Friday Reads
Posted: November 5, 2010 Filed under: morning reads 61 Comments
Good Morning!!!
The Seattle Times announced that Sen. Patty Murray has won re-election. It was a squeaker but she pulled through. I’m sure I’ll hear about this one from my Dad. He thinks the entire population of Seattle is nutty.
As of Thursday evening, Murray was leading Rossi by more than 45,000 votes, taking 51 percent to Rossi’s 49 percent. That’s up from a 14,000-vote lead on Election Day.
According to a Seattle Times analysis, Rossi would need to get about 54 percent of the estimated 591,000 uncounted ballots statewide to overcome Murray’s lead.
But nearly 264,000 of those ballots are in King County. Murray’s already commanding lead there has only expanded since Election Day. She took 68 percent of the 69,000 King County ballots counted Thursday.
To overcome King County’s heavy support for Murray, Rossi would have to take about two-thirds of the remaining ballots in the rest of the state. So far he’s received 53.2 percent of those non-King County votes.
That made Rossi’s task virtually impossible, even though hundreds of thousands of ballots remain to be counted statewide.
The ever bombastic Allan Grayson goes out of office as bombastic as ever according to Politico. I really like what he says, but really, talk about a little too little and a little too late. Coulda, shoulda, woulda ….
“Our strategy for two years has been appeasement, and look where it got us,” Grayson said on MSNBC. “I think Democrats want to see a fighting leadership, they want to see a fighting president — somebody who actually accomplishes good things for constituents.” As examples of what Democrats should have focused on, Grayson listed the Employee Free Choice Act, immigration reform, civil rights and women’s rights.
Grayson also took a direct shot at Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, recommending that Reid read William Butler Yeats’s “Slouching Toward Bethlehem,” which contains the line “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.”
Maybe he’ll primary Obama? That could at least be interesting.
The media is all chatty about the new Dubya memoir. According to the those that have leaked copies or excerpts, Bush’s lowest moment of his presidency was when Kenye West criticized him over Hurricane Katrina. The response itself counted up there with my lowest moment of his presidency, but gee, doesn’t any one think that thousands of U.S. soldiers and millions of Iraqi and Afghanistani citizens’ death would be considered a really low moment? Or, how about the torture of Iraqi prisoners? Where’s the measuring stick this guy uses? How is it denominated? Inquiring minds really find the entire concept odd.
Among other things, Bush says the lowest moment of his presidency was when rapper Kanye West declared in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that “Bush doesn’t care about black people.” “That ‘he’s a racist,’ ” Bush told Lauer. “I resent it, it’s not true, and it was one of the most disgusting moments of my presidency.”
Bush writes, per Lauer, that he can barely think about the moment “without feeling disgust” and that it outranks people criticizing him for the war in Iraq or his efforts to cut taxes to benefit the rich.
I’d think finding out we tortured prisoners would be up there on the disgusting moments scale. Caring what Keyne West thinks about things is like a bald man obsessing on a comb.
Dr. Doom–Noriel Roubini–is out with a new column on Project Syndicate and lives up to his name. It’s my second attempt to get you interested in the currency war news too, btw. (Just-in-case you thought I’d forgotten overnight.)
The risk of global currency and trade wars is rising, with most economies now engaged in competitive devaluations. All are playing a game that some must lose.Today’s tensions are rooted in paralysis on global rebalancing. Over-spending countries – such as the United States and other “Anglo-Saxon” economies – that were over-leveraged and running current-account deficits now must save more and spend less on domestic demand. To maintain growth, they need a nominal and real depreciation of their currency to reduce their trade deficits. But over-saving countries – such as China, Japan, and Germany – that were running current-account surpluses are resisting their currencies’ nominal appreciation. A higher exchange rate would reduce their current-account surpluses, because they are unable or unwilling to reduce their savings and sustain growth through higher spending on domestic consumption.
Within the eurozone, this problem is exacerbated by the fact that Germany, with its large surpluses, can live with a stronger euro, whereas the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain) cannot. On the contrary, with their large external deficits, the PIIGS need a sharp depreciation to restore growth as they implement painful fiscal and other structural reforms.
A world where over-spending countries need to reduce domestic demand and boost net exports, while over-saving countries are unwilling to reduce their reliance on export-led growth, is a world where currency tensions must inevitably come to a boil. Aside from the eurozone, the US, Japan, and the United Kingdom all need a weaker currency. Even Switzerland is intervening to weaken the franc.
So, this means, for the short term, stuff may be a little cheaper for us. However, in the long run, this rush to lower exchange rates will drag down our wages too and it will be destabilizing because no one will know how low things will go. Any time you add risk to a market, you’re going to get pull back in risk taking. That means a lot of businesses will think twice before expanding and of course that makes hiring iffy too. I’ll have some more on this later today.
