How Many Watched?

Developing... as the Drudge sayeth. He includes this link, stating preliminary ratings show it as having drawn 33% more than the McCain/Obama debate. I would like to see actual numbers, but the more who watched, the fewer who can be spun by the media.

And the House plans a second bailout vote... Bummer. At least they're not fully confident yet.

And stocks have popped up a bit in very early trading --bargin hunting?-- bummer, and then pulled back a bit. I just don't want that bill. The problem is, I don't know what signal the market can now send with the vote so closely pending. If it goes up, it's "because the markets are encouraged", if it goes down, "the rescue is urgently needed." At least crude is down a bit.

I don't know why I put links in on stories that are going to be old in 20 minutes. --Can't get the Drudge link to work anyway.

-------------------
Notes From Last Night

--Very bad for the media, especially Couric and Gibson. If they couldn't get an intelligent interview out of this clearly intelligent and very engaging woman it's clearly because they didn't want to. And then of course, there was the cutting room floor, which implicates their entire organization, and the complicity of the rest of the media in celebrating and advertising this particular and strange coup. Of course, I recognize this as what was happening, as do millions of others, but after last night there will be millions more on board. --But truth to tell, the constant reiteration of the "message" even as it's recognized to be manufactured and intended to harm, still has an effect. Cuda coulda collapsed, and that created worry.

--He claiming the "change" mantle, within the contex of debating a botox gopher, is convincing. It's no doubt who it is who's fresh, who it is who represents change.

--Off topic. "malignant narcissism", the psychiatric diagnosis of Barack: an exceptionally high opinion of ones-self with no accomplishment to back it up. I wonder if this might be a contributing reason as to why blacks support him so powerfully, beyond the simple racial identification? Part of black culture is "self-esteem". This is especially true in the inner city, where the impressively ignorant are bountifully arrogant, and will not be "dissed". Possibly his pathology resonates with his.

------------------
Hot Dog!

House passes bailout, stocks plunge. It was passed somewhere shortly after 1:00PM. Is it possible to note any correlation? --Really really dumb bill. --Really really dumb bill. Now we're going to waste 700 billion under the control of stupidity.

-----------------

The only pleasing news. Last night's debate

42% higher than Friday's presidential debate between top-of-the-ticket contenders John McCain and Barack Obama

I'll say nearly half of America watched. That's everybody who's going to vote. That should make it impossible for the media to spin that Sarah is stupid. But we've still got that stupid bill that's going to stink like a dead fish in six weeks. I certainly wouldn't want to have to take credit for having passed that thing.

------------
I guess I'll post this since I wrote it. I won't bother to write it just as a post:

Dear J,

"I guess the French banks are okay."

PARIS/LONDON, Oct 3 (Reuters) - French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said on Friday the world stood on the "edge of the abyss", gripped by a global financial crisis now threatening industry, trade and jobs worldwide.

"The world is on the edge of the abyss because of an irresponsible system," Fillon said, alluding to widespread anger over past lax regulation of financial markets and excessive lending.

I don't actually know anything specific about the French system, but this is world wide. In your second email you're doing what is called "thinking". I have no problem with spending 700 billion dollars to avert catastrophe, but the reason I'm so opposed to this bailout is because there's no thinking behind the bill. It's throwing money up into the air, all under the control of only one man, with no intelligent sense of how to effectively use that money. The problem is the uncertain value of the assets that back loans, it's not that the assets have lost value. Some have value and some don't. That's because the bad assets have been mixed in packages with the good, but in such a complex way --traded again and again-- that it's exceptionally hard to know which is where. That's why nobody is willing to trust any. And that methodology of discovery is exactly what has not been addressed in this bill.

--All projects depend on loans, at least effectively. There is no economic activity not supported by loans.

--The banks, for the most part, are not stuck with these loans, they sold them all to Fanny and Freddie. Fanny and Freddie then mixed them with other assets and sent them out world wide. Other banks broke up these packages more to suit their own interests, and sent them out. By one calculation, 63 trillion dollars of assets are now infected by these bad loans. And nobody knows where they are.

--Many of these loans were no money down and interest only payments.

--When housing prices fell due to over supply, and adjustable mortgage rates went up, buyers could no longer either make their payments or sell for a profit. They bailed. The "loan asset", it's value based on their payments, were then zero. These zero value assets are now scattered all over.

--But the houses still exist, they are worth something. There still would be wealth and credit --though loss-- if people knew where they were. But since they don't, credit is frozen, and with no credit there's no economic activity. Thus the crisis.

--It's to keep things from total collapse that governments want to pump money into the system, to buy time.

--The question then though, is who is going to sort out that bad debt, and how? This is where the financial arguments become really difficult.

--I presume most of the good work will be done by individual businesses, taking loss but making arrangements enabling lending. A lot of government money being promised makes them less inclined to get to it; they wait for the bailout. This prolongs the crises, and makes it worse.

--The bailout bill is bad.


See you, --Mouse

PS
All of your reasoning is correct, but the problem isn't the loss of value, it's that this loss of value is intermingled all over, and disguised. That's why these assets are considered "toxic", rather than just a loss. People don't really know what packages hold them and which don't. --This anyway is my understanding. --At some point these house will be sold for some value. --And credit isn't actually "frozen". That's hyperbole. There's just a lot less credit being sought now because, to cover risk, it costs so much. I'm speaking of the private sector.

I'm sick of this stuff and disgusted and terribly afraid it's going to give us Obama, whom I consider meglomaniacly insane.