. . . I have no idea if this bailout was a good thing or a bad thing. I don't have enough information to make that determination.Me, I would prefer fire codes and a fire department.
The real issue is that you need a sensible regulatory framework to prevent financial crises from happening in the first place, and criteria and practices for dealing with them when they do, along with a sensible and consistent broad social safety net for individuals and families for when crises happen to them.
It might have been the right thing to run down to the river with buckets to collect water to throw on the burning building, but it would have been much better to have better fire codes and a functioning fire department.
"Do not go gentle into that good night. Blog, blog against the dying of the light"
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Fire department vs bucket brigade
Atrios, who is an economist, provides an excellent analogy:
Cheer up!
My new favorite blog, Calculated Risk sums up the financial news:
With the DOW off over 500 points yesterday, Lehman in bankruptcy, the Fed rescuing A.I.G. tonight, the viability of WaMu and others institutions in doubt, Fannie and Freddie placed in conservatorship, a major money market fund halting redemptions, it might seem like the credit crisis is spiraling out of control.But even after all that, CR concludes
And there are definitely more problems to come.
Many banks will fail - especially small and regional banks with excessive concentrations in construction & development (C&D) and commercial real estate (CRE) loans. And the recession is getting worse with rising unemployment, declining personal consumption expenditures, declining industrial production and falling business investment. Economies of many other countries are in or close to recession. The Fed even cautioned on slowing U.S. exports today for the first time.
Foreign stock markets are crashing: the Russian stock market was halted today after declining 17%. The Shanghai composite index is off about 2/3 from the peak.
...unlike observers that believe this only marks the end of the beginning, I believe there is a chance that these events mark the beginning of the end of the crisis.OK, works for me.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Great line of the day
From Stephane Dion:
Mr. Harper, he speaks better English than me, OK. But I speak the truth better than him in English and in French
Monday, September 15, 2008
Why would the Bush administration be right this time?
Business writer Joe Nocera at the New York Times looks on the bright side, sort of:
So why would they be right about how they are handling the market meltdown?
With the government refusing to prop up Wall Street anymore, maybe now mortgage-backed derivatives will find their natural bottom. Something to look forward to, I guess.The thing that worries me is this -- if there is one thing the last eight years has taught us, it is that the Bush administration is just about always wrong about just about everything.
So why would they be right about how they are handling the market meltdown?
Great line of the day
Over at Dawg's Blawg, Marie Eve contrasts Harper's $19 billion spending extravaganza with his recent statement about the importance of fiscal prudence, and concludes:
If Harper keeps spinning at that rate, by October 14th he should have spun a hole for himself all the way to China.
Not helpful
Cue the trolls, just as Dion starts to trend upward. But trolls are so cute, aren't they, especially the ones who are pretending to be Liberals.
Be careful what you wish for
I've been working almost constantly for the last 40 years, and in that time I have paid tens of thousands of dollars into the Employment Insurance fund.
I have collected on these benefits for two stints of maternity leave and a few weeks of actual unemployment. But there is no way that I ever got back, or ever will get back, anything near what I have contributed into that fund, both directly from my salary and indirectly from my employers. All of us working stiffs have to keep paying into it, year after year after year, whether we use the benefits or not.
[For the last twenty years or so, mostly not -- which only increases my resentment, because I would much prefer that my involuntary contribution to the social compact at least be used to benefit jobless Canadians rather than just disappearing into the government's general revenues.]
But getting back to my point, so now Harper is promising to make self-employed people eligible for maternity leave benefits because this is what business people are asking for, Harper says.
I can understand their resentment -- its like driving around the mall on a cold winter's day and seeing the empty handicapped parking places and thinking gee wouldn't it be nice to park so close.
But you need to think this through, people.
Once you become "eligible" for EI benefits, you won't have a choice about whether to pay them or not and it won't matter whether you are young or old or male or female. A percentage of every dollar you earn will go into the EI fund and you'll just have to pay it, and maybe you'll have to pay the "employers" contribution as well -- and you'll keep paying and paying, now and forever, amen.
I have collected on these benefits for two stints of maternity leave and a few weeks of actual unemployment. But there is no way that I ever got back, or ever will get back, anything near what I have contributed into that fund, both directly from my salary and indirectly from my employers. All of us working stiffs have to keep paying into it, year after year after year, whether we use the benefits or not.
[For the last twenty years or so, mostly not -- which only increases my resentment, because I would much prefer that my involuntary contribution to the social compact at least be used to benefit jobless Canadians rather than just disappearing into the government's general revenues.]
But getting back to my point, so now Harper is promising to make self-employed people eligible for maternity leave benefits because this is what business people are asking for, Harper says.
I can understand their resentment -- its like driving around the mall on a cold winter's day and seeing the empty handicapped parking places and thinking gee wouldn't it be nice to park so close.
But you need to think this through, people.
Once you become "eligible" for EI benefits, you won't have a choice about whether to pay them or not and it won't matter whether you are young or old or male or female. A percentage of every dollar you earn will go into the EI fund and you'll just have to pay it, and maybe you'll have to pay the "employers" contribution as well -- and you'll keep paying and paying, now and forever, amen.
Dion trending up
As I understand it with daily tracking polls, its' not so much the numbers or the gap, its the trendline that's important. In this Canadian Press Harris/Decima poll, Harper is trending down while Dion is trending up.
And over at the Canoe blog, Paul Turenne has some questions about that gas price spike:
And over at the Canoe blog, Paul Turenne has some questions about that gas price spike:
It is remarkably bad luck for the Liberals and their Green Shift that gas prices spiked the way they did across Canada last Friday,. . .
