Comic Relief from Chris Rock

Larry King talks with comedian and activist Chris Rock about his thoughts on the hot issues in politics.

Picture of the Day

You have to love photo shop...

Rountable: What's Next for Economy

View, This Week with George Stephanopoulos along with George Will, Robert Reich, Newt Gingrich, and Steven Pearlstein.

USA Today/Gallop Poll

(Q) A new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll shows 46% of people who watched Friday night's presidential debate say Democrat Barack Obama did a better job than Republican John McCain; 34% said McCain did better.

Obama scored even better -- 52%-35% -- when debate-watchers were asked which candidate offered the best proposals for change to solve the country's problems.

More than six in 10 people or 63% in the one-day poll, taken Saturday, said they watched the first faceoff in Oxford, Miss. For those 701 people, the margin of error was +/- 4 percentage points.

Truly Beyond Parody

Money Quote: Andrew Sullivan...Yes, I saw Tina Fey and Amy Poehler last night. And, of course, the amazing thing is that a whole section of the script was directly transcribed from Palin's actual attempted interview with Katie Couric. There is no way Saturday Night Life could make more fun of Palin than she made of herself. How does McCain win an election with a national joke as his running-mate?

McCain's earmark obsession

I remain completely baffled by John McCain's windmill-tilting at federal earmarks.

In last night's presidential debate, the Arizona senator first began by talking about how the United States is in a "fiscal crisis" rather than a financial or credit crisis. Yet U.S. deficit spending as a percentage of GDP is not particularly high in historical terms, and now that there is a flight to safety in the markets, the U.S. government is able to borrow money at a near-zero interest rate. Yes, there is a looming fiscal calamity ahead, but the main problem today has to do with a freezing up of the credit markets, not the federal government's deficit spending.

What's more, McCain seems not to understand that earmarks are just a tiny piece of the fiscal picture. As Barack Obama pointed out during the debate, earmarks represent just $18 billion out of a much larger pie. Compare that to the projected 2009 deficit (not counting the bailout) of roughly $500 billion. Or compare it to the total federal budget of about $3 trillion.

Here's a pie chart, via economist Mark Thoma:

CBS Debate Poll Results

The CBS poll of undecideds has more confirmatory detail. Obama went from a +18 on "understanding your needs and problems" before the debate to a +56 (!) afterward. And he went from a -9 on "prepared to be president" to a +21.

Why Voters Thought Obama Won...

Okay, we thought that McCain had a slight upper hand tonight (though we also said it wasn't a game changer, which is basically another way of saying that McCain didn't do what he had to). But the initial polls suggest that viewers give the nod to Obama in a big way.

TPM has the internals of the CNN poll of debate-watchers, which had Obama winning overall by a margin of 51-38. The poll suggests that Obama is opening up a gap on connectedness, while closing a gap on readiness.

More Results...

Specifically, by a 62-32 margin, voters thought that Obama was “more in touch with the needs and problems of people like you”. This is a gap that has no doubt grown because of the financial crisis of recent days. But it also grew because Obama was actually speaking to middle class voters. Per the transcript, McCain never once mentioned the phrase “middle class” (Obama did so three times). And Obama’s eye contact was directly with the camera, i.e. the voters at home. McCain seemed to be speaking literally to the people in the room in Mississippi, but figuratively to the punditry.

The Obama campaign is quick out the gate with this new TV ad on the economy, criticizing McCain for saying nothing about the concerns of the middle class during the debate:

Letterman rails against McCain for no-show

U.S. New-Home Sales Fell in August to 17-Year Low

(Q) Sales of new homes in the U.S. fell in August to a 17-year low, signaling the housing market suffered another setback even before the latest turmoil in financial markets.

Sales dropped 11.5 percent, more than forecast, to an annual rate of 460,000, the fewest since January 1991, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. The median sales price dropped to a four-year low. Bounce 2 Bloomberg

To Debate or Not to Debate that is Question

Obama Hanged In Effigy

In a State that held the largest political campaign rally during the primary season for Barack Obama, a crowd of 75K, but now an Oregon college is now infamous for a racist effigy. Welcome to George Fox University ...at a Quaker college, no less. The bigotry continues....

A Simple Explanation of What Went Wrong

I read this interesting Brookings paper yesterday, titled "A Brief Guide To Fixing Finance." The most intriguing part of the paper was this simple explanation of exactly how things managed to get so bollocked up in the first place.

