joneilortiz

Governmental ownership of shares, with or without voting rights, opens up possibilities for much greater mischief than controlling executive salaries. For example, a bank or other company may want to reduce its employment in order to regain greater profitability. The government owners of these shares will be under pressure from congressman and senators who represent districts where employment would be affected to try to rescind or modify these cuts. Even without government ownership, congressmen protest corporate efforts to shift various activities overseas because labor and other resources are cheaper there. Such objections will be magnified when governments have direct equity stakes. - joneilortiz

STOP PRESS: This morning, after this article was published, news came from Iraq that the coordinator of Iraqi LGBT in Baghdad, Bashar, aged 27, has been assassinated in a barber shop. Militias burst in and sprayed his body with bullets. - joneilortiz

Henry M. Paulson Jr., the Treasury secretary, hoped that approval of the American bailout, which will involve buying securities from banks at more than their current market value, would free up credit by making cash available for banks to lend and by reassuring participants in the credit markets. But that did not happen last week. Instead, credit grew more expensive and harder to get as investors became more skittish about buying commercial paper, essentially short-term loans to companies. Rates on such loans rose so fast that some feared the market could essentially close, leaving it to already-stressed banks to provide short-term corporate loans. - joneilortiz

The rule was intended as a matter of practicality: It did not seem reasonable to ask a campaign to gather that information from every $5 donor. But the Obama campaign has raised millions of dollars this way, donations that will not be subject to outside scrutiny. - joneilortiz

"Here’s the thing, Monica Dux. I, a person your co-author Zora interviewed at some length for the book, have hairy legs. I have hairy ampits. I’m fat, which is generally considered “unattractive” in Western patriarchal culture. My breasts sag. Apart from the lesbianism, I am your scary negative cliche. And some of my friends are 100% your scary negative cliche. This person is not a myth. We’re out here. And we’re feminists." - joneilortiz via Bookmarklet

In the 1800s, Samuel Augustus Maverick went to Texas and became known for not branding his cattle. He was more interested in keeping track of the land he owned than the livestock on it, Ms. Maverick said; unbranded cattle, then, were called “Maverick’s.” The name came to mean anyone who didn’t bear another’s brand. - joneilortiz

The best commentary on the bailout I've seen yet - joneilortiz

LISA WADE, founder and co-editor, holds an M.S. and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin - Madison and an M.A. in Human Sexuality from New York University. She is currently an Assistant Professor at Occidental College in Los Angeles where she teaches classes in gender, race, sexuality, and the body. In addition to her contributions here, she sometimes posts sociologically-inspired rants at the Huffington Post. - joneilortiz

The product is Dole Fruit Gel Bowls. The text is: “There’s a feeling you get from the refreshing taste of real fruit. Lighten up with Reduced Sugar flavors. Life Is Sweet.” So how do they convince us that “Fruit Gel” is “real fruit”? By putting a “native” appearing woman with a ”natural” hairstyle in a white cotton frock with flowers around her neck. - joneilortiz

I use TV dinners to show my students that nearly everything, even things they’d never expect, are awash in race, gender, and class meaning. - joneilortiz

Jilted lovers are posting sex tapes on the Web—and their exes want justice. - joneilortiz

Time magazine has figured out that women don’t all love Sarah Palin. But instead of asking women who oppose her for their reasons, their reporter reaches back into her high school memories of how much females love to hate. Apparently it’s all about her prettiness, her confidence and our fear of embarrassment. Issues? Genuine disagreements? Worries about competence? What are those? Ooh, let’s talk skinny jeans (which somehow get a mention in the final paragraph). One the most vapid, shallow, and insulting things I’ve read in some time. It ends, by the way, by insinuating that the reason we keep getting male leaders is that women hate each other so much. Could it possibly be because the belittling of women’s intellects is so socially acceptable that Time publishes dreck like this without a second thought? Nah. - joneilortiz

Agree with Lindsay, especially on the setting back woman a decade or more. I too am embarrassed, just as I am when my European friends quite rightly ridicule Dubya. - Sally Church

LOL, Christopher. Palin = Scrappy Doo. - Faboo Mama

That's what Google does: It makes what came before it look old. Atlases, variety shows, newspapers, and diaries, to take just a few examples, wither under the diodic glow of Google Earth, Google News, Google's Blogger, and Google's YouTube. - joneilortiz

Cochrane pointed out a major contradiction in the bailout bill. The legislation promises the “minimization of long-term costs and maximization of benefits for taxpayers,” while it also promises that the Treasury Secretary “shall implement a plan that seeks to maximize assistance for homeowners . . . the Secretary may use loan guarantees and credit enhancements to facilitate loan modifications to prevent avoidable foreclosures.” As Cochrane makes clear, “you can bail out homeowners or you can make money on their mortgages, but you can’t do both.” - joneilortiz

If the government bargains to buy at the lowest possible price, it will protect taxpayers. But forcing the banks to book big losses could be self-defeating if they cannot resume lending until they raise fresh capital. If the government agrees to buy the assets at the value at which banks are keeping them on their balance sheets, taxpayers will almost certainly be overpaying. - joneilortiz

An Idiot's Guide to the Subprime Mess using 'stick-figures' to illustrate. - joneilortiz

