I don't buy it.

"Not rocking the boat" would be voting yes. Twisting other people's arms (probably by promising pork if elected) is an extra step above "not rocking the boat."

I agree with this and I think we will be surprised by Obama when he gets sworn in. He may be the last hope to pull something out of this mess. No matter what you think about what he has done in the past, he is the only choice that has the personality and mass appeal to get people to go along with it.

In terms of getting elected, if he had proposed something drastically different than what the "experts" proposed, he would have never gotten elected. Now, he can blame the experts (under Bush's watch) for anything that did not work.

No. Hawaii's a pretty terrible place to wait out a crisis. The supply lines are long and fragile, and being in a convenient re-fueling spot in the middle of the Pacific, is a tempting target. (See Dec. 7, 1941.) The feelings of isolation and panic were palpable in the days after 9/11, when all air traffic was grounded.

However, I am wondering if Obama's going to Hawaii is bad for the world. No, I'm not talking about the carbon emissions. I mean, in August, he went to Hawaii on a family vacation, and Russia invaded Georgia. Now, he's back to see his tutu, and the markets are falling off a cliff.

Would X be worse than Y?

"I may have cancer, but at least I don't have AIDS!"

Nader is on the ballot in enough states (45) to win. There are other choices.

Chris

Don't worry-Robert Rubin has tons of experience and he is WHITE which is really important to you. I understand Robert was BORN IN THE USA so everything will be peachy. Go shoot some possum.

Guy, you freaking out isn't going to solve anything

cheer up, enjoy life while you've got it. There is nothing so broke it cannot be fixed, and if you're so unenthused about the tickets, then why don't you run?

stop being such a gloomy gus and have a good time!!

Airdale

"We are now totally screwed"

I appreciate a lot your farmers'inside stories. Keep 'm coming please.

But we were screwed all along, isn't it?

Umm, the 'born in this country' thing only applies to people born before 1776. There aren't many of those left. It's ored with 'born a citizen'. The born outside the country thing was cleared up in 1968 when George Romney (Mitt Romney's dad) ran. He was born in Mexico of US parents.

...Obama refuses to clear the issue with his birth country. He refuses to let his birth certificate(if one ever existed) from Hawaii be shown.

Airdale,

Here ya go:

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html

But why would any bright, sane man or woman want to be the Prez? I'd much rather be a senator from some backwater state, living the life.

Hey, airdale.

Wise old Ben Franklin said, in response to a question about what type of government the Constitutional Convention had given us:

"A republic. . . IF YOU CAN KEEP IT"

We can all bash the politicians, but where do they come from, and who put them there? Ultimately, one way or another, we are going to end up with a government that is no better than WE THE PEOPLE are. If the populace is rotten, then the government will be also.

The education system in this country has been a global laughingstock for at least four decades now. That has got to be taking its toll. Your post suggests just one of the many ways that we are seeing this. The mass media in its many forms isn't helping either. You mentioned the iPods in the ears - GIGO.

We don't talk so much about this here, but this is the fundamental thing that really has me so depressed and pessimistic. I just don't see much evidence to think that the American people, by and large, really have what it takes to sustain a great democracy and economic powerhouse any more. The country continues out of shear inertia, in the same way that the big old tree out back continues to stand in spite of being hollow on the inside. The tree stands until a storm comes that knocks it down. I'm afraid that a lot of what we talk about here - oil & energy, food, finances - is just the brewing storm on the horizon, the one that will knock the decayed and rotten US down for good.

It does look like the Senator from Illinois is going to win this one. I, too, sincerely doubt that he will prove able to part the waters and lead us through the wilderness. More likely he'll be passing water in a crisis and be every bit as lost and clueless as everyone else. We'll hear some good speeches, though, I guess.

How much longer, though, will we even be continuing to have elections like this?

Airdale, what is the "race" issue? What specifically are you trying to say?

Bush is sorry now.
http://www.theonion.com/content//node/82237?utm_source=embedded_video_2

No, he was vacationing. There was a vacation in Hawaii earlier this year. About the time Russia invaded Georgia, IIRC.

I don't pretend to know how he thinks, but he doesn't seem to be easily rattled, and it seems like he keeps his mind on what he's doing and isn't easily distracted. These are good things, it means he might be thinking about things beforehand, as opposed to our current administration who just reacts in whichever way their knee happens to jerk without any kind of thought for the consequences of that action.

I think all these warm motivations attributed to him are really because he doesn't let on much about what's going on inside his head and because of that, people tend to see what they want to see in him. So far he's been benefiting from this, the Republicans have tried to play this behavior up as "we don't know him much" but that doesn't stick too well with Palin on the ticket.

We have to take a close look at what happened.

At the time they approved the $700 billion bailout, the intent was to buy toxic waste off of the balance sheets of the banks at greatly inflated prices. This really was a gift, and it was the worst of all possible scenarios for the taxpayer. We were going to spend $700 billion and get what in return? $700 billion of securities that were worth little or nothing?

