Comments on: I am a soulless curmudgeon

By: Journeywoman

Journeywoman — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:27:43 +0000

Re: the family going out to eat.

If I’m not mistaken (and my friend isn’t mistaken) that is the family with the special needs child.

I said exactly what you did about the family. “Why are they going out to eat?” To my friend. Her brother is special needs. I got a whole education on how VITAL routine is for a child who is special needs. If they have always gone out to dinner on Thursday, then they will (and should) go out to dinner on Thursday so that the child’s world doesn’t come crashing in on her head. Yes if things get worse then perhaps they shouldn’t, but I’m not in their heads–and I don’t have a special needs child.

That also being said I thought the most touching visual was the elderly black woman trying to massage her fingers.

By: GrannyJ

GrannyJ — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 07:19:06 +0000

The worldwide financial crisis is a far, far more important issue than Bush’s stupid Middle Eastern adventure which is trivial in its impact on people around the world in comparison. Given that the great housing bubble that burst is largely a creature of the Democratic party, I can’t bring myself to vote for a Democrat in yet another branch of government, giving the Barney Franks of Congress a free hand for still more creative innovation. So I am advising everybody I know to hold their noses and, yes, vote for McCain. I think that tension between the White House and the Congress is a good brake on wide ideological swings in our governance. Don’t forget that FDR tried all manner of new experiments — but what it took to get us out of the Depression was a major war. I’d love to cast a protest vote for Bob Barr or any other libertarian, but feel this election is too important to indulge my own ideology.

By: Lisa

Lisa — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:41:31 +0000

You know, I thought the same thing about the family going out to dinner! I was far more moved by the Oprah show a few years back where a family had to do their grocery shopping for a week on about $12. I remember how much the dinner came to — $24 — which is not really cheap when only one parent is working, and only half time. I’d rather have seen someone open their cupboards and say “Hey look we’ve got no food. That is what our life has come to.”

Overall, I liked the Obama ad, but I felt icky about the idea of it from the beginning. Even though he is my candidate, I didn’t like the idea of buying ad time on multiple networks so people would be forced to watch. Seemed a little authoritarian to me.

And in terms of the bailout, I hear your frustration. I am 30, have a lot of student loan debt, and even though we desperately want to buy a home, my fiance and I didn’t buy anything while a lot of people were buying more house than they could afford. Now we are still renting, and those irresponsible people might get help from the govt (and by extension, us) to keep the homes they couldn’t afford in the first place? It’s not fair when those who play by the rules end up picking up the tab for the excess of others.

By: Johnny

Johnny — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:50:29 +0000

I admit I like the commercial, but could see the very distinct targeting going on there.

I saw that 3 of the 4 families are in swing states. Let’s be frank, he’s got a large majority of the African American vote locked up - he needs to convince white America that he’s not the Devil.

I was listening to a person from IndyMac say, “Yes, it’s not fair” about potential mortgage term re-writes. I’m not happy either, but that’ life.

What goes around comes around, I think.

Or was it, I hope?

By: gh1f

gh1f — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:03:38 +0000

Some of those ‘bailout numbers’ are a bit inflated: many of the payments are loans that hopefully will be paid back, and we got equity for the first TARP payments. But the government is probably going to spend lots more money, so who really knows what the cost will be.

But all that being said, I agree with your main point, with one caveat. We need the financial system (ie, the banks) to turn people’s savings into real investments. So if too many banks don’t make business loans for good real investments, then all the savings are not helping the economy. If banks just sit on the money, then the savings are in effect, being wasted.

One reading of the excesses of the past is simply that peoples’ savings turned into real investments in new housing stock, rather than investment in things like new businesses with positive real returns. Now we need to turn that housing capital into factories, investments in businesses, etc, but that is going to be costly.

In the end, the big question is going to be this: which way does the causality run–the credit crises caused future poor economic growth, or is it expectations of poor future economic growth that caused the credit crises.

As far as I can tell, we have no real way to know which way the causality is going. At least not in real time.

In any case, all the current uncertainty about what the government is going to do, and all the doom and gloom about how bad things will be, is actually making things much worse, since people start to pull back in times of increased economic uncertainty. (How can you not panic when you read in the Wall Street Journal that the Chairman of the Fed and the Secretary of the Treasury went to Congress and said that unless they get $700 B to give to the banks that the economy will melt down?) Much of the current uncertainty is now being fueled by the government’s actions and uncertainty about the government’s future actions. Hopefully all this will settle down once we have a new President and Congress.

/ramble