McCain: Fundamentals Still Strong
Given the amount of crap he’s taken for it, I find it pretty shocking that John McCain is sticking with his “the fundamentals of our economy are strong” line, but here he is again:
Now the “to be fair” thing you’re supposed to say is that he follows up the fundamentals are strong line with acknowledgment that “these are very, very difficult times.”
But this of course raises the question, even being as fair as possible to McCain, of what the heck he thinks this means. The fundamentals are strong in what sense? Or, perhaps better, strong compared to what? America continues to be a very wealthy society and our citizens are much better off than most people around the world. You’d rather be an average American in 2008 than an average Chinese person or an average Indian. Is that all he means? Or does he have something in mind? The underlying financial system certainly doesn’t seem especially sound. To my ear, the current line just sounds like a compromise between one adviser who wants to appeal to the Luskin/Hannity element in the base and another adviser who wants McCain to sound normal, and nevermind if the resulting text makes sense.
45 Responses to “McCain: Fundamentals Still Strong”
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September 15th, 2008 at 11:38 am
John McCain: He flip-flops in real time!
September 15th, 2008 at 11:43 am
MATT! Please cease and desist your coverage of the financial crisis.
Janitors lose while big fat mean banker guys win? That is NOT how this is playing out. The Fed is widening lending practices to help our S&L, give AIG some options, and help stem the effects on Main Street.
I’ve chided you before for writing about economic matters you don’t understand. There are REALLY good progressive arguments to be made about the role of regulation in light of this meltdown. Start making those, not weird and false anecdotes about janitors and misallocated burdens.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Supposing, for the sake of argument, that there are actual rational goals in McCain’s statements about the economy… we conclude that making sense is not one of them.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:46 am
We’re passing through what Alan Greenspan calls a “once in a century financial crisis”. We can all panic, as the Democrats seem to want, and have a financial crash and a depression — or we can suck it up and realize that, while some big financial institutions have blown through their capital, the basic American economy is sound.
As FDR said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”. Politicians should help re-assure Americans and calm markets, not promote panic. When the economy crashes, it’s average people that get hurt most.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:50 am
My father-in-law just turned 82. All around him lament his sometimes tenuous grasp of reality. Dementia is suspected. We worry what the future holds and how we’ll pay for hospice. I sympathize with Cindy McCain in this regard. She must have similar worries, minus the “How in the hell am I going to pay for it?” part. Were my father-in-law to profess an interest in leading the free world it might hasten our plans for his more closely monitored dat to day living. For John McCain to have the same desire elicits no such concerns on the part of most. Individual and collective dementia can both be ignored I guess.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:50 am
This just in from the Financial Times about an Obama rally. It shows why Obama’s supporters are his worst enemies:
He avoided direct attacks against Sarah Palin, Mr McCain’s running mate and the catalyst of Republican resurgence. But his supporters showed less restraint.
“You want to know the honest truth? I think she’s like a bad actor from a B-list sex movie,” said Paula Vanbuskirk, an Obama-supporting independent, whose contempt for the Alaska governor and self-styled “hockey mom” was shared by almost everyone questioned by the Financial Times.
If it was Mr McCain’s intention to ignite a fresh “culture war” between middle America and east coast liberals by nominating Ms Palin, the evidence in Manchester suggested he has succeeded in spectacular fashion.
“I just do not trust the American people,” said Eleanor Shavell, 58, a computer programmer, who, along with several others, joked she would move to Canada if Mr Obama loses. “I cannot believe that 80 per cent of this country thinks we’re headed in the wrong direction yet 50 per cent are supporting McCain and Palin. I guess it’s like at school, there’s always got to be a bottom 50 per cent.”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/afc25cf0-827f-11dd-a019-000077b07658.html
September 15th, 2008 at 11:52 am
Well, it actually kinda fits with his recent suggestions to the effect that the economy would be fine if the government would just get out of the way.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:53 am
There’s no disconnect between “difficult times” and “fundamentally sound”. You’re not dead, are you? You’re not screaming on a gurney for some more morphine, you? Then, things are fundamentally sound.
Now, get off one of my 12 lawns.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:54 am
E. O’Neal:
Glad to see you think everything is fine while Wall Street is in meltdown mode. It’s not a matter of fear. If the economy was sound, there wouldn’t be a need for “B-52″ Ben to take the measures he has.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:55 am
Re Ringo Meza: And if you went to a McCain rally and sought out the most objectionable supporters to write a story about, you would only find diplomatic critiques? Of course not. There are plenty of appalling supporters in both camps.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Ringo Meza:
The same could be said about the fundies and a bunch of other McCain supporters. Seems you haven’t heard about the Obama waffle mix thing yet. Check this out:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/washington/AP-Obama-Waffles.html
September 15th, 2008 at 11:58 am
If you build your house on a stone foundation, but you build a shitty house, all you have is a shitty house. But hey, when the hurricane comes, at least you still have that stone foundation.
