The Obama campaign is finally talking about McCain’s lawbreaking on campaign finance.
McCain got loans on the basis of his opting into campaign finance, which means that he is bound by the spending limits, so he has been in felony violation of the law for well over a month now.
It took them long enough.
Just a few weeks ago, analysts were saying that the worst of the banking problems were over, but now they are saying oops! The banking downturn still has a way to go, so their “buy” message was premature.
This is not surprising, considering that analysts are low looking at something like $30 billion in additional losses just for WAMU for home mortgages, commerical loans, and credit cards.
I think that the only bank’s revenue remaining stream is check bounce fees, it appears.
Not surprising, considering that real estate is still crashing, with mortgage applications continuing to crater, and new home sales falling 40% from this time last year (and off 63% from the 2005 peak).
It’s no wonder that the changes in regulation allowing for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to repackage jumbo loans has had little effect, with the GSEs choosing instead to focus on repurchasing some of their own mortgage backed securities, which serves to minimize potential losses.
In terms of Jumbo loans, those over $417K, Fannie wrote $24 million and Freddie wrote $220 million since they could in March.
By comparison, in April alone, they spent $32.4 billion to buy back their old securities.
Nothing is moving until the players have a reasonable assurance that this is not all smoke and mirrors that they are dealing with.
Of course, the whole housing bubble breaking is not just academic. It now appears that a lot of the early babl boomers will have very little to live on retirement because of the housing crash.
In the wonderful world of energy prices, oil is down a bit on high inventory levels, and retail gas prices continue their downward path.
This lack of confidence, and lack of money, is probably why durable goods orders remain anemic.
That’s the guess of SCOTUSblog, who notes that Scalia has yet to write a majority opinion this session.
I believe that it can safely be said that if Scalia is writing the majority opinion, then all gun control is doomed.
Cheney should shoot Scalia in the face.
John Paczkowski, in discussing the fact that Nokia has purchased mobile phone operating system vendor Symbian, and is releasing the OS as open source, as an alternative to Google’s Android, opens with, “Nokia Announces Symbianese Liberation Army.”
I wish I had thought of that, you bastard.
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA, or “T”) is putting free WiFi on its commuter boats.
This follows a successful test on the Worcester-Framingham commuter rail line.
Having relied on the “T” for a bit over a year, 1982-1983, I’m surprised that they came up with something this sensible.
New York Times Columnist Thomas L. Friedman is a complete pratt. Really….
That also helps explain why Iraqis initially never took ownership of their governing institutions, like the Coalition Provisional Authority, or C.P.A. They never fought for it. It was handed to them. People have to fight and win their own freedom, and that’s what gives their institutions legitimacy.
Anyone who does not understand that the CPA was a US institution, enforced at the barrel of a rifle by the US military, and answerable only to Bush and His Evil Minions™ is too stupid to cut his own meat.
It turns out that Tsvangirai’s withdrawal from the runoff has, if anything, intensified ZANU-PF thuggery.
Of course, in response, you have the African National Congress coming out in favor of doing nothing about all this. Increasingly, I believe that there are elements in the ANC who believe that Mugabe’s fate will be theirs one day, and so they will support him to the bloody end.
Morgan Tsvangirai is calling for international isolation and armed peace keepers before a fair election can be held.
I will say that when the most effective action taken on all this so far is Queen Elizabeth II stripping Mugabe of his knighthood, you know that the regional and international response is pretty pathetic.
Barack Obama has condemned Mugabe, and has talked with Tsvangirai on the phone.
Truth be told, this surprises me.
I don’t think that there is really any electoral advantage in all this.
OK, it may be a bit of an exaggeration. It’s true that Coutrywide’s shareholders approved the Bank of America takeover.
And as to the question as to whether BoA got a good deal, or whether they come to regret it, I would note that the state attorneys general of Illinois and California have both filed suit for what amounts to fraud and deceptive business practices against the mortgage lender.
