Tuesday’s Mini-Report

March 18, 2008

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* The band-aid: “The Federal Reserve slashed a key interest rate by three-quarters of a percentage point Tuesday, in the central bank’s continued effort to restore confidence in the economy and battered financial markets. Although some experts cautioned that the cut may lead to more inflation, stocks soared as Wall Street cheered the news. The Fed cut its federal funds rate, an overnight bank lending rate, to 2.25%. It is the sixth cut in the past six months and comes at a time when the Fed is trying to keep the economy from slipping into recession – although many think it’s already entered one.”

* Uh oh: “The thickest, oldest and toughest sea ice around the North Pole is melting, a bad sign for the future of the Arctic ice cap, NASA satellite data showed on Tuesday.”

* The likelihood of a re-vote in Michigan is looking kind of shaky, but some in-state Dems are suggesting it probably wouldn’t matter: “One of Hillary’s most important supporters in Michigan, former Governor Jim Blanchard, went way off message in a conversation with me moments ago, saying that even if a revote were held in the state, it would likely be so close that it wouldn’t make much of a material difference in the delegate count. ‘I think if we had a vote in Michigan, it could easily be close,’ Blanchard told me. ‘The amount of delegates wouldn’t make much difference.'”

* I’ve neglected to mention developments in Tibet: “The Dalai Lama said on Tuesday he would step down as head of Tibet’s government-in-exile if that would stop bloodshed in his homeland, but China repeated its charge that he was the mastermind of a violent uprising. His officials, based in the Indian Himalayan foothills, said they believed 99 people had died in clashes between Chinese security forces and Tibetans over the past week, including 19 on Tuesday alone. Chinese state-run media said more than 100 people had given themselves up to police after taking part in Tibet’s most intense unrest against Chinese rule for nearly two decades.”

* Do you get the sense that Bear Stearns’ employees will soon be in the same boat as Enron’s?

* On a related note, USA Today had a good primer on the Bear Stearns collapse. Question #1: “What is an investment bank, and why should I care what happens to one?”

* I think we can guess how the case is going to be decided, but this debate at the high court is fascinating.

* I’m going to guess the Obama campaign wants more quotes like this one, as published by McClatchy: “I’ve never heard anybody give a speech like that, ever. It transcends John F. Kennedy’s speech on his faith and his politics,” said G. Terry Madonna, director for the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Pennsylvania’s Franklin & Marshall College. “I think his candidacy was in serious, serious trouble. I think that this speech saved his campaign.”

* The disbanding of the public integrity unit in the U.S. Attorney for Los Angeles’ office really is absurd.

* The EPA library system is the latest agency decimated by hacks.

* British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will hold a formal inquiry on the lessons to be learned from the war in Iraq “at some point.” Do we get one, too?

* Hey look, Fox News is lying about Obama’s church. Who would have guessed?

* The reporters covering Iraq for the newspaper chain formerly known as Knight Ridder really do deserve greater recognition.

* Classic: “U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn, told the editorial board of The Advocate and Greenwich Time he’s supporting Republican John McCain for president because he’s the most likely to bring about change in Washington.” The 72-year-old senator who’s been in Congress for a quarter-century and agrees with Bush on practically all of the major issues is “most likely to bring about change”? Seriously?

* And finally, the problem with the president in a nutshell: “In some ways it was a throwaway line, the kind of praise a boss tosses out casually. But as the economy teetered Monday, President Bush’s words to Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson struck many as discordant and disengaged. ‘I want to thank you, Mr. Secretary, for working over the weekend,’ Bush said as he met with his economic advisors at the White House. ‘You’ve shown the country and the world that the United States is on top of the situation.’ Actually, many analysts and critics said, by focusing on Paulson’s working hours instead of on the fear gripping Main Street and Wall Street, the president seemed to show just the opposite — that he has failed to grasp the gravity of the country’s economic crisis.”

Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.

Thanks for the linkage, Steve! As always, it is greatly appreciated!

  • “The Dalai Lama said on Tuesday he would step down as head of Tibet’s government-in-exile if that would stop bloodshed in his homeland, but China repeated its charge that he was the mastermind of a violent uprising.

    Okay, who let Dick Cheney give the Chinese lessons in PR?

  • Hey to Bush, “working on the weekend” is extraordinary.

    Yeah that Dalai Lama is a badass trouble maker.

