I guess because Bush has never wanted to acknowledge any bad news in 8 years in office. (Remember when no one in the administration was allowed to recognize the insurgency in Iraq or say that there was a civil war going on? Use the “r” word about the economy?)

Congressional Republicans: “McCain runs Bartertown.”

MasterMcBlaster: “Campaign Embargo…OVER!”

Next up: Thunderdome in Mississippi. Two men enter, one man leave. Spin the wheel, Raggedyman!

Oh well if Newt said it– then we have nothing to worry about! I'd take his word over Bernanke and Paulson anyday.

Of course that little egomaniac has to find a way to grandstand even when he's not running for anything.

Newt Gingrich just said his researchers have calculated an elimination of mark to market as being worth 500 billion of the 700 billion problem.

We’ll have to see how it plays out at the debate tonight.

If the moderator picks up on the theme that Obama/Reid/Pelosi/Dodd/Bush are in agreement and McCain/Congressional Rep. are the holdouts, game over for the community organizer.

100 million viewers – ain’t no ‘splain’in this one away.

At one point, the same rule worked in reverse for institutions to add value to their balance sheets.

I’m not a finance guy, but apparently it was used to help implement a low income housing initiative during the Clinton administration.

As with most every liberal policy, it was intended to do good, but ended up causing havoc.

Let's say Bank A and Bank B each own an asset, for which they each paid $100. For the sake of this simple comment, assume it's the only capital asset each bank has. Let's further suppose that Bank A and Bank B are allowed to make loans at a ratio of 10 to 1 (in relationship to the capital). In this case, Bank A and Bank B have both therefore extended $1,000 in various loans.

But now Bank B decides to sell its asset for $110. Mark to market means that everybody holding the same kind of asset must now revalue to this latest price.

Cool! Bank B's selling price means that Bank A's capital goes up by 10% — which means they can extend a further $100 in loans.

But what happens when Bank B sells for less than what it paid? Say… $90? Now Bank A has to mark its own asset down to that same value. And because the regulations say that they cannot leverage further than 10:1, they also have to bring their loans back in line with the required ratio. So now they have to call in 10% of their loans.

Does this make any sense?

So — the recent “fire sales” (like Merrill Lynch) had assets selling for something like 22 cents on the dollar. Think about what impact mark to market will have on the asset values…. and thus the banks' ability to make loans — or even leave existing loans in place.

Mark to Market is a rule to adjust the value of an asset on your books to the current fair market value.

If you want to personalize the theory, here’s an example.

Let’s say you own a house that you paid $500,000 for just last year. You took out a mortgage for $450,000 and are making the payments easily.

Let’s also say that you have an extra $25,000 in savings for emergencies.

You wake up one morning and find that your neighbor with a similar house had to sell for $300,000, due to fact that the market was down and the neighbor was forced to sell quickly for whatever he could get.

If you had to live under mark to market rules, your bank would come to you and say your house was only worth $300,000. So, even though you are making your payments on time, they want the difference. $450,000 – $300,000 = $150,000.

Pay up. Right now! Even though you had cash reserves, it’s not enough to cover the difference.

You would now have a liquidity problem. All because of a rule that could be eliminated by the stroke of a pen.

I hope this helped explain it.

ChrisWWW — Word, dude.

“and to most people Dubya = all Republicans”

That was the dangerous part of McCain’s magic trick. Had Reid, Pelosi, Dodd, Frank and all the surrogates kept quiet yesterday evening and today, it would have appeared to be a strictly administration program.

Being so full of themselves, they couldn’t resist the chance to preen for the cameras before thinking about how they were tying themselves to Bush.

Now, you have an unpopular President joined at the hip to even more unpopular congressional democrats in a scheme to waste taxpayer’s money on a historic scale. They couldn’t even resist the temptation of trying to load the bill with pork.

McCain and the House republicans are the only ones standing apart.

Bippity…..Boppity…..BOO!

Iraq has WMD
Rich people pay too much in taxes
There are too many restraints on torture & eavesdropping
New Orleans doesn't have enough water
People have too much health insurance, especially kids