Financial bailouts

In this week’s edition of the Schultz Report audiocast, David Schultz examines the looming vote recount in the Minnesota US Senate face-off between Sen. Norm Coleman and Al Franken.

Is the situation here another Florida 2000 cage match, as so many pundits are claiming? In most respects, Schultz thinks the answer is no. But when it comes to the stakes and the political gamesmanship, that’s another matter.

This Tuesday, on a day when the federal government announced it will pump a quarter-trillion dollars into our nation’s banks, four of Minnesota’s most prominent economists were by turns caustic and cautionary in their criticism of the federal response to changing financial markets and to the economic crisis that has spread across the globe over the past few weeks.

Yesterday afternoon I talked with MnIndy’s favorite business/economics journalist, Doug Henwood of the indispensable Left Business Observer, to see what he’s thinking about the economy and about the panic in credit markets, which so far seems unfazed by the bailout bill or by any of the other measures the Fed and the Treasury have undertaken. “Certainly the risk of something really nasty looks the highest it’s been since the end of World War II,” he tells MnIndy. “Now, if you want to draw some comfort from that, sometimes when people are thinking the world is coming to an end, that can be a sign that we’re close to the bottom. Or that we’re closer to the bottom than we are to the beginning.”

The following video (below jump) is an interview that Charlie Rose taped with Warren Buffett on Wednesday, shortly before the Senate vote on the bailout package.
Excerpt:
“In my adult lifetime, I don’t think I’ve ever seen people as fearful economically as they are right now…. This is really an economic Pearl Harbor. That sounds melodramatic, and [...]

Jon Stewart and former Reagan/Bush I speechwriter (and current WSJ columnist) Peggy Noonan discuss the economy and the presidential race. Video’s below the jump; highly recommended.
An excerpt of Noonan’s remarks:
I think we are in an epic political moment… We are in a real economic crisis, and the American political establishment said we must do A, [...]

And retiring Minnesota Rep. Jim Ramstad is one of the House members cited in today’s NYT story who voted no the first time around but is more inclined to vote for this version. House leaders only need to change a dozen no votes to yes to secure passage of the measure, which failed by 23 [...]

Writing at the Sunlight Foundation’s website, Paul Blumenthal elaborates on the provisions that distinguish the Senate bailout package from the one that failed in the House:
An Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) patch, a mental health parity bill, a package of tax break extensions, and tax breaks and relief for victims of natural disasters, specifically Hurricane [...]

Barack Obama, speaking at a stopover in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, earlier today, gave his full-throated support to quick passage of the Wall Street bailout bill in the Senate after a different version was rejected Monday in the US House. The speech sought to bridge the gap between Wall Street’s wishes and those of the public not [...]

Author and former New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston, whose warning to journalists about taking bailout hype at face value we cited earlier, has published a postscript on the House vote yesterday over at the New Republic’s The Plank blog. His verdict:
Whether you favor the $700 billion bailout or not, the House vote today [...]

Writing in the opinion section of the Guardian (UK), Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says what a growing number of economists are saying: The Wall Street bailout plan that House leaders are working to retool and resurrect provides no meaningful prospect of the public’s getting its money back, and won’t fix the problem in financial markets. [...]