I am viewing the financial apocalypse something like an earthquake or an avalanche-there is really very little I or anyone else can do about it. I am exposed to the market, of course, as is, really, everybody. But it’s going to happen, whatever I do about it. It’s like watching a car accident as it occurs-I am fascinated, in a sick, scientific way.
I could go off into a rant about Republicans and free market ideology-whoever voted for whatever bill, it is a fundamental tenet of conservatives that the market can do everything better. And if this scandal/tragedy/mess is anything, it is a free, unregulated market doing what it does, with disastrous results. If you’re going to enjoy the sex, you have to clean up after the baby, too. But that doesn’t interest anyone, including me, really.
The Red Sox/Rays series begins tonight. ESPN has been all a twitter about the “new rivalry” and talk of “bad blood”. This is true, dating back to the great Gerald “Ice” Williams and Pedro Martinez, back when he was still Pedro Martinez. These two teams have been somewhat contentious this season as well, I would say-this year featuring an alleged hard slide by Coco Crisp on a steal attempt, followed by a plunking and a donnybrook.
Up until 2008, Tampa had gone from being a Napoleon special-just throw your hat out there and collect your win-to a pain in the neck series-if you let your guard down and made a mistake, they’d beat you. Now they are legitimately good-strong, but not overwhelming starting pitching, a lineup full of young, fast, good hitters, and a fairly deep bullpen. Not only will they beat you if you don’t play your best, you can play well and they’ll still beat you. So it’s going to be a long, difficult series.
I don’t buy the whole “experience” business. Tampa Bay manager Joe Maddon has them playing good ball, and he seems to have the Fairy Dust of the Baseball Gods on him. He’ll make sure they obey the Hoosiers Principle-Still 90 Feet To First Base, Just Like It Was In April, and Just Like It Was In Double A. My heart says Boston, but my brain says Tampa is too good. Like Chicago in 2005, the other side just has the breaks going their way, and they are deep, good, and confident.
I can’t help but find the Tampa-Boston rivalry a little cute. They have been such a miserable franchise for so long, and I have sympathy for that, so I can’t really generate a lot of hate for the Naughty Fish. I will be disappointed if we lose, but not crushed. And, minus Boston’s involvement, I would absolutely favor Tampa against anyone else.
Except Philadelphia. As another blogger pointed out, if Philadelphia loses a championship, especially late on some kind of controversial call, the citizens might just burn down the city. This city needs a title pretty bad.
I watched the West Wing again this morning. It was the episode where CJ takes over the Chief of Staff job from Leo, which I completely missed, so it must have been after I stopped watching. It was a tremendous episode, of course. I completely love this show again, and it makes me start wanting the DVDs. I think there were 8 or 9 seasons all together, which would be mighty expensive. Not to mention the time required to watch all that TV.
I really don’t watch that much TV any more. I loved the new Terminator series, but they moved it to 8pm, so it is usually over before I get home. Never seen Survivor, never seen American Idol. Don’t know, don’t care. I guess it’s my job, mostly, that causes this-I am at work a lot of time while the majority of people are at home watching, uh, TV. I resent this more than I should-this is what I do, and I’m not likely to be changing any time soon.
I’ve started having these scary moments when I realize, with my birthday one week away, how little I have done and how dim my prospects are. You reach a certain age, and suddenly you start to realize that you don’t have it anymore. It’s not about sex, really, but in a way it is-you’re not dangerous any more, and young girls don’t look at you any more. Not that I’m craving the chance to be unfaithful, but I guess I’d like it to be a possibility.
I was also reflecting earlier about how many events in the Angels-Red Sox series I can’t remember ever seeing before. The first one was the Kevin Youkilis short-right-field-trap-and-throw-out-at-third of Vladimir Guerrero, the next one was Ellsbury sliding over the bag, and the third was the Varitek chase-and-tag-and-tumble on the blown squeeze. I’m sure they have happened before, but I’ve never seen them before.
What are political yard signs for? Seriously. You see them everywhere, and I just don’t think anyone is going around saying, “I didn’t know who to vote for, but now that I see that he has a name with letters in it, I think I’ll vote for him.” I guess the appeal is “all my neighbors are voting for x, so I think I will too.” That’s a stupid reason, but then again, I don’t know my neighbors, and I could care less how they are voting.
Now at home, and in the fifth, the Red Sox lead Tampa, 1-0, after 5. Dice K is apparently not struggling much at all, having given up not a single hit through the first five stanzas. Earlier today, the Red Sox Alumni Team (aka the Los Angeles Dodgers) lost again to Philadelphia. The NLCS moves to Los Angeles on Sunday with the Phillies up 2-0.
The Tampa Bay fans have been apparently equipped with noisemakers that sound like thousands of baby rattles being shaken. That's kind of cute, fans at their first ALCS game. I remember my first ALCS. Ah, memories.
This mess is from lack of regulations in one place, and overregulation in others. Freddie Mac and Fannie May are close to the root of this cascading problem, and the government required them to loan to undeserving people. And other mortgage companies kept selling loans to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac. And McCain isn't the one who got huge bribes from them.
