“Where Being Conservative Means You'll Need To Keep It Secret.”
I just about peed my pants… Stephane Dion’s logic escapes me and common sense.
He uses the Jewish congress as a defense to a Liberal candidate’s anti-semitic views and 9/11.
The Liberal party at its worst. And he lost this one again – got rid of the candidate.
photo credit: James Callan
With barely a whimper, WaMu is no more. It also is the largest bank failure in US history.
As they say, it’s not over till it’s over. I’d bet on more to follow in the next couple of weeks.
By the end of 2009, about 100 U.S. banks with collective assets of more than $800 billion will fail, predicts Christopher Whalen, managing director of Institutional Risk Analytics, a Torrance, California-based firm that sells its analysis of FDIC data to investors.
“It’s not going to be Armageddon,” says Mark Vaughan, a financial economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Virginia and a senior lecturer in economics at Washington University in St. Louis. “But it’s going to be bad.”
From August 2007 to September 2008, banks worldwide wrote down more than $500 billion. Regional banks, by contrast, have waited to write off their bad mortgages, hoping the housing market would improve and defaults would level off.
Instead, they’ve risen.
Unfortunately, we’re only starting to hear the the bad news.
Washington Mutual, the largest U.S. savings and loan, was closed by the federal Office of Thrift Supervision, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp was named receiver.
The bailout came after the thrift suffered deposit outflows of $16.7 billion since September 15, the OTS said.
“With insufficient liquidity to meet its obligations, WaMu was in an unsafe and unsound condition to transact business,” the OTS said.
The transaction ends exactly 119 years of independence for Washington Mutual, whose predecessor was incorporated on September 25, 1889.
It also follows more than a week of sale talks in which Washington Mutual attracted interest from several suitors.
Washington Mutual’s roughly $227 billion book of real estate loans put the thrift at the top of the critical list of U.S. lenders, analysts said. More than half of this portfolio was in home equity loans and in adjustable-rate mortgages and subprime mortgages that are now considered risky.
photo credit: shapeshift
Priceless stuff. When you have no chance of being elected you may as well shoot for the stars.
The Green party has the best economic policies to deal with an economic downturn (or crisis). Marc Lee is a Senior Economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, and chairs the Progressive Economics Forum: “Most good fiscal policy recommendations have started with the notion of getting money quickly into the hands of those who will spend all of it. In the short-run it would primarily work through EI, but one could also imagine souping up the GST credit, the Canada Child Tax Benefit and Old Age Pensions, not to mention provincial welfare systems.
That’s a great idea – encourage EI and entitlements.
- Fund a national housing program in order to build energy-efficient co-ops and affordable green housing units, and reorient Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation programs in order to provide credit and loan guarantees to non-profit housing organizations and cooperatives for building and restoring quality, energy-efficient housing for seniors, special needs, and low income families.
Sounds like all the makings of a Canadian sub-prime crisis.
- The Green Party commitment to provide massive funds to build public transit and bikeways will have a similar economic effect, a renewal of the economy, jobs, and real change to address climate change seriously. Another win-win-win solution!
With the warmer climate we’ll all be able to bike every day.
- Another Green Party solution to an economic downturn is our Guaranteed Livable Income (GLI) Policy. Poor people, homeless people can not participate in democratic decision making or economic activity when they have to worry where they will sleep at night or where their next meal will come from. The GLI would be set regionally above the poverty line. Combined with free public transit passes, it could eliminate poverty and allow social services to concentrate on problems of mental health and addiction. People would be much better equipped and mobile to participate in the economy and in their democratic responsibilities as citizens.
WOW. A new welfare system to generate voters for the party.
-Our flexible federally funded universal childcare program including workplace child care will also contribute to democratic and economic renewal, making it easier for many working Canadians to use mass transit. These policies demonstrate the comprehensive and ecological (integrated and relational) approach of the Green Party to both economic and democratic renewal.
How does childcare link with public transit? What’s with the economic and democratic renewal through childcare spending…
This all nuts really – and attracts Canadians looking for more handouts.
