit Card debt. I wonder how it’s tied into the current problem and will Congress land on the side of consumers or continue unregulated interest rates or continue backing business?

Hi Loo Hoo (waving to all)

So how serious is this crisis? So serious that it forced the Bush administration, for the first time in 8 years, to — kinda sorta — listen to reason.

That’s pretty damn serious.

yeah, essentially. Lowering taxes is not what the economy needs. People have forgotten basic Keynesian economics, apparently.

bom dia Hot Flash (my mom complains of those quite a bit *g*)

Thanks Ian.

digg

I’m no expert in econ (far from it) but I had a chance to listen to O’s speech and was heartened by much of what he said.

Well, that’s a matter of opinion. Paulson would tell you he knows what he’s doing.

But my answer is that the people in power are clueless, and are still doing things that show they aren’t taking this seriously. Here’s the simple test: the moment they start kicking the current banking class out of power, rather than allowing them to continue running their banks, I’ll know someone is taking this seriously.

I mean, if you were running a subsidiary and some VP ran his department completely into the ground and created so much debt that it could take down the entire company, while for years he had been claiming amazing results and taking home huge bonuses (ie. he’d been lying to you), what’s the first thing you’d do?

You’d fire the scumbag and sue the shit out of him to get as much money back as possible.

His speech said many of the right things. His actual policy proposals are disappointing at best.

A cynic might suggest that this is a pattern. Being a massive optimist who believes in tinkerbell, I would never do so.

damn fires are cropping up all over the place. oy the bill is going to be staggering

given the past eight years, it is a move inthe right directins. i won’t comment on you and tinkerbell *g*

directins = direction

Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Paulson and Helicopter Ben at the Fed will both be worrying about Krugman wrecking the deals they are making now so they better work fast…and have some real results.
Otherwise Obama will open the books on the inside details of what really caused this collapse and if the economy is still bad there will be lots of interested people.
Greenspan, Paulson and Ben have until January to save Reaganonomics/Chicago School Economics from another New Deal.

Tinkerbell? I didn’t know you knew David Brooks.

thanks for the reply.

I don’t have much confidence in what’s been done so far.Seems like they just keep trying to throw money at the problem!

I would like to see Obama attach someone to Paulson as soon as possible after Nov 4. If something is stinky have Pelosi bring congress in and shut stuff down.

Ian they can’t fire their fellow bankers without accepting some blame themselves, the GOP can’t ever admit that they are wrong.
It took Bush how many years to decide that the invasion of Iraq did not have enough troops? Bush Surged the troops what last year?

been wall-towall fire coverage on the local tv here so very little econ, political news is being reported. Kind of a relief actually

So far they are puttig lipstick on Wall Street.
The underlying problem is still there… Mountains of debt like a big pig laying on the economy.
They are stll playing the confidence game.

Is it close to you?

Saw a special on Link TV concerning this.
Wide scale defaults on credit card debt would shut our economy right down!

Granted this is a bit silly, but I think Obama has his best chance now that he is almost there since what econs really want is for people to have “hope” (assuming the fear card is perhaps done). How to balance this with reality is another thing – of course where there just aint no freakin money it might not be that hard (or fair rules that try to allow what people need and can afford & balanced with a way to give people a leg up).

Ian, you are great.

I read you every chance.

FWIW, I don’t see the economy of the world becoming stable until bank balance sheets are clean and transparent.

Today’s market actitivity is groundless.

No. I’m in PV. But we have some friends that live in Porter Ranch and waiting to hear from Demi who was close to the Marek Fire. Where are you?

Wild swings and drops are great for creating winners and losers, margin calls, trading fee’s. Of course they will likely get addicted to this as they were addicted to all the other profit making abilities of pushing some paper on someone elses dime and someone elses risk.

What great power they now have… for x a margin call, for y a loan, for z a government backed on your loses merger for pennies on the dollar stock merger, for me this many Billion, for you taxes. For you fear, for you a stock tip.

Colorado

Perhaps Krugman should be Obama’s Treasury Secretary.

lol. we have the foothills area out here too (pasadena, etc). i thought you were in cali. i can see the smoke from my house. i expect a spectacular sunset today guven all the smoke

Why, oh why can’t there just be a little .25% trading tax on every transaction? Brokers get their commissions everytime anything changes hands.

what would give me the most hope would be 1) an explanation of what is happening, as i’ve been told fdr did with his fireside chats. and 2) a really excellent plan to start to address not just the immediate crisis but also the underlying problems that got us here.

may not be politically feasible though. our elite have apparently not been scared enough to let go of their failed and failing policies of short term greed.

Cramer looking stupid like the dumb pimp he is again.

Buy before the biggest drop & sell before the biggest gain – wonder how much him and his peeps made.

I’m David Brooks evil twin.

oh yeah, in honor of the rape of american tax payers, i wish you all happy columbus day *spit*

Cramer capitulating was bullish sign.

If he starts seeing smoke from Cali,I think you’re in trouble!