ReplyDeleteAside from that, the CEOs of these companies make tens of millions a year in wages. Since the companies are really government-agencies, that means some rather overpaid government employees. I don't like capping wages in the private sector, but I don't see any reason to pay government employees over $100,000 a year. That's enough to make them rich. To live comfortably. The tax money can be used for other things.
No, they didn't, and no, they weren't.
ReplyDeleteThe government encouraged lending, of course. But no one forced anyone to do anything. And no one forced them to securitize the mortgages, and no one forced them to issue the criminally underregulated default swaps that really undergird the whole mess.
Everyone said they were government agencies, and everyone acted like they were government agencies, but they weren't government agencies. Saying something doesn't make it so.
And it was McCain aide Rick Davis that is the director of a company that was still recieving Freddie Mac checks THIS SUMMER.
CEOs who don't produce wealth for their stockholders are overpaid. It doesn't matter if the government tries to regulate CEO pay, because they'll just find a way around it. I think the influence and importance of CEOs is vastly overrated.
Sort of like managers in baseball-they don't have a huge influence on quality. They get too much credit when times are good, and too much blame when times are bad.
The first paragraph in Wikipedia on Fannie Mae describes it as a government operation. The same is true for Freddie Mac.
ReplyDeleteI assume that the "no, they weren't" applied to them being government agencies. But it turns out that they are.
Created, chartered, controlled, and regulated by Congress.... that makes them in fact government agencies.
No, a government agency is one that is part of the government. Like it or not, Fannie and Freddie were private companies. Just like you can't buy shares in the Department of Defense, Fannie and Freddie were not part of the Federal Government.
ReplyDeleteI concede-everyone thought of them as Federally backed. Everyone took the Federal support into account when buying their shares or assessing their value. Everyone assumed, as it ended up, correctly, that the government would bail them out if necessary.
So what we have here is something that walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and looks like a duck but, it turns out, is not actually a duck.
I will also concede that there was mismanagement at work here-they were allowed to swell beyond reason, and they shoveled money in bucketloads to whomever they thought would listen to them-politicians of both parties.
But they were not part of the government. They sold shares and made money and issued annual reports and paid excessive salaries and acted like idiots, just like any other company.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/53802.html
ReplyDeleteYou may want to read this.
According to the Federal Reserve Board, in 2006:
-84 percent of subprime loans were made by private lenders.
-1 of the top 25 lenders was subject to the Community Reinvestment Act
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did not loan one dime to anyone-it was all done by private companies.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were government agencies, but just a different type of agency, that is all.
ReplyDelete"84 percent of subprime loans were made by private lenders"
Does that leave 16% involving Fannie Mae/etc, an outfit Obama got massive donations from? And actually so many of the rest have had involvement from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac also, due to shuffling of money.
"Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did not loan one dime to anyone-it was all done by private companies."
According to
http://www.escrowhelp.com/articles/20040222.html
"Fannie Mae does not directly loan money to you, the "primary" Borrower, but rather loans money in the "secondary market", or to lending institutions. In short, by lending money to your lender, this frees up capital for your bank so they can go on to make more loans. "
Looks like loaning to me. Part of the money-shuffle that puts them at the root of this meltdown.
From Wayne Barrett at the Village Voice:
"[Clinton appointee] Andrew Cuomo... made a series of decisions between 1997 and 2001 that gave birth to the country's current crisis. He took actions that... helped plunge Fannie and Freddie into the subprime markets without putting in place the means to monitor their increasingly risky investments. He turned the Federal Housing Administration...into a sweetheart lender with sky-high loan ceilings and no money down, and he legalized what a federal judge has branded "kickbacks" to brokers that have fueled the sale of overpriced and unsupportable loans. Three to four million families are now facing foreclosure, and Cuomo is one of the reasons why."
Andrew Cuomo is evidence that Bush (with "Brownie") was not the only President who appointed unqualified cronies. Clinton commonly did this too.
As for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae's true role, it is far bigger than 16%:
From:
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/treasury-set-bail-out-fannie/story.aspx?guid=%7B46D1439E-A2C4-418C-9BE0-09BE0B9EE60D%7D&dist=msr_7
"Together, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac form the cornerstones of the U.S. mortgage market and own or guarantee more than $5 trillion worth of American mortgages -- or almost half the home loans in the country's roughly $12 trillion mortgage market. Over the past year, the companies have recorded combined losses of around $14 billion. "
About Rick Davis, any idea how his checks stack up to what Obama has received?
"But they were not part of the government. They sold shares and made money and issued annual reports and paid excessive salaries and acted like idiots, just like any other company."
The excessive salaries and act like idiots applies to other government agencies, for sure.
I don't dispute that they lobbied both sides of the aisle. But doesn't that further prove that they aren't government agencies? The Department of Defense doesn't lobby Congress.
ReplyDeleteI don't dispute that today, F+F are much bigger than they were-much too big, obviously. I don't dispute that F+F were mismanaged. I don't dispute that F+F loaned money-they didn't loan it to people, though. But the mortgages themselves were made by private mortgage companies, not F and F.
Andrew Cuomo, though, whatever his faults or errors, was more qualified to run HUD than Michael Brown was to run FEMA.
Government does lobby government:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ilcampaign.org/PDF/LobbyReport2008.pdf