But three things happened:

1) The stock market did not get the boost they had anticipated. Instead, it continued to slide rather precipitously.

2) The credit markets did not unfreeze as they had anticipated. They did just the opposite and continued to lock up, and the financial "apocalypse" they had invoked to scare us into approving the $700 billion gift, all of a sudden, became a real possibility.

3) British and European lawmakers and public opinion demanded, and got, a much better deal from their banks--equity, interest on the money advanced, and control.

So Bush and Paulson were forced by events, and shamed by Europe, into giving the American taxpayer a little bit, or at least the appearance of a little bit, better deal. They did not do this of their own volition.

As the plan now stands it is still a much worse deal than what European taxpayers got, but it is still a better deal (perhaps ever so little) than what they wanted to give us. As I understand it, we at least now will get something for our $700 billion that might actually stand a chance of being worth something some day--equity in the banks. We will earn 5% on our equity infusion (far less than the 10% Warren Buffet got). But, unlike the Europeans, we got absolutely no control. This is a crime, but it is not as egregious a crime as our illustrious politicians and financiers at first had planned for us.

As Willilam Buiter explains:

In the case of the Fortunate Nine, the injection of capital is through (non-voting) preference shares yielding a ridiculously low interest rate (5 percent as opposed to the 10 percent obtained by Warren Buffett for his capital injectcion into Goldman Sachs). Without voting shares, the government has no voice in the running of these banks. It also has no seats on their boards. By contrast, in the Netherlands, the injection of €10bn worth of subordinated debt into ING bank comes with a price tag that includes two government directors on the board and a government veto over all strategic decisions by the bank.

In addition, in the the case of the Fortunate Nine, there are no attractively valued warrants (options to convert, at some future time, the preference shares into ordinary shares at a set price or at a price determined by some known formula). Quite the opposite, the preference shares purchased by the US state, can be repurchased after three years, at the banks’ discretion, on terms that are highly attractive to the banks. The US tax payer is not only getting a lousy deal compared to private US investors like Buffett, (s)he is also doing much worse than the British tax payer in the UK version of Paulson’s capital injection (£37 bn so far out of provisional budget of £50bn). The UK preference shares have a 12 percent yield and come with government-appointed board members.

http://blogs.ft.com/maverecon/2008/10/the-us-tax-payer-is-getting-a-lous...

Do these sound like the mahcinations of policy makers that have the best interest of rank and file Americans at heart?

Well, many will disagree with me on this but I tend to believe that these folks -- Paulson included -- are doing what they believe is the right thing -- the thing that will save the system and allow AIG execs to continue getting back rubs. Problem is that, smart and knowledgeable as they are, they're knowledge is still of an inferior kind. They simply don't have the big picture. I really believe that.

The most knowledgeable people on this site have argued for years as to KSA's true oil reserves. The bottom line is that we still don't know what they are. Paulson and Co. are in the same boat -- which is reason a'plenty for being scared.

Maybe the benefactors they are really trying to pay off are our Chinese (and Japanese, and Indian, etc.) overlords.

That part of your question has been bugging me all day long. Even though these countries have huge cash reserves, they nevertheless have their own problems. If this thing gets really bad, they may need all their available cash just to take care of their own domestic problems. So why would they continue to lend money to us?

And what makes it all that more puzzling is something Brad Setser said the other day:

One irony of the past year is that the US was borrowing far more from China that it was buying from China. Campaign rhetoric that the US was paying for Saudi oil with funds borrowed from China isn’t far off – though it leaves out the fact that the US also borrows from Saudi Arabia to pay for Venezuelan, Mexican and Nigerian oil.

http://blogs.cfr.org/setser/2008/10/21/the-end-of-bretton-woods-2/

Setser also said that the deficits to the U.S. current account in 2005, 2006 and 2007 were largely offset by investments these countries made directly in U.S. banks. I suppose these investments could have taken two forms:

1) By buying U.S. banking products, such as MBSs, CDOs, etc.

2) By loaning U.S. banks money

Now if the U.S. government is injecting money into U.S. banks in the form of equity, could the U.S. banks not then use that money to pay back the loans the Chinese government made to the banks back in 2005, 2006 and 2007? The Chinese government could then loan the money back to the U.S. government, who then infuses it back into the banks, who then pay off more debt to the Chinese. Rinse and repeat.

The net result is that the Chinese swap debt that was guaranteed by U.S. banks for debt guaranteed by the U.S. government. Or, as Setser puts it, "what looked to be private lending turned out to be public spending."

If the Chinese were to stop loaning us money and the U.S. was put on a cash and carry basis, this would create huge hardship for the country. Could it be that our government is jumping through all these hoops in an effort to try to keep our lines of credit open from China and others?

But when we want to borrow money for something where the Chinese aren't improving their financial posture, like a stimulus package, will they go for it?

It's a disturbing question, and in his talk yesterday Roubini also raised the spectre of these countries cutting us off.

Of course this still doesn't answer the question as to why the U.S. taxpayers got such a bad deal for saving these banks.