Cknolls

We've just been alerted that despite House Democrats relenting on extending bans on offshore drilling and oil shale in the continuing resolution (CR) appropriations bill, Democrat Senate Leader Harry Reid has decided to sneak an extension of the oil shale ban through as Congress fights over the financial bailout. Oil shale in America's West is estimated to hold be between 800 billion and 2 trillion barrels of oil — that is more than three times the proven oil reserves in Saudi Arabia alone. Here is the text of Reid's proposed new ban on oil shale, that he is trying to add as an amendment to the CR or move seperately as a "stimulus" package, or we should say an anti-stimulus package if this is included. Sec 1602 continues ban on oil shale. The language follows: SEC. 1602. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, including section 152 of division A of H.R. 2638 (110th Congress), the Consolidated Security, Disaster Assistance, and Continuing Appropriations Act, 2009, the terms and conditions contained in section 433 of division F of Public Law 110–161 shall remain in effect for the 19 fiscal year ending September 30, 2009. It would be an insult to all Americans if Senate Democrats worked to bailout Wall Street while damaging our future prosperity by banning development of vast energy reserves in oil shale. Shameful! Harry Reid

First $250 billion allocated to the Treasury. Another $100 billion will be available to the program. Remaining $350 billion could be used unless Congress prohibits it.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08269/914907-85.stm With any luck his seat will be one that is a pick-up for the elephants.

QUOTE (jackie hayes @ Sep 23, 2008 -> 10:28 AM) No, not pedantic at all. There were Dems at the state and local levels passing actual laws, which were preempted by Republicans at the federal level. Gramlich at the Fed, calling for actual regulation. You make the claim that everybody was rah-rah about subprime mortgages, but there were people pushing against them -- all Dems, as far as I can tell. If the Dems were as happy as Repubs about subprime mortgages, why were those state and local laws passed? As for McCain, he did favor some increased regulation for Fannie and Freddie. If you mean that, then blaming Dems is weak. S.190 died in a GOP committee in a GOP Senate (no filibuster). Oxley, a Republican, has explicitly blamed the WH for the failure of the House legislation. If you mean that McCain tried to regulate subprime mortgage lenders but got "shot down by Dems", please provide the details. Well the NY Times disagrees with you. 2003, that is, when the New York Times ran this article on proposed reforms to Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac: The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago. Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry. The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios. The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt -- is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates. ... The proposal is the opening act in one of the biggest and most significant lobbying battles of the Congressional session. ... ''The current regulator does not have the tools, or the mandate, to adequately regulate these enterprises,'' Mr. Oxley said at the hearing. ''We have seen in recent months that mismanagement and questionable accounting practices went largely unnoticed by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight,'' the independent agency that now regulates the companies. ... Significant details must still be worked out before Congress can approve a bill. Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing. ''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing." Barney Frank is a joke. He was one of the biggest impediments to change at Fannie/Freddie.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 24, 2008 -> 06:28 PM) Oh Goodie. Everything I've read or heard about this thing since it was proposed is screaming "Horrible idea." Bottom to top. I heard someone say that the $700 billion was determined by Bernanke estimating that 5% of mortgages would default.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Sep 24, 2008 -> 01:21 PM) Shoot. You could have just given me $25 and I would have made him look a million times better. I would have picked up some Crest White Strips for him. LOL

For onetime make-up fee? If so, I would be pissed if I were one of his donors.

QUOTE (PlaySumFnJurny @ Sep 24, 2008 -> 09:35 AM) You have heard of the "Great Depression," right? Not to hijack the thread or make excuses for Joe Biden, but that comment is just flat wrong. The depression is what caused the market to crash.

And a crash in the stock market does not last 3 YEARS.

QUOTE (PlaySumFnJurny @ Sep 24, 2008 -> 08:12 AM) Looks like there might be a few problems with this post, too: Television was around back then, as the first station license was granted in 1928. http://inventors.about.com/od/tstartinvent...sion_Time_3.htm Furthermore, although the "Great Crash" occurred in 1929, another extremely severe crash occurred in 1939, during the heart of FDR's presidency and the rise of television. http://mutualfunds.about.com/cs/history/p/crash8.htm I'm surprised the MSM didn't lay that cover for Joey boy.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 24, 2008 -> 07:33 AM) http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/194057.php I'm sure the MSM is waiting to run this story for their weekend editions to maximize their exposure.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Sep 23, 2008 -> 03:18 PM) haha imagine if Palin said that. a complete MSM frenzy of attacks. What about the senile 13 car driving, 7 home owning old geezer?

