How This Economy Got Effed Up

Blame "Reaganomics" or neoliberalism for screwing things up because the proponents refused and still refuse to learn from history:

It's the Jobs Cliff, Stupid

How true:




Congress, of course, is the enemy. So is the White House with this appeaser willing to work with the dolts whose policies created the mess.

There is No Doubt Last Night's Election Debacle

was a huge blow to Obama, but the answer certainly isn't for him to go on the "right," which he already is. He needs to fucking focus on job creation to the exclusion of almost everything else on the domestic agenda.

There is no point trying to place the blame on Harry Reid, or the blue dogs, or "teabaggers," or even the nutroots. This is Obama's screw-up because he isn't doing one damned thing to reverse the ongoing economic mess.

With 9-percent unemployment, Massachusetts voters, or at least those who bothered to go to the polls, made their disgust with the current Washington policies or lack of them quite clear.

Talk show host Thom Hartmann isn't too happy over what happened last night:

Wall Street Mess

I'll believe it when I see it over any kind of tax on Wall Street.

The Paulson plan is no plan at all.

A "breakthrough" has been announced:

Congressional leaders and the Bush administration reached a tentative agreement early Sunday on what may become the largest financial bailout in American history, authorizing the Treasury to purchase $700 billion in troubled debt from ailing firms in an extraordinary intervention to prevent widespread economic collapse.


House Republicans Support a Plan That Would Insure Troubled Mortgages (September 27, 2008)

Leading the G.O.P. Vanguard Against the Bailout (September 27, 2008)

Officials said that Congressional staff members would work through the night to finalize the language of the agreement and draft a bill, and that the bill would be brought to the House floor for a vote on Monday.

The bill includes pay limits for some executives whose firms seek help, aides said. And it requires the government to use its new role as owner of distressed mortgage-backed securities to make more aggressive efforts to prevent home foreclosures.

In some cases, the government would receive an equity stake in companies that seek aid, allowing taxpayers to profit should the rescue plan work and the private firms flourish in the months and years ahead.

Thom Hartmann has a good idea on how to resolve the mess, and that's re-instituting the Securities Turnover Excise Tax.