Cramer: It's a Worldwide Crash
October 6, 2008 10:35 pm

By Jim Cramer

........The Fed has been put out to pasture, a victim of being theoretical, not practical, an organization that simply didn't take seriously those of us who warned them in person and on TV. What did they think, we made it up for ratings? Is that what they thought? You think I, a reputed bull, want to go on TV and scream that they knew nothing?.......

......Even as late as the summer, the Fed thought for sure the price of iron and copper meant more than the implosion of housing-based finance.......

....... Which is where we are this morning, in a worldwide crash that will leave us with gigantic institutions that we have never heard of, with balance sheets that are ridiculously large that must fall, and a hedge fund community that has lost control of its asset base.

And in this moment we are supposed to be buyers?

I say let it fall without me. I say keep selling industrials unless they yield more than 4%.

I say it is no longer in the hands of the central banks. It is in the hands of rational people making rational decisions to get out before more institutions fail, more hedge funds liquidate, and still lower prices are upon us.

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Make-Believe Maverick
October 7, 2008 8:29 pm

Tim Dickinson, Rolling Stone:

This is the story of the real John McCain, the one who has been hiding in plain sight. It is the story of a man who has consistently put his own advancement above all else, a man willing to say and do anything to achieve his ultimate ambition: to become commander in chief, ascending to the one position that would finally enable him to outrank his four-star father and grandfather.

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They're Stealing from You and Me -- Where's the Outrage?
October 7, 2008 8:39 pm

By Garrison Keillor,

....John McCain is a lifelong deregulator and believer in letting brokers and bankers do as they please -- remember Lincoln Savings and Loan and his intervention with federal regulators in behalf of his friend Charles Keating, who then went to prison? Remember Neil Bush, the brother of the C.O., who, as a director of Silverado S&L, bestowed enormous loans on his friends without telling fellow directors that the friends were friends and who, when the loans failed, paid a small fine and went skipping off to other things?

McCain now decries greed on Wall Street and suggests a commission be formed to look into the problem. This is like Casanova coming out for chastity.....

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Palin's future, according to Garrison Keillor
October 9, 2008 10:45 pm

GARRISON KEILLOR

.....It was dishonest, cynical men who put forward a clueless young woman for national office, hoping to juice up the ticket, hoping she could skate through two months of chaperoned campaigning, but the truth emerges: The lady is talking freely about matters she has never thought about. The American people have an ear for B.S. They can tell when someone's mouth is moving and the clutch is not engaged. When she said, "One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let's commit ourselves just every day, American people, Joe Six-Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again. Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us these dollars," people smelled gas.

Some Republicans adore her because they are pranksters at heart and love the consternation of grown-ups. The ne'er-do-well son of the old Republican family as president, the idea that you increase government revenue by cutting taxes, the idea that you cut social services and thereby drive the needy into the middle class, the idea that you overthrow a dictator with a show of force and achieve democracy at no cost to yourself -- one stink bomb after another, and now Governor Palin.

She is a chatty sportscaster who lacks the guile to conceal her vacuity, and she was Mr. McCain's first major decision as nominee. This troubles independent voters, and now she is a major drag on his candidacy. She will get a nice book deal from Regnery and a new career making personal appearances for forty grand a pop, and she'll become a trivia question, "What politician claimed foreign-policy expertise based on being able to see Russia from her house?" And the rest of us will have to pull ourselves out of the swamp of Republican economics.

Your broker kept saying, "Stay with the portfolio, don't jump ship," and you felt a strong urge to dump the stocks and get into the money market where at least you're not going to lose your shirt, but you didn't do it and didn't do it, and now you're holding a big bag of brown bananas. Me, too. But at least I know enough not to believe desperate people who are talking trash. Anybody who got whacked last week and still thinks McCain-Palin is going to lead us out of the swamp and not into a war with Iran is beyond persuasion in the English language. They'll need to lose their homes and be out on the street in a cold hard rain before they connect the dots.

