Matthew Yglesias » Answering David Cay Johnston

Sep 23rd, 2008 at 9:11 pm

Answering David Cay Johnston

Felix Salmon and Ryan Avent answer his questions.

The answers both convince me that there really is an urgent need to “do something” and also an urgent need to try to make sure we do the right thing. Middle class people are pretty desperately in need of some form of bulk modification of mortgages, a step the financial institutions and their hirelings in the GOP have been blocking for months. In theory, this question is separable from the bailout issue. In practice, the banks’ desire for a bailout provides a key moment leverage and opportunity.

Comments
56

56 Responses to “Answering David Cay Johnston”

Jake Says:
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:31 pm
There are two fundamental things working against Paulson and Bernanke at the moment (in the blogosphere):
1) Nobody trusts Bush, and by extension, the Treasury Secretary.
2) There is concern that the GOP will paint the bailout as primarily something the Democrats own, and McCain will vote against it, riding it to the presidency.

Neither one of these are particularly rational, mind you, but people got spooked after 2004.
kafka Says:
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Five Big Lies:

Credit Markets are Frozen:
So how are these “frozen” credit markets going to come up with the $700 billion to lend to Uncle Sam for the bailout? Simple, they’re not “frozen” to begin with, except to those of dubious credit worthiness.

We Can Limit Executive Pay:
Name one law, regulation, or accounting rule Wall Street hasn’t figured out how to slime its way around. Think pay limits will be the exception? Ask yourself who enforces the rules? If these people did their jobs this mess wouldn’t have happened in the first place?

We Have to Bail Them Out:
Best way to find out whether this is true: finance the bailout with a surtax on the wealthy. My bet: 10 seconds after that gets included in the bailout bill, the crisis will be declared over.

Bernanke and Paulson are “Experts”:
Then how is it (in their own words) we face the “greatest crisis since the Great Depression”? If that’s true, they’re idiots. If not, they’re liars.

We Can Prop Up Housing Markets:
How many bills has Congress passed in the last year to “help” homeowners? Three? Four? See how well the housing markets are doing?
Steve LaBonne Says:
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:52 pm
To say those answers are unconvincing is putting it mildly. To
address just one of Avent’s points, it fucking well SHOULD be harder to get a loan now compared to when sane lending standards had become basically nonexistent.

In fact that’s a very revealing “argument”. The real purpose of this nonsense is to try to reinflate the bubble just enough to keep the party going a bit longer. (Maybe until after the election; maybe just in the Micawberesque hope that something will turn up.) That’s insane; when the postponed crash happens- even harder than it would if allowed to happen now- we’ll have gotten the Treasury far more deeply in debt with absolutely nothing to show for it.
nukev Says:
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Matt- The Felix and Ryan posts were great. Hopefully, they are trusted by the folks that frequent here. I’ve been disappointed by some of the rhetoric and I suppose it’s natural given the last eight years but there really is reason to “do something.” Make it the Dodd bill on steroids but please avoid the impulse to damn any plan to spite Bush and Wall Street. More back up for the “do something” point of view:

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/41423/Roubini-More-Than-1-Trillion-Needed-to-Solve-Housing-Crisis?tickers=FNM,FRE,XLF,WM,WB,WFC,BAC

and here’s some more neat perspective…

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/capital-commerce/2008/9/22/bailout-prevents-great-depression-20.html
rapier Says:
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:56 pm
Nobody can believe that something can’t be done to save us. Nobody on the Titanic believed it could sink either, even after it started to go down. That said nobody tried to bail it out either. The analogy might be too strong but the ’something has to be done’ idea is wrong. Nothing is going to save several trillion dollars at the heart of the financial system from disappearing.

Everyone is convinced that the world ends if the financial giants collapse. This is a lie. With a trillion give or take the Fed and Treasury can keep the credit markets that serve citizens going pretty well. Wall Street for the most part stopped serving people long ago. It serves itself and it’s friends. People don’t understand what Wall Street does and how it affects them for a good reason. It effects them only tangentially. It’s far far less necessary than they say.

Think about the trends in other systems. The newest and best trend is for systems to be distributed. So too should be the financial system. Throwing XXX billion at the financial behemoths will at best trickle down to us. Haven’t we had enough of that?
Calling Out Matt Says:
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Matt,

Please do a post explaining to your loyal readers WHY Paulson needs THAT amount money NOW. What is he going to do with it specifically? How will those decisions be made? How specifically will our financial markets crumble but for a $700 billion bailout? Finally, as a general matter, what the fuck is going on in this country?
djslippyb Says:
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:59 pm
For everyone who can’t print their own money the credit markets are frozen or really, really, expensive. From my perspective as a state government finance manager, I can tell you that the market for credit for local and state governments is closed. I have been told this is the same for corporations.