This from a Ms. May who calls Canadians “stupid”
I’m left wondering how long it will be before Layton drops some of this crap into the NDP platform.
Got this in my email today:
Dear American:
I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.
I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.
I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.
This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.
Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction.
After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.
Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson
The issue of the day, brought to you by the NDP and Liberals, that’s an outright lie.
For the current fiscal year, which ends March 31, 2009, Parliament has voted to spend more than $4 billion on cultural programs, including the CBC, the Canada Arts Council, the National Gallery of Canada and the Department of Canadian Heritage. That amount is $660 million or 19.7 per cent more than was spent in fiscal 2006, the last year when the Liberals controlled the purse strings.
Overall program spending during that same period is up 18.6 per cent. In other words, Conservatives have boosted spending on arts programs faster than they have boosted overall government spending.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, for example, will receive $1.1 billion from the Tories this year, an increase of $133 million or 13.5 per cent compared to the last year under the Liberals.
Kory Teneycke, the top spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, explains:
“The public reaction out there – you’d think we’d shut down the arts. That’s not the case,” said Teneycke. “This was not about less money for the arts. It about having government programs that are meeting their objectives. We’re committed to cancelling programs that are boondoggles.”
Now that the issue has been brought to the voter’s attention, it’s about time someone looked into the funding of groups that are questionable at best – and maybe question why arts funding has increased.
Watching Stephane Dion on the news today… couldn’t believe his logic.
He blames Harper for the debt problem because he cut the GST. “For people to get benefit of this cut, they needed to spend, and now we have this mess.”
So cutting the GST caused people to overspend… unbelievable.
And all along I thought I was saving money.
More gems..
Speaking to the Georgia Strait:
“Like today when he insulted the artists and when he said that he wants to put the 14-year-old kids in jail for the rest of their lives….And then to increase the number of our people in jail in Canada by 5,000 people and he has not a penny to pay for it. That means that our jails will be more crowded than ever. And when these people will get out of jail, they will be more brutal than ever. The rate of recidivism will go up, and we will not be safer. We know that because it is what happened in some states….And he wants to import it because he is a dangerous ideologue.”
photo credit: Wigwam Jones
A sign that this financial meltdown is very serious…
“John McCain has suspended his campaign effective tomorrow morning and will return to Washington, D.C.
McCain has also requested that the Debate Commission postpone the Foreign Policy debate.
McCain says he must return to the Senate to help work out the details of the “bail-out” legislation. He has asked Senator Barack Obama to follow his lead and return to his duties in the Senate.
In making this decision, McCain states that it appears that the Paulson plan will not pass through the legislature. He states that this issue is an emergency that requires immediate action and it is more important than the Presidential race.
No word yet from the Obama campaign.”
Let’s see what Obama does, and if he will actually return and vote on the package.
“Present” doesn’t count.
photo credit: ItzaFineDay
When 1,400 British Columbians were asked to include Obama and John McCain among their possible choices for prime minister, 42 per cent of them chose Obama, well ahead of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who attracted support from 29 per cent of those polled.
Placing third was New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton with 12 per cent.
At the bottom of the heap were Liberal leader Stephane Dion, Green Party leader Elizabeth May and U.S. Republican leader John McCain, with seven, six and five per cent support respectively.
When British Columbians were asked who they would chose as president of the U.S. if they were able to vote, 80 per cent chose Obama, while 20 per cent chose McCain.
Pity poor Stephane Dion; it appears he has as much chance of winning B.C.’s support in his quest to become prime minister as the Vancouver Canucks do of winning the Stanley Cup.
Not only did Dion attract only seven per cent of those polled as a potential prime minister, only one per cent found he was best described as charismatic and only two per cent said he could be best described as inspiring.
Kyle Braid, vice-president public affairs for Ipsos Reid, said the results were fascinating.
“B.C. has got a bit of a case of the Obama envy,” he said. “It’s really pretty incredible, the degree to which a leader from another country has set himself apart from other politicians.
“The numbers also show that Dion has managed to do that as well, but in his case it’s completely in the wrong direction.”
Amazing… especially the part about the Canucks.