I'm posting this here instead of the DEM thread so as not to be politically incorrect. This follows SSk's piece in the Dem thread. This is hilarious!: These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis," said Rep. Barney Frank, then ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. "The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 23, 2008 -> 01:07 PM) There's a big flaw in your argument, and it's the flaw that has caused this bailout...that we let these banks get so leveraged and so interconnected and so big that if any of them truly go down then basically it winds up being a gigantic disaster. Thanks to the bank deregulations of the late 90's, these banks were able to borrow enormous sums of money from each other, vastly more than they had assets they were able to cover in the event that their debts were called in. By doing so they were able to push up their profits enormously in the short term, but that left them over-leveraged in the event that the housing market turned, and now they simply don't have the money to cover the debts they wrote...and if they go down, they take every other one with them because they all owe a piece of themselves to each other. That's why Lehman went down right after the FNMA nationalization, that's why AIG was bought by the government right after Lehman went down. There are really only 2 options here. Either we be prepared to bail out these "Too big to fail companies" if we don't regulate them well enough, or we expand antitrust activities so that these banks and investment firms never get too big to fail, which would mean breaking up a hell of a lot of companies right now. I may have missed it, but can someone name a large commercial bank that has failed.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Sep 22, 2008 -> 11:38 AM) I put a lot of stock into Survey USA, McCain should be worried.... Virginia - Obama +6 Obama (D) - 51% McCain ® - 45% Obama takes 91% of democrats and McCain takes 87% of Republicans. The tie breaker is independents which make up 22% of those polled. McCain edges out Obama ONLY 48-45. That's nearly a tie. McCain needs those independents to win VA. I also just noticed this: "Among women, Obama led by 6 points before Sarah Palin was named to the GOP ticket, now leads by 16." There seems to be quite a bit of gloom over a SurveyUSA poll of Virginia that puts Obama up by 6 percent. (I note SUSA has Obama ahead, 49 percent to 45 percent in "Central Virginia," a sub-sample of about 200 voters.) No offense to the fine folks at Survey USA, but I decided to go back and check their last poll in Virginia's 2006 Senate race. They had Jim Webb ahead of George Allen, 52-46. The final results were Webb's 49.6 percent to Allen's 49.2 percent, a margin of 9,329 votes out of 2.37 million cast. SUSA had the state's marriage amendment polling at 42 percent support,and it ended up passing with 57.1 percent of the vote.

Michelle & Co. - Looks like Joe Biden, in his interview with Katie Couric, was copying off the wrong classmate’s exam again. He said (video here): “When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, ‘look, here’s what happened.’” My recollection is that the stock market crash was in 1929. Two problems here: Television did not even exist in 1929, and FDR was elected in 1932, so he wasn’t even the leader at the time of the crash. When Joe was in history class, was he cheating by looking over the class dunce’s shoulder, or does he just make this stuff up? Of course, TV celebrity Katie Couric also didn’t note that Biden’s statement was doubly incorrect. Her goal was a softball puff piece.”

Delinquency rates on option arms are staggering as they begin to reset. Will the next bullet be the repeal of FASB 157. Then the repeal of the uptick rule. After that... lower......... much much lower. The gov't. thinks it is bigger than Mr. Market. As one insider I read put it: The gov't opted for cancer instead of a car crash. Indeed.

Good thing we cannot short finskies, huh. Pakistan banned short selling a coupl;e of months ago. At first the mkt there rallied, then it plunged 28%. Our market falling 28% would take us to S&P 911.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Sep 19, 2008 -> 09:57 PM) http://wcbstv.com/campaign08/congressman.c...l.2.821541.html This from the Ways and means Chairman who didn't realize that rental income is taxable. Nothing to see here. Move along.