  • If our government, at least since Reagan, had spent as much money helping keep small business in business, we would not be such easy prey to the effects of the biggest, stupid-by-greed, business’s failures.
    If we spread America’s business wealth more evenly throughout the layers of the economy business failures become separated in time and space and are less of a national calamity. And stupidity becomes less of a national policy.

    What ever happened to the anti-monopoly busters that helped businesses grow by the quality of their produce and service rather than by their ability to create and then eat carrion?

  • * Uh oh: “The thickest, oldest and toughest sea ice around the North Pole is melting, a bad sign for the future of the Arctic ice cap, NASA satellite data showed on Tuesday.””

    I enjoy understatement as much as the next fellow, but I think “Uh oh” significantly undersignifies the fucked-ness, with fucked sauce, on fuckedy-fucked noodles, with fuckedy-fuckedy-fuck on the side which this portends…

  • These guys don’t normally work on weekends? Really?? I guess I never really thought too much about it before, but I had kind of assumed they treated these as seven days a week jobs, and not the kind of thing you just go home and forget about.

  • In regard to the “nut shell” link.
    Maureen Dowd, of all people, criticized her Commander-in-Cheep for his happy face comments about to the economy over the weekend.

    By her account Duhbya was very happy and joking in his speech to a group of business men, who were probably watching foreign stock markets plunge, on their cells, and Blackberrys, literally as Duhyba was speaking.
    The only way that any one could be happy about the failure of Bear Sterns, and what that might portend for us and for the world’s economy, is if they are on drugs.

    I am being quite serious. Is Bush is on antidepressants? That would explain his extremely misplaced ebullience, as well as the lack of recognition of just how out of sync he is.
    It also again brings up the question of his competency to make decisions.

  • ““I want to thank you, Mr. Secretary, for working over the weekend,…”

    Uniquely American. Right Mr. President?

  • This is too good to not post!

    Fox News infested by bed bugs.

    bed-bug-pic.jpgFox News’s senior vice president for operations and engineering, Warren Vandeveer, admitted to the New York Times yesterday that Fox’s Midtown Manhattan newsroom was recently infested with bed bugs. “An exterminator determined that the incursion was limited to a ‘very small area in the newsroom,’” but added that the home of the employee who brought the pests into work had “the worst infestation he had seen in 25 years in the business.” Vandeveer says the bugs have now been “totally eradicated.” (HT: HuffPo)

  • A curious case of omission… Today’s NYT does *not* have a correction of Kristol’s yesterday’s blunder (in accusing Obama of mendacity, when Obama said he had not been in the pews of the church for Wright’s incendiary “God damn America” quote). Not even in small print, on A2, which hardly anyone reads. So, to everyone who’s read Kristol’s words in print, the calumny stands.

    If I were Obama, I’d sue Kristol — and Kristol’s source, Kessler — for libel. A big part of Obama’s campaign rests on his his honesty. For Kristol to accuse Obama, in print, of lying is tantamount to impugning Obama’s honor. People used to be shot for less; paying big reparations and making a public — in bold print — mea culpa is the least Kristol should offer.

  • Although some experts cautioned that the cut may lead to more inflation, stocks soared as Wall Street cheered the news

    ever notice how often this happens .. somehting bad comes out in the news concerning the US economy .. jobs report .. or here ..a governmental action which hurts the currency .. and the market “cheers wildly” whatever it was ..

    it’s almost like for something to be “good” for the market .. it has to be bad for the nation .. i.e. “the rest of us” …

    looks less than patriotic doesn’t it ..??

  • I’m confused – should we or should we not conclude that Henry Paulson is doing a heckuva job?

    I’m thinking that the next step by the Bush administration will be to save those poor megamillionaires from the grief of calculating tax breaks, finding tax shelters, running investment banks, and having to worry about risky investments, and simply establish a program of publicly-funded loans with modest negative interest rates for people worth >$10 million.

  • “One of Hillary’s most important supporters in Michigan, former Governor Jim Blanchard, went way off message in a conversation with me moments ago, saying that even if a revote were held in the state, it would likely be so close that it wouldn’t make much of a material difference in the delegate count. ‘I think if we had a vote in Michigan, it could easily be close,’ Blanchard told me. ‘The amount of delegates wouldn’t make much difference.’”

