American Dream and Middle Class in Jeopardy

American Dream and Middle Class in Jeopardy

By Jeanna Bryner, Senior Writer
posted: 09 October 2008 01:47 pm ET

The presidential candidates say they connect with and "get" the American middle-class. And the government's bailout plan for Wall Street has been billed as the best way to help Main Street keep its white picket fences.

Meanwhile, the financial crisis has only gotten worse since the $700 billion bailout package was announced, and it threatens to squeeze the middle class like never before, robbing people of homes, life savings and the economic security that has long been a staple.

Already, real income (which adjusts for inflation) has been stagnant since the 1970s, straining middle-class budgets and pushing wealth and power into the hands of the very few. Now some economists and sociologists fear the current crisis could make it all even more inequitable, putting the American Dream, the inspirational foundation of the middle class, at risk.

Subprime Scapegoats

Boston Globe Editorial

AMID A GLOBAL financial crisis that began with unsustainable loans to people with bad credit, it was only a matter of time before apologists for Wall Street excesses would try to pin the blame on the poor - and on government policies meant to help them.

Sure enough, the Community Reinvestment Act has emerged in recent weeks as a favorite target of conservatives and others who oppose any government intervention in the market, for it requires banks to lend in neighborhoods they might otherwise avoid.

And yet the Community Reinvestment Act has nothing whatsoever to do with the subprime mess.

Myths and falsehoods about the purported link between affordable housing initiatives and the financial crisis

Summary: Conservative and other media figures -- echoing a reported strategy on the part of Republicans -- have attempted to lay blame for the financial crisis on proponents of the expansion of affordable housing. Those attacks are premised on several myths and falsehoods.

Conservative and other media figures, echoing a reported strategy on the part of Republicans, have attempted to deflect blame for the financial crisis onto proponents of the expansion of affordable housing and legislation and institutions created to effect that expansion.

Recession? Depression? How Deep, How Far and What Can Be Done?

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on October 11, 2008, Printed on October 11, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/102379/

As the financial crisis gains steam, moving from overextended American households to global banking giants, fear of a major crash is spreading. Talk of "Another Great Depression" has entered the mainstream discourse, 1 out of 6 homeowners are "under water" -- owing more to the banks than their houses are worth -- and $2 trillion of retirement wealth has evaporated over the course of a few short months. The markets have not been "calmed" by the government's heavy interventions; the Dow Jones Industrial Average touched a five-year low this week, and is now 40 percent below its peak of one year ago.

The question on most people's minds is just how far and deep the fallout from the crisis will go. Are we looking at the kind of recessions we've seen -- and survived -- in the early 1980s, early 1990s and at the beginning of this century, or are we staring into an abyss that will be far more painful, one that will profoundly transform our lifestyles?

The Woman Who Could Have Prevented This Financial Mess Was Silenced by Greenspan, Rubin and Summers

By Katrina vanden Heuvel, TheNation.com
Posted on October 11, 2008, Printed on October 11, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/102559/

"Break the Glass" was the code-name high-level Treasury Department figures gave the $700 billion bailout; it was to be used only as a last-resort measure.

Now millions have been sprayed and damaged by broken glass.

But more than a decade ago, a woman you're likely never to have heard of, Brooksley Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission -- a federal agency that regulates options and futures trading -- was the oracle whose warnings about the dangerous boom in derivatives trading just might have averted the calamitous bust now engulfing the US and global markets. Instead she was met with scorn, condescension and outright anger by former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and his deputy Lawrence Summers. In fact, Greenspan, the man some affectionately called "The Oracle," spent his political capital cheerleading these disastrous financial instruments.

