Three Hours From Dead?

I say that old guy has a nose like a freakin’ doorstop.

I can confirm that there was a run on money market funds after Lehman blew up. In fact a lot of the money market fund companies owned Lehman commercial paper and were hit with a double whammy of investor withdrawals and hundreds of millions dollars of Lehman paper suddenly going to money heaven. Many of them internally “broke the buck,” but their parent companies stepped in and topped them off, and only The Reserve Primary Fund officially broke the buck publicly as I recall.

As far as whether there would’ve been an irreversible collapse of the US economy without Congressional action, I’d say TARP 1 was another “Weapons of Mass Destruction” style Big Lie with the economy collapsing anyway and the government only possibly saving the jobs of a few thousand bank/investment company workers and execs. Regardless of which party is in power, it’s the financial industry that’s pulling the puppet strings.

I think that old guy has a mind like a steel trap. My guess is that he’s exaggerating, but only a bit. We were close.

And I want you all to know that I did my part to stimulate the economy today. I got a Mac Mini 2 gHz to replace my recently-deceased much-missed G5. This little fucker screams. I am in new gizmo heaven.

I remember the reports on the run on the money markets at the time. I remember specifically the point being made that never before had a money market gone bust, thus the run.

They say Rahm Emmanual has a saying, “never let a crisis go to waste.” Seems to me there is no comparison of the response to the financial crisis, and the fear-mongering which led to the Iraq war. I don’t think Bernanke, et al, were deliberately fear-mongering in order to enrich the financial sector, I really do believe they were genuinely panicked, seriously afraid. I think most of those who were seriously involved in the system that failed were shocked, they did not think such a thing possible, and it seems to me they are still in a state of panic.

In school they discussed the great depression and other meltdowns, and wrote papers in which they put forward what they think should have been done, but they never expected to be placed in the situation where its happening again, and they have to make the right decision, right now.

There were many ways in which the system was, is, a house of cards, but then, the stock market always was, values never did have anything to do with earnings or dividends, it was always speculaation, not investment, and we needed to return to a finance system based on investment, not speculation and arbitrage.

Even so, its collapse is a catastrophe, because its the only finance system we have, for now.

@Promnight:

Now would be a good time to move on to that Star Trek-style no-money economy; did they ever explain how that worked (flying around on big-pimpin’ Cadillac spaceships and no bills)?

@Original Andrew: Even if we knew, there would be some problems with the transition, I think.

TJ: Koalas. SFL, you mentioned the Koalas in Australia; here is a story, unattributed, from libtard DU. But still, you must see the photos, koalas forced out of the forests by the fires seeking water from people. I hope these are real.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389×5026506

Oh good FSM:

Furthermore, a poll from Rasmussen reports that 62% of voters want more tax cuts and less government spending in the plan. This must be music to the ears of Republicans, who have been on a media blitz of their own, arguing for the same. Newly elected chairman of the Republican National Committee Michael Steele wasted no time in explaining why he thinks his party should vote no.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20090210/pl_ynews/ynews_pl242

Fool us once, shame on us, fool us 543 times–what was the last part??

I’ve spilled an ocean of 1s and 0s marveling at the stupidity of the American public, but… wow… these people would drink Drano for breakfast if the Republicans told them to.

@Original Andrew: You forget gold-pressed latinum.

The cries for more tax cuts have drowned out the cries for more placebos.

@Promnight:
I saw the photos of the burned koalas on the Sydney Morning Herald’s website. Very sad, but then you read about the 300+ people being killed, and it’s all tragic.

@Original Andrew: “These people would drink Drano for breakfast if the Republicans told them to.”

True that, sister. COTD.

Oh and back to the point of this post – I’m watching K.O. right now and this tool. Five TRILLION dollars…

@Original Andrew: Now now, no angst, 50% of the people are below average in intelligence, and average is no great shakes either. On any question involving knowledge of the real world, like the relative economic impact of tax cuts and spending, their opinion is like static, it means nothing, except maybe as a measure of ignorance among those who answer their phone in the evening, let alone take a poll.

Thats the reason we have a representative democracy, rather than a direct democracy (also known as anarchy). Since 90% of the people are at best only partially incompetent to make serious policy decisions, the idea is that the representative will sometimes lead, rather than following, especially on an issue on which the representative knows the public is utterly ignorant. Dems actually try, they sometimes persue issues their constituents disagree with, we call them politically naive when they do so. The current system seems to favor the demagogues.

TJ/ One for old dogs and 2nd chances.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090211/ap_on_sp_ot/dog_show

@Promnight:
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
~~Henry Louis Mencken (1880–1956) A Little Book in C Major, p. 19 (1916).
http://www.bartleby.com/73/423.html