If the fundamentals are sound when everything is collapsing, what could possibly happen to make the fundamentals unsound? And if the fundamentals will never be unsound, then why would we want proven losers like McCain and Phil Gramm to rebuild when we already know that they’re largely responsible for the current mess?
When your shitty house on the stone foundation blows down, you don’t go right back to the same architect and contractor to build you a new one. Unless you’re a fucking moron, but then again, these are Republicans we’re talking about.
September 15th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
ringo meza, given the affection of many mccain-palin supporters for racist invocations, i’d stfu on that game.
e. o’neal, honest to goodness, “suck it up?” that’s your solution? “suck it up?”
suck what up? the nature of the problem we have right now – the deleveraging of the economy and the destruction of asset values – don’t have a precedent at this scale. there is no easy way to work these problems through without lots of damage all over the place.
given the apalling failures of Bush League Economics, we aren’t loaded with options: interest rates might possibly go one notch lower, but if you don’t have capital to lend, you can’t lend it. fiscal stimulus would be nice, but the price we may have to pay on long-term paper may be too high for the rest of the economy to endure.
“sucking it up” doesn’t do anything to address the very real basis of very real anxieties….
September 15th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
The ‘fundamentals’ he would talk about, if he were ever pinned down on his empty pablum, would probably be nonsense about the spirit of America and the soul of the American worker. Slogans, but you know, not actual economic fundamentals.
That’s as specific as you’ll get from the man who openly admits his economic ineptitude.
http://thesebastards.blogspot.com/
September 15th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Fundamentalists. He meant to say that America’s fundamentalists are strong.
September 15th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
I really would like to know what McCain considers to be the “fundamentals” of the US economy. On a meaner note, I’d REALLY like Sarah Palin to try to explain what McCain means.
September 15th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
To use a soccer term, a definite “own goal” by McCain.
Obama camp, please copy.
September 15th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
To be fair, John McCain is a tired old man who in his own words “doesn’t know much about economics” and seems unwilling to alter (or “change”) the talking points his handlers have spoon fed him.
September 15th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
I just love the Republican “clapping for Tinkerbell” economic policy. Mind of matter, it seems is parmount. There is no plan, or at least no explanation of a plan on how to deal with these economic issues. No press conference by Bush, nothing. Leadership what is that?
September 15th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Wait a sec, I thought “clapping for Tinkerbell” was Republican foreign policy. Isn’t it part of the Bush Doctrine?
September 15th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
If anyone is inclined to take Bush/McCain/Luskin/O’Neal’s “somewhere over the Rainbow” bullshit seriously, I suggest they look at what
Nouriel Roubini was saying this morning. (Roubini is the NYU economist who has been warning us this shitstorm was coming for over a year)
See
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/56803/Feds-Right-to-Let-Lehman-Fail-But-It’s-a-’Dangerous-Risky’-Path-Roubini-Says?tickers=LEH,MER,BAC,FNM,AIG,C,JPM
Let’s see: Bernanke is letting banks put up shitty stocks (equities) as collateral so they can borrow $Billions of OUR dollars and loan it to the bank’s own brokerage subsidaries.
Wow — I don’t think they were that fucking brazen even during the Great Hoover Depression.
September 15th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Stupid remark of the day award goes to George The Moron –”In the LONG RUN everything…blah blah blah”
Second place goes to CNBC’s Erin Burnett –who said on an NBC News Special report that the morning’s market action had been reassuring: “While you may have a cancer in one limb of the body — if you think of the U.S. economy as the body — the entire body is not necessariyl going to have cancer, too.”
I take it Erin has not talked to an oncologist. Or Googled “metastatis”
September 15th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
OK, I give up. Let’s all panic and shut down the markets and the economy. Then we can all stand in breadlines and vote for the Democrats who did more than their part in causing our distress. “Happy days are here again!”
September 15th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
I wonder, does McCain accost old black women in the street and ask them to prepare him lunch?
September 15th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
another outstanding comment from my new favorite AIRHEAD, e. o’neal.
lacking the intellectual wherewithal to make a coherent argument (”suck it up” being e. o’neal’s contribution to our understanding of the current crisis), e. o’neal then leaps directly into the idiotic straw man critique, topped with the old chestnut that the dems did it too!
what an awesome intellect: i’d say e. o’neal, by current standards, is at least qualified to be vice president!