TPM: The Gist of the ACORN Story

The Republican party is grasping on to the ACORN story as a way to delegitimize what now looks like the probable outcome of the November election. It is also a way to stoke the paranoia of their base, lay the groundwork for legal challenges of close outcomes in various states and promote new legal restrictions on legitimate voting by lower income voters and minorities. The big picture is that these claims of 'voter fraud' are themselves a fraud, a tool to aid in suppressing Democratic voter turnout. But I want give readers a bit more detail to understand what is going because the right-wing freak out about ACORN happens pretty much on schedule every two years.

Glenn Greenwald: Major Shock: Eavesdropping Powers Abused Without Oversight

In the most unsurprising revelation imaginable, two former Army Reserve Arab linguists for the National Security Agency have said that they routinely eavesdropped on - "and recorded and transcribed" - the private telephone calls of American citizens who had absolutely nothing to do with terrorism. The two former NSA employees, who came forward as part of journalist James Bamford's forthcoming book on the NSA, intercepted calls as part of the so-called "Terrorist Surveillance Program," whereby George Bush ordered the NSA in 2001 to eavesdrop on Americans' calls in secret, without first obtaining judicial approval as required by the law (FISA). That illegal eavesdropping continued for at least six years - through 2007.

The two NSA whistleblowers, Adrienne Kinne and David Murfee Faulk, were interviewed by ABC News' Brian Ross. Kinne said that "US military officers, American journalists and American aid workers were routinely intercepted and ‘collected on' as they called their offices or homes in the United States." He also said his co-workers "were ordered to transcribe these calls." Faulk told Ross: "when one of my co-workers went to a supervisor and said: 'but sir, there are personal calls,' the supervisor said: ‘my orders were to transcribe everything'." He said that the intercepted calls included highly personal and intimate conversations and even phone sex.

A Mortgage in Stockton Flaps Its Wings and Global Finance Collapses

In chaos theory, the "butterfly effect" is the idea that a tiny flap of wings in one country will contribute to a reaction in another that can wildly alter the weather of, possibly, both.

The current global credit typhoon has its own butterflies. Among them: a modest 2002 home purchase in, say, Stockton, California—financed with a nonprime, or otherwise faulty, mortgage loan.

By the time that home in Stockton was supporting two or three ill-advised loans in 2005, those loans had disappeared into packages called asset-backed securities (ABS), then were to global banks, insurance companies, and pension funds—particularly in Europe. Like their US counterparts, the European financiers bought boatloads with borrowed money. Then they, too, shoved them off books into Structured Investment Vehicles that required no capital charge and little reporting.

Katha Pollitt: Follow-ups for Sarah Palin

What will happen with contraception and abortion if John McCain wins the election? You wouldn't think this would be such a puzzler. McCain has been in the Senate for a quarter of a century, after all, during which time he has voted against women controlling their own fertility nearly every chance he got. His campaign website prominently features a section called "Human Dignity and the Sanctity of Life," whose first heading is "Overturning Roe v. Wade." It states: "John McCain believes Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned, and as president he will nominate judges who understand that the courts should not be in the business of legislating from the bench." He has expressed his admiration for Supreme Court Justices Roberts and Alito. He chose as his running mate a far-right Christian with extreme antiabortion views. And yet, even now, with less than a month to go, voters are a bit like the student in the old joke who, when asked which was the bigger problem in his high school, ignorance or apathy, responded, I don't know and I don't care!

Our psychology helps politicians bend the truth

HOW do politicians get away with bending the truth? The answer may lie with a fundamental psychological tool that we use to make sense of the world.

The current US presidential campaigns have featured untruths on both sides that have been notable for their durability. Politicians have been exposed for misrepresenting their position and then kept at it anyway, making the same misleading statements again and again.

Paul Krugman: Moment of Truth

Last month, when the U.S. Treasury Department allowed Lehman Brothers to fail, I wrote that Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, was playing financial Russian roulette. Sure enough, there was a bullet in that chamber: Lehman’s failure caused the world financial crisis, already severe, to get much, much worse.

