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By Eugene Robinson
$19.95
By Karen Elliott House
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$40
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On Monday morning, as the aftershocks from Wall Street’s worst week in decades continued to rock the national and global economy and the Bush administration scrambled to contain the fallout with a bailout plan that could cost American taxpayers over a trillion dollars, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Robert Scheer and Dean Baker joined “Democracy Now!” host Amy Goodman (above) to sort through the rubble and speculate about what might come next.
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Turns out that having Phil Gramm on one’s economic advisory team may not be the best way to demonstrate one’s readiness to inherit the gigantic mess that the U.S. economy has become under the Bush administration’s not-so-close watch—or at least that’s what Obama’s camp is pointing out in this ad on the financial debacle.
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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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Financial columnist Paul Krugman, trying to make sense of the Lehman Brothers debacle, warns that “the defenses set up to prevent a return of those bank runs, mainly deposit insurance and access to credit lines with the Federal Reserve, only protect the guys in the marble buildings, who aren’t at the heart of the current crisis. That creates the real possibility that 2008 could be 1931 revisited.”
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Flickr / tshein
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While John McCain took heat for reasserting that “the fundamentals of the economy are strong,” two of the five biggest American investment banks folded on Monday. Bank of America bought out troubled Merrill Lynch while Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy. Update: Another big one stumbles
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AP photo / Susan Walsh
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By Bill Boyarsky — With a stunningly vicious pair of blows, the faltering world economy—the Godzilla of this year’s presidential race—has made the candidates look small. Why hasn’t this looming crisis been part of the presidential debate?
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Investors have been throwing money at stock markets the world over following the news that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been placed under federal conservatorship. Some analysts are confident that the move will stabilize the mortgage giants and, in turn, a tanking housing market. With hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on the line, let’s hope they’re right.
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AP photo / Gerald Herbert
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By Robert Scheer — The world according to John McCain is one in which America is triumphant at home and abroad thanks to the Bush legacy, rolling to victory internationally and mastering its domestic economic problems. If daily news would seem to deny such a rosy scenario, then that only shows skeptics lack the courage that sustained McCain as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
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AP photo / Richard Drew
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Finally, some slightly better financial news has hit the wires after months of sobering reports: Oil prices dropped to a three-month low on Tuesday, which may be due to “the softening market,” as one analyst puts it in this NYT account, but whatever the reason it still means a slight reprieve from weeks of punishing prices. Stock markets had their biggest gains in four months.
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foreclosurewearhouse.com
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Congress to the rescue! Mortgage lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are being propped up in their time of dire need, thanks to a bill passed Saturday that will lift the world’s two largest financial institutions out of immediate danger and help some homeowners handle mortgage crises.
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commons.wikimedia.org
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There’s a lot the president doesn’t like about the new housing bill, just passed by the House, but he’ll hold his nose and sign it. The package includes huge guarantees for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae—the national debt ceiling had to be lifted by about $800 billion, just in case—but also rescue for hundreds of thousands of homeowners at risk of foreclosure.
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AP photo / Ron Edmonds
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President Bush is still insisting that the U.S. economy is in generally good shape, even as he asks Congress to support legislation to help Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, while insisting in the same breath that he’s not proposing a “bailout” for the ailing mortgage companies. Hmmm.
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foreclosurewearhouse.com
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Although certain Washington denizens from both sides of the aisle might have been thrown when the two government-backed mortgage finance companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, hit the skids last week, several of their current and former colleagues had long seen the crisis coming.
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By William Pfaff — The Italian-Canadian chief executive of Fiat, the leading Italian industrial enterprise, Sergio Marchionne, speaking about the present economic crisis last weekend, mentioned the well-known argument first made by the Austrian-American economist Joseph Schumpeter about the function of “creative destruction” in modern capitalism.
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Flickr / sfadden
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The housing market is continuing its descent into Slumpsville, judging by the way things have gone over the first quarter of 2008, and indicators don’t look good for the immediate future, either. American homeowners have been forced into foreclosure in record numbers this year and late payments have soared to a new high.
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Flickr / sfadden
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Leading senators think they have made a bipartisan breakthrough on legislation aimed at the mortgage crisis. A parallel effort in the House met with Republican opposition, and it’s not entirely clear where President Bush and his veto pen stand on the matter.
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By David Sirota — Congress is ravaged by a disease inside the Washington Beltway inhibiting emotions like compassion and integrity. As the housing crisis intensifies, this malady is getting worse.
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Flickr / Kiwi NZ
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From the L.A. Times: “In what appears to be the latest symptom of the nation’s mortgage meltdown and credit crisis, insurers, law enforcement officials and state agencies nationwide report a jump in home and automobile fires in the last year believed to have been set by owners unable to pay their debts.”
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Flickr / caswell_tom
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According to a new L.A. Times/Bloomberg poll, the vast majority of Democratic voters in the next three primary battlegrounds want the government to bail out struggling homeowners. Most don’t seem to care that the Fed rescued Bear Stearns; they just want the same treatment.
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publicradio.org
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With a mind-set reminiscent of the Bush administration’s recent bailout of mortgage lenders, the Senate last week approved the Foreclosure Prevention Act, a bill that provides billions of dollars in tax breaks to big businesses like Ford and General Motors but takes only modest steps in addressing the plight of homeowners.
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We’ve all heard of Publishers Clearing House, but this is a whole new ballgame, people. Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Films team has come up with a game that offers each player the fictional (sigh) amount of $3 trillion, the same amount the Iraq war is projected to cost the U.S., and a whole virtual mall’s worth of fun “shopping” items to buy.
