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By Bill and Nancy Boyarsky
$101.88
By Leslie T. Chang
$17.16
$23
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — John McCain’s sudden intervention in Washington’s deliberations over the Wall Street bailout could not have been more out of sync with what was actually happening.
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By Eugene Robinson — John McCain is rapidly making his temperament an inescapable issue in the presidential campaign. Does the nation really want so much drama in the White House?
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By David Sirota — In the late 1990s, Washington was in the throes of a deregulatory orgy. Many lampooned Rep. Bernie Sanders’ opposition to the grotesquerie, and his notoriety as the only self-described socialist in Congress. Nobody guessed that in a few years our country would become the United States’ Socialist Republic.
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Collage: commons.wikimedia.org / senate.gov
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“This meeting is an attempt to move the process forward,” President Bush declared Thursday, but it seems the White House gathering of congressional leaders and presidential candidates might have achieved the opposite effect. Lawmakers had agreed to a bailout outline earlier in the day, but the afternoon’s “political theater,” as Christopher Dodd put it, has raised doubts about the deal.
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AP photo / Reed Saxon
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The tanking economy is screwing over citizens both as homeowners and voters. The past two years have seen more than 1 million people lose their homes through foreclosure, and November’s election may see the same people also disqualified from voting due to election laws requiring official notification of voters’ new addresses.
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finfacts.ie
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Following days of hype-work by the Bush administration to scare taxpayers into paying for Wall Street’s failures, support for the $700-billion bailout seems to be gaining steam. Analysts believe the final bailout plan, expected in a day or two, may look eerily similar to Bush’s initial proposal, with some slight changes.
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By Joe Conason — Before this is over, we will need a special prosecutor with an ample budget to find, prosecute and imprison the criminals responsible for this disaster and ultimately deter such criminals in the future.
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By Ellen Goodman — Why is a welfare mother to blame for her poverty while Wall Street fat cats can count on the federal government for $700 billion?
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The former president gets a little hot under the collar in giving Jon Stewart his take on the financial collapse (without any mention of the deregulatory zeal of his own administration). He also explains why he thinks Obama will win, and why it’s not about whether people love Barack Obama but whether people think Barack Obama loves them.
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cbsnews.com
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The “CBS Evening News” host brought a little heat to her sit-down with the Alaska governor: “I’m just going to ask you one more time, not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation?” Update: Full video
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propublica.org
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Assuming the administration’s $700-billion scheme is approved, the total price tag for bailouts this year—including Bear Stearns, AIG and Freddie and Fannie—will be roughly three times greater than all other U.S. bailouts ever. Because $1.015 trillion is a hard figure to wrap one’s head around, ProPublica puts the numbers in perspective.
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Flickr / soggydan
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Citing the financial crisis, John McCain announced Wednesday that he’d like to skip Friday’s debate so he can put on his senator hat and get back to work in Washington. Unimpressed, Rep. Barney Frank called the idea “the longest Hail Mary pass in the history of either football or Marys.” Update
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By Sam Harris — When it comes to politics, there is a mad love of mediocrity in this country. “They think they’re better than you!” is the refrain that (highly competent and cynical) Republican strategists have set loose among the crowd, and the crowd has grown drunk on it once again. “Sarah Palin is an ordinary person!” Yes, all too ordinary.
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White House / Joyce N. Boghosian
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How’s this for not mincing words? “I believe if the credit markets are not functioning, that jobs will be lost, that our credit rate will rise, more houses will be foreclosed upon, GDP will contract, that the economy will just not be able to recover in a normal, healthy way.” So sayeth Ben Bernanke on Tuesday, in a dire warning to Congress.
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AP photo / Madalyn Ruggiero
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By Bill Boyarsky — In Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy, the fact that he is African-American has seemed to be an obstacle that could be overcome with a good campaign, a few breaks and the issues turning his way. That’s what is happening now.
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Rainer Hachfeld, Neues Deutschland, Germany —
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Tab, The Calgary Sun —
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Unless something very strange happens, Congress will pass a massive bailout of the financial system by the end of this week simply because every other option is worse. But the content of the bailout package matters enormously.
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By Marie Cocco — So this is how the “ownership society” works. We own all the bad stuff.
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By Eugene Robinson — Let’s be clear about why we’re facing a crisis that could pull down the global financial system. The irresponsibility of individuals who bought houses they couldn’t quite afford pales in comparison to the irresponsibility of the financial wizards who built on those shaky mortgages a towering edifice of irrational faith.
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commons.wikimedia.org
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While lawmakers debated exactly how to throw hundreds of billions of dollars at Wall Street, the Dow dropped 372 points on Monday. The price of oil, meanwhile, had a $25 surge that took many analysts by surprise.
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Flickr / world economic forum
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel is furious with the United States for roiling the world economy and expecting Europe to help clean up the mess. “We did what we were supposed to do. ... We adopted a decent EU regulation ... but when it came to it, the Americans said ‘that’s not for us.’ ”
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AP photo / Susan Walsh
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By Chris Hedges — The lobbyists and corporate lawyers, the heads of financial firms and the crooks who control Wall Street, all those who spent the last three decades assuring us that government was part of the problem and should get out of the way, are now busy looting the U.S. treasury.