This is why the capital infusion needs to go to the banks. Yes, it would have been nice if a year ago, the root of problem was recognized and we had given a big relief package to troubled homeowners but everyone was to busy demonizing them. Now it is too late and unfortunately the credit markets can’t wait for the benefits to work from the bottom up without serious damage to an already fragile economy.

I think Dodd and Frank are doing a good job. Set up a system that makes a market for these assets while retaining an equity stake in the firms if taxpayers lose money on the transaction. Get the credit markets flowing again.

You underestimate the value of reasonably priced credit in our economy at your own peril. That said I’d love to see the folks that got rich getting us into this mess face some humiliation and clawbacks.
Steve LaBonne Says:
September 23rd, 2008 at 10:00 pm
By the way, just to expose a fallacy that runs through a lot of commentary on this stuff, the idea that the 1929 financial crash “caused” the Great Depression, and thus that another financial crash would necessarily “cause” another depression, is simply stupid. The causes of the Great Depression were far more complex than that and are hotly disputed by economic historians to this day.
Steve LaBonne Says:
September 23rd, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Folks, the party is over. A pretty severe recession cannot be avoided after a large speculative bubble bursts. You cannot stave it off by throwing good money after bad. You can only make it worse, and cripple future generations with debt in the process.
nukev Says:
September 23rd, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Rapier- I hear you. In fact I think Great Depression II is here no matter what congress does. I do think, however, that it makes sense to at least try to avoid the worst. Long lines at closed banks are not good.
Steve LaBonne Says:
September 23rd, 2008 at 10:09 pm
It also is unhelpful to confuse a sharp recession with Great Depression II. Doomsday rhetoric is not an aid to clear thought.
ploeg Says:
September 23rd, 2008 at 10:10 pm
I absolutely loved the “gesture politics” crack from Solomon. The banks are making a completely unprecedented request for taxpayers to put at risk hundreds of billions of dollars, with nothing in return but the promise that if we don’t do it, the economy gets it, and we don’t even get a gesture? This is exactly the same sort of chickenshit that we got when those multimillionaires called Iraq a “generational struggle” but got the dry heaves when it was suggested that the multimillionaires should help pay for it now instead of putting it on the credit card.
The Other Steve Says:
September 23rd, 2008 at 10:12 pm
I’m convinced that I need my mortgage modified.

I bought my house for $300k with 20% down, so I borrowed around $240k. But now I owe $225k and my house is only worth $250k.

Seems to me like I’ve got $40k too much mortgage. So we need to modify that so I have 20% equity again.

Actually, you know, come to think about it. How about just giving me the $40k difference in a cash out? That’d be sweet.
rk Says:
September 23rd, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Neither author was very convincing. As others have noted it should be harder to get credit. But the fact is that it is still quite easy to get credit. Comparing this to the period of time immediately before FDR took office would be foolishness. In the winter of ‘33 banks were failing by the day. It got so bad that FDR took office during virtual national financial holiday. Many cities were issuing scrip. Despite all that FDR refused Hoover’s entreaties to embrace a “bipartisan” solution prior to taking office. No evidence has been presented to date to indicate that the situation is as dire as 1933, merely assertions that something must be done. This looks like another classic Bush con job; stampede the Democrats using dire warnings that aren’t backed up with evidence.

Finally, its worth remembering that one reason that credit may be tight is that the institutions that created this mess are still extant. Lenders will be hesitant to act when financial institutions lack transparency and accountability. Those institutions must fail for the system to work again. Any bailout has to work from the bottom-up, not from the top down.
Thomas Says:
September 23rd, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Matt is right: the Dems need to make this a bigger bailout, making sure that their special interests get bought off, along with cash for the fat cats on Wall Street. This needs to be a Democrat wish list, and dare Bush to veto it. There’s no need for a single Republican vote on this thing. Heck, let it become law without Bush’s signature–all the better.