Countrywide’s founder, Angelo Mozilo, aka “the Tanned One”, must be breathing a sigh of relief.
I think that I was right, no rate change, but the words accompanying the decision are a bit more hawkish on inflation.
FRB: Press Release–FOMC statement–June 25, 2008
Release Date: June 25, 2008
For immediate release
The Federal Open Market Committee decided today to keep its target for the federal funds rate at 2 percent.
Recent information indicates that overall economic activity continues to expand, partly reflecting some firming in household spending. However, labor markets have softened further and financial markets remain under considerable stress. Tight credit conditions, the ongoing housing contraction, and the rise in energy prices are likely to weigh on economic growth over the next few quarters.
The Committee expects inflation to moderate later this year and next year. However, in light of the continued increases in the prices of energy and some other commodities and the elevated state of some indicators of inflation expectations, uncertainty about the inflation outlook remains high.
The substantial easing of monetary policy to date, combined with ongoing measures to foster market liquidity, should help to promote moderate growth over time. Although downside risks to growth remain, they appear to have diminished somewhat, and the upside risks to inflation and inflation expectations have increased. The Committee will continue to monitor economic and financial developments and will act as needed to promote sustainable economic growth and price stability.
Voting for the FOMC monetary policy action were: Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman; Timothy F. Geithner, Vice Chairman; Donald L. Kohn; Randall S. Kroszner; Frederic S. Mishkin; Sandra Pianalto; Charles I. Plosser; Gary H. Stern; and Kevin M. Warsh. Voting against was Richard W. Fisher, who preferred an increase in the target for the federal funds rate at this meeting.
Well that was a quick truce.
If you expect to be disappointed, the Middle East will never disappoint.
Typical. Money that was supposed to be spent on counter-terrorism was spent on…lord knows what.
Of course Pakistan has been spending our money down south, to counter the Indians, as opposed to up north, where the Taliban is, anyway.
Once again, I am compelled to make the repeat the wisest thing that I’ve read this century:
But it does inspire in me the desire for a competition; can anyone, particularly the rather more Bush-friendly recent arrivals to the board, give me one single example of something with the following three characteristics:
- It is a policy initiative of the current Bush administration
- It was significant enough in scale that I’d have heard of it (at a pinch, that I should have heard of it)
- It wasn’t in some important way completely f#$@ed up during the execution.
Seriously. I’ve yet to see anything wiser yet, and I’m using the loose definition of the 21st century which includes the year 2000.
It’s actually quite refreshing that Bush and His Evil Minions™ are acutally doing something to deescalate the diplomatic situation with North Korea.
Not surprisingly, Cheney, et al, are steadfast against this.
The fact is that the North Koreans are not crazy, they are paranoid, and when you have Cheney lobbying for a military attack, that’s just being a realist.
Hopefully, this will be a step towards formal diplomatic relations. The only thing keeping the regime in power is paranoia and distrust of the USA.
Even if inflation were not an issue, and it is, they would not cut rates, because they have already cut them so far that the market is no longer effected by this.
The economic news lately has been awful, so they won’t raise rates.
Thus, they will do nothing, though my guess is that their statement will be more hawkish on inflation.
We will know in about 14 hours.
Whenever the housing crash is discussed, Charlotte is mentioned, since it was one of the largest metropolitan areas not experiencing a price drop.
Yhe other shoe has now dropped. Charlotte area house prices dropped year over year for the first time in 17 years.
I do think that Charlotte’s market is healthier, and will remain healthier, than the US market as a whole, but the housing crash will hit everywhere.
While I think that the predictions of a rapid decline in far suburbs is premature, it’s clear that increases in fuel costs, and hence the cost of commuting have driven some changes in attitudes regarding distant suburbs.
I disagree with land use expert Christopher Leinberger, who says, “Many low-density suburbs and McMansion subdivisions, including some that are lovely and affluent today, may become what inner cities became in the 1960s and ’70s – slums characterized by poverty, crime and decay,” if just because these McMansion subdivisions were remarkably poorly constructed, and the houses will not survive long enough to become slums.