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Bloomberg.com
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The International Monetary Fund, the darling lending institution of neoliberal capitalists, believes that the U.S.‘s current mortgage crisis is dragging down the world economy. The IMF is predicting at least a two-year global economic downturn, led by the U.S. credit crunch, that also has a gambling chance of turning into a “global recession.”
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Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama gave major economic policy speeches Thursday, outlining specific proposals and highlighting John McCain’s relative weakness on the subject. Obama called for a boost in regulation and an additional $30 billion in stimulus while Clinton proposed a job retraining program.
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By Joe Conason — For years, District Attorney Robert Morgenthau has warned that the nexus of capitalism and criminality poses a serious threat to America. With Bear Stearns now in ruins, maybe we will listen to him.
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By Marie Cocco — The housing crisis brings to mind Gordon Gekko, that fictitious ambassador of Wall Street whose words, then and now, remind us why uninhibited capitalism just doesn’t work.
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Flickr / epicharmus
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A sense of gloom still hangs over the economy, but there was cause for celebration Monday. Home sales are up for the first time in months, the dollar has regained some ground against the euro, and Wall Street had a triple-digit day. So why aren’t investors smiling?
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By David Sirota — The Federal Reserve Bank’s decision last week to address the housing crisis by extending $200 billion of taxpayer-financed credit to Wall Street banks was met with a stunned reaction typical of surprising events. But really, the move was the expression of longstanding isms that routinely package corruption as sound public policy.
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By Ellen Goodman — The government spread out a nice, soft net to catch the collapsing financial firm Bear Stearns. But if you’re a little guy who gets in trouble, expect to meet up with a somewhat harder surface.
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By Eugene Robinson — The Democratic presidential candidates squabble over real or imagined racial sensitivities, the Republican presidential candidate stages photo opportunities with the troops in Iraq, and meanwhile the financial system is coming apart at the seams.
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France 24
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Those hoping for better news about the state of the U.S. economy—not to mention the bigger picture—aren’t going to hear it from former Fed chair Alan Greenspan anytime soon, judging by his ominous forecast released Monday.
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The mortgage crisis has claimed another corporate victim. Bear Stearns, one of the largest financial institutions in the world, has been bought for a piddling $236 million. The company was valued at $3.5 billion just a few days ago, and $20 billion a little more than a year ago.
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AP photo / Haraz N. Ghankari
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President George W. Bush has often invited comparisons to Mad magazine antihero Alfred E. Neuman, and his latest comments regarding a potential recession in the U.S. aren’t helping him shake the “What, me worry?” tag line anytime soon.
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Officials at the Federal Reserve are running out of creative ways to stave off a recession and expect the U.S. economy to slow to a crawl in 2008, with a growth rate of only 1.3 to 2 percent over the year.
Posted on Feb 20, 2008
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With mere days left before Super Tuesday and down to just two candidates, Thursday’s Democratic debate in Los Angeles gave voters a crucial eleventh-hour look at Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who kept things friendly enough while staking out their differences on several key issues—health care, the economy and, most importantly, the Iraq war.
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The FBI has announced an investigation into the practices of more than a dozen companies related to the subprime mortgage crisis that has destabilized the American and global economies. The Securities and Exchange Commission has already launched investigations of its own, and though it’s nice to see the authorities crack down on improper practices, it would be nice to have some oversight before there was a crisis.
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brokerforyou.com
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What to do about the slumping U.S. economy? President Bush may disagree with congressional Democrats on dozens of issues, but he seems to agree with their call for some kind of temporary stimulus measure to be implemented as soon as possible. Bush’s potential bailout plan will likely focus on income tax rebates to inspire Americans to go out and spend for their country.
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AP photo / Richard Drew
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Winter 2008 is shaping up to be a gloomy season for the American economy, with mounting concerns over subprime mortgage prices and a plunging stock market. Thursday was a particularly dreary day on Wall Street, with the Dow Jones industrial average down 307 points and the Standard & Poor’s 500 falling almost 3 percent.
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marketplace.publicradio.org
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You know the economy is in trouble when investors and analysts are relieved that Citigroup lost only $9.83 billion in the last quarter of 2007. The banking giant managed to squeeze a few billion out of Abu Dhabi and Singapore, and will still pay a dividend on its stock, so for now the mood is upbeat.
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The term “subprime mortgage” has certainly been in heavy rotation in recent months, and economic panic has spread as a result of lenders playing fast and loose with their home-lending criteria, causing chaos in the mortgage market. Enter the Federal Reserve to try to undo some of the damage and prevent a recurrence.
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AP photo / Richard Drew
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Thursday was not a good day on Wall Street, with the Dow dropping over 362 points to close at 13,567.87. Meanwhile, the S&P 500, like the Dow, fell 2.6 percent, and the Nasdaq also took a hit, dipping 2.25 percent by day’s end.
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Anyone considering a bid for the presidency these days should keep records of their college (and, to be extra-safe, high school) report cards handy, judging by President Bush’s take on the state of the nation’s economy and the relation of that topic to his own educational history.
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From TPM Muckraker
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The former Christian Coalition leader and current candidate for Lt. Gov. of Georgia reportedly concocted a scheme with lobbyist Jack Abramoff to collect the life insurance payouts of African-Americans in lieu of charging them fees for the duo’s lobbying and consulting services. (Read the whole story in GQ.)
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