Do I hear $1 trillion?
nukev Says:
September 23rd, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Call it what you want but 15% unemployment is what??? unthinkable? I disagree. When $10,000,000,000,000 evaporates in the US we can have a ball talking about what to call it.
Steve LaBonne Says:
September 23rd, 2008 at 10:29 pm
You’re begging the question, nukev. Nobody has yet made any cogent data-based case for thinking that not bending over for Paulson will lead to a far worse recession than bending over. (Matt’s two heroes above don’t even come close.) It’s all unsupported assertions and handwaving.
blah Says:
September 23rd, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Why is Paulson trying to spook the markets?
Steve LaBonne Says:
September 23rd, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Why is Paulson trying to spook the markets?

Because he can’t rob us blind unless we’re too panicked to realize we’re being robbed. This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.
nukev Says:
September 23rd, 2008 at 10:51 pm
Steve- You are right. The case hasn’t been made and I can’t make it to the degree that will convince anybody. Its dejavu 2003. Maybe its naivete to think that Paulson/Bernanke actually are trying to do something good here. Maybe they just want to hand their pal’s cash and screw the country. Looking at the information I can find, I beleive the economy is in big trouble. I also think trying to do something is better than doing nothing and Dem’s are in a position to get almost whatever they want if they try. If you think that nothing is better than say Dodd++ great. I hope you’re right. The consequences of either decision are not trivial.
Matt D Says:
September 23rd, 2008 at 11:07 pm
What’re the arguments against restructuring loan terms anyway?

Seems to me that if we can make it easier for people to pay back their loans, we’d ease a lot of the uncertainty about the risk of all this crap that’s tied up in them.

It also seems like there’s really two issues here:

1) How do we prevent a recession/depression/collapse? The answer is probably going to involve a bailout, like it or not.

2) How to ensure that, long-term, we aren’t just pissing our money away in #1’s bailout? And here is where the mortgage renegotiation seems like it would be beneficial. Whether we get equity stake or assets from these companies, we have a definite interest in shoring up those loans.
Dan Kervick Says:
September 24th, 2008 at 12:40 am
Well, Matt claims that he is now convinced that there is an urgent need to do something. But his continuing blather about “leverage” and “opportunity” suggest that he doesn’t really believe that, and still doesn’t get it.

One has leverage over another person when that other person really needs something you have, but whether that other person’s need is satisfied doesn’t matter much to you personally. Thus you are in a position to demand something significant from that other person in exchange for your services.

But that’s not the situation we’re in. We’re in a situation where we’re like the townspeople who live down in the river valley, and who own the factory that manufactures concrete, and who are being asked by the folks who run the dam upriver for a rush shipment of emergency concrete, provided on credit, to repair the crumbling dam before it collapses and washes us all away.

And Matt is like the town boob down in the valley, rubbing his hands together, and saying “Aha! Now I have those dam-operator fellows over a barrel! Unless they agree to this list of demands, I will not lift a finger save myself or my town. That will show them!”

For some reason Matt continues to promote the illusion that we have a narrow time frame, the same time frame devoted to the bailout debate, within which we are able extort progressive goodies from The Gov’ment, so we must spend valuable days loading up this bill with all kinds of wonderful half-baked extras, or else we will lose our opportunity.

Bunk. The public is spitting mad over this bailout, and the behavior of Wall Street and the government that brought us to this point. After they front the money to save the capitalist economy, assuming that bailout effort works, they are going to be in the mood for compensation, payback and imposing a serious attitude adjustment on their former masters. We’ll get it all then: corporate salary regulation, mortgage restructuring, big fat taxes on rich fat cats, sweet new regulations on the radically free Republican markets, etc.

But please: do the bailout first! Because the Democrats in Congress are like the town fathers who run the concrete factory. And if the dam breaks while they are drawing up their absurd wish list of demands, born of their amazing “leverage”, then they are going to be swept away along with the rest of us. They will be blamed for their failure to act in a timely way, and their short-sighted partisanship. The ones that don’t die by drowning will be fished out, rounded up, tarred and feathered and hung.