Even if he was not fired, and needed a huge cash infusion to recover, you’d expect him to have the structure in place the hit the ground running as soon as he got the cash. Not wait for the money and take weeks to get started using the new cash.

don’t know. it is an excellent proposal. but then again, the furriners do it so we great capitalists can’t do it

What you don’t know if Bush has even f*cked this up as well. The Bushies centralized Forest Service accounts payable to some place in Albuquerque for all of the western states. Now it takes three to four MONTHS for the FS-contracted firefighters to be paid. With the payment delays and increased equipment/training requirements, there are less fire-fighters willing to work for them.

If you don’t believe in good government, you get bad government.

lol. his state is ripe for wild fires too. part of living in the west.

Yup,wildfire season

Ian,
Its not that “people” have forgotten Keynesian economics, its that since Keynes was one of those dreaded libruls, his ideas are anathema to Conservatives. Just like anything Clinton did was anathema to the Bushies in the early years of King George II. Never mind the dude with his hair on fire in 2001 about terrorists– he was a Clinton hold-over, and therefore anathema. It is OK to be wrong, but anathema is worse than being wrong; such ideas are forbidden.

It is mainly the Conservatives who have forgotten Keynes. His type of thinking is forbidden.

Bob in HI

lol. i don’t doubt it at all which is why the neighboring counties help each other out. they don’t have much trust in the state government let alone the feds. they pool resources and loan out to one another.

Don’t fix a levy, the city drowns at a cost of Billions (profit for some).
Don’t fix a bridge, the bridge falls at a cost of millions/billion.
Don’t watch Humpty, you get a broken egg.

What a failed world view to just let shit happen at a cost of Trillions (and to the environment and people) – spending exponentially more and getting people killed. All for limited benefit as disaster caps move in (of course they got the money on other projects and tax breaks on the up side as well – so no down side and cheaters win.

True words there.

Cramer did Obama (and the merkin people) a solid on CNN. Lauer led him with a question asking if part of the market drop was “Obama fear” by those making over $250,000/yr. Cramer basically poo-pooed that and said that had nothing to do with it and whatever President we end up with is stuck with the recession.

(bows) Konnichiwa, Wobbs

Anybody heard from demi today?

Cramer is smart in that way – he knows everyone hates the pols so he gives a little ups & downs for each.

bom dia, SD.

no word yet. i’ve been watching the coverage all day. been a few more fires here today (one is contained)

Why, oh why can’t there just be a little .25% trading tax on every transaction? Brokers get their commissions everytime anything changes hands.

This is a really good idea. Hedge funds account for the majority of trades in stock markets on any given day even though they represent a small portion of the market.

When I lived in Tujunga there were fires in the Angeles Forest all the time.

the marek fire is/was burning up into Angeles nat’l forest.

We do the same up in Northeast Washington State. Lots of volunteer fire-fighters, good state support, and great help from our Canadian neighbors to the north. This year was relatively quiet. I suspect our resident firebugs were somewhere else, hopefully in jail. The few fires we had were mostly wind and lightening caused. Although one of the guys I see doing family history research looked like he was still suffering from PTSD with the loss of his house. He was going to put his insurance settlement in WaMu, but I explained about its status and introduced him to bankrate.com to ensure he actually got to keep it.

Thanks Ian!!

Gotta run, be back later! bye

Your lucky. Our firebugs wait for the first forecast of the Santa Ana winds and then they go out and wreak havoc. After the last huge fires here, the county agencies basically were through with the state govt. The only thing they were good for was getting some neighboring states to come in and help but as far as helicopters and airplanes, the counties shared them with one another.

Excellent insight; in case you missed this:
Europe to U.S.: You messed up the rescue, too
“PARIS (Fortune) — First you mess up the world’s financial system. Then you blow the rescue of it. Now let’s show you how to do it properly.
That, in a nutshell, is the less-than-flattering message European governments are sending to the U.S.”

(AND it is the message we, the voters/taxpayers should be sending to our Congress critters)

“By contrast, the initial Paulson plan involved the U.S. government buying up the problem securities of banks in a procedure that risked being anything other than prompt and transparent. “It looks as complex as the credit derivatives that caused the problem in the first place,” one top European finance official told me, on condition I didn’t quote him by name.”

Don’t you find it fascinating that given that 70 per cent of ‘GDP’ is related to consumerism -which was facilitated by ‘easy credit’- and now that consumers are scaling back big time and credit is tighter (and will remain so) that the ‘pundits’ are saying nothing about what such implies?

My brother lives in Rancho Cucamonga and my sister in Claremont, San Diego. Fires in the past have gotten close to my brother’s house. If my sister’s house goes, it will be the largest natural disaster in US history, since there are literally thousands of homes in the way before hers. I remember the large fire in San Diego in 1970. I don’t wish what is going on with the fire on anyone.

hey, ian, are you implying that the market shot up almost 1000 points today because krugman won the nobel prize?

or just because you wrote about it?