I came across this clip at random today, thought it was worth sharing… it should be obvious that someone who is likely the greatest tennis player of all time has a lot of competitive drive and pride, not to mention that it should be clear never to assume it’s over until you’ve actually won.
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Congress rejected Paulson’s Wall Street bailout bill this afternoon. It was primarily defeated by Republicans, with 133 of them voting against (as opposed to 95 Democrats). So much for the party of “progressives”—the Democrats tried extremely hard to pass this appalling giveaway, with Pelosi trying to go both ways by pushing for the bill, declaiming the removal of regulation and supervision in the financial system while simultaneously doing nothing to put them back by inserting them into the bill.
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So I did watch the first Presidential debate this evening, with some friends at work. It was more or less what I expected—a somewhat blustery McCain, and a smooth Obama. It seemed as if Obama was a lot better at getting his digs in, and at working the obviously scripted attacks into the flow of the debate, while McCain at times seemed to be inserting them almost at random, and clinging to them ferociously.
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The largest bank failure in US history (so far). Washington Mutual, rumored to be in trouble for quite some time, was seized by federal regulators today. Apparently customers had withdrawn $16.7 billion over the last ten days.
They’re being sold to JP Morgan, who look like they’re doing well out of it, considering that they tried to buy Washington Mutual in March for $4/share. Apparently the feds have managed to get this done without using the FDIC fund, which is probably good overall. The big losers look to be Washington Mutual shareholders and creditors, who may get nothing.
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So I think that my initial reaction to Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley becoming bank holding companies was rather naive. I thought that they were doing it as a defensive measure, because they were struggling. Now I wonder if in fact they’re doing it because they see an opportunity for even more plunder.
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The big news at the moment continues to be Paulson’s “plan” to make everything in the markets okay by creating a fund to buy up all the “distressed assets” out there, e.g. the bad bets that the banks created and then spread around the entire financial system while hiding the risks from all concerned. If the taxpayers end up shelling out for this thing, it’s a gigantic transfer of wealth from the average American to the hugely wealthy. Seven hundred billion dollars, even today, is a huge amount of money (and works out to about two thousand dollars per American).
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Goodbye to Wall Street as we know it?
(I’m not concerned for Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley—they’ve grown fat and ludicrously wealthy over the years and are now attempting to outrun the consequences of some very bad bets. But if they’ve given in to pressure, or if they have indeed requested, to “reform” as more tightly-regulated entities, it means that they’re extremely worried that the run on their assets will continue if they don’t take drastic measures to reassure people. Which in turn means that even they, reputed to be the smarter banks (for example. Goldman managed to make money from a significant piece of the credit crunch last year), are in too deep. Again, I don’t care about these people. But they’re still immensely powerful, and if there’s colossal financial damage coming, they’ll do all they can so that it rains on us, not them—as the administration’s appalling bailout proposal makes clear.)
I’m cheating a little and including the subhead.
(By the way, someone posted a comment for Tuesday’s post that I accidentally deleted as spam a moment before realizing it wasn’t one of the 20 spam messages in the list. Sorry—please repost!)
When I was quite young, I went to see Siberian tigers at the Bronx Zoo. My memories of this are vague in terms of specifics, but I suspect that I saw at least one cub, and I do know that I was strongly affected by seeing them. I’ve always loved all kinds of cats, have had a soft spot for tigers, and, well, blue-eyed tigers are just too much to resist.
Even at a young age, however, I was quite aware that they were not domestic animals.
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These are some of the best YouTube clips I’ve ever seen… I’m not sure what it is that makes them quite so captivating.
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In May 2005 David Foster Wallace gave a commencement speech at Kenyon College. Go read it.
It was with shock and sadness this morning that I read of the death of David Foster Wallace. He was forty-six, and apparently hanged himself.
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I’m not sure I agree that more suffering is what’s needed—people often learn the wrong lessons from suffering just as they do from good times—but otherwise I think IOZ nails it.
The Interior Department Knows How To Party
I often think that it might be better to take George Carlin’s approach to life, and to view it as a big carnival/freakshow put on for the entertainment of those who can look at it that way. Generally, I take things a little too seriously to do that, but then things like this come up: “Oil brokers sex scandal may affect drilling debate”.
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Race and gender are both deeply significant in this election, but the narratives covered by the media don’t deal with what’s really going on. I certainly don’t believe that Barack Obama’s election would mean that America has taken much of a step towards eliminating racism in reality—it means something, and is potent symbolically, but the true effects of this country’s endemic prejudice would remain, and might face even fewer challenges given the symbolism. (The “we have a black president so there’s obviously no race problem” attitude would be prevalent, I suspect.) Similarly, I doubt very much that Palin’s ascension to the Vice Presidency, or even the Presidency itself, would truly challenge the dominant gender roles in this culture. As precedent I cite Margaret Thatcher, who as far as I can tell did almost exactly nothing positive in that regard for the UK. In any case, Arthur Silber once again delivers, dissecting the current operation of both race and gender.
Roger Federer defeated Andy Murray in straight sets in today’s delayed final, 6-2 7-5 6-2, and took less than two hours to do it. The same Federer that many commentators dismissed as a contender for the title… despite his having not lost there in years. Yes, he had a bad early hardcourt season, but the only person you could really think would beat him at it would be Nadal, and even Nadal would have had tremendous difficulty doing so in New York. I don’t see why so many pundits were eager to state that he was in rapid decline, and now he’s made them look pretty bad.
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Government Takes Over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
So the US Government has taken over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, pillars of the mortgage industry in the US… they were originally state entities, went private but with government support, and are now state-controlld again.
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Most American readers, and those who follow the US political blogs, will probably have seen this already, but it’s worth putting up here for anyone who missed it. An absolute classic:
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I don’t agree with a lot of the criticisms of Sarah Palin, particularly those focused on her gender, the fact that she has a family, the fact that her daughter is pregnant, or the fact that she “lacks foreign policy experience” (that last one is basically code for “is a committed raving imperialist”). Of course, I can’t stand her policies at all,and her religiosity is disturbing.
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While the US is bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, Russia is asserting itself, disrupting American plans for energy transport and control around the Caspian Sea . Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Bush Administration isn’t all that good at effective strategy, as Michael Klare discusses in TomDispatch.
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I hadn’t heard of Michael Hudson before, but I found what he had to say in this interview rather interesting. He gives explanations that sound plausible to me for a number of apparent oddities in the world economic system, for example his first answer about why the US can sustain such a huge deficit.
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