Wow. - torque via Bookmarklet

I would have never guessed that the oldest living American was a Hoosier. - Clare Dibble

wow she's probably been retired longer than she worked - joneilortiz

A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Jim Manley, told ProPublica yesterday that Senate Republicans had "balked" at an attempt to attach an unemployment-benefits extension to the Wall Street rescue. - joneilortiz

"Signs of a pending depression? The Economist's D-word index" - joneilortiz via Bookmarklet

The Washington Post reports today that the Defense Department "will pay private U.S. contractors in Iraq up to $300 million over the next three years to produce news stories, entertainment programs and public service advertisements for the Iraqi media in an effort to "engage and inspire" the local population to support U.S. objectives and the Iraqi government." In contrast to earlier efforts, where there was supposedly always a "produced by MNF-I" label, these efforts explicitly will not have such attribution. As one official explains, "They don't know that the originator of the content is the U.S. government. If they did, they would never run anything." - joneilortiz

Union officials say they took the day to protest after a film crew from the National Rifle Assocation showed up at the Consol mine last week to interview union workers. - joneilortiz

"After some more give and ake, Sen. Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, presents a five-page list of 192 economists and business school professors who oppose the plan. Bush isn't impressed. "I don't care what somebody on some college campus says," Bush says. Instead, he says he trusts Hank Paulson, who, he says, has more than 35 years of experience and access to more information than those academics on Shelby's list." - joneilortiz via Bookmarklet

I'm telling you, her eyes glittered on that one... - Stupid Blogger (aka Tina)

Anticipation of an unfriendly senate after the next round of elections. - Stupid Blogger (aka Tina)

+1 Tina - joneilortiz

Well put! - Jason Wehmhoener

I love (temporarily?) loving these anti-bailout conservatives (except for some of that free market stuff at the end). - joneilortiz

But here is a remarkable thing about these responses. To a great extent they are not responses by government, really, but by the private sector. Bernanke and Paulson are neither politicians nor civil servants; Bernanke is an economics professor and Paulson an investment banker. Their principal advisers are investment bankers rather than Fed and Treasury employees. Even the prohibition of short selling, which seems like a product of the kind of mindless hostility to speculation that one expects from politicians, has been strongly urged by Wall Streeters, including the CEO of Morgan Stanley. The White House, the Congress, and even the SEC have been only bit players in the response to the crisis. In effect, the government's power to repair the crisis that Wall Street created has been delegated to Wall Street. - joneilortiz

Just saw this on MSNBC. Very strange. Maybe the people behind the camera raised their hands and were counted too - LPH™

haha you see the old lady in the background trying to hold down her husband's arm, the one McCain vote? - joneilortiz

LOL, WUT?! - Rahsheen™

A North Carolina textile company said it closed two plants and laid off 200 workers this week because it couldn't find the credit to keep going. - joneilortiz

"Last week, Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard and Fox News (rock solid winger credentials), said on Fox that the administration made a mistake when it labeled the bailout plan a "bailout," instead of a "rescue." Well, given what happened yesterday, the White House apparently decided to side with Barnes because today (September 30, 3008) its spokesman, Tony Fratto, said, "It's really unfortunate shorthand for a very complicated issue," and it preferred the word "rescue."" - joneilortiz via Bookmarklet

+1 Cee Bee - Fox is not the only one either... - Mavericks of Troy, NV!

no doubt. they're all complicit. - Cee Bee

University of Michigan Law Professor Michael Barr, a specialist in banking and finance law, flatly rejected claims that the CRA was "a significant factor in the current crisis. CRA was enacted more than 30 years ago. It would be quite odd if this 30-year old law suddenly caused an explosion in bad subprime loans from 2002-2007....Subprime mortgages were mostly made by mortgage brokers and lenders and securitized by investment banks -- institutions not covered by CRA," he told the Huffington Post, adding, "CRA only covers banks and thrifts, and these institutions mostly have not suffered to the same extent or kind from bad lending as the non-CRA-covered institutions at the core of the current crisis. The problem here is not CRA. It is what the late former Fed Governor Ned Gramlich called 'the giant hole in the supervisory safety net' -- bad lending by firms outside the banking sector's rules for prudential supervision, capital requirements, consumer protection and yes, the CRA." - joneilortiz

Center for American Progress fellow Robert Gordon noted that approximately half of the subprime loans were made by independent mortgage companies that were not regulated by the CRA. Twenty-five to thirty percent came from only partially CRA regulated bank subsidiaries and affiliates. He states that institutions fully regulated by CRA made "perhaps" one in four sub-prime loans. Finally he notes that independent mortgage companies made "high-priced loans" at more than twice the rate of the banks and thrifts. Gordon also makes the argument that the weakening of the CRA in 2004 was followed by intensified subprime lending. - MikeAmundsen

Columbia professor and Nobel prize winner Edmund Phelps writes in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, "We Need to Recapitalize the Banks," an article appears not to have garnered the attention it warrants in the blogosphere. Phelps comments approvingly on Sweden's approach to handling its financial crisis, which had as its cornerstone reducing the size of the financial system and nationalizing banks which were cleaned up and later privatized at a profit. - joneilortiz