Comments on FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: Pelosi Tips the Scales?

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2009-03-12T03:08:00.000-04:00

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2009-03-12T03:07:00.000-04:00

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2009-01-18T07:41:00.000-05:00

ermm....

2008-10-01T04:02:00.000-04:00

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According to the LA Times today, Palin believes di...

2008-09-30T17:11:00.000-04:00

According to the LA Times today, Palin believes dinosaurs and humans coexisted on earth. How could any educated person vote for a potential president who is so ignorant? She also thinks she knows more about climate change than the National Academy of Sciences although it took her six years and five schools to get a degree in telecommunications. That is evidence that she is not only ignorant, she is also arrogant.

Just an alert, but what happens next will be a com...

2008-09-30T13:35:00.000-04:00

Just an alert, but what happens next will be a common sense step by the largest personal credit sources in the country: lowering the amount of available credit for every customer.

So, if you have a credit card with availability up to $35,000 and pay the minimum balance, you will be pinched down to $7,000. If you pay your balance off monthly, you will still be notched down to $17,500.

Why? Because cash is short. Why expose yourself to more risk in a cash strapped society? Banks will take these steps in response to the credit crisis and the bailout bill. It is common sense and actually a positive gesture to yor customers.

Another thing we need to rein in is the ability for credit card companies to permit minimum payments. Direct withdrawal in full is the standard mandate in Europe. You charge $400 to your card, you pay $400 at the end of the month.

It is imperative that we, the people, shift this society from a consumer society to a saver society.

The new bill will pass 228 to 205 on Thursday.The ...

2008-09-30T13:22:00.000-04:00

The new bill will pass 228 to 205 on Thursday.

The extremes of either party have reeked havoc on this country for thirty years now. Not to mention that the process is controlled by Wall Street and corporate money.

From a political standpoint, though, the image in the public's mind is that the GOP has let their Wall Street friends run amok. For shame! Nancy Pelosi speaks of the partisanship that led us to this point and they get offended? Any excuse in a storm, I guess.

If there are 175 Republicans in the House in the next Congress, I would be really surprised.

Millions of Americans will be receiving their quarterly 401K statements in the next week. Not to mention, millions of Americans will be getting their first shipment of heating oil for the winter and the costs are doubled in '08 compared to '07.

If John McCain thinks the last three weeks have been bad, the next 15 days may be worse. Yet, he will still get 45% of the vote.

Get ready for the October Surprise, folks.

hi amy, you are absolutely correct that you were r...

2008-09-30T13:18:00.000-04:00

hi amy, you are absolutely correct that you were responsible in the way you purchased your house -- and far too many americans were not across the repub and dem base. we are FAR more leveraged than we were in the past, and this is very bad. that is the fault of many, including the people who made those purchases, the govt who paved the way for too much lending, and predatory lendors. all took advantage of a too-good-to-be-true situation.

but the economy is far more involved than you lay out here. it isn't just the mortgage ... it is the financial institutions that spent 10x as much as the loan itself in crazy instruments on top of the loan (derivates as the credit swaps). it is super complicated, but it is bad. it should have been regulated and needs to in the future.

this is not a dem or repub issue. if we duck our heads in the sand and pledge allegiance to the almighty and pure free market capitalism, we will have a crash. doing nothing is simply wrong ... we have no choice.

capitalism and free market ... and regulation ... are not incompatible. free market without regulation is stupid.

I guess I am brainless then because I do not want ...

2008-09-30T12:56:00.000-04:00

I guess I am brainless then because I do not want this bailout. And maybe I can’t talk because at 30 my husband and I have little to no money in the market. But we are taxpayers.
Our economy is self-correcting and the ramifications of government or any other type of intervention scares me to death.
I also disagree with the blame of this falling on low income mortgage lending. If 146 million households defaulted on $100K each that would be $146 billion, not $700 billion. Not, it’s not the low income housing initiatives; it is the people who thought they sailed under a lucky star with their low interest only payments. Those mid to mid-upper income people whose mortgage payment went from $1800 a month to $3600 a month overnight are who is now defaulting on their $400000 mortgage.
My husband and I bought our home in June for $175K. We bought what we could afford and people like us are not the problem. It’s the house & car rich-money poor, keeping up with the Jones’, greed hounds that are now the problem.
Like I said, I don’t have much money in the market, but I am a taxpayer and I bought my home responsibly.
The ramifications of interference in the market today will be disastrous down the road. It’ll make yesterday feel like a walk in the park.
The economy self-regulates and resets. It may not be quick and times may be hard for a bit, but it will come back into line.
The fallout from a bailout will be categorically worse. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but it will happen. You can count on it.

The Republicans who voted for the bill are blaming...