The authors note the “domino-like” character to the financial crisis:

1. The bubble in home prices, fueled by the ready availability of credit, resulted in an underestimate of the risks of residential real estate;

2. The peaking of residential home prices in 2006, combined with lax lending standards were followed by a very high rate of delinquencies on subprime mortgages in 2007 and a rising rate of delinquencies on prime mortgages;

3. Losses thereafter on the complex “Collateralized Debt Obligations” (CDOs) that were backed by these mortgages;

4. Increased liabilities by the many financial institutions (banks, investment banks, insurance companies, and hedge funds) that issued “credit default swaps” contracts (CDS) that insured the CDOs;

5. Losses suffered by financial institutions that held CDOs and/or that issued CDS’s;

6. Cutbacks in credit extended by highly leveraged lenders that suffered these losses.

Sure, that's an oversimplification. But it is a good place for the layperson to begin trying to comprehend what exactly went wrong here . . .

Palin In Polling Free-Fall

You can fool some of the people ...

The new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll will be released at 6:30 pm ET, but here's an early look at one set of numbers: Forty-nine percent say that Palin is unqualified to be president if the need arises, compared with 40 percent who say she's qualified. By contrast, 64 percent believe Biden is qualified to be president, versus just 21 percent who disagree.

Business Ownership: How Sweet It Can Be!

For today's Economic lesson: Activity 1 Click Here!

Activity 3...Choose any one of the following Links to complete the seven questions.

Elise McMillan and her brother Evan co founded The Chocolate Farm in Englewood, Colorado, in the late 1990s.

Milton Hershey (more history here)broke ground for his chocolate factory near Lancaster, PA in 1903. It was the beginning of what would become Hershey Foods Corporation.

Forrest Mars, Sr. invited Bruce Murrie, an investment banker and son of the Hershey company president, to be his partner in M&M Ltd. The M&Ms we still eat today were first sold to the public in 1941. The letters in "M&M" stand for Mars & Murrie. Eventually, Murrie left the business but Forest Mars became the owner of Mars, Inc.

Wally Amos launched the Famous Amos Cookie Company in a Hollywood, CA storefront on Sunset Boulevard in 1975.

TIP: If a company has incorporated and is publicly traded, another source of information will be Hoover’s Online Directory.

A Conservative Takes Aim at McCain

The final two paragraphs from George Will's column today are worth highlighting again:

Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

This is Bad Timing...

Obama's new ad takes aim at an article McCain 'wrote':
Bounce 2 the full article...

Comedian Elon James on Whiteness

SNL...Does McCain

Poll: Lingering Racism May Hurt Obama

One-third of polled white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks

Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks — many calling them "lazy," "violent" or responsible for their own troubles.

The poll, conducted with Stanford University, suggests that the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference between the candidates in 2004 — about two and one-half percentage points.More than a third of all white Democrats and independents — voters Obama can't win the White House without — agreed with at least one negative adjective about blacks, according to the survey, and they are significantly less likely to vote for Obama than those who don't have such views.

Such numbers are a harsh dose of reality in a campaign for the history books. Obama, the first black candidate with a serious shot at the presidency, accepted the Democratic nomination on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, a seminal moment for a nation that enshrined slavery in its Constitution.

"There are a lot fewer bigots than there were 50 years ago, but that doesn't mean there's only a few bigots,"

said Stanford political scientist Paul Sniderman who helped analyze the exhaustive survey. Bounce 2 MSNBC to read more....

The GOP Has Gone Commie!

This take is courtesy The Big Picture enjoy...I am having a hard time keeping up with all of the bailouts and special facilities created for dealing with this crisis. Am I missing any?

- Bear Stearns
- Economic Stimulus progam
- Housing Bailout Program
- Fannie & Freddie
- AIG
- No Short selling rules
- Fed liquidity programs (Term Lending facility, Term Auction facility)
- Money Market fund insurance program
- Special Loans for GM & Ford
- New RTC type program

If you are a fan of irony, consider this: The conservative movement has utterly hated FDR, and his New Deal programs like Medicaid, Social Security, FDIC, Fannie Mae (1938), and the SEC for nearly 80 years. And for the past 8 years, a conservative was in the White House, with a very conservative agenda. For something like 16 of the past 18 years, the conservative dominated GOP has controlled Congress. Those are the facts.

We now see that the grand experiment of deregulation has ended, and ended badly. The deregulation movement is now an historical footnote, just another interest group, and once in power they turned into socialists. Indeed, judging by the actions of the conservatives in power, and not the empty rhetoric that comes out of think tanks, the conservative movement has effectively turned the United States into a massive Socialist state, an appendage of Communist Russia, China and Venezuela.

To paraphrase Floyd Norris, we have become Marxists, but of the Groucho, not Karl, variety . . .

Vast Bailout by U.S. Proposed in Bid to Stem Financial Crisis

(Q) The head of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve began discussions on Thursday with Congressional leaders on what could become the biggest bailout in United States history.

While details remain to be worked out, the plan is likely to authorize the government to buy distressed mortgages at deep discounts from banks and other institutions. The proposal could result in the most direct commitment of taxpayer funds so far in the financial crisis that Fed and Treasury officials say is the worst they have ever seen.