The only piece of leverage congressional Democrats do have is that the large voting public is paying attention, and wants a bailout that (a) works and (b) protects the interests of average working Americans and taxpayers more than the interests of the wealthiest among us, or the interests of the hired friends of the greedy in Washington. So do that. Do a good bailout; not a bad one. But do it fast! And drop the extras.
Akhbar Says:
September 24th, 2008 at 12:47 am
Matt, Salmon has a pretty convincing post suggesting that you are wrong about a bulk mod being a good idea. I think he is wrong, though, and that you are right that sensible general stimulus measures should be tacked on here. Buffett’s investment of $5 billion in Goldman Sachs undermines the Paulson/Bernanke argument that we don’t have time to worry about getting the bailout right, let alone time to add related but distinct stimulus spending.

http://theenlighteneddespot.wordpress.com/2008/09/23/warren-buffett-laughs-at-your-puny-downturn/
Arnold Evans Says:
September 24th, 2008 at 1:02 am
I’m somewhere between disappointed and disgusted that Obama is not further to the left of McCain on this issue. He should be tying McCain to this, with the claim that if not for the election, McCain would support this. It is true, the press would support this and the left-wing echo chamber would turn it into conventional wisdom turning more independents off of McCain.

Moments like this I feel like Obama just doesn’t want to be president.

And if “not playing politics” is really a valid reason to lose the presidency, then really, what happened with FISA?

I hope Obama wins, but the idea that he doesn’t have better political instincts on the economy than John McCain makes me a little queasy.
tomj Says:
September 24th, 2008 at 1:30 am
Look, this is much simpler than it appears: you don’t have to induce people into a bailout. A bailout presupposes that someone is in need of help and they are not in any position to negotiate terms. The party doing the bailing is taking a huge risk and they should demand and receive a reward for their service.

Paulson’s pitch is along the lines of “hey, I’m about to drown. Quick, give me your wallet or I’ll pull you in with me.”
dob Says:
September 24th, 2008 at 1:32 am
we’re in. We’re in a situation where we’re like the townspeople who live down in the river valley, and who own the factory that manufactures concrete, and who are being asked by the folks who run the dam upriver for a rush shipment of emergency concrete, provided on credit, to repair the crumbling dam before it collapses and washes us all away…

…begins the most belabored analogy in the history of the Internet.
JJF Says:
September 24th, 2008 at 1:49 am
Thanks, Matt, for posting the links. Very credible, and very troubling.

I can’t help but be reminded of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. I realize the credibility of the Bush administration is as low as any in our history, and it would be a shame if they’re right that there is an immediate crisis, and we neglect to take action because we just don’t want to get fooled again.

I have heard a lot of “there is no crisis” lately, but I haven’t heard anyone say it who seems to have a real solid understanding of finance and what’s happening in the markets.

The “experts” (people with years of experience in the field) seem to think the crisis is real.

I think the real debate needs to be about the right solution. “Nothing” is not a good answer.
Arnold Evans Says:
September 24th, 2008 at 1:50 am
Would it even be possible to disburse $700 billion before election day or before the inauguration?

If we’re getting away from a gun placed to our head, let’s authorize $50b for the next eight weeks, see how that works and then authorize another bridge until a thorough, well-thought-out plan can be negotiated.

If we’re not getting away from a gun placed to our head, let’s strike the most populist possible tone for now, and handle this after the election.
patience Says:
September 24th, 2008 at 2:01 am
Sorry Matt, but you’re wrong here.

Stop reading journalists and start reading what experts ahve to say.

Here’s Princeton’s take.

http://econ.princeton.edu/news/crisis-panel.html

Bottom line. If the Banks for some reason want us to unwind and unload their bad assets for them then we get equity in the banks for every dollar of work we do for them.

IE There is no crisis, that requires immediate action. In fact there is great evidence that the immediate action is entirely just a con to get us to swallow the bad assets with no hope of recovery. That’s the direction that Johnston’s actually investigations are pointing too as well.
TH Says:
September 24th, 2008 at 3:07 am
Kafka, et al:

Try limiting yourselves to things you have a clue about. The fact that the Federal government can borrow $700 billion does not mean that credit markets aren’t frozen. Unless of course you’re considering everybody short of the U.S. government to be of “dubious credit-worthiness”. Which would be ridiculous, of course. Otherwise, it’s like saying dating supermodels is easy because Tom Brady can do it.

When the U.S. government is the only entity that can successfully raise debt, we are F-U-C-K-E-D.

For a few more examples, the arguments that we should do $50bn now and more later just doesn’t work. I don’t think people making this argument understand just how much of this stuff is out there. Also, and this gets to the point of “will the government overpay” as well, this thing doesn’t work unless it’s basically a one-time event. The way you have price discovery is through a reverse auction, also known as a Dutch auction.

To explain:

Let’s say you go to a Sotheby’s auction to buy a painting. You don’t want to overpay, but you don’t want to lose the painting to another bidder either. So you bid as much as you can afford to and hope you have the top bid. This motivation is how auction houses get such ridiculous sums for artwork.