The consequences of Lehman’s fall were apparent within days, yet key policy players have largely wasted the past four weeks. Now they’ve reached a moment of truth: They’d better do something soon — in fact, they’d better announce a coordinated rescue plan this weekend — or the world economy may well experience its worst slump since the Great Depression.

John Walcott: Truth is not subjective

Editor's note: John Walcott, Washington bureau chief for McClatchy Newspapers, delivered this speech on Oct. 7, 2008, upon accepting the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence from Bob Giles of the Nieman Foundation.

Thank you, Bob. I must say that when you told me that the Nieman Foundation had decided to make me the first recipient of this extraordinary honor, my first reaction was something between shock and surprise. In fact, I haven't been so surprised since my wife, Nancy, said, "yes" to my marriage proposal some 36 years ago. I can imagine no higher honor for anyone in our profession than to be compared to I.F. Stone. I do not believe that I deserve that honor, or that I've earned it, but I must confess that I'm grateful that someone, somewhere, for some reason, thinks that I do.

Palins Repeatedly Pressed Case Against Trooper

By SERGE F. KOVALESKI

ANCHORAGE — The 2007 state fair was days away when Alaska’s public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, took another call about one of his troopers, Michael Wooten. This time, the director of Gov. Sarah Palin’s Anchorage office was on the line.

As Mr. Monegan recalls it, the aide said the governor had heard that Trooper Wooten was assigned to work the kickoff to the fair in late August. If so, Mr. Monegan should do something about it, because Ms. Palin was also planning to attend and did not want him nearby.

Treasury Moves Quickly to Recruit Private Bailout Managers

By Robert O'Harrow Jr.

Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 8, 2008; Page A10

The Treasury Department this week plans to start outsourcing the management of up to $700 billion in troubled securities, using special contracting authorities that enable it to retain private portfolio managers, custodians and other financial services consultants without following standard acquisition procedures.

The department's quick turn to the private sector will help it prepare for the massive task of overseeing mortgages and other financial assets to be acquired by the government as part of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act that was approved by Congress and signed by President Bush on Friday.

Inside Account of US Eavesdropping on Americans

U.S. Officers' "Phone Sex" Intercepted, Recorded, Shared Across NSA Listening Post

by Brian Ross, Vic Walter, and Anna Schecter

Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked at the giant National Security Agency (NSA) center in Fort Gordon, Georgia.

"These were just really everyday, average, ordinary Americans who happened to be in the Middle East, in our area of intercept and happened to be making these phone calls on satellite phones," said Adrienne Kinne, a 31-year old US Army Reserves Arab linguist assigned to a special military program at the NSA's Back Hall at Fort Gordon from November 2001 to 2003.

Ted Rall: Mad Money--A Broke America Can't Afford Wars, Tax Cuts

WASHINGTON--Credit has dried up. The stock market is disintegrating. Unless someone pours money into capital markets, everyone agrees, we could wind up like people in Baghdad, fondly remembering the day five years ago when they pushed the handle and their toilets still flushed. Only one "someone" has enough cash to fix the problem: the U.S. government.

The Bush Administration and Congressional Democrats want taxpayers to pay $700 billion to bail out failing banks. Progressives would prefer to bail out homeowners facing the imminent foreclosure of their homes, as well as those in danger of being foreclosed upon during 2009, at a cost of $1.3 trillion.

ACLU: Bush admin tried to create 'Gitmo inside the US'

The US military was using the same procedures employed at the controversial Guantanamo Bay prison at other facilities inside the United States where US citizens and legal residents were detained, according to documents released Wednesday.

At least one Navy officer was concerned that a detainee was being slowly driven insane by the policies, which prohibited detainees from having items such as shoes or socks, according to 91 pages of e-mails between officers at military brigs in Virginia and South Carolina released Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Progressive Voter Guide to the Economy

By , AlterNet
Posted on October 9, 2008, Printed on October 9, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/102019/

A Gallup poll released this week showed that a majority of Americans -- 53 percent -- are angry about the financial crisis. And 41 percent are afraid. The system, Americans believe, has failed them.

