Greenspan: Don't use Fed as a 'magical piggy bank' (AP)
AP - Troubled by the Bear Stearns debacle, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is advocating a new way of dealing with government bailouts of companies whose sudden collapse could wreak havoc on the country's economic and financial stability.

McCain Versus Obama on Free Trade: McCain = McCan’t and Obama = OhMama
This is a continuing series on the Primary Issues of the Presidential Election 2008. Read Round One: McCain Versus Obama on the issue of Health care. Round Two: Their take on the Iraq War You have heard this famous cliché many times, we are sure. “There is no such thing as a free lunch”. There is even an acronym for it! TANSTAAFL. Go figure. For an explanation of how the cliché was derived, read the reference link. It is quite fascinating, well, at least interesting, well worth a click a

Rudolph Giuliani, Sen. Charles Schumer to face off on "Meet the Press"; Alan Greenspan visits "This Week"
NBC's "Meet the Press" will be in a New York state of mind Sunday morning. Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Sen. Charles Schumer will face off about the presidential race. Giuliani is a John McCain supporter, and Schumer...

Maddow/Olbermann Invited to White House Chat with Obama, But Fox Isn't a News Organization?: VIDEO
Here's a curious turn in The White House vs. Fox News fight. On Monday, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow were among several people who attended an off-the-record briefing with Pres. Obama at The White House. Sources tell us other attendees at the two-and-a-half hour chat included Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, Gwen Ifill of PBS and Gloria Borger of CNN. Perhaps not surprisingly, no one from Fox News was in the room. This fact quickly turned...

Greenspan: Don't use Fed as a 'magical piggy bank'
Troubled by the Bear Stearns debacle, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is advocating a new way of dealing with government bailouts of companies whose sudden collapse could wreak havoc on the country's economic and financial stability. Greenspan says Congress needs to give the government new powers to handle troubled companies to minimize any potential losses to American taxpayers. A self-described libertarian Republican, Greenspan has a reputation for being wary of giving the government extra

9/26 Obama vs. McCain, Presidential Debate 1, Summary and Analysis, Stop Blaming Corporate America
We are carefully rummaging over the debate at this time and have so far come to the conclusion that little was said in the first round that was all that interesting.  With further analysis, we may be proven wrong, and there could be key items we are missing, so we will try carefully glean the important points as we watch more closely. It appears to us that both candidates in this debate spoke of the central problem (which is the economy) with hyperbole and promises rather than practical solutions and expl

Bailouts Spike Atlas Shrugged Sales [Books]
All of the government's pesky market intrusions have people snapping up copies of Atlas Shrugged like they were bailout packages. Since it's not likeAyn Rand's laissez-faire fantasies got us into this mess.Former Fed chair Alan Greenspan, architect of the endless free credit of the 2000s, was famously an acolyte in Rand's "Objectivist" inner circle. He and George W. Bush were all for lighter regulations and oversight of an already-wild Wall Street.Now, of course, everything has come crashing...

9/26 Presidential Debate 2008: McCain Gaffes May Have Lost Debate. Will It Happen Again?
1. “…have no doubt about the magnitude of this crisis. And we’re not talking about failure of institutions on Wall Street. We’re talking about failures on Main Street, and people who will lose their jobs, and their credits, and their homes, if we don’t fix the greatest fiscal crisis, probably in — certainly in our time, and I’ve been around a little while.” In general, this was a very weak response Senator. The rest of the response involving requiring transparen

Greenspan: Don't use Fed as a 'magical piggy bank'
Troubled by the Bear Stearns debacle, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is advocating a new way of dealing with government bailouts of companies whose sudden collapse could wreak havoc on the country's economic and financial stability.

The Past and Future of Economic Dystopia [Mega Capitalism]
Yesterday marked the beginning of a new era of economic dystopia — at least, if the stock market is any guide. Former U.S. Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan called the current stock market freefall a once-in-a-century economic crisis. After the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 500 points, its largest one-day point loss since the September 2001 terrorist attacks. And as U.S. citizens contemplate the collapsing housing market and the insa

Coming Up: Alan Greenspan and Sens. Schumer and Cornyn
Today's job report shows the Unemployment rate now stands at 9.8 percent- highest level hit since 1983. Another 263,000 jobs lost last month. This Sunday, we'll get an EXCLUSIVE take from Alan Greenspan on where the economy is heading. Just... ABC News' George Stephanopoulos reports on politics, The White House, and Congress for his online column, George's Bottom Line and blogs the latest news from ABC's pre-eminent Sunday talk-show and public affair program This Week with George...