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Flickr / jurvetson
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Nancy Pelosi isn’t buying into the idea of a $700 billion gift basket for Wall Street without any strings attached. The House speaker is all for a bailout, so long as it’s clear that “the party is over for the Bush administration’s anything goes, failed economic policies.” Update 2
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By Will Durst — I’m sorry to be the one to have to say this, Gov. Palin, but you are so earlier-this-month. It’s your partner, John McCain, who’s back in the news. And not in what you call your good way.
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Here’s a sound bite for the ages: “The Shock Doctrine” author Naomi Klein was one of the panelists on the Sept. 19 episode of “Real Time With Bill Maher,” and when the conversation inevitably turned to Sarah Palin, Klein pronounced the GOP VP nominee to be “basically Bush in drag.”
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What to make of the bailouts and sellouts that dominated the past week’s financial headlines? Well, “Left, Right & Center” commentators Matt Miller, Robert Scheer and Tony Blankley (Arianna Huffington was away) have some ideas about what caused the nightmare on Wall Street and what the future holds.
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AP photo / Lauren Victoria Burke
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If you thought the Iraq war was expensive, the Bush administration is also throwing an estimated $1-trillion bailout of major finance firms to prevent a meltdown of the U.S. economy. President Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson outlined such a “bold approach” Friday morning, yet detailed plans still remain forthcoming.
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AP photo / Richard Drew
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By Robert Scheer — Has the war on terrorism become the modern equivalent of the Roman Circus, drawing the people’s attention away from the failures of those who rule them? Corporate America is a shambles because deregulation, the mantra of our president and his party, has proved to be a license to steal.
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Carolyn Eisenberg takes a close look at Melvyn Leffler’s “For the Soul of Mankind” to ask whether our current troubles are rooted in a history that continues to haunt us.
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By Eugene Robinson — John McCain was telling the truth when he said that economics wasn’t his strong suit. In response to what many economists have called the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the Republican nominee has sounded—and let’s be honest here—totally, embarrassingly and dangerously clueless.
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By David Sirota — Barack Obama isn’t going to win any arguments about the economy if he keeps winking at the robber barons who helped wreck Wall Street.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — If he carries Michigan, many routes to victory are open for Barack Obama. Without Michigan, he’s got a big problem.
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commons.wikimedia.org / Ramy Majouji
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Truthdig’s editor in chief warns against thinking about the economic crisis as an “act of God,” saying “this is man-made” and that the individuals responsible are well known and entirely too influential in the current election.
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AP photo / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
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President Bush had been laying low over recent days, but it seems his inner circle considered it prudent to trot him out for a brief appearance at the White House. He surfaced on Thursday to speak vaguely about the snowballing economic crisis on Wall Street before disappearing once again.
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Hey, now that Jon Stewart mentions it, that whole government bailout thing starts to sound a lot better: We, the taxpayers, just bought a really, really big insurance company. That’s like having two hotels each on Boardwalk and Park Place in Monopoly, right?
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commons.wikimedia.org / Manfred Brückels
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By William Pfaff — Karl Marx, were he still about, would surely be interested in the report that unregulated free-market capitalism has died in a flash, by its own hand; whereas it took 70 years and a Cold War to bring down the Marxist economy established in the Soviet Union following the Bolshevik Revolution.
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flickr.com/ikkoskinen
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One sign of the nation’s shaky economy can be seen in the growing numbers of newly homeless people forming “tent cities” around the U.S. The rise of these encampments is being attributed partly to the foreclosure crisis in the housing market, and the newest economic developments aren’t likely to ease the situation.
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By Marie Cocco — Obama shows more promise than McCain, if only because he correctly sees deregulatory zeal as a culprit. But Obama’s economic strategy simply can’t be implemented now: He wants to spend on necessary investments such as health care, but would have no money to do it.
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By Joe Conason — With the markets in frightening turmoil and the public outraged by financial irresponsibility and excessive greed, John McCain has suddenly rediscovered the importance of strong, watchful government.
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By Amy Goodman — With financial institutions begging for bailouts, taxpayers should be in the driver’s seat. Instead, decisions that will cost people for decades are being made behind closed doors, by the wealthy, by the regulators and by those they have failed to regulate.
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Whither Lehman Brothers? Et tu, Merrill Lynch? What’s going on on Wall Street? Jon Stewart breaks down the financial meltdown on Tuesday night’s edition of “The Daily Show”—complete with ‘80s monster movie allusions. Sweet!
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commons.wikimedia.org
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John McCain’s Tuesday was so filled with gaffes and bad news that no one seemed to notice when one of his top advisers held a BlackBerry aloft and declared “you’re looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create.” That spectacle simply couldn’t compete with former HP CEO Carly Fiorina and, more significantly, the very public failure of deregulation.
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listphile.com
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Here we go again: The Federal Reserve is bailing out another tanking financial institution—the insurance behemoth American International Group—by sinking $85 billion into AIG in return for a stake in the company. Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called for a Wall Street investigation following this latest startling agreement between big government and big business.
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Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com —
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AP photo / LM Otero
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By Bill Boyarsky — While it’s fashionable for the media and some of his own supporters to be mourning the demise of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, they may well be overlooking an important point—that the vaunted McCain-Palin ticket has peaked. What else but such blind optimism could be motivating the unflagging energy of thousands of Obama grass-roots workers?
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Americans don’t mind wealthy and even rapacious capitalists as long as they deliver the goods to everyone else. But when the big boys drag everyone else down, Americans rise up in righteous anger.
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Bank of America Lied to Homeowners and Rewarded Foreclosures, Ex-Employees Say
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