Via Powerline, which quotes Andrew McCarthy suggesting the bill should also take care of CRA.

As I argued with Qwinn, I'm in favor of destroying Qwinn, but I can't see how Democrats won't turn around and say, "Oh, you're pushing your political priorities in this bill? Okay, we want the government to bail out people defaulting on the mortgages they can't afford. That's our priority."

Another quote has an economist saying "Let the markets work."

Where were Barney and Chris?

And here's the Washington Post's breakdown of the bill, section by section.

With that, I'll try to keep off of the bailout thing today.

Good Clinton McCain Ad: more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:46 AM | Comments (133)
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You all think you're soooooo smart.

Week 4 results, combined with group 3 splitters, weighted and adjusted using DiT "Arbitrary and Capricious" indexing method.

1 mesablue 36
1 buzzion 36
3 JPT 35
3 chinpoko-mon 35
3 Hazy Dave 35
6 Nodakdrunkhobos 34
6 DaveSObscenelyNamedPicks 34
6 Roman Legions34
9 DrZin 33
9 AliceH 33
9 The Slicing Hammers 33
9 Drew W. 33
9 Yeah Right Whatever 33
9 jimmytheleg3 33
9 Physics Geek33
9 rudytbone33
9 moflicky33
9 Super Karate Monkey Death Car33
19 All Hail Alex 32
19 JarvisW 32
19 Liberrocky 32
19 gresmi 32
19 Dave R 32
19 Murph 32

more...

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 08:24 AM | Comments (13)
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Really. You've got to wonder about the maturity level of those who run CNN's web division when they do stuff like this with some regularity.

Update - I know this isn't the most important thing in the world, but as "Prof. Festus X." notes below, the media almost seems to go out of its way to find unflattering pictures of conservatives while at the same time finding new and interesting ways to make their hero look heroically heroic.

It may not be bias, but it's far from professional.

Posted by: Slublog at 07:19 AM | Comments (69)
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Liberal bastion of integrity and high moral standards, Alcee Hastings⁽¹⁾, has apologized for crude remarks slaming Palin last week.

"anybody toting guns and stripping moose don't care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks."

"I regret the comments I made last Tuesday that were not smart and certainly not relevant to hunters or sportsmen,"

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 06:36 AM | Comments (58)
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Happy Jewish New Year to any of our secret overlords who happen to pass through.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:07 AM | Comments (54)
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Tom Frickin' Coburn. Not exactly a liberal pansy. Not a socialist by most accounts.

Taxpayers deserve to know that there is no guarantee this plan will work, but there is a guarantee that we will face a financial catastrophe if we do nothing. If banks continue to fail and stop lending the average American could lose their job, be unable to secure a loan for a car, home or college education, and find their life savings and retirement in jeopardy. Our economy depends on having liquid assets available for credit and lending just as an automobile engine needs oil. If those liquid assets stop flowing, our economy will be seriously damaged and will require far more costly and lengthy repairs.

This bill does not represent a new and sudden departure from free market principles as much as it represents an emergency response to congressional actions that have ignored free market principles, and our Constitution, for decades. If anyone in Washington should offer their resignation it should be the members of Congress who peddled the fantasy of free home ownership without risk. No institution in our country is more responsible for the myth or borrowing without consequences than the United States Congress.

As much as members of Congress want to find scapegoats, the root of this problem is political greed in Congress. Members of Congress from both parties wanted short-term political credit for promoting home ownership even though they were putting our entire economy at risk by encouraging people to buy homes they couldnÂ’t afford. Then, instead of conducting thorough oversight and correcting obvious problems with unstable entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, members of Congress chose to ignore the problem and distract themselves with unprecedented amounts of pork-barrel spending.

Plus, the worthless promise of Fannie and Freddie to guarantee (oops! maybe not!) these shit mortgages then induced Wall Street to sell them as very secure, um, securities. And induced banks and private investors to buy them.

Since the Democrats will probably arrange matters so that more Republicans vote on for the bailout next time, but an equal number of Democrats change their votes to "Nay," I guess we should start working on a Plan B.

Federal government begins chartering its own lending agencies for creditworthy businesses? (Including things like GMAC.) That'll do some good.

Sounds kinda socialist but when banks stop lending someone is going to have to be the lender of last resort.

Hmmmm... Extremely provocative. So much raw red meat my arteries just puckered.

Posted by: Ace at 11:47 PM | Comments (217)
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I'm still skeptical we face a credit crunch requiring unprecedented government intrusion into the financial services industry. Today the Fed released the latest data. The weekly updates are current as of September 17 and they are instructive. more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:19 PM | Comments (136)
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33% in favor, 32% opposed, 35% not sure.

I don't post this to claim the public knows best. I didn't think that before and I don't think it now.

I'm posting it to disabuse people of any idea that the path to electoral success runs through opposition to the bailout.

And the numbers moved that much so far. Wait 'til things get bad.

At the end of this some of you might look back and think, "Christ, that was our last best chance to avoid the road to serfdom."

Posted by: Ace at 06:46 PM | Comments (253)
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At Instapundit.

