Hoover planned for mass arrests

The proud tradition lives on. (Yeah the story was from a few days ago, but still a wee bit relevant.) Read the rest of this post...

Key moments in modern American history, The Bush Years

The year 2000 delivered many new possibilities to friends of the GOP. A full food trough was just sitting there and many were puzzled, not quite sure what to do.

After the jump, a happy bunch who understood the full potential of a permanent GOP majority.

Mmmmmm, Iraq...oil, reconstruction contracts and security forces. Yummmmm. Post Katrina rebuilding. Delicious. Tax cuts for the richest Americans and send the bill to the middle class. You have what? No regulations for financial markets? Great! Just keep dishing out favors to millionaire farmers and throw in a splash of a dismantled consumer protection and we'll be set, for now. Read the rest of this post...

Subprime fiasco fallout - everyone suing everyone

Wouldn't it have been easier if "leaders" bothered to provide some reasonable ground rules? Obviously when people want to push the limits, they're going to find a way to do what they want to do. However, I reject the arguments that claim we could not have done anything and that "the market" will ultimately solve such excesses. Perhaps, but at what cost?

Our leaders both at the Fed and in Congress could have minimized the fallout but they all were too busy playing Republican financial experiments with our financial system. Just like the Republican societal experiments with supposed safe sex (abstinence programs), I wish they would just experiment amongst themselves and leave everyone else out of their little games.

A few examples of the lawsuits, after the jump.

This time, investors are aiming not only at mortgage lenders, brokers and investment banks but also insurers (American International Group), bond funds (State Street, Morgan Keegan), rating agencies (Moody's and Standard & Poor's) and homebuilders (Beazer Homes, Toll Brothers et al).

Borrowers, too, are suing both their lenders and the Wall Street firms that wrapped up their loans. Several groups of employees and pension-fund participants have filed so-called ERISA/401(k) suits against their own firms. Local councils in Australia are threatening to sue a subsidiary of Lehman Brothers over the sale of collateralised-debt obligations (CDOs), the Financial Times has reported. Lenders are even turning on each other; Deutsche Bank has filed large numbers of lawsuits against mortgage firms, claiming they owe money for failing to buy back loans that soured within months of being made.

“It seems that everyone is suing everyone,” says Adam Savett of RiskMetrics' securities-litigation group. “It surely can't be long before we get the legal equivalent of man bites dog, where a lender sues its borrowers for some breach of contract.”

The authorities, too, are baring their teeth. Several Wall Street banks have received subpoenas from New York's attorney-general, Andrew Cuomo, requesting information on their packaging of now-stricken securities. This comes on top of a deepening probe into possibly inflated home-price appraisals by brokers and lenders, including Washington Mutual and First American Corporation. Ohio's attorney-general, Marc Dann, has been just as hyperactive, suing over a dozen lenders and brokers.

No less important is the spadework being done by the Securities and Exchange Commission, America's main markets watchdog. It is conducting more than 20 investigations, including one into the arrangements banks entered into with hedge funds that may have been designed to hide or delay mark-to-market losses.

So instead of proper guidance and regulation, we are stuck in this cycle of lawsuits, counter lawsuits and probably counter-counter lawsuits. How is this any easier or less painful than regulation? I'd like to hear how this model is superior because it just looks nuts to me.

The other point that jumps out is the issue of lawsuits. Republicans always want to limit the right to sue though if we're not providing any oversight or regulations to protect people, what other options are there? Funny too that there are plenty of businesses suing, showing that they are just as open to lawsuits as regular people, despite their complaints about lawsuits. The old do as I say, not as I do from big business. Read the rest of this post...

CNN: Bush legacy a "mixed bag"

Is political success the same as a legacy? Read the rest of this post...

A few photos from yesterday

The kids are playing 1 foot away from me - I mean, it is a huge house, so they simply have to play make-believe next to Uncle John. I thought I'd share a few photos from yesterday.

My brother-in-law makes a huge breakfast for us every Christmas morning, here he's making the potatoes:



My niece was purveying the landscape while bro-in-law was cooking. We open gifts AFTER our brunch, which usually drives the kids batty.



Carmela the wonder dog was a bit overwhelmed by all the big boxes (well, big for her). They're a funny breed, YorkiPoos, the slightest "new" thing in the room scares the hell out of them. Carmela quite literally lept from the floor into my lap, without an invitation, and watched the festivities from the safety of the space between me and my sis.

Read the rest of this post...

Target, Sears and Macy's have slowest season in five years

During my recent visit to the US, I was shocked at how empty a local Macy's was just a few weeks before Christmas. I walked in to a nearly empty store (on a weekend) and went to the checkout with only one person ahead of me in line.

Sounds like the high gas prices hurt budgets this year. Maybe Cheney was wrong again, but when was he ever correct? Read the rest of this post...