It only takes a glance at the morning news -- or a look at rising food and gas prices -- to see that these fears and frustrations are not without good reason. Every day, more and more people lose their homes and their health care and see their retirement funds erode. Or rather, they watch as these things get taken from them.

Wall Street: A new Iraq War

By Pepe Escobar

WASHINGTON - As the US electoral college stands today, Barack Obama would win this presidential election, even according to the Macchiavelli from Texas himself, Karl Rove, Obama would win even across the Potomac, in northern Virginia, once a Republican stronghold, now "communist country", according to John McCain's brother Joe.

Red or blue, voters continued to flock to the Obama camp immediately after this Tuesday's second presidential debate - a total cool, calm and collected Obama wipeout, with McCain relegated to the role of a bewildered reptile, at times neurotic, sycophantic, dismissively all-knowing or just plain mean (like referring to Obama as "that one").

Bernanke running out of ammo

By Julian Delasantellis

A well-worn bit of wisdom from rural America advises one that it is pointless to "close the barn door after the cows have escaped". By participating in yesterday's global round of short-term interest rate cuts, US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke cannot be said to have been guilty of this offense. Instead, what he has done is to close the barn door after the cows have escaped, been captured down the road by cattle rustlers, then sold, slaughtered and ground up into dog food chunks.

For the 10th time since August, 2007, the Federal Reserve has engineered an interest rate cut in order to counter the spreading effects of the now global financial and credit crisis. With twin 50 basis point cuts in both the Discount Rate, to 1.75%, and the Federal Funds Target Rate, to 1.5%, the Fed has now just about emptied its magazine of possible interest rate cuts.

Md. Police Put Activists' Names On Terror Lists

Surveillance's Reach Revealed

By Lisa Rein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 8, 2008; A01

The Maryland State Police classified 53 nonviolent activists as terrorists and entered their names and personal information into state and federal databases that track terrorism suspects, the state police chief acknowledged yesterday.

Police Superintendent Terrence B. Sheridan revealed at a legislative hearing that the surveillance operation, which targeted opponents of the death penalty and the Iraq war, was far more extensive than was known when its existence was disclosed in July.

Thomas Frank: The GOP Peddles Economic Snake Oil

Suddenly Republicans are against market values?

OK, let me get this straight: The central axiom of conservative Republicanism is that government is inherently corrupt and can't do anything right.

Over many years of ascendancy, conservative Republicans have filled government agencies with conservative Republicans and proceeded to enact the conservative Republican policy wish list -- tax cuts, deregulation, privatization, outsourcing federal work, and so on.

And as a consequence of these policies our conservative Republican government has bungled most of the big tasks that have fallen to it. The rescue and recovery of the Gulf Coast was a disaster. The reconstruction of Iraq was a disaster. The regulatory agencies became so dumb they didn't even see the disasters they were set up to prevent. And each disaster was attributable to the conservative philosophy of government.

Bisphenol A linked to chemotherapy resistance

CINCINNATI—Exposure to bisphenol A (BPA) may reduce the effectiveness of chemotherapy treatments, say University of Cincinnati (UC) scientists.

The research study, led by UC's Nira Ben-Jonathan, PhD, says that BPA—a man-made chemical found in a number of plastic products, including drinking bottles and the lining of food cans—actually induces a group of proteins that protect cancer cells from the toxic effects of chemotherapy.

The findings are reported in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives and appear online Oct. 8, 2008, ahead of print.

Pollution From Livestock Farming Affects Infant Health

Wellesley, MA – October 8, 2008 – A new study in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics explores the effects of pollution from livestock facilities on infant health and finds that production is associated with an increase in infant mortality.

Stacy Sneeringer of Wellesley College utilized data on spatial variation in livestock operations from the past two decades to identify the relationship between industry location and infant health. As livestock production has become more concentrated in larger farms, production has become more concentrated in certain areas.