A reverse auction is the same, but, in reverse. Instead it’s sellers that are “bidding” to sell you their assets. This is done all the time, every single day, whenever a public company does a share repurchase. They announce that they’re doing a repurchase of, say, $500 million, and shareholders offer up their shares at a price of their choosing. The company will repurchase the lowest priced shares first, up to the target amount of the repurchase. So while shareholders want as high a price as possible for their shares, if they want to sell them, they can’t try to offer to sell at an inflated value or their shares won’t get bought.

In the case of the government’s purchase of mortgage securities, it works the same way. The banks can’t try to sell at inflated prices, because if they do, chances are they’re not going to make the cutoff and they get stuck with the stuff. Instead, they’re going to offer to sell at the lowest price they can possibly accept without going bust, in the hopes of getting rid of their toxic assets and gaining some liquidity.

And not only should a reverse auction yield the lowest possible price that anyone will accept, and probably lower than the value of the assets if held to maturity by the Fed entity, but it’s going to help the institutions most in need. The guys that are really desperate are going to offer their mortgage assets at firesale prices because they have no choice. Healthier institutions, like, say, Bank of America, that can afford to hold these assets on their books until the value stabilizes (when liquidity returns to the market) aren’t going to be competitive in terms of what they’re willing to sell for, and won’t benefit from taxpayer largesse.
pseudonymous in nc Says:
September 24th, 2008 at 5:16 am
TH: here’s the problem. Why should we trust anyone who says it’s necessary?

Oh, you can talk about restoring confidence in the markets, but are the proposers really out to save us from 1932 or are they talking their book and looking to resume the party?

This is like Silence of the Lambs: we’re really meant to work with the psychopath here?
AlanC9 Says:
September 24th, 2008 at 5:40 am
Well, maybe it is like Silence of the Lambs. Remember, Lecter really did help Clarice catch Jame Gumb.

Let’s just hope it doesn’t turn out like Hannibal.
El Cid Says:
September 24th, 2008 at 7:15 am
Here’s another reason for some intense focus on this emergency action:

If this $700 billion rotating credit give-away doesn’t work, we can’t just pony up another trillion.

The focus on empiricism, on the actual mechanisms of how a ‘rescue’ of these bastards will work, and on not trusting these venal morons who brought us here, isn’t ideological.

If we spend it wrong, we’re broke. We also maybe destroy any of what we can do about anything next year.

If you want to make the dam / river valley analogy, you should also add that the dam owners demanding the free goods from the townspeople aren’t just demanding free cement — they’re demanding all sorts of things which aren’t used to build dams, and they won’t tell anyone quite what they intend to do with all this stuff, and they’re the same people who built dams which broke all over other valleys.

And so it’s not just that the townspeople are listening to overly cynical dam trusters, it’s that the townspeople only have so many goods to pony up, and if the dam owners take the pile of loot, throw some loose powdered cement at the side of the cracking dam, and then run away, well, the townspeople are just as threatened as they were before.
kid bitzer Says:
September 24th, 2008 at 7:18 am
i don’t see it, m.y.

i read salmon’s answers, and found them totally non-responsive.

they did nothing to demonstrate that “there really is an urgent need to “do something””.
tristero Says:
September 24th, 2008 at 7:35 am
Salmon sure has a sense of humor:

“We don’t know how expensive this solution is going to be: for all we know, it might make a profit. ”

And for all we knew in 2002, an invasion of Iraq would spread democracy around the MIddle East.

But hey! Y’never know!
Don Williams Says:
September 24th, 2008 at 8:11 am
RE Dan Kervick’s comment “We’ll get it all then: corporate salary regulation, mortgage restructuring, big fat taxes on rich fat cats, sweet new regulations on the radically free Republican markets, etc.”
————-
Bullshit.

We Will get NOTHING AFTER the Bailout. Mitch McConnell and the other Republicans Senators will filibuster and they will be supported by several Whores from the Democratic Side of the aisle.

How many Democratic Senators broke ranks and voted FOR the 2001 Tax Cut for the Rich? How many Democratic Senators subsequently objected when the money to pay for that Tax Cut — and for Iraq — was obtained by stealing $3 Trillion from Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds?

Barney Frank and Chris DODD are going to look after us? Gee, they’ve been such FERIOCOUS Watchdogs over the past 8 years, haven’t they? I remember the loud barking they gave to warn us. Well, actually, I don’t.

