I came across this clip at random today, thought it was worth sharing… it should be obvious that someone who is likely the greatest tennis player of all time has a lot of competitive drive and pride, not to mention that it should be clear never to assume it’s over until you’ve actually won.
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Congress rejected Paulson’s Wall Street bailout bill this afternoon. It was primarily defeated by Republicans, with 133 of them voting against (as opposed to 95 Democrats). So much for the party of “progressives”—the Democrats tried extremely hard to pass this appalling giveaway, with Pelosi trying to go both ways by pushing for the bill, declaiming the removal of regulation and supervision in the financial system while simultaneously doing nothing to put them back by inserting them into the bill.
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So I did watch the first Presidential debate this evening, with some friends at work. It was more or less what I expected—a somewhat blustery McCain, and a smooth Obama. It seemed as if Obama was a lot better at getting his digs in, and at working the obviously scripted attacks into the flow of the debate, while McCain at times seemed to be inserting them almost at random, and clinging to them ferociously.
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The largest bank failure in US history (so far). Washington Mutual, rumored to be in trouble for quite some time, was seized by federal regulators today. Apparently customers had withdrawn $16.7 billion over the last ten days.
They’re being sold to JP Morgan, who look like they’re doing well out of it, considering that they tried to buy Washington Mutual in March for $4/share. Apparently the feds have managed to get this done without using the FDIC fund, which is probably good overall. The big losers look to be Washington Mutual shareholders and creditors, who may get nothing.
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So I think that my initial reaction to Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley becoming bank holding companies was rather naive. I thought that they were doing it as a defensive measure, because they were struggling. Now I wonder if in fact they’re doing it because they see an opportunity for even more plunder.
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The big news at the moment continues to be Paulson’s “plan” to make everything in the markets okay by creating a fund to buy up all the “distressed assets” out there, e.g. the bad bets that the banks created and then spread around the entire financial system while hiding the risks from all concerned. If the taxpayers end up shelling out for this thing, it’s a gigantic transfer of wealth from the average American to the hugely wealthy. Seven hundred billion dollars, even today, is a huge amount of money (and works out to about two thousand dollars per American).
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Goodbye to Wall Street as we know it?
(I’m not concerned for Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley—they’ve grown fat and ludicrously wealthy over the years and are now attempting to outrun the consequences of some very bad bets. But if they’ve given in to pressure, or if they have indeed requested, to “reform” as more tightly-regulated entities, it means that they’re extremely worried that the run on their assets will continue if they don’t take drastic measures to reassure people. Which in turn means that even they, reputed to be the smarter banks (for example. Goldman managed to make money from a significant piece of the credit crunch last year), are in too deep. Again, I don’t care about these people. But they’re still immensely powerful, and if there’s colossal financial damage coming, they’ll do all they can so that it rains on us, not them—as the administration’s appalling bailout proposal makes clear.)
I’m cheating a little and including the subhead.
(By the way, someone posted a comment for Tuesday’s post that I accidentally deleted as spam a moment before realizing it wasn’t one of the 20 spam messages in the list. Sorry—please repost!)
When I was quite young, I went to see Siberian tigers at the Bronx Zoo. My memories of this are vague in terms of specifics, but I suspect that I saw at least one cub, and I do know that I was strongly affected by seeing them. I’ve always loved all kinds of cats, have had a soft spot for tigers, and, well, blue-eyed tigers are just too much to resist.
Even at a young age, however, I was quite aware that they were not domestic animals.
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