It’s Those Damn Atheists Again
JEFFREY Frankel announced a few months back: “They say there are no atheists in foxholes. Then there are also no libertarians in financial crises.” Much as it pains me to have to agree with an economist, he does seem to have got that bit right. Although there is a notable exception to the Frankel’s Rule. Whilst the vast majority [...]

Should Andrea Mitchell Be, Like, Kicked Off NBC Entirely?
We like Andrea Mitchell when she's practicing the fine art of journalism. We don't like Andrea Mitchell when she tries anchoring more than 30 seconds of MSNBC programming or bigfoots her colleagues for special treatment. So, we have a sort of wishy-washy feeling toward her. But our feelings aside, she's an ace reporter; a veteran NBC News foreign affairs correspondent, she's earned her keep. So it makes sense that she'd have a hand in reporting on the news that's affecting eve

Greenspan: 'Crisis Will Happen Again'
(Newser Summary)

9/26 Presidential Debate 2008: How Can Liberals Say Obama Won? You have to see this.
This segment has 30 comments from Senator Obama in this debate that are direct quotes from the transcript with our responses to each. We feel Obama may have looked nice, but we also believe he failed in this debate. Here are the quotes and our responses. All quotes are taken directly from the transcript. When asked about our current financial crisis, Obama responded 1. “But we’re also going to have to look at, how is it that we shredded so many regulations? We did not set up a 21st-century

Former Fed Chief: US Employment Picture "Awful"
But Alan Greenspan says he believes recovery is underway

Conservatives Seek To Shift Blame For Crisis Onto Minority Housing Law
Blame for the current economic crisis has been laid on many doorsteps, including the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 ; credit default swaps ; hedge funds ; the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 ; Alan Greenspan ; and Phil and Wendy Gramm . But it has fallen...Full Article @ huffington post Comment Share Email Post Your Comment say s

"Corrupt Asians" Feel Vindicated By Wall Street Bust
A decade ago, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan declared that Asia would realize that "market capitalism, as practiced in the West, especially in the United States, is the superior model."... <a href="http://www.postchronicle.com/news/business/article_212173935.shtml"><b>More</b>

America Out of Work: Is Double-Digit Unemployment Here to Stay?
It was not a lesson Lawrence Summers mastered with great ease. But after nearly a decade working beside sphinxlike Alan Greenspan, and having watched his own tenure as president of Harvard cut short by a phrase that slipped too nimbly from brain to mouth, Summers, director of the President's National Economic Council, has become a restrained public man. Gone are the days when he would glibly compare flailing financial markets to jet crashes, as he did to TIME in 1999. He is mindful of how...

Innovative Saxby Chambliss Campaigns On Promise To Do Whatever Alan Greenspan Says
Here’s heavy-petting Saxby Chambliss defending himself, on the Fox News, against a Jim Martin ad that quotes Chambliss saying he doesn’t even know what the term “recession” means. We’ll cut him some slack on that, because a new person is declaring a new version of the word everyday. But what’s notable is that Chambliss defends his comment by saying that he was quoting Alan Greenspan, people. He appears still to think that this is the ’90s/early ’00s, when name

The Depression Scenario? Deeply Depressing
For years there's been a lunatic fringe of economic commentators warning that Alan Greenspan with his easy credit, hedge-fund rocket scientists with their massive leverage, and i-bankers with those ever expanding array of abstruse and ultimately worthless financial products were creating imbalances that would ultimately bring about a Great Depression, Part Deux. In practical terms, they predicted that the financial sector would collapse, consumer demand would be destroyed by either deflation or inflation, a

EARLY MORNING BLURBS REMAIN FROZEN DESPITE THE MASSIVE BAILOUT LARK AND ME JUST GAVE THEM
The emergency bailout you and I paid for has not worked so far. Credit markets remain frozen because banks are mortally afraid to lend in this environment. Smart people are predicting a “severe global recession.” Republicans, predictably, are blaming poor people (read: blacks & Latinos) for our current financial woes, meanwhile economists are blaming Alan Greenspan for letting market forces run free for 2 decades. The securities at the heart of the subprime mortgage crisis are so compli

The Man Nobody Wanted to Hear: Global Banking Economist Warned of Coming Crisis
William White predicted the approaching financial crisis years before 2007's subprime meltdown. But central bankers preferred to listen to his great rival Alan Greenspan instead, with devastating consequences for the global economy. William White had a pretty clear idea of what he wanted to do with his life after shedding his pinstriped suit and entering retirement. White, a Canadian, worked for various central banks for 39 years, most recently serving as chief economist for the central bank for...