Hot Docs: Who to Blame for the Economic Crisis, Confusion About Obama, McCain's Views
Who's to Blame for the Economy? Recent political ads pointing fingers for the current economic crisis are "partisan caricatures" that are "far wide of the mark" of truth, says FactCheck.org. The watchdog group looks at recent ads from John McCain's campaign and from the liberal group MoveOn.org. FactCheck calls the MoveOn ad "bunk" for blaming McCain adviser Phil Gramm for the crisis. Meanwhile, the McCain ad says that Obama was "silent" on a bill that actually never came up for a vote in the Senate. The report sums up by listing 11 different groups that have drawn criticism for their role in the crisis (from Wall Street to the Clinton and Bush administrations). "The U.S. economy is enormously complicated," the report concludes, "screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation."
Public Needs a Crash Course on the Candidates: American voters "have much to learn" about what candidates Barack Obama and John McCain stand for, suggests the National Annenberg Election Survey. The poll, conducted in September, asked voters questions about the presidential hopefuls' views on trade, healthcare, and the economy. Responses varied widely. Most answered correctly when asked about support for the Iraq war, health insurance, and tax cuts. But more than a third mistakenly credited Obama for McCain's proposal to give individuals and families money to help them buy their own health insurance. Knowledge may improve in the coming weeks, however, as Annenberg's studies of previous elections have shown that "voters of all educational levels learn from watching debates."
Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq: "Political, security, economic, and diplomatic trends in Iraq" are "positive" but still "fragile, reversible, and uneven," the Department of Defense says in its most recent report to Congress. While praising a drop in violence to "early 2004" levels, the Pentagon warns that progress needs to be made in local infrastructure and law enforcement. The report particularly blames "malign Iranian influence" for contributing to insurgent groups that destabilize the country.
Economy Down, Medicaid Up: Most states expanded their Medicaid programs in 2008, but these programs may be in danger as the economy continues to slow. The Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured has released its annual survey of Medicaid directors in 50 states and the District of Columbia. With the slowing U.S. economy, most Medicaid directors anticipate increased enrollment in their states, amounting to a projected 3.6 percent increase nationwide. Many are worried about paying for this—two thirds of state Medicaid chiefs put the odds of a budget shortfall at "at least 50-50." Many also cite the "strained federal-state relationship" between agencies as a particular difficulty. The report warns that these circumstances "are likely to hinder state efforts."
Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan: Despite the fact that private contractors have been working in Afghanistan and Iraq since the beginning of U.S. military operations in those two countries, government agencies are unable to provide "complete and reliable data" on those workers, a Government Accountability Office study has found. Over the period of the 18-month study, the GAO found that government agencies spent at least $33.9 billion on 57,000 contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The study found that "complete and reliable data were not available for us to determine the total number of contractor personnel" and that government agencies were "unable to provide complete or specific information on the number of contractor personnel who had been killed or wounded."
Reader Comments
Fact Check is Wrong
Forbes:
Gramm was the driving force behind the two pieces of legislation at the bottom of the crisis -- the repeal, in 1999, of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act which had created a firewall between commercial and investment banking; and the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000. The way the latter passed was extraordinary: 262 pages of dense language slipped into an 11,000-page omnibus bill on the Friday before the Christmas recess.
"The act freed complex derivatives from any regulation," said Michael Greenberger, who served in the Commodities and Futures Trading commission in the late 1990s. "It set the stage for the present mess and the problem is, no one knows how many of these instruments are still out there or who holds them."
http://tinyurl.com/3vr7sp
100 Year Crash: McCain advisor spurred $62 trillion derivatives market that will swamp global markets
Sep 15th 2008 by Peter Cohan
Lurking in the background of this weekend's collapse of two of Wall Street's biggest names, is a $62 trillion segment of the $450 trillion market for derivatives that grew huge thanks to John McCain's chief economic advisor, Phil "Americans are Whiners" Gramm. That's because in December 2000, Gramm, while a U.S. Senator, snuck in a 262-page amendment [The Commodity Futures Modernization Act] to a government re-authorization bill [11,000 pages] that created what is now the $62 trillion market for credit default swaps (CDSs).
http://tinyurl.com/56rkcb
It's not exactly like Gramm hid his handiwork—far from it. The balding and bespectacled Texan strode onto the Senate floor to hail the act's inclusion into the must-pass budget package. But only an expert, or a lobbyist, could have followed what Gramm was saying. The act, he declared, would ensure that neither the sec nor the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (cftc) got into the business of regulating newfangled financial products called swaps—and would thus "protect financial institutions from overregulation" and "position our financial services industries to be world leaders into the new century."
http://tinyurl.com/48bnvc
Bailout just a band aid
The bailout seems like a small band aid for a much larger problem that began in 1977 with the Community Reinvestment Act under Carter. Google it. It explains a lot. Politicians should never have put pressure on banks. They're all a bunch of lawyers--what do they really know about economics?
Rundown...
American consumer for living outside their means.
Groups like ACORN who pressured for more low cost housing so much that they were abusing it.
Barney Frank, who even though he was warned back in Sept (10th?) 2003 about a possible Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac problem, didn't even give the argument any credibility.
Paulson for being in the pockets of the big banks as well as the Fed who made this problem worse.
Bernanke for running the most secretive non-entity in existence that loans the United States its own money, allowing for printing and thus diluting its value.
Barack Obama for taking so much of Bear Stearns lobbying money and not even bothering to give it back. McCain needs to give his back too but it's about 1/6th to 1/7th what BO's is...
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