I’m not sure you read this in the down page links yesterday, but Democratic Blue Dawg Heath Shuler from North Carolina says he’ll challenge Nancy Pelosi for the minority leader position. Given the number of lost blue dawg seats, I’m not sure how that will come out, but here’s a link to TPM that covers his thoughts.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi hasn’t announced whether she’ll retire, continue to serve in Congress, or even seek a leadership role in the next Congress, but already one of the House’s most conservative members is trying to undercut her. Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC), who dodged the shellacking on Tuesday, says if Pelosi makes a play to be Minority Leader, he’ll run against her.
“If there’s not a viable alternative — like I said all along — I can go recruit moderate Members to run in swing districts,” Shuler said. “In that situation, I could do it better than she could, and that’s what it’s going to take. It’s going to take moderate candidates to win back those seats.”
Why don’t they just all re-register as Republicans and get it over with?
One last thing from Der Speigel that grabbed my attention. I think it was the headline: ‘A Settling of Accounts with Mr. Perfect’ that really did it.
To the right he is confronted by the stark hatred of the Tea Party movement. In the political center, voters abandoned Obama in droves. And on the left there are complaints that instead of Mr. Change, Obama has turned into Mr. Weakling. Young voters and African Americans are, of course, still behind Obama, but many of them didn’t even bother to cast their ballots on Tuesday.
The debacle, the largest loss of seats for the president’s party in more than half a century, isn’t just a warning for Obama. It is a demolition. For two years, Obama was allowed to hope that he had managed to capture the heads of American voters in addition to their hearts. In fact, however, he only managed to find his way to their hearts, and only for a short time.
The Country’s Lecturer-in-Chief
America, indeed the entire world, fell in love with the idea in November, 2008 of having a young, black president in the White House. Voters felt that they could be a part of the change that they so wanted — a change that Obama promised so eloquently.
But the voters’ affection evaporated quickly. Campaigns are like poetry, it is said, whereas governing is prose. To be sure, the crises Obama faced when he took the oath of office were enormous. But so too were the opportunities — like that of explaining to Americans how urgently reforms were needed.
Obama, the great communicator, turned into the country’s lecturer-in-chief. His reforms required a vision to give them an overarching structure. But instead, Obama preferred to go on about the failures of his predecessor George W. Bush, who had long retired to his ranch in Texas. Or else he analyzed how the impact of the global recession would have been far worse without him and his economic rescue team.
His advisors seem to still believe that the public just doesn’t understand how much good Obama has achieved, from health care reform to tougher regulations for the Wall Street gamblers.
They may well be right. But they are not doing the president any favors. No American without work wants to hear how the unemployment figures would be at 15 percent instead of 10 percent if it were not for the man in the White House. And no one casts their vote out of gratitude.
Read the entire thing. It reads like an Obot Obit. Okay, well, I’m still trying to sort things out on the PC and the new Blackberry. So, I’ll turn the discussion and the link suggestions over to your capable hands.
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
ecocatwoman
mablue2
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
I am looking forward to George Bush’s explanation of the Financial Crisis after he put Chris Cox in charge of the SEC who essentially defunded financial regulation.
I think History will rank Bush II as one of the worst presidents in history
PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain) cannot
I find that acronym offensive.
I don’t think anything was meant by it and it’s a lot easier than spelling out Portugal-Ireland-Italy-Greece-Spain. Besides, remember that only in English is the acronym close to “pigs”.
I think that’s a pejorative term used by Northern Europeans. I don’t blame you.
didn’t know it was a northern european slur.
fooey on them. i’m part italian and part irish.
lol 😉
Also Roubini should know better-one of his degrees is from the Bocconi in Milan, even if he was born in Istanbul, to Iranian Jewish parents.
you’re right, laurie, it’s offensive.
roubini also got his prescription for ‘anglo saxon’ economies wrong.
The Germans and the French some times take a down the nose approach on their southern neighbors.
Yes-but none are like the Anglos
well, i know that. my own english-german grandmother anglicized her italian husband’s last name when they married, much to the resentment of his family. i just didn’t know that ‘piigs’ was an example of that.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6A41N020101105
Clinton rules out a presidential run through 2016
When I read the part where she talks about other countries already having a woman as leader, it really hit home.
“Asked if it might be her, she replied: “Well, not me. But it will be someone and it is nice coming to countries that have already proven that they can elect women to the highest governing positions that they have in their systems.”
As usual, she always answers with class….
very classy
Wonder if Obama’s ‘lowest moment of my presidency’ will be when they laughed at him for wearing “Mom jeans”. 😉
Am trying to make sense of the QE II thing- not being an economist- just a poor working class slob- and you are the writer I look to to walk me through the stuff. Lord knows the “media” can’t explain it. The macro and micro classes of my eons ago college years? No longer can recall those.
So things will be cheaper now? And wages will be worth less later? Deflation/inflation?
