DemFromCt: Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up
Maddow. The world according to TARP March 10: The stock market was way up today. Is this the first sign that the Treasury relief program is working? Rachel Maddow is joined by TARP Congressional Oversight committee chairperson Elizabeth Warren: "The decisions we make over, really, the next six months or so are going to be the decisions about how the shape of our financial future will go, really, for the next 50 years. Th s is it. All the marbles are on the table."
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Chris in Paris: I'm with Roubini on this one
An 18 or 24 month recession would be great (now that we're in it) but it's too optimistic. We still have not seen any stabilization out there and the second half of the year is likely to produce new "surprises" by some of major economies who have so far, avoided massive banking problems. (And by avoided, I mean avoided by looking the other way.) That will have an impact on an already delicate US economy that is looking for direction. The US banks also are not showing any signs of recovery and as long as the US government strings them along, they won't bounce back.The man who predicted the current financial crisis said the US recession could drag on for years without drastic action.
Among his solutions: fix the housing market by breaking "every mortgage contract."
"We are in the 15th month of a recession," said Nouriel Roubini, a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, told CNBC in a live interview. "Growth is going to be close to zero and unemployment rate well above 10 percent into next year."
Echoing a speech he made earlier in the day, Roubini said he sees "no hope for the recession ending in 2009 and will more than likely last into 2010."
Roubini, who is also known as "Dr. Doom," told CNBC that the risk of a total meltdown has been reversed for now but that the economy is going through "a death by a thousand cuts." He also said that "most of the U.S. financial institutions are entirely insolvent."
"The market friendly view for the banks is nationalization," said Roubini. "Temporarily take over the banks, clean them up and get them working again."
- Think Progress: Iraq takes banking advice from Citibank.
The Washington Independent’s Spencer Ackerman notes that at a press conference in Baghdad on Sunday, U.S. Embassy spokesman Adam Ereli boasted that the Iraqi banking sector is taking advice from Citibank:Beyond education and culture, in the field of economy and services, it’s worth noting that representatives of U.S. banks, JP Morgan and Citibank and others came to Baghdad on January 28th, participated in an international banking conference that explored correspondent banking relations that would deepen commercial ties between Iraq and the international community, business community. Citibank has already ....
THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN: This Is Not a Test. This Is Not a Test.
... Our country has congestive heart failure. Our heart, our banking system that pumps blood to our industrial muscles, is clogged and functioning far below capacity. Nothing else remotely compares in importance to the urgent need to heal our banks.
Yet I read that we’re actually holding up dozens of key appointments at the Treasury Department because we are worried whether someone paid Social Security taxes on a nanny hired 20 years ago at $5 an hour. That’s insane. It’s as if our financial house is burning down but we won’t let the Fire Department open the hydrant until it assures us that there isn’t too much chlorine in the water. Hello?
Meanwhile, the Republican Party behaves as if it would rather see the country fail than Barack Obama succeed. Rush Limbaugh, the de facto G.O.P. boss, said so explicitly, prompting John McCain to declare about President Obama to Politico: “I don’t want him to fail in his mission of restoring our economy.” The G.O.P. is actually debating whether it wants our president to fail. Rather than help the president make the hard calls, the G.O.P. has opted for cat calls. It would be as if on the morning after 9/11, Democrats said they wanted no part of any war against Al Qaeda — “George Bush, you’re on your own.” ...
Think Progress: Sanford plans not to use stimulus fund to stimulate South Carolina economy.
ABC News’ Teddy Davis reports that South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R), who is considering a run for president in 2012, “will be sending President Obama a letter in the next few days asking for permission to apply a quarter of South Carolina’s stimulus money, approximately $700 million, to paying down state debt rather than using the money to fund government programs.” If Obama rejects Sanford’s request, the governor will not seek the $700 million in stimulus funds which are under his discretion, possibly causing the state legislature to override his efforts.
DailyKos' Meteor Blades: Green Diary Rescue & Open Thread
Contributing Editor Scout Finch has already posted commentary about Van Jones and put up that video of his fabulous speech last week at the PowerShift confab. But as he is joining the Obama administration, I think it’s appropriate to give the guy who will start work next week helping direct the administration's creation of green jobs - with a particular focus on "vulnerable communities" - another round of applause here.
Change we can triple-cheer. Who filled this post in the Cheney-Bush administration? That would be nobody.
Jones wrote The Green Collar Economy and heads Green for All. Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, who was previously executive officer of the South Bay Central Labor Council and executive director of Working Partnerships in San Jose, California, will be taking over his Green for All post. At Netroots Nation last year, Jones said of our energy/environment crisis:
"We cannot drill and burn our way out of this problem. If we do, we will burn this planet." "We can say no, we're not going to drill and burn out way out. We're going to invent and invest our way out."
Here’s what he told the Commonwealth Club on February 2:
- Nuisance Industry adds: Jones, author of The Green Collar Economy and head of Green for All, is as an effective a speaker on urban environmental justice issues as I have seen. Effective because he can draw crowds of working class people to discuss sustainability. Effective because he is able to motivate people from Nancy Pelosi to the machine shop worker in my class to focus on developing clean energy jobs. He is a tireless, passionate, and popular speaker on a subject that is too often ignored.
Debating the Employee Free Choice Act., in which repuglicans lie ....
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