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John McCain - Seriously Out of Touch
October 9, 2008 11:01 pm

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Palin And The Alaskan Secessionists
October 9, 2008 11:15 pm

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Private sector loans, not Fannie or Freddie, triggered crisis
October 11, 2008 7:44 pm

By David Goldstein and Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

As the economy worsens and Election Day approaches, a conservative campaign that blames the global financial crisis on a government push to make housing more affordable to lower-class Americans has taken off on talk radio and e-mail.

Commentators say that's what triggered the stock market meltdown and the freeze on credit. They've specifically targeted the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which the federal government seized on Sept. 6, contending that lending to poor and minority Americans caused Fannie's and Freddie's financial problems.

Federal housing data reveal that the charges aren't true, and that the private sector, not the government or government-backed companies, was behind the soaring subprime lending at the core of the crisis.

Subprime lending offered high-cost loans to the weakest borrowers during the housing boom that lasted from 2001 to 2007. Subprime lending was at its height from 2004 to 2006.

Federal Reserve Board data show that:

_ More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions.

_ Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year.

_ Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics.........

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Booing Pretty Evident Here
October 12, 2008 2:57 pm

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David Letterman rips McCain again: "I just don't know if we can trust him"
October 12, 2008 3:00 pm

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Darker and Darker
October 12, 2008 4:35 pm

TPM - .....You can see the video embedded below. The gist is that Quinnell apparently did say "Arab terrorist." (ed.note: It would be more accurate to say that she insisted he was one in the interview. It's unclear from interview whether she actually used the second word with McCain.) She got the idea from a pamphlet she got not from the McCain campaign but from a fellow volunteer at the local McCain headquarters, where she's a volunteer. She's been sending the pamphlet to people in her area. And she thinks that McCain really knows that Obama's Arab but didn't want to get into it with her on camera......

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Blue Star Families: Military Wives for Obama
October 12, 2008 4:41 pm

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Poll: Monthly churchgoers swing toward Obama
October 12, 2008 9:38 pm

USA Today.....Voters who attend religious services one to two times a month are supporting the Democratic nominee by 60%, up from 49% who supported Sen. John Kerry in 2004, based on a survey released Oct. 8 by the nonpartisan group Faith in Public Life......

.....Exit polls in 2004 showed Bush won 51% of the vote among monthly churchgoers.

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Alaskan Independence Party: The Last Refuge of a Scoundrel
October 12, 2008 11:03 pm

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

........AIP's charter commits the party "to the ultimate independence of Alaska," from the United States which it refers to as "the colonial bureaucracy in Washington." It proclaims Alaska's 1959 induction as a state "as illegal and in violation of the United Nations charter and international law."

AIP's creation was inspired by the rabidly violent anti-Americanism of its founding father Joe Vogler, "I'm an Alaskan, not an American," reads a favorite Vogler quote on AIP's current website, "I've got no use for America or her damned institutions." According to Vogler AIP's central purpose was to drive Alaska's secession from the United States. Alaska, says current Chairwoman Lynette Clark, "should be an independent nation."

Vogler was murdered in 1993 during an illegal sale of plastic explosives that went bad. The prior year, he had renounced his allegiance to the United States explaining that, "The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government." He cursed the stars and stripes, promising, "I won't be buried under their damned flag...when Alaska is an independent nation they can bring my bones home." Palin has never denounced Vogler or his detestable anti-Americanism.

Palin's husband Todd remained an AIP party member from 1995 to 2002. Sarah can be described in McCarthy-era palaver as a "fellow traveler." While retaining her Republican registration, she attended the AIP's 1994 convention where the party called for a draft constitution to secede from the United States and create an independent nation of Alaska. The McCain Campaign has reluctantly acknowledged that she also attended AIP's 2000 Convention. She apparently found the experience so inspiring that she agreed to give a keynote address at the AIP's 2006 convention and she recorded a video greeting for this year's 2008 convention. In other words, this is not something that happened when she was eight! .........

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