Obama takes it to McCain

From a classical liberal point of view it is hard to be partisan in any election, especially in the US where there appears to be bipartisan support for every kind of intervention and big government. But still you have to be grateful for moments of sanity, like the attempt to get real about regulating Fannie and Freddie in 2005.

Well, almost.

What happened next was extraordinary. For the first time in history, a serious Fannie and Freddie reform bill was passed by the Senate Banking Committee. The bill gave a regulator power to crack down, and would have required the companies to eliminate their investments in risky assets.

Different World

If that bill had become law, then the world today would be different. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, a blizzard of terrible mortgage paper fluttered out of the Fannie and Freddie clouds, burying many of our oldest and most venerable institutions. Without their checkbooks keeping the market liquid and buying up excess supply, the market would likely have not existed.

But the bill didn’t become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn’t even get the Senate to vote on the matter.

Oh, and there is one little footnote to the story that’s worth keeping in mind while Democrats point fingers between now and Nov. 4: Senator John McCain was one of the three cosponsors of S.190, the bill that would have averted this mess.

lol… KO is merely, “leftish of centre?”

Nic

Not for nothing but Olbermann was recently banned by the NBC management from ever doing a news cast for his abuse of guests and co-workers that didn’t agree with his views as well as for being too polemical. He’s now only ever allowed to do his opinion show.

Suggesting he’s leftish of centre is perhaps putting it a little mild.

Don’t you think he sounds a little how one imagine a Soviet newscaster would have sounded like?

I like it how Krugamn’s first instinct in the interview was the head towards lying but then caught himself in time.

KO asked Krugs if Lehman was a government bailout. He immediate response was to say “yea” it was. lol.

From my time back in the U.S. back in February/March, PBS Newshour was the only show I thought even deserved the term “News”. The term “market failure” comes to mind. It seems astonishingly that in a country of at least 100 million well-educated adults, none of the commercial channels feel there’s any money to made out of producing quality news programs.

I have to say reading that Hasset article, it seems fairly plausible that blocking that bill may well have been the difference between Fannie/Freddie Mac collapsing, but to suggest the entire financial crisis (the death of Bear Stearns, Merryl Lynch, Lehmann Brothers, and near-death of AIG) can be blamed squarely on the blocking of that one bill is pretty absurd – those companies have to take a fair whack of the responsibility for buying up so much bad debt, which there were hardly forced to do, by any means. Further, F&F Mac have been around since the 1930s – so why would they suddenly need stricter regulation in 2005 to prevent collapse? But it is mildly amusing to see even an AEI mouthpiece arguing that the current woes on Wall St are due to insufficient regulation.

JC, except that commercial stations in Australia generally produce reasonable quality news, which I understand is mostly the case in the UK too.

And there is a market failure, because PBS is *only* TV station offering quality news – and PBS is heavily taxpayer subsidised. I would’ve assumed that you would prefer to see that subsidisation disappear, which would leave the 8 million Americans that watch it at least once a week with…what exactly?

NPOV – naturally, if PBS were defunded, then some enterprising sort would painstakingly build a credible network of dedicated journalists, instruct them to report on the issues of the day without fear or favour, then kick back and watch the truckloads of cash roll in. Just like if we sell the ABC.

Nic:

No, KO doesn’t really piss me off as I don’t watch him. Honestly the only times I have ever seen him was when Ken P once mentioned him and now you. I also don’t watch O’Reilly for the same reasons. They’re boringly predictable.

From what I have read of Olbermann he would hardly fit into any centrist mold unless of course the center has suddenly taken a hard left turn :-)

S

till, given the little Ive seen of him its entirely possible that I was wrong about KO, that hes not leftish of centre but . . . gasp just plain left of centre. But I doubt that was your point really.

Dunno what he is in person but he does seem to push a pretty hard left line.

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JC, except that commercial stations in Australia generally produce reasonable quality news, which I understand is mostly the case in the UK too.

I really don’t think you can say that, N.

The ABC’s evening news with Dan Rather was actually quite good. ABC’s Lateline was excellent and commercial Sunday morning current affairs programs were well put together. I think ” Sunday” is now headed by former Clinton staffer George Stephenopoulos and is actually very good.

And there is a market failure, because PBS is *only* TV station offering quality news – and PBS is heavily taxpayer subsidised.

No, it’s one program that you and I like that is subsidized but not “heavily” so. There’s matching funding dollar for dollar.

I wouldve assumed that you would prefer to see that subsidisation disappear, which would leave the 8 million Americans that watch it at least once a week withwhat exactly?

Well of course. I think there shouldn’t be a cent going into state funding of any programming. That goes without saying. Jim Lehrer’s show would also do well on cable or free to air. To imply it would disappear without state funding is being more than a little pessimistic.

N;

you shouldn’t confuse local affiliate news programs with nationally syndicated ones in the US. The nationally syndicated are actually of pretty high quality.

Jim Lehrers show would also do well on cable or free to air

And your evidence for this is?

His audience numbers, N.

At PBS, the audience for the NewsHour With Jim Lehrer continued to show somewhat more stability than the commercial networks, but also some weakness.21

The NewsHour, an hour-long broadcast that began in 1983 and now seen each weekday on more than 300 PBS stations, attracted approximately 2.2 million viewers a night during the 2006-07 season, according to data from the NewsHour research department. That number remains unchanged from the previous season.

With 2 million people watching, although not big, would easily get him a slot on cable.

And while for you it may go without saying that the state shouldnt be putting a cent towards any programming, for me it would go without saying that stations who rely on funding from advertising cant be trusted to provide decent quality, objective news.

So you don’ read any papers then? And you shouldn’t be reading this blog because it carries advertising.

State-funded channels in Western democracies are generally freely critical of the entity that funds them – the same cannot be said of commercial stations.

Yea, especially here…. from a green party perspective :-)

JC, papers don’t rely solely on advertising, the advertising they do rely on is generally more varied, and they have a market that is to a significant extent based on their reputation for decent journalism.
But as it is, no, I often don’t trust newspapers to provide objective stories on their major advertising sectors. For instance, more than once it’s been fairly obvious that stories in The Age go out of their way not to offend the automobile and property industries too much.

And if the was the slightest evidence that were the Green Party to somehow get itself into power and the ABC was clearly not showing the same level of criticism towards its policies and governance as it has to the ALP or Liberal parties, then I would be first person to write in and complain. It would also be pretty close to a recipe for making itself irrelevant.