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Wednesday, September 17, 2008
So this is how Wall Street thanks us?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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So the feds step into save AIG with $85 billion, and the market STILL tanks by almost 450 points?
And I see the news ticker on CNBC — muted in my office — reporting that the price of gold rose today by the highest dollar amount in history.
But of course, the fundamentals of the economy are sound … if by fundamentals you mean the American worker, right John?
Unfortunately, we have fewer of those “fundamentals” at work here in Georgia than we should have. The state unemployment rate last month jumped to 6.3 percent, the highest in 15 years and above the national average of 6.1 percent.
Also, market analyst Barry Ritholz, at his always useful Big Picture blog, offers this explanation for the difference between Lehman, Bear Stearns and AIG:
“— Lehman Brothers was like the little kid pulling the tail of a dog. You know the kid is going to get hurt eventually, and so no one is surprised when the dog turns around and bites the kid. But the kid only hurts himself, so no one really cares that much.
— Bear Stearns is the little pyro — the kid who was always playing with matches. He could harm not only himself, but burns his own house down, and indeed, he could have burnt down the entire neighborhood. The Fed stepped in not to protect him, but the rest of the block.
— AIG is the kid who accidentally stumbled into a bio-tech warfare lab … finds all these unlabeled vials, and heads out to the playground with a handful of them jammed into his pockets.”
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Obama’s case for tighter regulation
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
John McCain has been arguing for months, no for years, that additional regulation of Wall Street financial firms would kill the goose that was laying so many golden eggs. Now that the goose is laying an egg of a different sort, he’s changed his tune considerably.
Barack Obama has taken a different and more consistent course, warning that we were courting big trouble if we did not change our approach. In fact, he laid out that warning along with some pretty explicit recommendations for reform in a speech back in March.
I’ve posted extensive excerpts of that speech for those on either side willing to read what he had to say back then.