2008-09-30T11:55:00.000-04:00

The Republicans who voted for the bill are blaming the Democrats who voted for the bill for the bill failing?

To call a DOW drop of 7% a crater forgets that in ...

2008-09-30T10:50:00.000-04:00

To call a DOW drop of 7% a crater forgets that in 1987 it dropped 22.6% on black Monday. 7% is the continuation of the revaluation.
The recovery so far today of 2% just illustrates that the Stock Market is not a good marker, and most people will quickly dismiss it as such.
Additionally, if you listen to the members of congress that voted no on both sides of the aisle, they all had good reasons for not supporting the bill, not the least of which was that it was more "kneejerk ram it down their throats" stuff from the Bush administration.

Sound like a kid? I'm usually accused of sounding...

2008-09-30T10:33:00.000-04:00

Sound like a kid? I'm usually accused of sounding like a surly old man. I'll have to consider my style carefully, if I want to be more effective. I think I was at least sloppy with my emphatics.

I'm 36, have a retirement account and work for a company highly dependent on investment success for anything other than immediate needs (we don't need to borrow for payroll).

However, usually when people talk about kid-like thinking they refer to those who cannot delay gratification or to those who do not suffer hardship well.

That would be a better description of those for the bailout, than those like myself against it.

Perhaps this is a better tone than "let it burn" which can sound like it disregards consequence. It is rather the result of weighing consequences and making choices.

The market rewards good behavior in the long term. You'll be fine. Trust me.

hi amy, i completely agree with you on pelosi here...

2008-09-30T09:18:00.000-04:00

hi amy, i completely agree with you on pelosi here. it was a jumping the shark moment, as was boehner's comment that repubs left b/c of the comment. you may agree with me on this, but patriotism yesterday involved voting for this bill ... unless you were a brainless, monomaniacal "give me free market or give me death" repub. the spineless primarily repub but a lot of dems as well (one of my favorite, mark udall of colorado, who is running for a senate seat, voted for it as well) were UNPATRIOTIC ... putting their own job ahead of the obvious financial impact to the country. pelosi, mccain, cantor, and a ton of others failed to act for the country. bush, who is obviously abyssmal and, right now, unfortunately powerless was actually acting patriotic by trying his best, albeit pathetically, to convince the house that this bill was vital. obama rightly stayed on the sideline, b/c it was blatantly obvious that entering into the game would make it partisan. now, i think he should act, just to convince as many dems as possible to vote for the bill.

politics can be disgusting. yesterday, and last week, was as disgusting as it gets.

$1.2 trillion. treason.

Saying the Repubs were being unpatriotic was NOT a...

2008-09-30T08:54:00.000-04:00

Saying the Repubs were being unpatriotic was NOT about Bush. That was about pissing enough people off that votes they thought they were getting they now didn't. One of my Repub reps was publically in favor of the bill... all the way til yesterday. He voted no. She incited the anger to have the bill be struck down on purpose. It's so clear. And I'm an Obama voting Democrat... who thinks Pelosi is the worst thing that's happened to Washington. Except maybe for Bush... but it's close.

And clarke, you're right, it was a dumb move on Bo...

2008-09-30T02:44:00.000-04:00

And clarke, you're right, it was a dumb move on Boehner's part, and fortuitous for the Dems. Boehner, however, is generally smarter than Gingrich and more prone to keep a low-profile, so it won't do the damage Gingrich's gaffe did--but I hear Eric Cantor is already plotting a challenge to Boehner--I'd say the more seats Republicans lose, the more likely that becomes.

RWC--Funny you should mention Obama's Europe trip ...

2008-09-30T02:34:00.000-04:00

RWC--Funny you should mention Obama's Europe trip as a stumble for him--it was a short-term sacrifice for the triple long-term gains of looking Presidential, standing with world leaders on the world stage, and subtly reminding America what it'd be like to have America be *popular* abroad. In other words, it was Part I, and standing toe-to-toe with Mccain in the debate was Part II (the main reason Obama didn't constantly go after McCain; his goal was to reassure voters. He achieved that in spades.)

If memory serves, Obama actually took the trip abroad after McCain demanded Obama go abroad, thus removing a talking point for McCain, giving Obama loads of press coverage, largely positive, and making McCain look small and petty. (Obama's in Germany, so I'm gonna go to a German sausage factory in Pennsylvania! Wah! Wah!)

By the way, you want to be careful with words like "arrogance," since that's actually now exposed as code for "Uppity N-----." It's okay; you can feel free to say "Uppity N-----" instead; Republican Congressman Lynn Westmoreland had no trouble calling Obama uppity.

davidd, sorry but the reason you don't get why the...