I wonder how we got into this mess ,given that such incorruptible tribunes were looking after the Little People?
Don Williams Says:
September 24th, 2008 at 8:32 am
To use Dan Kervick’s silly Dam analogy (because I have a sense of humor), I see the vast majority of Americans as peasants who are standing on top of the hill –and who are indifferent to the leaking dam because the local aristocrats have never allowed the peons to accumulate much anyway.

Now the aristocrats are trying to force us risk our lives –to go work at the base of the leaking dam in order to shore it up. And they will join us just as soon as they finish up hauling their bags of gold up the hill to safety.

Fuck them. After the deluge, most of them will have drowned. The rest will leave. And there will be lots of rich bottomland left for those who work for a living.

Paulson’s screaming that “The SYSTEM” must be saved. But “The SYSTEM” is what’s been fucking us for decades.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:United_States_Income_Distribution_1967-2003.svg

Why give $2 TRILLION to save it?
If “The System” can’t pony up $1 Billion every election to buy our COngress, maybe our Congress will start listening to us.
Steve LaBonne Says:
September 24th, 2008 at 8:37 am
Where is the credit crunch?
Armando Says:
September 24th, 2008 at 8:58 am
Salmon’s column convinced me that we do not need the bailout, if what he said is true. I imagine it is all BS.

With proponents of bailouts like Salmon, it need no detractors.

If I wanted to shoot down the bailout, I would be pushing that column.

Is that your intention Matt?
Armando Says:
September 24th, 2008 at 9:00 am
Avent’s piece is much much better imo.

Sounds like he is endorsing the Dodd Plan to me.
jdw Says:
September 24th, 2008 at 9:03 am
Helpful post, Matt. Thanks for posting it.

John
Glen Tomkins Says:
September 24th, 2008 at 11:54 am
The thrid chamber of oour legislature

Why do we need the buy-in of the banks? OK, so let’s go with the mortgage relief plan, and skip the bank bailout plan. The banks block this, how? Are they a third chamber of our legislature, that must approve of any relief plan?

You’re right, in a very real sense, big contributors are a third chamber. Hell, they often seem to be the only chamber that counts. On healthcare financing, for example, the only even half-way plausible reason to not just do single-payer is that we seem to need the approval of that third chamber.

I would propose that this crisis is an opportunity, not to give another set of political contributors more gravy, but to break the power of that third chamber of our national legislature. They hold sway only because in normal, good, times, the electorate isn’t paying attention. Well, whatever there is bad about the current situation, the silver lining is that what happens in Washington now has a lot more of the electorate’s attention than it usually gets.

Step back a second. This crisis is the result of the failure to regulate the shadow banking non-system. But that failure wasn’t a technical failure of the regulatory agencies in place, any more than the levee failure and flooding of New Orleans was a technical, civil engineering, failure. In both cases the ultimate, governing, regulatory loop, the Congress, had been systematically disabled in order to let campaign-contributing kleptocrats pillage the public interest for monetary gain. Restoring that governing regulatory loop, by decoupling it finally and decisively from campaign-contributing kleptocrats, is both what the present crisis demands, and what the present crisis clearly teaches, in terms understandable by the electorate, is necessary.
DRR Says:
September 24th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
I have nothing useful to say except that I trust and respect Felix Salmon’s opinions and his word is respected by other economic commenters I trust and respect (Daniel Davies, Brad Setser, Nouriel Roubini, Mark Thoma). That is all.
David Cay Johnston Says:
September 26th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
I think you mis-read my post.

I was not asking questions to get answers for myself. I know the answers. My point was to provoke fellow journalists to ask skeptical questions, to do their basic job of checking out what officials say.

Some of my points were intended to help journalists think about how Joe Sixpack sees things. Most people have no idea what the Ted Spread is, what a basis point is, what LIBOR is, but they do understand that their mailboxes continue to contain solicitations for credit cards and that unsound mortgges are still being offered.
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[url=http://the-winners-way.com][b]The-Winners-Way.com[/b][/url] is a site that shows you how to win 97% of your bets. Regular Gamblers through there are making around [b][u]$5000.00 to $12,000.00[/u][/b] a week.

Seriously, unbelievable returns! [url=http://www.the-winners-way.com][b]www.The-Winners-Way.com[/b][/url]

Anyway, I will be hangling out here more often so keep me posted on your earnings…
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Are there more testimonials around the site?
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