    So if he admits that the delegates would be evenly split if there was a fair vote, does he admit if Hillary pushes to have the delegates seated as voted in January that she is attempting to defraud the voters of Michigan?

  • If the Fed keeps that up – cutting rates – we are going to be sitting here with Monopoly Money in our billfolds, if we aren’t there already. Every time they do this, they make the dollar less and less attractive as an investment, and dollar-denominated investments less attractive. The result is the Euro is now at $1.65 the last time I looked.

    Pretty soon, even the Chinese are going to see that the US Treasury is a bad investment. The day OPEC decides oil wil be sold by the Euro is the day the American Empire ends up with the Imperial Wehrmacht shaking begging bowls in Baghdad to buy gas to drive out out the country. When the rest of the world sees it is time to rein in the Bush/Cheney wing of America, it’s not going to take a world war to do it.

  • Yes, the Euro is $1.65, the Candadian Dollar now costs $1.10, and the Swiss Franc will cost $1.05.

    The greenback becomes less and less of a monetary unit and more and more like something to start a fire with.

    How long before we go the way of the peso and lire? Cup o’ joe…$40.00.

  • Funny, I bet most of the investors in Bears Sterns don’t have a million shares. Or even a hundred thousand.

    I don’t think we should really be in the sympathy market for someone who had diluted their company to a tune of a million shares…

  • Once upon a time, i could go anywhere on this green earth and open up doors with my little green bills. Ben Franklin used to be everybody’s favorite American (except that one 1998 series that had massive counterfeiting problems…i had hell of a time in Bali because of that series). Ah, the good ole days, eh?

    At some point, they’ll have to start lopping off zeros. I’ve seen that before – though it didn’t affect me personally because i had the green stuff – and it wasn’t pretty. After shaking off 70 years of repression and trying to find a new way to live, all of Russia woke up one morning with three fewer zeros behind their rubles. It might have taken a lifetime to save 30,000R…then you had 30 (or roughly $1). Of course, prices are supposed to go down too, but things have intrinsic value…unlike paper money. The 4R chicken can’t really be sold for .004R.

    I don’t look forward to the day when i take my paycheck to a currency exchange and convert it to Euros, and wait for a decent day/when i can’t avoid it to convert those Euros back to dollars.

  • Another fRight Wing Screeching Point bites the dust:

    Contrary to popular stereotypes, areas undergoing immigration are associated with lower violence, not spiraling crime, according to a new study.

    Harvard University sociologist Robert Sampson examined crime and immigration in Chicago and around the United States to find the truth behind the popular perception that increasing immigration leads to crime.

  • Jaw-dropping riposte from Mark Kleiman:

    John McCain doesn’t know that Iran is a Shi’a country and that al-Qaeda is a Sunni terrorist group. That leads him to fantasize that Iran is supporting al-Qaeda.
    That’s OK, though. He’s passed the Commander-in-Chief threshold.
    Or stumbled across it. Or something.

    Ouch.

  • At least our debts are in dollars, ah, Lex?

    Anyhow, hear what the prez said about the housing bust? That we had a ‘surplus’ that we had to work through.

    I’m sure that’ll go over well to the rest of the people in my apartment complex doubling up, and the shanty towns that sprung up.

    Haven’t seen massive movement of population, which is what we saw in the 00′ slump (and the little mobile houses and cars of the families displaced then). This is different and bigger. Really different than anything I’ve seen in my life… Though I’m young.

    It’s been seven years of scary. Just on the edge of something horrible happening.

  • ROTFLMLAO, I’m guessing that McCain and his advisers are also wishing that he could unsay that statement about not understanding the economy (“The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should.”). There’s some fun to be had in wondering which statement they’d prefer he’d never said, if they could only undo one of them.

  • Why is it that the billionaires hate all government programs as a waste of the taxpayers’ money until a bank they own has to be “bailed out” by the people’s money?

  • Don’t we have a President now who didn’t/doesn’t understand the difference between Shia and Sunni? Doesn’t the political class ever learn? Rarely is the question question asked, ir our politicians learning?

    No doubt, a large proportion of the US population neither knows nor cares either; Mencken and Thompson were right…man, i wish Hunter had a blog to dissect these times of fear and loathing.

  • * British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will hold a formal inquiry on the lessons to be learned from the war in Iraq “at some point.” Do we get one, too?

    CB, Whatever for?

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