Glenn Greenwald: Dick Morris: A sign of the times

Dick Morris, September 24, The O'Reilly Factor:

O'REILLY: Rove says it's a risk for McCain to bail temporarily on the debate and go back to Washington. What say you?

DICK MORRIS, POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, it's the most brilliant move since Sarah Palin.

O'REILLY: You think it's brilliant?

MORRIS: Bless the McCain campaign. It's fabulous, because McCain is going to save the country, because he's the only one that can deliver the Republicans and the administration. . . . He's going to solve the problem, because the key is the bailout's going to pass. And the bailout's going to work. And [McCain's] going to get credit for it. And then Obama is the guy left out. And then McCain is the credentialed expert for handling the economy.

Retirement accounts have lost $2 trillion — so far

by JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, Associated Press Writer
Wed Oct 8, 6:57 AM ET

Americans' retirement plans have lost as much as $2 trillion in the past 15 months — about 20 percent of their value — Congress' top budget analyst estimated Tuesday as lawmakers began investigating how turmoil in the financial industry is whittling away workers' nest eggs.

The upheaval that has engulfed financial firms and sent the stock market plummeting is also devastating people's savings, forcing families to hold off on major purchases and even delay retirement, Peter Orszag, the head of the Congressional Budget Office, told the House Education and Labor Committee.

As Congress investigates the causes and effects of the meltdown, the panel pressed economists and other analysts on how the housing, credit and other financial troubles have battered pensions and other retirement funds, which are among the most common forms of savings in the United States.

Revealed: "Secret" Executions Being Carried Out in Saddam's Old Intelligence Headquarters

By Robert Fisk, Independent UK
Posted on October 8, 2008, Printed on October 8, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/101952/

Like all wars, the dark, untold stories of the Iraqi conflict drain from its shattered landscape like the filthy waters of the Tigris. And still the revelations come.

The Independent has learned that secret executions are being carried out in the prisons run by Nouri al-Maliki's "democratic" government.

The hangings are carried out regularly -- from a wooden gallows in a small, cramped cell -- in Saddam Hussein's old intelligence headquarters at Kazimiyah. There is no public record of these killings in what is now called Baghdad's "high-security detention facility" but most of the victims -- there have been hundreds since America introduced "democracy" to Iraq -- are said to be insurgents, given the same summary justice they mete out to their own captives.

Thousands of Troops Are Deployed on U.S. Streets Ready to Carry Out "Crowd Control"

By Naomi Wolf, AlterNet
Posted on October 8, 2008, Printed on October 8, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/101958/

Background: the First Brigade of the Third Infantry Division, three to four thousand soldiers, has been deployed in the United States as of October 1. Their stated mission is the form of crowd control they practiced in Iraq, subduing "unruly individuals," and the management of a national emergency. I am in Seattle and heard from the brother of one of the soldiers that they are engaged in exercises now. Amy Goodman reported that an Army spokesperson confirmed that they will have access to lethal and non lethal crowd control technologies and tanks.

George Bush struck down Posse Comitatus, thus making it legal for military to patrol the U.S. He has also legally established that in the "War on Terror," the U.S. is at war around the globe and thus the whole world is a battlefield. Thus the U.S. is also a battlefield.

Stocks zigzag, end lower after emergency rate cut

By JOE BEL BRUNO and TIM PARADIS, AP Business Writer
36 minutes ago

A stock market empowered by an emergency interest rate cut tried to find some stability Wednesday, rallying several times before another late-day drop left Wall Street down for the sixth straight day. Still, the pullback, while fed by comments from Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, was milder than the massive declines of earlier in the week.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index, the market measure most closely followed by traders, fell 1.13 percent — compared to a 3.85 percent slide Monday and a 5.74 percent drop Tuesday. The Dow Jones industrials fell 189 points, a number that while sizeable was less frightening than the 875 it lost over the first two days this week.

