compatancy???compentancy??? ahhh competancy!!!!

"The swelling tide of toxic home loans is proving to be even more worrisome than initially feared"

It would be nice if some of the people who get paid big dollars because they supposedly have high skills could acknowledge that they messed up. It would also be nice if the national media did not consider it part of their job to cover up for powerful people who messed up on their job.

Yes, that headline is a a direct quote. It also is the sort of statement that has no place in a serious news article. The swelling tide of toxic loans is not proving to be more worrisome than feared. The problem is that the people who were supposed to be regulating the financial system did not know what they were doling.

The people who did understand the economy knew that an unprecedented run-up in house prices, with no remotely plausible explanation based on fundamentals, with no corresponding increase in rents, was a bubble. We also knew that bubbles burst. And, we knew that when bubbles in a highly leveraged asset like housing burst, that lots of debts go bad and that banks then take really big hits.

The NYT should be exposing the incompetence of people who were paid big dollars to know the housing and financial markets (this includes both bankers at place like Citigroup, Merill Lynch, Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as the top regulators) and completely failed in their responsibilities.

It should not try to tell readers that the housing crash was somehow an unforeseeable event that came out of the blue. It was an entirely predictable event and it was only incompetence that prevented these people from seeing it. Unfortunately, unlike dishwashers and custodians, bank executives and regulators are not held accountable for their performance. Instead, the media covers it up for them.

This goes under contending conservatives because they like to say people who earn a lot deserve it for "obvious" reasons... not so much in the real world.

Move away from sound good feel good theoretical world and conservatives have to run for the hills.



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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Why would John McCain change his policy position on offshore drilling?

Report: Hess Execs Ponied Up Huge Money Before McCain's Drilling Flip

By Greg Sargent - August 5, 2008, 10:05AM

The Los Angeles Times digs up some more detail on the Hess Corporation-McCain story, reporting that the big fundraiser where all the Hess execs chipped in huge sums took place just before McCain reversed his previous opposition to offshore drilling:

On June 10, John B. Hess, a top executive at the oil company with his family name, summoned friends to the 21 Club, a former speakeasy in Manhattan, and delivered $285,000 to John McCain and the Republican National Committee.
A week later, McCain traveled to Texas and announced his support for offshore oil drilling...

Hess was one of half a dozen hosts who tapped friends for the maximum $28,500 donation to the GOP. Others included investor Henry Kravis and hedge fund mogul Paul E. Singer.

McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said there was no link between the money and McCain's stand. "Mr. Hess was fundraising before Sen. McCain made the announcement," he said.


Hard to know what to make of this. There's no source given for the info on the fundraiser itself, and the contributions were bundled and delivered to the RNC-McCain committee on June 24th. And as best as I can determine from other reporters, Hess has clammed up and is refusing to explain what happened.

But if the report is true, does this change the story? Not much. It raises at least the possibility that McCain had privately signaled a coming switch, though that's impossible to prove and it very well may not have happened. But even if the Hess donations weren't directly tied to the drilling flip, it doesn't change the fact that many oil company executives did reward McCain with huge contributions after his change in position

What's more, whatever the timing of the Hess donations with regard to the drilling flip, the larger point is that the oil companies like Hess have plenty of other reasons to shower wealth on McCain's candidacy. McCain's tax cut proposals would slash the corporate tax rate for, and confer other benefits on, the nation's largest oil companies, according to a report from the Center for American Progress, though it's unclear how precisely McCain's policies would affect Hess.

go figure...



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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com