September 15th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
The McCain “things aren’t really so bad” comment today in FL is just really bizarre and compounds his problems. It’s seemed clear for awhile now that he’s off his rocker so can’t say I’m too surprised that he himself would say something that is so out of touch on today of all days. But… presumably he has staff and advisors surrounding him committed to keeping him from going completely off the rails. When he pulls one of these boneheaded maneuvers, I think, wow … It’s not only that he’s lost it but he seems to have no one around him who can tell his ass from his elbow. Are there no Young Turks on Team McCain?
September 15th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
oh, come on, you whiners, more people die every year in car accidents than have died from this economy. And people in North Korea are eating bark right now. You aren’t eating bark, are you? Economy is sound. Q.E.D.
Just practicing the FOX news talking points you’ll be hearing tonight.
September 15th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
McCain can’t simultaneously run on his record of calling for more regulation of and transparency in the industry while simultaneously claiming that the only problem is too much government regulation getting in the way of the market.
His history on torture, tax cuts, immigration, addressing global warming, etc has very solidly been “whatever I was for 5 or 10 years ago when I was working up the maverick reputation, I have abandoned it for whatever the far-right Bush position happens to be on the issue.” So, no, I will not give him the benefit of his record of 10 years ago when he is very simply stating that regulation is the problem this week.
September 15th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
1) More news re our “strong fundamentals”. From
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/business/15fed.html
“Administration officials acknowledged last week that more bank failures were inevitable, and the main protection for depositors — the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation — is likely to exhaust its reserves.”
2) Wait –it gets better:
“That is similar to an approach urged by Alan Greenspan, Mr. Bernanke’s predecessor as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Mr. Greenspan, who has long been a staunch opponent of government interference in the economy, said on Sunday that the federal government might have to shore up some financial institutions.
“This is a once-in-a-half-century, probably once-in-a-century type of event,” Mr. Greenspan said in an interview on ABC. “I think the argument has got to be that there are certain types of institutions which are so fundamental to the functioning of the movement of savings into real investment in an economy that on very rare occasions — and this is one of them — it’s desirable to prevent them from liquidating in a sharply disruptive manner.”
3) Given that it is Greenspan’s Republican incompetence that help push us into this mess, I don’t understand why any reporter cares what Greenspan says.
September 15th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
The part where McCain says these are difficult times sounds like a pander to the nation of whiners out there. Come on, Johnny Straight-talk, give it to us straight: everything is fine!
Wasn’t there a scene in the Simpsons at some point with people protesting carrying signs that read “Everything is Fine.” “Don’t change anything?” Someone’s got to dig that up.
September 15th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
“Times are difficult but the fundamentals are sound” is another way of saying “Times are difficult but we really don’t have to do anything about it.”
September 15th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
The problem with McCain saying “these are very, very difficult times” is that it makes it sound like we are having bad weather. It takes no responsibility for having been part of a system that caused the “difficult times,” and it suggests nothing we can do to end and prevent such “difficult times.” The implication is that we merely need to ride it out, and all will be fine. And it’s true that when you are nine-house-owning millionaire like McCain, you can basically ride out “difficult times” with little or no impact on your life, and little or no impact on your future. Not so for the vast majority of Americans.
September 15th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
“The fundamentals are sound” is an economist’s cliche which is employed to argue that a given market move is not genuinely a response to new information but the result of either speculation or psychological over-reaction. So “the fundamentals” in a specific context might be some of the following: data relating to employment, wages, retail sales, new housing starts, durable goods sales, office space occupancy rates, exports, inventories, etc., etc.
But McCain doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s just mouthing the cliche.
September 15th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
I lived in an up-and-coming southern Chinese city in 2006-2007. Many of my Chinese friends/coworkers, who were generally 20something urban professionals making about $400/month, would express a sentiment I would summarize as: “it must be sad being from the richest country on Earth, because you know your best days are behind you.”
From a strict utility function of happiness, they were getting much greater satisfaction from their self-betterment than most Americans (and for less money/effort). Which makes sense: a 10% raise for a young Chinese professional might mean “now I can buy an air conditioner.” For most Americans it would mean “now I can buy a 10% nicer air conditioner.” These are not equivalent experiences.
Having said all that, I love hearing this kind of argument from Republicans. Keep it up guys!
September 27th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
FUCK OBAMA VOTE McCAIN!
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