Senior aides and lawmakers said the goal was to complete the legislation by the end of next week, when Congress is scheduled to adjourn. The legislation would grant new authority to the administration and require what several officials said would be a substantial appropriation of federal dollars, though no figures were disclosed in the meeting. Bounce 2 NYTimes for the rest of the story.

Obama ad hits McCain on social security

Another unreleased Obama ad, this one airing in Flint, Michigan, goes after a favorite Democratic issue at an economically scary time: Social Security. (It's not a good week to have had, as so many Americans do, your retirement savings in equities.)

The spot accuses McCain of wanting to privatize the program. The AARP, which opposes such plans, but also follows this closely, has a summary of McCain's past support for diverting some, but not all, payroll taxes into private accounts.

These unreleased spots raising alarms about bread-and-butter economic issues may say more about the real race than does the cable news buzz.

Gallup Daily Poll

The Obama surge is real.

Obama on the Offensive

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is airing an unusual two-minute TV ad about the economy, calling for “shared responsibility” and “real regulation” to rein in an “anything-goes culture on Wall Street.”

The ad is part of the campaign’s effort to respond confidently and convincingly to this weekend’s financial meltdown.

Two-minute ads are sometimes used in the opening or closing days of a campaign, but are rarely seen in the heat of the fall.

Fed’s $85 Billion Loan Rescues Insurer

(Q) Fearing a financial crisis worldwide, the Federal Reserve reversed course on Tuesday and agreed to an $85 billion bailout that would give the government control of the troubled insurance giant American International Group.

The decision, only two weeks after the Treasury took over the federally chartered mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is the most radical intervention in private business in the central bank’s history.

With time running out after A.I.G. failed to get a bank loan to avoid bankruptcy, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, convened a meeting with House and Senate leaders on Capitol Hill about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday to explain the rescue plan. They emerged just after 7:30 p.m. with Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke looking grim, but with top lawmakers initially expressing support for the plan. But the bailout is likely to prove controversial, because it effectively puts taxpayer money at risk while protecting bad investments made by A.I.G. and other institutions it does business with.

Buying vs. Renting (Economic Class)

For the assignment of September 16, 2008...click here and you will be directed to the site. Any questions ask me....

McCain and Gutter Politics...

"I wonder how many times you have to be hit on the head before you find out who's hitting you? It's about time that the people of America realized what the Republicans have been doing to them," - Harry Truman.

Colbert...Viewer Be Advised

President Bush OK'd Raids

(Q) President Bush secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government, according to senior American officials.

The classified orders signal a watershed for the Bush administration after nearly seven years of trying to work with Pakistan to combat the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and after months of high-level stalemate about how to challenge the militants’ increasingly secure base in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Another Scandal...

(Q) As Congress prepares to debate expansion of drilling in taxpayer-owned coastal waters, the Interior Department agency that collects oil and gas royalties has been caught up in a wide-ranging ethics scandal — including allegations of financial self-dealing, accepting gifts from energy companies, cocaine use and sexual misconduct.

In three reports delivered to Congress on Wednesday, the department’s inspector general, Earl E. Devaney, found wrongdoing by a dozen current and former employees of the Minerals Management Service, which collects about $10 billion in royalties annually and is one of the government’s largest sources of revenue other than taxes.

“A culture of ethical failure” pervades the agency, Mr. Devaney wrote in a cover memo.

The reports portray a dysfunctional organization that has been riddled with conflicts of interest, unprofessional behavior and a free-for-all atmosphere for much of the Bush administration’s watch. See video for more details...

Credit for Beginners

Economics lesson for Wednesday, September 10, 2008, click here.

Steelers Score Early to Win, 38-17

Parker runs for 138 yards, 3 TDs as Steelers wrangle Texans
For one game, it seemed like a replay of the Steelers' Super Bowl-winning season of three years ago.

Parker showed no loss of speed or cutback ability resulting from the broken right leg that ended his 2007 season in the Steelers' next-to-last game, when he was leading the NFL in rushing. Ben Roethlisberger missed on only one of 14 passing attempts until being lifted after three quarters.

Hines Ward had two scoring catches among his six receptions for 76 yards, and Pro Bowl safety Troy Polamalu, coming off an injury-filled season, made his first interception in nearly two years.

Joe Biden, En Fuego

Jobless rate soars to 6.1%

(Q) The unemployment rate soared to a nearly five-year high in August as employers trimmed jobs for the eighth straight month, the government reported Friday.

The unemployment rate rose to 6.1%, the highest level since September 2003. That's up from 5.7% in July and 4.7% a year ago.

In addition, the economy suffered a net loss of 84,000 jobs in August, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, compared to a revised reading of a 60,000 job loss in July.

The U.S. economy has lost 605,000 jobs so far this year.

The jobs report immediately drew comment from the presidential candidates as well as the Bush administration.
To read on Bounce 2 CNN Money