2008-09-30T01:33:00.000-04:00

davidd, sorry but the reason you don't get why there is a disconnect on this bill, is it is because you obviously have no skin in the game. You are either too young to care, or you don't have any need for capital, or you are too far removed because you work in a big company and don't see working capital, etc. I am sure most of the constituents complaining about this bill are just like you. HOWEVER, the majority of people that post on political blogs like this one are a little closer to capital markets. The fact is, business cannot make payroll without access to credit markets. Inventory can't be bought and we are in front of the holiday season (even though its going to be a crappy one). Maybe YOU don't care if business X fails and all the people work there lose their jobs, but that is not the majority of people in the country I can assure you. The problem is you are projecting a lot of platitudes like "business needs to reinvent" and other ideological statements that make it seem like you are a kid.

NYSE had a market capitalization of $25 trillion i...

2008-09-30T01:21:00.000-04:00

NYSE had a market capitalization of $25 trillion in 2006.

An 8% drop represents about $2 trillion of wealth wiped out.

Tell me: why is congress wiping out $2 trillion/day because they are worried about hitting the taxpayer with some fraction of $700 billion?

This is nothing to do with Nancy Pelosi.Check this...

2008-09-30T00:10:00.000-04:00

This is nothing to do with Nancy Pelosi.

Check this:

Iowa Republican Steve King on McCain's Responsiblity for the Bailout failure - "If it had not been for John McCain injecting himself into this, it would have, this bill would have passed. I believe that"

As an Australian who has the luxury of living in a country of well regulated banks, with only small exposure to the US subprime crisis and very healthy balance sheets I can afford to be worried but not terrified while watching the the desperate attempts of US politicians to stabilise their economy. This morning I watched as members of the house of congress threw away what would seem to have been their best opportunity to deal with the situation in the short term.

Imagine my surprise to hear Republican Steve King from 5th District of Iowa on Australia's national news radio network praising John McCain's role in preventing the bailout package from going ahead.

Audio is available here: http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/newsradio/audio/20080930-king.mp3

The entire exchange is quite revealing. No mention whatsoever is made about Nancy Pelosi's speech. Instead it is the ideological cast of the legislation that is identified as being the source of the offence to Republican congressman. Moreover towards the end of the interview, Steve King identifies John McCain as being the one factor in the equation that preveted the bill from being passed.

"If it had not been for John McCain injecting himself into this, it would have, this bill would have passed. I believe that"

Rather than looking for a bipartisan solution, a solid Republican majority in the House are more interested in an ideologically driven free market solution that would leave mainstream America dealing with the fallout of a substantial market correction.

If John McCain's lukewarm support of the bill has sent mixed messages to the public, it would seem the message to Republican members of the House has been heard loud and clear.

The full transcript is included below.

Transcript:

Steve King:
I am happy to Australian's today. I hope their attitude is a little fresher than some of the attitudes in Washington DC today.

Reporter:
Well we are certainly wondering what is going on over there. The Treasury Secretary, your President, your party's own Presidential candidate in John McCain, They all say that this deal is needed. Why do you and 227 other Congress men and women say 'Not this deal'?

Steve King:
We say not this deal because it is not a free market solution it is a government... it is a government solution, and to some extent a government takeover of the private market. Even to a government takeover of the speculators market.

So it is $700 Billion to bail out Wall Street speculation and it is at the expense of Main Street America. There are better solutions out there and the only way we can get to the table with better solutions is to vote no on this package. There were no amendments allowed and it came to the floor take it or leave it. We decided to leave it.

Reporter:
Congressman, the Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson says that the tools in his toolkit are not sufficient, and that he will have to keep pressing to get what they need from you in congress. Do you think that enough of your congressional colleagues are going to be won over? Only a dozen votes are needed to change their minds on this. Are a few little tinkering changes going to get you over the line?

Steve King:
I don't know. For me the tinkers won't help me much, I want to see fundamental changes, I want to see real reform, and we need to reform the Fanny Mae and Feddy Mac, the government sponsored enterprises that have been the foundation of bad mortgages that have driven up the price of real estate. It was a correction that is necessary.

I will say that the administration does have the tools. Right now the accounting system that we use is call mark to market. That means the banks and the lending institutions have to adjust their balance sheets exactly according to the market on those securities and right now there is no market. So that means the value is zero. We know they have a lot more value, because underneath that is the real estate and if you are going to presume that mark to market is zero, then that implies that the houses themselves that collatorise this are worth zero. We know better than that, they are probably worth 75 or more percent of what is on the back of that paper.

Reporter:
Congressman, there is a sense of urgency about this. The pressure with which this was hammered out at the weekend. It seemed the clock was ticking. After this no vote today, Wall Street delivered it's verdict with it's biggest ever single day decline. There must be tremendous pressure to say we need to do something now, we haven't got time to do systemic reform, that is for further down the track.