"Off the record, every suspicion you have about MSM being in the tank for O is true. We have a team of 4 people going thru dumpsters in Alaska and 4 in arizona. Not a single one looking into Acorn, Ayers or Freddiemae. Editor refuses to publish anything that would jeopardize election for O, and betting you dollars to donuts same is true at NYT, others. People cheer when CNN or NBC run another Palin-mocking but raising any reasonable inquiry into obama is derided or flat out ignored. The fix is in, and its working."

Thanks to CJ.

Posted by: Ace at 06:01 PM | Comments (140)
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From, um, "Inspector Asshole." Anyone who's been reading these threads knows he's lived up to his name, at least as regards being a real burr in my sock.

It is -- to be unavoidably insulting -- my opinion that the more one actually knows about this crisis, the more one accepts it is, in fact, a crisis. (And quite likely a fixable one.) In this case, Inspector Asshole read something about the mark-to-market rules and it changed his mind.

What are those rules? Basically that whenever someone conducts an arms-length (legit) transaction in an asset, anyone holding similar securities must mark down the value of their securities to reflect the new market price. And thereby reduce the level of assets they show on their books. And since valuable properties (not as valuable as they once were sold for, God knows, but still valuable) are being deleveraged down to near zero value (sometimes by intentional manipulation -- some want these companies to go bankrupt in order to buy them out during bankruptcy proceedings), this not only reduces a company's paper assets, but it invokes rules about how much cash a bank or lending company must keep on hand in relation to its assets and obligations. As many of a bank's assets (these artificially diminished toxic assets) are now pretty close to zero, a bank can wind up bankrupt on paper when, in reality, it actually has a fairly decent balance sheet.

Some propose temporarily suspending these mark-to-market rules... perhaps let them value these assets on paper according to their best price in a two-month window after the housing bubble broke. That would, hopefully, reflect a diminished but still somewhat realistic value, far less than the prices they once sold for, nicely corrected by the bubble burst, but nowhere near the close-to-zero value these assets supposedly have now.

Before you take this to be a panacea-- the only thing we need to do --bear in mind Newt Gingrich was proposing this (among other measures) two weeks ago but has now decided that some sort of rescue is now required, and that simply reforming the mark-to-market rules is not, at this point, going to stabilize the markets and get credit flowing again.

Helpful, probably. But not helpful enough. Because the reality is that these assets can't be sold at the moment, so even if they're marked up on paper to something resembling a realistic value, banks and institutions holding them are still currently sitting on billions in unsalable, illiquid assets.

More on Mark-to-Market: From November 7, 2007. Predictable.

If you think banks are writing off large amounts of assets now, wait until new accounting rules take effect this month.

The Royal Bank of Scotland Group estimates that U.S. banks and brokers, already under massive losses caused by the collapse in the subprime credit market, potentially face hundreds of billions of dollars in write-offs because of what are called Level 3 accounting rules, according to Bloomberg.
Related Articles

* The SECÂ’s New Take on Loan Commitments

The U.S. Financial Accounting Standards Board Rule 157, which is effective for fiscal years that begin after November 15, 2007, will make it harder for companies to avoid putting market prices on securities considered hardest to value, known as Level 3 assets, the wire service reported.

''The heat is on and it is inevitable that more players will have to revalue at least a decent portion'' of assets they currently value using ''mark-to-make believe,'' Bob Janjuah, Royal Bank's chief credit strategist, reportedly wrote in a note published Wednesday.

Janjuah noted that, for example, Morgan Stanley has the equivalent of 251 percent of its equity in Level 3 assets, Goldman Sachs has 185 percent, Lehman Brothers has 159 percent and Citigroup has 105 percent, according to Bloomberg.

On the other hand, Merrill Lynch has Level 3 assets equal to 38 percent of its equity. As a result, Janjuah believes Merrill ''may well come out of all of this in the best health.''

In the fair value hierarchy, Level 1 is simple mark-to-market, whereby an assetÂ’s value is based on an actual price. Level 2, known as mark-to-model and used when there aren't any quoted prices available, is an estimate based on observable inputs, Bloomberg explains.

Level 3 consists of unobservable inputs, such as those that reflect the reporting entityÂ’s own assumptions about what market participants would use to price the asset or liability (including risk), developed using the best information available without undue cost and effort, according to FASB. There is no verification requirement if the assumptions are in line with those of market participants.

Mike Pence is still claiming that repealing or modifying mark-to-market would substantially fix the problem. Well, for one thing, that allows companies to hold on to these for longer and perhaps avoid bankruptcy, but it doesn't actually fix the problem of these assets having a current value of zero.

Further, the Pence plan also involves loans and insuring the value of mortgages -- which seems to me to be an even bigger intervention in the market, and potentially putting the US on the hook for even more obligations it couldn't possibly cover if they all went tits up.

Allowing holders of these securities to suddenly mark up their values does little at all to restore market confidence or get the markets in these assets functioning again.

I just think the more loans you give these guys, the more you're increasing the odds they won't actually pay them back. Balance sheets don't look much better with huge loans on them.

Anyway, Inspector Asshole (ahem) weighs in below:

more...

Posted by: Ace at 04:55 PM | Comments (189)
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