Naomi Klein: Wall St. Crisis Should Be for Neoliberalism What Fall of Berlin Wall Was for Communism

As the world reels from the financial crisis on Wall Street and the taxpayer-funded $700 billion bailout, we spend the hour with Naomi Klein on the economy, politics and “disaster capitalism.” The Shock Doctrine author recently spoke at the University of Chicago to oppose the creation of an economic research center named after the University’s most famous economist, Milton Friedman. Klein says Friedman’s economic philosophy championed the kind of deregulation that led to the current crisis.

Narcissistic people most likely to emerge as leaders

COLUMBUS, Ohio – When a group is without a leader, you can often count on a narcissist to take charge, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that people who score high in narcissism tend to take control of leaderless groups. Narcissism is a trait in which people are self-centered, exaggerate their talents and abilities, and lack empathy for others.

“Not only did narcissists rate themselves as leaders, which you would expect, but other group members also saw them as the people who really run the group,” said Amy Brunell, lead author of the study and assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State University at Newark.

An Evolving Role for the Army

The U.S. Army on Monday unveiled a new field manual for stability operations — the panoply of activities to secure a government’s control over its populace and keep the peace — taking yet another step beyond the military’s traditional role of preparing to fight and win the nation’s wars.

Formally known as FM 3-07, the Stability Operations field manual is a 200-page attempt to develop doctrine for mid-career to senior officers who must implement a wide range of tasks — from building irrigation systems to supporting district-level elections — previously thought outside the Army’s scope. It instructs commanders to work not only with civilian U.S. government agencies but with non-traditional allies, like non-governmental organizations.

Hack-a-vote: Students at Rice learn how vulnerable electronic voting really is

Electronic voting machines expert Dan Wallach available to discuss November elections

This week undergraduate and graduate students in an advanced computer security course at Rice University in Houston are learning hands-on just how easy it is to wreak havoc on computer software used in today's voting machines.

As part of his advanced computer science class, Rice University Associate Professor and Director of Rice's Computer Security Lab Dan Wallach tests his students in a unique real-life experiment: They are instructed to do their very best to rig a voting machine in the classroom.

McCain linked to private group in Iran-Contra case

By PETE YOST – 16 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — GOP presidential nominee John McCain has past connections to a private group that supplied aid to guerrillas seeking to overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua in the Iran-Contra affair.

McCain's ties are facing renewed scrutiny after his campaign criticized Barack Obama for his link to a former radical who engaged in violent acts 40 years ago.

The U.S. Council for World Freedom was part of an international organization linked to former Nazi collaborators and ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America. The group was dedicated to stamping out communism around the globe.

Obama's Flimsy Ties to Bill Ayers

By Ari Berman, The Nation
Posted on October 7, 2008, Printed on October 7, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/101900/

In a last-ditch attempt to reverse its sagging poll numbers, the McCain campaign is attacking Barack Obama for his flimsy ties in Chicago to former '60s radical Bill Ayers. That's not surprising. The same thing happened during the Democratic primary, when Hillary Clinton made similar claims against Obama. In this piece from the May 19 edition of The Nation, Ari Berman explored Obama's relationship with Ayers and their respective ties to the Chicago-based Woods Fund.

From 1993 to 2002 Barack Obama served on the board of the Woods Fund, a small foundation in Chicago devoted to supporting a main passion of Obama's: community organizing. Unless you worked in the philanthropic world or regularly watched Fox News, you'd probably never heard of the Woods Fund before ABC's April 16 Democratic debate. As part of a barrage of guilt-by-association questioning, co-moderator George Stephanopoulos asked Obama about his connection to another Woods Fund board member, Bill Ayers, a former '60s radical and ringleader of the Weather Underground. In an interview with theNew York Times, coincidentally published on 9/11, Ayers, reflecting on his memoir,Fugitive Days, had said inartfully, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." Ayers, who meant that he wished the antiwar movement had ended the Vietnam War sooner, clarified in a letter to theTimes, "My memoir is from start to finish a condemnation of terrorism." Taken out of context, the statement sparked outrage, leading Stephanopoulos to ask Obama, "Can you explain that relationship for the voters, and explain to Democrats why it won't be a problem?"

