McCain Quote Is Similar to Herbert Hoover Quote

could not embed link (0.00 / 0)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30...

4:33 Krugman

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

   Dorothy Parker

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by: JonnyBBad @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 06:06:56 AM CDT

Thanks! (4.00 / 3)

I like Krugman on TV because he geeks out on the economics, which is a nice break from rhetoric. But he doesn't pull punches either. It's a break from the Sturm and Drang one usually finds.

I seem to remember a time when more of TV was talking to people like Krugman and not people like Rove and Carville. Anyone else remember that?

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by: Mike Caulfield @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 06:24:00 AM CDT

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gone but not forgotten Paul Duke (0.00 / 0)

our eldesy son's first words...Paul Duke !

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Fairest of Them All: Paul Duke Made Washington's Week

By Gwen Ifill
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, July 22, 2005; Page C01

As the moderator of PBS's "Washington Week," I get asked a lot if I think television is going to hell in a handbasket. I always say no. Paul Duke, who died this week at 78, was one of the reasons why.

With his sonorous voice, elaborate segues between topics and old-school notions of honorable journalism, Paul made a home for those of us who believed it is possible to tell the news straight.

In 1974, Paul Duke left NBC to join PBS and helm "at Washington Week in Review." (Christian Science Monitor News Service)

Paul Duke, Voice of 'Washington Week,' Dies

Paul Duke, 78, a veteran newsman who for 20 years was the calm and mellow-voiced moderator of "Washington Week," the longest-running news program of the Public Broadcasting Service, died July 18.

Paul was the living embodiment of what "fair and balanced" really means. The millions of viewers who set aside their Friday nights to watch "Washington Week in Review" could never tell you exactly what he thought about any of the issues he covered.

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

   Dorothy Parker

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by: JonnyBBad @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 06:31:48 AM CDT

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yes (0.00 / 0)

but those were the olden days.  

Netroots Outreach Director for the Carol Shea-Porter campaign

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by: susanthe @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 07:53:39 AM CDT

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Yes (0.00 / 0)

I could rant on that at some length, but it would be tedious, and I do have a day job to keep (at the moment).

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by: JimC @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 09:14:44 AM CDT

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Krugman: "socialize the risk" (0.00 / 0)

That will strike a nerve.

The giant finds its gait.

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by: Jack Mitchell @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 10:46:17 AM CDT

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Fundamentals (0.00 / 0)

In the interest of full disclosure, I tried to make a people's version of McCain's argument to one of my (much) more knowledgeable coworkers yesterday. My version was more like this: "Who cares if Lehman fails? I'm supposed to feel bad about this? Some other firm has better financials and will step in and get rich."

He was not buying it -- not for a second. He thinks whatever rot felled Lehman's tree has spread throughout the forest. We don't know which trees are sick, but we'll find out, and soon.

But he did not reply when I suggested, tongue in cheek, that China and India could bail us out. He may just have written me off as an idiot (and who would blame him?).

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by: JimC @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 09:23:05 AM CDT

From what I understand (4.00 / 4)

AIG is the real one to watch.

But it is interesting that your coworker gets it rather effortlessly.

I think the root metaphor that people used to understand was "public health". The treatment of someone else's tuberculosis or polio is neither w holly charitable or wholly selfish act. And once you understand that -- regulation, in terms of quarantine, or rules regarding chlorination of pools etc -- REGULATION, in a word, naturally follows.

Historically, the public health efforts of both governments at the turn of the century and the UN mid-century were watershed moments -- they gave the lie to the idea that we are a bunch of people for whom the common good was only the sum of individual well-being. They showed the power of government, and for a long time those effort became a sort of root metaphor that made government intervention comprehensible to people.

There is a direct link between FDIC and dealing with TB, in other words.

That's why the Republican party knows when health gets done in this country it's game over for them. It's not just the cost. It's that we'll get our metaphor back, and the immediate result of that will be not "cleaning up" Wall St., but regulating it.  

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by: Mike Caulfield @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 10:13:06 AM CDT

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Really super! n/t (0.00 / 0)

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by: hannah @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 10:19:56 AM CDT

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Regulation (0.00 / 0)

To be fair, McCain was touting regulation yesterday. And in my biased but still fair opinion, he did not sound sincere about it. He sounded like he knew it had to be said.