Another NH paper slams Mitt

Over the weekend, The Concord Monitor called Mitt Romney a "phony" who should not be president.

Today, another major smackdown of Mitt from the Union Leader, which is the right-wing Republican paper in NH (and pro-McCain). The funny thing is that Mitt considers NH something of a second home. He has a big second home on Lake Winnipesaukee. But NH folks, at least the editorial writers, aren't loving the Mittster. Best line:

In this primary, the more Mitt Romney speaks, the less believable he becomes.

Classic. Read the rest of this post...

Wednesday Morning Open Thread

Well, that's over.

I'm in Maine for a couple days. One side benefit of this trip is getting to view the candidate ads for the New Hampshire primary. N.H. only has one t.v. commercial station, WMUR. Almost everything else comes from Boston or Portland. None of them have been that eye-catching, I'm just geeky enough to get excited that I can actually see the ads.

Have to go get coffee now. It's 21 degrees.

What's up? Read the rest of this post...

Happy Boxing Day

OK, I don't really have any idea about Boxing Day either besides what it says on Wiki so perhaps some AMERICAblog readers in the UK or Commonwealth countries can tell us more. We enjoyed a wonderful Christmas dinner with a fun group of expats last night. The group included a few locals, a German expat and then a few Americans. Needless to say the subject of politics and the 2008 was front and center.

Down to the last American, we all were aghast at the decline of rights in the US and debated whether Americans really give a damn. The consensus was that yes they are aware, but no, people just don't care. In Europe, you just assume you are being watched but in the US, it used to be a core values issue. There was also a general feeling that the US has drifted into the far right becoming a country that is a much different place than only a few years ago. From afar, the "I'm more of a good Christian than you" theme in the campaign is downright bizarre.

More after the jump on what us fuzzy foreigners think about the candidates.

Our host, Jim, is what could be best described as an old fashioned Republican. Precisely the kind that is being driven out of the party due to the Christian hard right. Jim repeatedly talks to me about how crazy the GOP has become since Bush arrived. Last night he talked about liking McCain, though he preferred the McCain of 2000 over the 2004 boot-licking McCain. In 2008, everyone thought that McCain is simply too old for the position. Pick any recent photo of the guy and he just looks bad. Outside of McCain, Jim was on board with either Edwards or Obama.

Of course, what 2008 election discussion would be complete without talking about Hillary? The room was generally accepting of voting for her though a few issues really annoyed the crowd. Voting for Iraq was the biggie. People may concede that getting out of Iraq needs to be planned properly, but why can't she just admit she made a mistake? Worse still, why vote for war with Iran? No matter how that subject has been spun, there's anger out there on this. (I had my own barn burner discussion with my sister on this two weeks ago.) If Hillary moves forward, she's going to have to explain this one because the group last night was fairly middle of the road, business types.

One visiting New Yorker also asked the question, "tell me what exactly is on her Senate resume that shows leadership?" Gaining experience via osmosis doesn't translate to many people. It's a theme that is receiving more coverage (on both sides) but she has her work cut out for her here too. Obama can talk about his Senate leadership on the issue of lobbyists (no matter how weak it was, in reality) and people can at least see something. Hillary leaves people wondering what exactly she has stood for since joining the Senate. If there is a record of leadership, nobody at the table knew about it including the person living in NYC who is a Democrat.

The hostess of the party, Hadia, was much more on the Hillary ship. She understood the complaints and did not necessarily agree with all of her positions, but Hadia blurted out "I would vote for Hillary." (I think my sister falls more in this camp as well. There is no love for those strange votes, but she is supportive of a woman taking a leadership position.) There are surely a lot of people out there that are fed up with men dominating politics (and business) and want to see this change. Despite improvements in the business world, the US is still pretty pathetic when it comes to women in politics. We have a long way to go before we are in the same league as Scandinavia, where the ratios are pretty even. When we have 50% of the population being blocked out of power, there is a problem. Hillary connects with many people - men and women - on this issue.

The consensus for this small group around the table was that no matter who the Democrat was, they would vote for that person. There was a consensus belief that the GOP was barking mad with their appeals to the religious right. Everyone pointed the finger in the direction of Karl Rove as the guy who created this problem for the GOP. He won a few elections but is losing the long term war for the heart and soul of the party. The Republicans now are so far down that lunatic fringe path, how could any thinking person connect with them? How could a country like the US be having a debate on evolution in 2007? If this is where the GOP is today, their future looks bleak beyond the fanatics of the religious right. Mainstream Americans just find them, well, strange and creepy.

Obviously this is just a small group of people, most of whom vote remotely so their votes are ignored anyway. (Thanks to Democrats and Republicans alike for that lovely little program of democracy for all.) What would be interesting to folks overseas is knowing if this represents what others are thinking and saying, or are these thoughts just limited to expats? What are people near you saying about the elections and the the candidates? Similar to our discussions over here or different? Read the rest of this post...