If We Get Through This Crisis, We'll Face Another in 5 to 10 Years -- Here's Why

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on October 7, 2008, Printed on October 7, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/101869/

If the bailout passed last week were to have the desired outcome, kick-starting our ailing economy -- and there's no reason to believe it will -- we can expect another painful economic crisis in five to 10 years. It may not be an American crisis, and it might get less attention for that reason, but it will happen.

In the meantime, an enormous bubble of paper wealth will grow -- nobody can say in what sector or which region it will occur -- and some people who get out at the right time will make fortunes. But many more will lose their shirts when it all comes crashing down, and crash down it will.

DDay at Hullabaloo: Dishonorable Revisionism

So I watched the Obama campaign's Keating documentary, and it's a fairly good recitation of the scandal, and the connection to the financial crisis of the present.

[...]

What's more, the research section of the "Keating Economics" site includes a wealth of information and documents, including personal letters from McCain to White House colleagues and federal regulators asking for them to back off Charles Keating. This letter to then-WH Chief of Staff James Baker in 1985 is particularly striking, if only for the line "I believe it to be unwise, and I think it flys (sic) in the face of our recent efforts to remove the hand of government from the affairs of private enterprise." That sentence alone explains much of the current crisis.

Stopping a Financial Crisis, the Swedish Way

By CARTER DOUGHERTY

Correction Appended

A banking system in crisis after the collapse of a housing bubble. An economy hemorrhaging jobs. A market-oriented government struggling to stem the panic. Sound familiar?

It does to Sweden. The country was so far in the hole in 1992 — after years of imprudent regulation, short-sighted economic policy and the end of its property boom — that its banking system was, for all practical purposes, insolvent.

But Sweden took a different course than the one now being proposed by the United States Treasury. And Swedish officials say there are lessons from their own nightmare that Washington may be missing.

Next president will reshape U.S. courts from top to bottom

By Michael Doyle | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The next president will tip the courts, one way or another.

Supreme Court openings are all but guaranteed, and that's just the start: 44 trial and appellate federal judicial vacancies already await filling. There will be more.

Consider this: President Bush has placed 316 judges on the bench during his two terms. One out of three federal judges now owes a lifetime-tenured job to the current president. Whoever replaces Bush will be likewise recasting courthouses, top to bottom.

A Pal Around McCain

By Harold Meyerson
Monday, October 6, 2008; A15

"There's no question that we have to change the subject here," a senior Republican operative told The Post's Michael D. Shear in a story published Saturday.

The "subject" in question is the economy and how to fix it. As Americans have taken their eye off the ball -- that is, off John McCain's sterling qualities of character and command -- by focusing on the economy, Barack Obama has surged into the lead nationally and in many key battleground states./

Is Warren Buffett the New J.P. Morgan?

In 1907, one man saved us from financial collapse. Today it takes three.

By Daniel Gross
Posted Monday, Oct. 6, 2008, at 11:23 AM ET

"This is the place to stop this trouble!" J.P. Morgan declared on the afternoon of Oct. 23, 1907. After the failure of several trust companies (unregulated banks, kind of like today's subprime lenders), the banker had decided that the collapse of the Trust Company of America would cause too much damage to America's fragile financial system. He pulled together leading bankers and pooled funds to bail out the firm. Over the course of two weeks, as a fevered crisis gripped Wall Street and Washington, Morgan acted time and again: saving brokerage firms, rounding up $25 million in cash in 20 minutes to help the New York Stock Exchange stay open, underwriting municipal bonds for New York City, and bringing in gold from Europe to bolster the dollar and replenish Washington's coffers.