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by: JimC @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 10:21:50 AM CDT

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Gramm, his adviser (4.00 / 2)

Undid the major regulations that would have prevented this from happening. So it's quite possible that he knows what needs to be said. But his adviser, the man he calls the smartest economic mind to have served in the Senate, undid the regulations we had.

Never mind that underneath this all there is still the possibility, however small, that the oil crisis is a direct result of the Enron loophole.

I wanted to throw out my TV set seeing Dobbs and co the other night saying -- why are not people proposing bold new ideas to stop this?

We actually don't need new ideas in this arena. We need the old ones. We don't need to clean up wall street. We need to put adults back in charge.

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by: Mike Caulfield @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 12:48:12 PM CDT

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and for linky goodness (4.00 / 1)

there's this:

http://www.senate.gov/legislat...

you see here the maverick boldly breaking with his party to prevent the deregulation of the financial services industry.

Oh, no wait, you don't. You see an absolute party line vote, with all democrats opposing and all but one republican supporting. And McCain right next to BFF Gramm as the wall comes down!

Here's an explanation of what happened with Gramm-Leach-Billey, and why that law was so destructive:

Changes in the financial landscape, driven by technology and globalization, made the 1930's era Glass-Steagall Act - the New Deal era law that required that investment banking be kept separate from commercial banking - increasingly inefficient. While reform was desirable, the banking, insurance and securities industries spent over $300 million lobbying Congress to shape that reform to meet their own interests. In the two years before Glass-Steagall was repealed in 1999, financial service industries gave $58 million to congressional campaigns; $87 million to political parties; and spent $163 million lobbying Washington. But though the regulatory structure was outdated, the need for oversight was not. Unfortunately, in the rush to repeal the law to create immediate opportunities for certain Wall Street firms, little effort went into modernizing the government's supervision of the financial industry - to guard against the potential for conflicts of interest, to insist on transparency, or to ensure proper oversight of new and complex financial products or the dramatic rise of investment banks and non-bank financial institutions, like hedge funds and Structured Investment Vehicles. Nearly a decade later, our financial markets-and everyday Americans-are paying the price.

Who's the analyst quoted above? Obama. In March.

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by: Mike Caulfield @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 13:12:23 PM CDT

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Modernization (0.00 / 0)

I like his choice of word there -- modernization is the key. New ideas, to reflect a new world, but old principles.

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by: JimC @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 13:25:51 PM CDT

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One more thing (0.00 / 0)

Your point is great, and the "health of the system" must be the bottom line. But I have to add, and not just in a partisan fashion, that although the problem is complex, with all sorts blame to go around, Lehman is not blameless in the sense that a person getting sick would be blameless.

Pick your metaphor, but I'll go with a casino. Suppose a town was destroyed by gambling. Some of us spent too much and lost it all, some of us gambled responsibly (we WERE gambling, no matter how much we thought we weren't), but Lehman and Merrill and their ilk, they were the dealers. And they are supposed to know better. The vast majority of ordinary people who took the risk did so to get a house.

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by: JimC @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 10:33:23 AM CDT

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It is a problem (4.00 / 1)

Remember when five banks failed in New Hampshire? It wasn't just the bank presidents who were hurt; there were a lot of empty storefronts on main streets all over the state.

I don't believe in trickle down economics, but I do believe in ripple effect economics, and we've got two ripples coming from opposite ends - the people at the low end of the spectrum losing homes and jobs, and the people at the high end going into financial meltdown. It's the type of thing that can cause a riptide if competent people aren't in charge.  

"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."  Franklin D. Roosevelt   [I'm an advisor to the NHDP Coordinated Campaign]

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by: Kathy Sullivan 2 @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 15:30:30 PM CDT

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Socialized risk, privatized profit. (0.00 / 0)

The only thing that trickles down is financial hardship.

Republican Economic Policy = Invisible Hand + Invisible Handouts

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by: Douglas E. Lindner @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 17:22:27 PM CDT

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"It was a nightmare on Elm St." (0.00 / 0)

I still miss Al Gore ! Great line.