Anyway, who would benefit more than the Tories, and be hurt more than the Liberals, when Canadians are reminded right in the middle of a campaign just how much gas costs already? Price of crude goes down, price of gas jumps through the roof. Even with a hurricane, that's tough to explain. . . I'm just sayin' ...
Questions for Candidates
Dan Froomkin writes a piece titled Fact Checking Is So 20 Minutes Ago about the increasing conservative tendency not to care about facts. Its being dished higher and deeper in the States, but Canadian Cons are increasingly slinging the BS, too. So maybe we need to stop wringing our hands about refuting every lie every day, and instead expect the press to start "meta-fact-checking", as Froomkin suggests:
~ ...How reality-based is the candidate? Does he acknowledge unpleasant realities? Does he think he makes his own reality, and that asserting something that isn't true will sort of make it true? ...
~Does the candidate say things that the people covering him know he doesn't believe? For instance, is it obvious to everyone in the traveling press corps that he is repeating a line his speechwriters or pollsters have written for him, even though he knows full well it's not true.
~Is the candidate exposed to dissenting views - either in public or within his campaign? Does he encourage dissenting views? How hard does the campaign work to keep dissenters out of his way?
~Is the candidate ever willing to try to make his case in front of people who don't already agree with him? Is he willing to engage them? Does he tailor his speeches to specific audiences in order so that they will like what they hear? Or so that they will open their minds to views they may not initially share?
~How does he respond to people who don't share his views? Does he dismiss them? Does he try to persuade them? Does he listen?
Sunday, September 14, 2008
I like this line, too
Andrew Potter, Ottawa Citizen national editor explains why the Conservative war room is so juvenile:
A friend of mine has a theory, that the left is made up of a coalition of socialists and social workers, while the right is made up of a coalition of economists and jerks.
Who got us into this mess anyway?
The Gazetteer is absolutely correct:
Stephen Harper turned a $12 billion dollar surplus into a deficit in the BEST of times.
And now that things are going sideways and he's telling us that, in these times of 'uncertainty', that he's the best man for the job?
Great line of the day
From Chet at Vanity Press:
At some point, this election will start to be about something.But actually, of course, its about the future of the country -- no biggie!
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Tories blow it again
So the Conservatives are using a photo of a California family in their most recent ad. I guess they couldn't be bothered to search for a Canadian family who supports them. Or they couldn't find one...
Bang Bang You're dead
Well, the RCMP taser report from June is finally out (another Friday afternoon document dump). My question is, why did it take the Access to Information Act to get the RCMP to release such a mildly-worded, even weasel-worded report?
Basically, the Globe story indicates that report appears to assign the blame for 20 deaths to "problems in the RCMP policy development process" -- rather than to police officers and a police culture which still sees tasers as a quick and easy way to control and punish civilians:
There is, however, one enduring image that this news story about the report provides:
Did any of them shout "bang, bang, you're dead"?
Basically, the Globe story indicates that report appears to assign the blame for 20 deaths to "problems in the RCMP policy development process" -- rather than to police officers and a police culture which still sees tasers as a quick and easy way to control and punish civilians:
. . . the Mounties did not perform “due diligence” when they approved tasers for use earlier this decade . . .Yeah, and I'm sure the RCMP would have listened to all those non-existent impartial researchers and their hypothetical studies, so actually this mess is all the researchers' fault, those bastards!
“Many of the resulting problems in the RCMP policy-development process might have been avoided” had the force sought out impartial researchers to conduct studies “that could detect and take into account potential police and manufacturer biases,”. . .
The time may have come when Canadian police services and their governing authorities “need to exercise their own final say in matters appropriate to training and usage.”The Globe story indicates only one place where the report apparently took a real stand:
The report . . . suggests more attention be paid to factors that may affect risk of harm, including the subject's body weight, pregnancy, medical devices such as pacemakers, psychosis, ingestion of drugs and prolonged acute stress and exhaustion.
The report slams use of the term “excited delirium,” which is used by police officers to describe combative, resistant suspects. It says the supposed condition is not a recognized medical diagnosis, and is merely an excuse to justify firing the 50,000-volt charge.But in the end, it appears the report just wimped out:
The report urges the federal government to set national standards for taser use by all police forces across the country.Yeah, I'm sure Stockwell Day got right on this -- he's had the report since June, I guess, so where are those standards?
There is, however, one enduring image that this news story about the report provides:
In some cases, RCMP officers don't have access to tasers loaded with simulation cartridges, meaning members must resort to scenarios in which one yells “bang, bang” and another feigns being hit, the report says.So RCMP officers were shouting "bang, bang" at each other?
Did any of them shout "bang, bang, you're dead"?
Of course she didn't say Canadians were stupid
Chet at Vanity Press provides a pretty good analysis of what Elizabeth May said -- and of course she didn't say that Canadians were stupid people.
The controversy, however, IS pretty stupid. Its exactly the kind of made-up "dispute" that the media love, because they don't have to do any actual research or reporting, just play a video over and over and talk, talk, talk. What fun.
Pretty soon, if we don't demand better, our political discourse will be at the same juvenile gotcha level as the States -- and that WOULD be stupid, wouldn't it?
The controversy, however, IS pretty stupid. Its exactly the kind of made-up "dispute" that the media love, because they don't have to do any actual research or reporting, just play a video over and over and talk, talk, talk. What fun.
Pretty soon, if we don't demand better, our political discourse will be at the same juvenile gotcha level as the States -- and that WOULD be stupid, wouldn't it?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)