I resist the urge to take what little I have left and bury it in the back yard. Will check back later to see what more you have to say.
Let me see if I can get this right. Things will be cheaper for those outside the country because the value of the dollar will go down. However, for those of us within the country things will go up in price. Hence the argument that this will help fight deflation.
I think I have it right. Let me know if I have it wrong Dak.
Dak
On TL there was a discussion the QE2 was going to be Treasury bonds purchased from banks. Why would the Fed purchase Treasury bonds from the banks and how does this improve things?
I find the currency wars interesting and figure it will be just a matter of time before the dollar will no longer be the currency used for valuation for everything. I’m actually rather surprised it has lasted this long considering the chinese and many of the ME oil producing countries have been making noises about losing it for what seems like forever.
Yes, it’s a policy to drive growth through exports because the purchasing power of the dollar will be down for goods outside the country and the other currencies will find our goods cheaper and should buy more. It is meant to reverse the ‘beggar they neighbor’ policy of countries like China that have kept their goods and services cheaper in relative terms by pegging their currency to the dollar in a way that their goods stay permanently cheap. This is not by competition in a market or from some kind of comparative advantage, it is through exchange rate manipulation.
The dollar is losing its status in the world as the ‘reserve’ currency of choice. I think you’ll see more and more countries go to a basket of currencies. The Yen is one that is important and so is the Euro.
Did you check the primer on yesterday’s morning thread ?
Just finished it.
I was really good at micro economics but macro was IMO much much more complicated. So I am still trying to absorb how the Fed purchasing T Bills from the banks (inside our country) affects places like Brazil. How does the chain of money flow from the Fed to the Banks to outside the US and if it isn’t money flow then is it just being forced to compete with cheap products(like we’ve had to do with China for awhile)? I know that the devaluation of the dollar impacts our trade deficit. Is that part of it?
Because US merchants who want to buy Brazillian goods must take their U.S. dollars and buy the Brazillian real to carry out the transaction. (The real is their currency.) The supply and demand for dollars and for the real creates a market just like any other. If there is too much supply of one currency, it will be cheap and the goods it represent will be cheap too and this also feeds into the investment market. It determines if you’re going to buy cheap goods or go for investing your real in Brazil bonds or stocks. The Money Supply also determines interest rates and therefore bond yields.
Good for Nancy Peloisi; I hope she holds firm this time and tells Obama to go to hell. What’s she got to lose at this point?
To state the obvious: By “this time” I’m referring back to HCR. IMO it’s pretty clear that her capitulating to him with the public option was not only wrong for America but cost Democrats dearly.
Why is it that articles attempting to deconstruct Obama’s failures never get it right–even Der Spiegel? Classic Village think, again. All the pearl clutching writers keep accusing Obama of being too far left when, in fact, Obama is slightly to the right of Attila the Hun. Instead of calling him a great communicator, why don’t they call him what he really is–the great patronizer. (Rant off.)
From Dr. Roubini
OK, so how does that square with not worrying about the deficit and spending to meet domestic needs, such as jobs, infrastructure, health care, the social safety net, etc. so the cash flow through the economy can be increased by greater middle class prosperity? Or does it?
Yep. He’s wrong, IMO. There is *only* government spending left right now to make up the domestic demand deficit. Government belt-tightening is the wrong approach. However, I wouldn’t object if someone in D.C. started looking at re-routing our war spending back to the domestic economy, increasing social security, etc.
Accountability might make a nice cost saving change. No more no-bid contracts. No more mercenaries. Perhaps without mercenaries, we couldn’t wage wars unilaterally.
Accountability would have save us from the leaks that Wikipedia produced and would have given the Dems the upper hand to some extent.
Instead, Obama wanted to “turn a new page” thus allowing those weasels to get away with the crapola and are now on the same path to finish the job.
You would think that Madoff was the only crook making billions when there are still so many more laughing and scratching at the beauty of Obama’s leadership.
If only accountability were a realistic hope!
That’s my take too.
Germany and China are not liking the fed move –
Germany and China have expressed concerns over US plans to pump $600bn (£373bn) into the US economy.
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said the US would not solve its problems, but create “extra problems for the world” instead.
Some countries fear that the US Federal Reserve’s move could hurt their exports by making their currencies stronger.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11697483
Ok dak – I have a question about the currency wars… Will there be a written test?
I am trying my best to follow this and would not otherwise be but for your posts. You are a good teacher but sometimes I feel like I need a glossary for dummies. Thanks for your patience.
lol, no written test and I’m trying to go real slow because the foreign sector isn’t added even to 101 or 102 classes very often. International economics and trade and finance are their own things so you can even find people in economics and finance that don’t have background in it. My three fields are Monetary Economics/Banking, Corporate Finance, and International Finance and Trade. That’s not a traditional combination for many folks.