I would expect, however, that as the exurbs were first into the housing crash, they will be the last out, and the land values won’t reach the relative levels that they had to more urban neighborhoods ever again.
It comes as no surprise that Dodd and Feingold are announcing that they will filibuster the bill as it stands.
What is interesting is that Nancy Pelosi is suggesting that more debate on the bill would be “healthy”, which appears to indicate that perhaps she’s seeing the response out there, and is regretting her decision to help Hoyer ram this through.
The most prominent supporter of this is nepotism beneficiary Bill Kristol, but nutjob Daniel Pipes is saying this too.
They couch it by saying that this “might” happen, but they really lobbying the Bush Administration to bomb Iran.
What’s more, I think that they are specifically lobbying for bombing Iran just before the general election.
Survey USA has Barack Obama up by two points over John McCain in Indiana.
Indiana??? If that holds to the general, we have nothing to worry about.
Additionally, dispite the very serious people in DC trying to claim that the Newsweek poll giving Obama a 15 point lead, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll gives Obama holds 12-point lead over McCains.
Let’s hope that Barack doesn’t screw this up.
In a New York Times OP/ED, Peter Godwin muses on what to do about the brutal war that Mugabe is waging on his own people.
He notes that the international community should delegitimize the Mugabe regime, and take steps to recognize the government in exile.
Then he has his moment of genius:
Of course, South Africa could use its economic power to draw Mr. Mugabe’s rule to an end in weeks rather than months. Yet Mr. Mbeki has steadfastly refused to act, providing a protective cloak for Mr. Mugabe’s repression. And just a few weeks ago, even as opposition members were being tortured, Mr. Mbeki visited Zimbabwe, allowing himself to be garlanded at the airport and displayed on state-run TV with a broadly grinning Mr. Mugabe. In the United Nations Security Council, where South Africa currently has a seat, Mr. Mbeki has opposed attempts to put the political situation in Zimbabwe on the agenda.
If Mr. Mbeki’s cost-benefit calculus has been such that he hasn’t seen it necessary to take tougher action, perhaps it’s time to change that calculus. Perhaps, for example, now is not the time for you to book a safari to South Africa. Or for you, or any institution that manages your funds, to make new investments in the country.
Most important, there is the FIFA soccer World Cup, for which South Africa is to act as host in 2010. That may seem like a long way off, but South Africa is already investing huge amounts both financially and politically, for what is supposed to be its triumphal coming-out party. Maybe Zimbabwe should become to the South Africa-hosted World Cup what Tibet has been to the Beijing Olympics — the pungent albatross that spoils every press conference and mars every presentation with its insistent odor.
Perhaps it’s time to share the Zimbabweans’ pain, to help persuade Mr. Mbeki to bear down on its source by threatening to grab the world’s soccer ball and take our games elsewhere.
I don’t follow soccer, so I was unaware that the World Cup would be in South Africa.
This is brilliant, and people should start lobbying FIFA now to change the venue.
In the most recent Supreme Court decision on Gitmo, Scalia noted that 30 former detainees had, “Returned to the Fight”.
Well, thanks to Sabin Willett, whose firm has represented some of those detainees, writing in the Boston Globe, we now have a definition of what this means:
It is a serious allegation, so the lawyers looked into it. It turns out that clients of our firm, who were sent to Albania in 2006, were two of the 30. What fight had they returned to? Abu Bakker Qassim had published an op-ed in The New York Times. Adel Abdul Hakim had given an interview. These press statements were deemed hostile by the Department of Defense.
Surely the Pentagon was joking? They weren’t.
So I can’t speak for the other 28, if indeed there are another 28, but for the two men I do know about, giving hostile interviews constituted “returning to the fight.”
The basic institutions of state security in the United States have become very profoundly pathological indeed.