Relief for troubled assets! Just in Time!

From big Wall Street houses to small community banks, executives have expressed an interest in signing up for the bailout. wsj

Let's make that the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. So many of God's assets are troubled. So little time.

The general public has bristled at the notion of risking $700 billion in taxpayer funds to address mistakes on Wall Street, and many constituents have urged their elected officials to vote against the plan. nyt

One odd thing: The WSJ headline is*:

Crisis Hits Europe's Banks
As U.S. Seals Bailout Deal

But the story doesn't mention European banks a single time.

Guess we're all a little woozy.

[*The story was later reduced to "U.S. Seals Bailout Deal" - "seals" still sounds bit ominous]

As Obama noted after the debate, McCain didn't mention the middle class. Nor do these stories. Perhaps McCain is actually speaking the mainstream argot, and Obama, not.

Poser for a poseur

This crisis is complicated by innovative financial instruments that Wall Street created and distributed. They're making it harder for officials and Wall Street executives to know where the next set of risks are hiding and also spreading the fault lines of the crisis.

The latest trouble spot is an area called credit-default swaps, which are private contracts that let firms trade bets on whether a borrower is going to default. When a default occurs, one party pays off the other. The value of the swaps rise and fall as market reassesses the risk that a company won't be able to honor its obligations. Firms use these instruments both as insurance -- to hedge their exposures to risk -- and to wager on the health of other companies. There are now credit-default swaps on more than $62 trillion in debt -- up from about $144 million a decade ago.

One of the big new players in the swaps game was AIG, the world's largest insurer and a major seller of credit-default swaps to financial institutions and companies. When the credit markets were booming, many firms bought this insurance from AIG, believing the insurance giant's strong credit ratings and large balance sheet could protect them from bond and loan defaults. AIG, which collected generous premiums for the swaps, believed the risk of default was low on many securities it insured.

As of June 30, an AIG unit had written credit-default swaps on more than $446 billion in credit assets, including mortgage securities, corporate loans and complex structured products. Last year, when rising subprime mortgage delinquencies damaged the value of many securities AIG had insured, the firm was forced to book large write-downs on its derivative positions. That spooked investors, who reacted by dumping its shares, making it harder for AIG to raise the capital it increasingly needed.

Few financial crises have been sorted out in modern times without massive government intervention. Increasingly, officials are coming to the conclusion that even more might be needed. WSJ

Let's ask the experts. What would Sarah do?

It would be ungracious of this blog,

having celebrated Mr. Friedman here on more than one occasion for his stalwart billionaire bravado, his goody two-shoes sadism, his facile one flat suck-on-this world of dyslexic olive oil and so much more not to note the latest in a series of panegyrics honoring his moustachioed meatbath, this, from Greenwald:

Tom Friedman doesn't understand why America is unpopular in the world

Data dada

Hey now, another dadaist blog (if that's what this is) entitled Amy:

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But it's not at all the same thing as Emilyshlomoeme. On Amy, the disruption of the standardized "conversation" appears driven not by some authorial intervention, but by some spasmodic tagging mechanism that apparently thinks it fine to just punch holes in anything resembling prose, and add links to seemingly unrelated business propositions:

Caesar Salad Southwest Style

Jalapeno Croutons

2 Tbs Jalapenos, seeded car insurance insurance quote diced. If fresh jalapenos are not available you can use canned Macaroni & Cheese for a milder taste try substituting canned green chilies.

tsp Cayenne Pepper
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2 Cups Milk
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In a medium sauce cheap, reliable website hosting combine the jalapenos, cayenne, salt and milk and bring to a boil. [link ]

or

Come On In - The Water Is Fine

The Bible uses water as a symbol of the Holy Spirit mesothilioma the Word of God. We know that without water there can be no living matter as we know it on the earth. Water is essential. Go without water for a day or so and you will see just how important water is to the human body. The same thing is ture concerning spiritual things.

Without spiritual water all things remain in a mortgages loans state. [link]

"Unrelated" is hardly the word. The linkage, burrowing up from below (or, blasting through, like a shotgun perforating a television screen from behind), connects to the drive to sell. (Can we simply recognize, with Zizookian aplomb, that Freud's death drive is not unrelated to Capitalism's sell drive?) The irrelevant has never seemed so germane.

What's arbitrary is the "content." Amy delaminates the myth that blogs are composed by individuals sharing their passions. Under a certain lens, the New York Times might not look entirely dissimilar.

Statesmanlike Custody of the Assets

JUAN GONZALEZ: And you also detail in your book the same kind of flimflam going on with the soldiers who are recruited into the military, a bonus pay that they get that then, if they happen to be injured too soon when they get on the battlefield, they then have to pay back?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Yeah. I found that just absolutely astounding. You know, you’re doing this research, and you find things that—I say, “Linda, are you sure? This can’t be!” But they said—you know, the view is, they signed a contract to serve for three years. The fact that they get blown up after one month means they haven’t fulfilled their contract.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, what happens?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: They have to pay back the money. Demo Now