QUOTE (bmags @ Sep 19, 2008 -> 03:05 PM) DAMN THEM FOR TRYING TO FIGURE OUT THE TRUTH So the WAPO was wrong in its reporting? Where's the correction?

QUOTE (bmags @ Sep 19, 2008 -> 03:05 PM) DAMN THEM FOR TRYING TO FIGURE OUT THE TRUTH Which is what? That he was an advisor. Damn the MSDNC for trying to cover for Barry ,AGAIN.

From last night's Countdown: OLBERMANN: Speaking of Obama and advisors, there's another aspect of the McCain plan today. McCain has a new ad out claiming Obama has an economic advisor named Frank Raines. And that under Frank Raines' leadership, Fannie Mae committed extensive fraud, and it collapsed, and Frank Raines made millions. The problem being that the Obama campaign has said tonight, "Frank Raines has never advised Senator Obama about anything ever," that's the quote, and Frank Raines said, "I am not an advisor to Barack Obama nor have I provided his campaign with advice on housing or economic matter." What on earth happened there? FINEMAN: Well, what happened is-not much. Based on what I've been told, Frank Raines did pay a visit to Barack Obama's Senate office a couple I'm not sure exactly when but really before the campaign geared up big time, is my understanding and he didn't meet with Obama. Frankly, Frank Raines is a kind of radioactive character around here because he was heavily criticized by independent investigators who looked at what happened to Fannie Mae. And you know, he's not the prince of Fannie Mae that you want to necessarily be in a photo-op with. So, Obama's a pretty shrewd politician. I think Raines has probably given some contributions both to the Senate race and maybe the presidential one. But he's not counted in the inner circle. This came about because of a "Washington Post" story but the Obama people are telling me is that it was Raines himself who, at the time, identified him that way. Now, he's got this statement out tonight. But I know the campaign well enough to know that Raines has never been in the inner circle of the Obama campaign. So, Raines is an adviser to Team Obama, just not in the inner circle. Hey MSNBC, we need more cover for Barry.

A number of journalists are trying hard to fit McCain's "Advice" ad into the now-established theme of the McCain campaign employing lies and underhanded tactics. The Obama campaign says the ad is a lie. Writers at Time and the Atlantic have suggested that it has racist overtones, because Franklin Raines is black, and Obama is black, and a photo depicting a generic victim of their alleged financial wrongheadedness is of a white woman. Now, the Washington Post fact checker takes McCain to task for relying on…the Washington Post. Yes, the paper reported in July that Raines had "taken calls from Barack Obama's presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters," and in August called Raines a "member of Mr. Obama's political circle." But hey, the Post says now, that information originally came from the Style section, and it came when a Post reporter was "chatting" with Raines at a photo shoot. Raines apparently said he had gotten, in the reporter's words, "a couple" of calls from the Obama campaign. When the reporter asked what about, Raines said, "Oh, general housing, economy issues." So the reporter wrote that Raines had "taken calls from Barack Obama's presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters." So now, the Post says McCain "is clearly exaggerating wildly in attempting to depict Franklin Raines as a close adviser to Obama on 'housing and mortgage policy.'" But the McCain commercial never called Raines a "close adviser" or a close anything. As far as "housing and mortgage policy," given that the Post had written — and has not retracted — that Raines had discussed "mortgage and housing policy" matters with the Obama campaign, in what sense is that a wild exaggeration? Oh, and by the way, just for good measure, the Post brings up the racial issue, too — noting without any other comment that the McCain ad "attempts to link Obama to Franklin Raines, the former CEO of the bankrupt mortgage giant, Fannie Mae, who also happens to be African-American. It then shows a photograph of an elderly white woman taxpayer who has supposedly been 'stuck with the bill' as a result of the 'extensive financial fraud' at Fannie Mae." P.S. And now, of course, the Obama campaign is sending out emails quoting the Washington Post charge that McCain is "exaggerating wildly." P.P.S. A reader reminds me that I should have double-fact-checked the fact-checker. The original Post profile of Raines apparently ran in the paper's Business section, not Style, as the fact-checker said.

http://www.pbs.org/now/polls/poll-435.html Did I miss the Obama Presidential qualification poll? And they do this with our money.

Funny how you can short the SKF huh?