Hilzoy

If Only They Were Kidding… Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the House Republican plan: “* Rather than providing taxpayer funded purchases of frozen mortgage assets, we should adopt a mortgage insurance approach to solve the problem. * Currently the federal government insures approximately half of all mortgage backed securities. (MBS) We can insure the […]

The Deal Dissolves NYT: “The day began with an agreement that Washington hoped would end the financial crisis that has gripped the nation. It dissolved into a verbal brawl in the Cabinet Room of the White House, urgent warnings from the president and pleas from a Treasury secretary who knelt before the House speaker and […]

Meanwhile, In Other News … McClatchy: “The deepest freeze in U.S.-Russia relations since the Cold War has brought diplomatic efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions to a halt just as Western governments and U.N. inspectors are warning that Tehran could be gaining the ability to build a nuclear weapon. Russia this week pulled out of […]

Quick! Hide Sarah Palin! CNN: “McCain supporter Sen. Lindsey Graham tells CNN the McCain campaign is proposing to the Presidential Debate Commission and the Obama camp that if there’s no bailout deal by Friday, the first presidential debate should take the place of the VP debate, currently scheduled for next Thursday, October 2 in St. […]

Say What? So I return from a day of teaching and discover that John McCain has decided to suspend his campaign and return to Washington DC, the better to deal with our nation’s urgent problems. Goody! It might have been even better had he bothered to show up for even a single one of the […]

Square In The Middle Of It From the NYT: “One of the giant mortgage companies at the heart of the credit crisis paid $15,000 a month from the end of 2005 through last month to a firm owned by Senator John McCain’s campaign manager, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement. The […]

Bailout I’m sure everyone knows about this already: “The Bush administration has proposed granting unfettered authority for the Treasury Department to buy up to $700 billion in distressed mortgage-related assets from private firms as part of a program that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said “has to work.”” Some reactions: Dean Baker, Paul Krugman (1, 2, […]

Reformers, Take 2 Having gone over McCain and Obama’s legislation on banking and mortgage reform, I thought I’d continue my search for John McCain, Scourge Of Wall Street by looking at his website to see what new regulations he proposes for financial institutions. As far as I can tell, though, not only is there nothing […]

Reformers John McCain, via MSNBC: “The crisis on Wall Street, my friends, started in the Washington culture of lobbying and influence pedaling and he was right square in the middle of it,” McCain said, painting Obama as a Washington insider. “My friends, this is the problem in Washington. People like Sen. Obama have been too […]

Chutzpah To expand on a point Steve made a couple of days ago: It takes a certain amount of chutzpah for McCain to produce ads about Obama’s advisors having ties to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. One of the people McCain focusses on denies advising the Obama campaign; the story the McCain campaign based its […]