Half of mammals 'in decline', says extinction Red List

BARCELONA (AFP) - Half the world's mammals are declining in population and more than a third probably face extinction, said an update Monday of the "Red List," the most respected inventory of biodiversity.

A comprehensive survey of mammals included in the annual report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which covers more than 44,000 animal and plant species, shows that a quarter of the planet's 5,487 known mammals are clearly at risk of disappearing forever.

Dow closes at 4-year low as crisis mood sweeps the world

WASHINGTON — The U.S. financial crisis spread around the world like a wildfire on Monday as stock prices plunged here and abroad amid eroding confidence in the world’s banking system.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 800 points before a late rally let it close down "only" 369.88 points, at 9955.50. That’s the first time the Dow closed below 10,000 in almost four years.

Privatizing Canada's health care is not the answer: Lessons from the United States

Prominent US physician discusses her perspective in CMAJ

OTTAWA, OCTOBER 6, 2008 – Investing in Canada's public health system is the best way to improve it, rather than privatization, writes Dr. Marcia Angell, a senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School and former editor-in-chief of The New England Journal of Medicine. The article was published online today in CMAJ http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/rapidpdf/cmaj.081177.

Responsibility and the Bailout: Will They Resign If It Fails?

By Dean Baker - October 2, 2008, 5:58AM

Today's the big vote. The nation's political leadership has carried out a full court press for this bailout. They have frequently ignored the facts and commonsense (since when do we make policy based on stock market swings?) and repeatedly tossed out the specter of the Great Depression to push their case.

It's clear that the overwhelming majority of the public thinks that this Wall Street bailout stinks, but Wall Street has immense political power and it is likely that it will get its way.

Paul Krugman: Health Care Destruction

Sarah Palin ended her debate performance last Thursday with a slightly garbled quote from Ronald Reagan about how, if we aren’t vigilant, we’ll end up “telling our children and our children’s children” about the days when America was free. It was a revealing choice.

You see, when Reagan said this he wasn’t warning about Soviet aggression. He was warning against legislation that would guarantee health care for older Americans — the program now known as Medicare.

Conservative Republicans still hate Medicare, and would kill it if they could — in fact, they tried to gut it during the Clinton years (that’s what the 1995 shutdown of the government was all about). But so far they haven’t been able to pull that off.

The Wall Street bust

Commentary and weekly watch by Doug Noland

I still owe readers a thorough analysis of the Q2 2008 flow of funds. For now, I'll just point out some data relevant to the current state of acute fragility.

Looking back, Total Non-Financial Debt (NFD) expanded US$578 billion during 1994. By 1998, NFD growth for the year had surpassed $1.0 trillion. Non-Financial Credit increased $1.153 trillion in 2001, $1.415 trillion in 2002, and $1.676 trillion in 2003, before reaching the $2.0 trillion milestone in 2004. Incredible as it was, debt expansion then surged over the next fateful three years. Growth rose to $2.319 trillion in 2005, $2.428 trillion in 2006 and then to last year's record $2.561 trillion.

Frank Rich: Pitbull Palin Mauls McCain

SARAH PALIN’S post-Couric/Fey comeback at last week’s vice presidential debate was a turning point in the campaign. But if she “won,” as her indulgent partisans and press claque would have it, the loser was not Joe Biden. It was her running mate. With a month to go, the 2008 election is now an Obama-Palin race — about “the future,” as Palin kept saying Thursday night — and the only person who doesn’t seem to know it is Mr. Past, poor old John McCain.

To understand the meaning of Palin’s “victory,” it must be seen in the context of two ominous developments that directly preceded it. Just hours before the debate began, the McCain campaign pulled out of Michigan. That state is ground zero for the collapsed Main Street economy and for so-called Reagan Democrats, those white working-class voters who keep being told by the right that Barack Obama is a Muslim who hung with bomb-throwing radicals during his childhood in the late 1960s.