I took advantage of early voting and voted today around 10AM.
There were no lines, but there were a good number of folks there voting for a Friday morning.
It looks like the turnout for this election will be huge... I hope that is a good thing.
Friday, October 24, 2008
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14 comments:
Isn't anyone going to ask who I voted for?
;-)
Nope. Not me, anyway. I'm going to sit here quietly assuming, until you burst with the pressure of silence and announce it yourself.
{crickets chirping}
(Sitting in my chair, whistling softly as I read Stranger in a Strange Land)
I grok, my water brother.
Somehow I knew you would!
Whatever.....
So now we are supposed to bail out the auto industry; help GM buyout Chrysler? When will this nightmare end? Will I wake up tomorrow and the birds will be chirping and toads(we have toads here) will be croaking and all will be right with the world? Will the bankers be lending and factories chugging along with product coming out the ass end and the farmers farming all kinds of healthful foods? Will 401ks ever reach the highs of just a few months ago ever again? Will countries which were once mortal enemies suddenly take the tack of worldly cooperation? Am I asking too much?
I guess I am. Thankfully, we still have tequila, a silver lining if there ever was one.
Hey the DJIA was up almost 900 points today and the Fed is going to lower rates tomorrow so all is going to be well, right?
I still find it rather amusing that McCain is accusing Obama of being a socialist while the current Republican administration (aided by Congress) is passing some of the most socialist programs in years.
There was a fun article a few days ago that pointed out that Teddy Roosevelt, McCain's hero, was in favor of 'redistributing wealth' as McCain insists on putting it.
Oh, and let's see a show of hands of those who believe Greenspan was really taken by surprise with this debacle. As was put in one cartoon, "Who could possibly have foreseen that greedy Wall Street types left to their own devices would act like greedy Wall Street types?" (not an exact quote)
If Greenspan was as smart as everyone was willing to admit to at the time, he should have known that easy credit(historically low interest rates)over an extended period of time would lead to excesses(bubbles)which would at some point come back to bite someone(everyone?)in the fucking ass. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out.
Economic success takes balance and vigilance. With interest rates staying as low as they were for most of his term, bad things were bound to happen. Also, in our system, the "business cycle" has a tendency to require recessions every now and then. It is natural. But Greenspan tried to keep these recessions shallow(remember the "soft landings)which is a virtuous notion generally, but at some point, I believe, this will make the "big one" much worse because the imbalances and inefficiencies in the system will be much bigger.
Because of what is happening now, I am gladdened to see his celebrity has dimmed some. It is deserving even though the job itself is admittedly a very difficult one.
Well said, Bawdy. And now one of the big headlines popping up is about how the freshly rescued banks seem to have decided they are no longer in the lending business, and are going to use the money we all gave them for more acquisitions. Hardly surprising to those of us watching from the bottom of the mountain, so to speak.
does anyone here believe that by acquiring chrysler, gm is doing anything besides avoiding financial collapse for, say, an additional 12-18 months?
i've always been a chevy guy, but this just seems dumb.
bob, it's funny that you should mention the view from the bottom of the mountain. only a few hours ago, my father and i were discussing the view from the bottom of the dunghill.
coincidence?? ;)
Well, maybe I'm just making a mountain out of a dunghill...nah. Same difference in this case.
As to the American auto industry...here's my thoughts. Not facts, just thoughts. They have been hand in hand with 'Big Oil' for so long that they lost sight of what was eventually coming, as far as the kinds of cars they'd need to have on hand. So they just pushed and pushed and pushed the guzzlers, while the oil got scarcer and scarcer and prices went higher and higher. It wouldn't have taken a rocket scientist, or a champion economist to know that this couldn't last. That they would need to have econo models pretty soon, not to mention the eco connection. They didn't see the concerns of a growing segment of the public, and now they're in danger of fading away, even worse than back in the early 80's. I have no sympathy for them, really.
Of course, one could also make the argument that the American auto manufacturers just supplied what its big car, gasoline-addicted customers demanded... still, though, that does not mean they should be bailed out by the government.
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