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

   Dorothy Parker

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by: JonnyBBad @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 17:38:53 PM CDT

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It seems that some people are still saying quotable things. (0.00 / 0)

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by: hannah @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 10:21:12 AM CDT

oh my! n/t (0.00 / 0)

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by: Mike Caulfield @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 15:03:58 PM CDT

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Devastating n/t (0.00 / 0)

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by: JimC @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 21:35:05 PM CDT

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Blackberry (4.00 / 2)

I decided to forego commenting on the irony of Paul Krugman now being a hero, as opposed to the good old primary days, when I used to love to quote him and other people supporting another candidate hated it, and to instead post this McCain staffer whopper instead, because we can all enjoy the irony of this comment:

(CNN) -- Sen. John McCain's senior domestic policy adviser said Tuesday that the BlackBerry mobile e-mail device was a "miracle that John McCain helped create."

The adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, discussing the nation's economic woes with reporters, said that McCain -- who has struggled to stress his economic credentials -- did have experience dealing with the economy, pointing to his time on the Senate Commerce Committee.

Pressed to provide an example of what McCain had accomplished on that committee, Holtz-Eakin said the senator did not have jurisdiction over financial markets, then he held up his Blackberry, telling reporters: "He did this."

"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."  Franklin D. Roosevelt   [I'm an advisor to the NHDP Coordinated Campaign]

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by: Kathy Sullivan 2 @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 15:18:23 PM CDT

But will this (0.00 / 0)

have the staying power of Gore and the internet?

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by: jbd @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 15:24:59 PM CDT

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Probably not! (0.00 / 0)

Or, as my mother used to say, "life isn't fair."

"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."  Franklin D. Roosevelt   [I'm an advisor to the NHDP Coordinated Campaign]

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by: Kathy Sullivan 2 @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 15:32:23 PM CDT

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Proof that Republicans are better at BS. (4.00 / 1)

Internet pioneers have said many times that Gore was the first politician who paid attention to information technology, and he knew more about the internet in the decades before it was used by the public than John McCain does now.

Gore never actually said "I invented the internet."  That sentence originated from a Republican who mocked Gore for pointing out, rightfully, that he was instrumental in crafting the legislation that led to critical software innovations responsible for the wide use of the internet.  But he gets mocked for something he never said.

And yet McCain will certainly get away with an adviser saying he was instrumental in creating a foreign-devloped highly complex device for the purpose of streamlining a process that the vast majority of Americans--but not John McCain--go through every day.

Gore's incredible decades-early foresight should be observed with awe, but he was ridiculed for saying something he never said about his real leadership on the issue.

John McCain is negligent in his inability to comprehend even the most basic elements, the ones familiar to a vast majority of Americans, of a technology--and an entirely new field of law--that is redefining our world, but he will certainly get away with an adviser claiming he's a leader on the issue.

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by: Douglas E. Lindner @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 17:45:22 PM CDT

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John McCain (4.00 / 2)

is a Canadian?

BlackBerry is developed by Research In Motion (RIM), a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of innovative wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market.

...

Founded in 1984 and based in Waterloo, Ontario...

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by: Alex Gallichon @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 15:30:42 PM CDT

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It's deliberate (4.00 / 1)

They're trying to get a funny item about McCain in the news to make us forget what he said about the economy.

And by the way, I never minded when you brought up Krugman. I like being challenged on Blue Hampshire, and he -- and you -- were heroes even when I disagreed with you.

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by: JimC @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 15:52:23 PM CDT

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The McCain campaign is fundamentally sound n/t (4.00 / 2)

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by: elwood @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 18:04:22 PM CDT

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goes with Fiorina's accessment of Palin and McCain (0.00 / 0)

Hope all of us are know sitting there and getting our shovels and knee-high boots to do some barn house cleaning.

VALOR, n.  A soldierly compound of vanity, duty and the gambler's


hope.

- Ambrose Bierce from "The Devil's Dictionary"

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by: TJMCNH1 @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 20:13:39 PM CDT

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Hey Krugman (4.00 / 2)

Has always been a weakness of mine. I was surprised as you to see him vilified during the primary -- a guy that fought the good fight on the Iraq war and really wrote the book on what the economic end game has been here.

Not so much here, where a quote might be dismissed though -- more on the orange satan where all sorts of invective about everything from his commitment to his whiteness were thrown around.

But it's good people have let him back in. There were few things stupider than tossing a analyst of his caliber off the boat.

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by: Mike Caulfield @ Wed Sep 17, 2008 at 06:59:59 AM CDT

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