Grayson said on MSNBC. “I think Democrats want to see a fighting leadership, they want to see a fighting president — somebody who actually accomplishes good things for constituents.” As examples of what Democrats should have focused on, Grayson listed the Employee Free Choice Act, immigration reform, civil rights and women’s rights.
Well they had one and the Dem base voted for her…duh
But I have to laugh at his list when I look at the current Dems…like the GOP, they have allowed lobbyists to write bills so long, they don’t even know how to craft one themselves much less push it though. These are lost skills and dead languages in congress as far as I can see.
Phase 1 of Mission Wash Out the Bushit is over. Phase 2 is beginning. The media will begin to chip away at their creation
Hooray for Patty Murray!! It’s been said that one can see all of the votes needed to win a statewide election in WA, from the top of the Space Needle. The western part of the state came through again!
I was of two minds about voting for her, given her cave-ins on Obama’s DINO agenda. Rossi would be very bad news, though. I wonder if he’ll give up for good this time? This makes 3 in a row he’s lost. All to Democratic women (snicker, snicker)!
I assume most of you receive emails from Ann Lewis at No Limits Foundation (nolimits.org) but for those who do not I just want to make you aware of the following:
“We’re proud to announce two members-only conference calls coming up: Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm on the economy and CARE Vice President for Policy and Advocacy JoDee Winterhof on better lives for women around the world.
You asked for it: Jennifer Granholm on the American economy
Governor Jennifer Granholm has spent the last eight years on the front lines of the American economy. First elected in 2002, and reelected in 2006 with the largest number of votes ever cast for governor in Michigan, she has worked to strengthen and diversify Michigan’s economy, adding opportunities beyond the traditional automobile manufacturing base; such as alternative energy, doubling the number of college graduates, and expanding children’s health coverage.
JOIN NO LIMITS!
You’ll want to be part of this conversation on Thursday November 18th – open to No Limits members only. Start thinking about the questions you want to ask!!”
yup! I belong. The link to her is over on the left sidebar in places that matter.
Thanks for the link…
The Jobs numbers are out for October:
Job growth is positive but not enough to make a dent in the unemployment rate.
Krugman’s got a response to Evan Bayh at the NYT
MMMMmmmmmkay. Maybe’s he’s just not into you or being a real Democrat Dr. Krugman?
There you go.
Nice to have you back, Paul.
But let’s don’t pretend you didn’t take a hiatus to give Obama a pass.
Oh dear: “Keith Olbermann SUSPENDED From MSNBC Indefinitely Without Pay
developing…”
He donated to three Democrats this election cycle.
This could get interesting.
Ooooh! Where did you read this, Dee?
I do wish he is sent to a room with two women and only the women come out.
OOOOh, “If you sit by the river long enough, you will see the body of your enemy float by.” Sun Tzu
I Googled and found a link…
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20021940-503544.html
Reading the article at Huffpoo, several of the commenters are very upset and predict that MSNBC ratings will plummet!! How much lower can they go?
Karma, man.
It’s a damn shame he went so far off the rails.
HA!!! Good. He can join Shuster in whatever basement he’s in now.
I just got CNN breaking news and it says that Pelosi will stay and will run for minority leader
Der Spiegel ends its article with the following:
Obama will be a mediocre one termer, imho.
I always had a feeling that he only ever wanted to be a one-termer.
Trying to “suss out” what Obama thinks is as puzzling as to why David Blaine does what he does.
Laurie, so have I. It seems to me that Obama simply wanted to make it into the history books but he’s not interested in actually making history. He’s the ultimate ticket puncher. Now that he can check president off his list, he’s done. (Let’s hope he’s done.)
yeah, but wouldn’t an ego make him not want to be a one termer? One Termers always kind’ve go into the failed Presidency bin.
all ego, no conscience. he’ll go for a second term unless he’s forced out.
yes but he does love to vacation…
Nancy Pelosi has signaled that she will once again seek the position of Dem Minority Leader.
Apparently Nancy is still waiting for the “message” to arrive. Much of the voter antipathy that took place on Tuesday came signed, sealed, and delivered bearing her name in many places.
If there was ever a time for “change” in the House, this is it. I would love to see Anthony Weiner take her place because if the GOP is looking for a good fight, this is the guy who can at least outshout them.
For disaffected, disenchanted Dems to rise up from the torpor, handing the reins to someone else may be a much needed fresh start. Having Nancy in that role will just send another signal and a “who cares” attitude back into the laps of those of us who actually do give a damn.
Two House Dems are also waiting in the wings to challenge her….
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/127899-democrats-split-over-potential-pelosi-bid-for-minority-leader
here’s a funny right wing link:
Peggy Noonan says Palin is Not Reagan and then proceeds to call her a nincompoop in the WSJ op ed page. I think she just called her ignorant too.
ouch