Steve King:
Well that is a good point, but in the short term what we can do is suspend mark to market and have actually a real market value established on those securities and then the next thing we can do is make sure our FDIC, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation that guarantees the deposits in our banks can go into these banks and issue the net worth certificates that will put the collateral into any banks that people wonder about. Those two things should stabalise this market and then the market should be able to make the adjustments.

Now it may be that we have to buy up some of these mortgages from a taxpaper standpoint, but to do all of that and not put the changes in place... I can tell you. I know Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank and Steny Hoyer too well to believe that there are any reforms that will come through this congress if we give $700 billion off to Wall Street.

Reporter:
Of course to a lot of people this is just an example of the partisan gridlock that has affected congress for a very long time and that given that there is an election, you are all facing it in five weeks from now, that gridlock is likely to continue. What do you see happening from here?

Steve King:
I think that what has happened already is that we have broken up into our groups, sat back down and started to put our proposals together. I know that for me that I have had meetings with... a whole series of different meetings and I have picked up a stack of paperwork and now I am going to pore through that and lay out the things that I believe can sustain themselves on the negotiating table. I am going to ask my colleagues to do the same and come with a free market solution to this and put it on the table.

I think that another thing they did with this was they tried to do a hybrid, that means a cross between a government solution and a free market solution and it turned into oil and water. The oil and water separated in congress today and that is the biggest reason the bill failed on the floor. I think we need to go one way or the other. It is either going to be a free market, or it is going to be a government solution. If it is a government solution, I will be a no vote. If it is a free market solution you can generally count on me to stand with the free markets, and I think the world is far better off in the long run.

Reporter:
Your party's presidential candidate John McCain certainly injected himself into this process last week. He suspended his campaign, he called on the first presidential debate to be put off until a deal was reached. Is this going to reflect badly on him that you are still at this point now?

Steve King:
Well I know that the other side has lined up and turned this into a partisan discussion and I will say this. If it had not been for John McCain injecting himself into this, it would have, this bill would have passed. I believe that, and I believe that the 700 billion taxpayer dollars in one great big cheque, I will say a blank cheque to Henry Paulson or the Secretary of the Treasury would have already have been passed... at least out of the House and on it's way to the Senate... But he has given us an opportunity to provide a free market solution, that is to John McCain's credit. If he is not in this equation then we've got, I think, not a real solution, but a big governement proposal where the cure is worse than the disease.

Reporter:
Many thanks for your time today congressman.

Steve King:
Many Thanks John. Goodbye.

Let me first state that I am an extremely enthusia...

2008-09-29T23:46:00.000-04:00

Let me first state that I am an extremely enthusiastic Obama supporter.

Let me now state that a failure to pass this bailout is a huge travesty to our nation. The financial system is built, right now, on twigs (of mortgages, of derivatives, of back-office deals), and we needed this bill.

McCain jumping in was great for Obama -- but it was awful for our country. So transparent and obviously triggering partisanship run amok. Pelosi's speech, also, was hideous for our country, even if it turned one Republican from the bill. Cantor is a jerk for admitting that the speech caused some defections.

And they are all deeply unpatriotic, including Pelosi. We need a financial solution. The markets are desperate because they are built on a house of cards. As an Obama supporter, I feel the need to be true to my beliefs. We personally need to have a value system, as a belief in protecting the American people from financial destruction, and hold our leaders -- not just McCain but Pelosi as well -- responsible for the roles they play in not living up to these values.

They blame Pelosi's comments? She...what? Hurt the...

2008-09-29T23:05:00.000-04:00

They blame Pelosi's comments? She...what? Hurt their feelings, so they took their votes and went home? Children, children...

The margin wasn't as wide as it appeared (sorry if...

2008-09-29T22:51:00.000-04:00

The margin wasn't as wide as it appeared (sorry if I'm duplicating). As soon as it became clear that the roll call was going to fail, there were undoubtedly defectors who would've voted aye for a successful measure. There's no upside to supporting a failing bill that's unpopular. I'd be willing to bet the actual margin was only one or two votes. Five at the absolute most. Even congressmen can count better than that.

McCain can retire to his Sedona porch, "Hey, you k...

2008-09-29T22:48:00.000-04:00

McCain can retire to his Sedona porch, "Hey, you kids! Get away from my desert!"

...which one?

Does McCain have anything on his schedule for Un-S...

2008-09-29T22:29:00.000-04:00

Does McCain have anything on his schedule for Un-Suspending his campaign ?

I really don't get why there's a disconnect here.W...

2008-09-29T22:24:00.000-04:00

I really don't get why there's a disconnect here.

We all know that this will hurt everyone, including us.

We are also aware that over the long-term the economy will recover and grow.

What we known even more is that when it does grow it will be new businesses that make it grow. Yes, that means current business failing.

Just think long-term.