With the announcement of President Elect Obama’s economic “dream team,” speculation officially begins concerning what his cabinet will look like. “Which of those heavy hitters will be Treasury Secretary” is merely the first and most obvious question. The Associated Press (yes yes I know many people are still boycotting them) has come up with an interesting collection of short lists for the various positions, with the caveat that “Obama has signaled that he will...

Less than 12 hours from now, the first American polling places will open on Election Day. In many areas, early voting places were very busy with people trying to exercise their rights as they had time to do so. Of course, this helps people who normally work on Election Day, as they don’t have to count on voting during a small window of time before work, after work, or on their lunch break. While many people have certainly already voted, many have not. A massive turnout is expected for this...

The SEC has temporarily banned short-selling of 799 financial stocks. Maybe you don’t know what short-selling is. Here’s the funny explanation first: Now here’s the not-so-funny explanation. Essentially, buying a stock is betting the price will go up. Short-selling is selling shares you don’t actually have, betting the price will go down, and you can “buy to cover” later. One thing to remember: when you buy, you can only lose as much as you spent but your gains...

Last night, Japan’s “new” Prime Minister became their Ex-Prime Minister. More: Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda announced on Monday night that he would resign, abruptly ending his chronically unpopular government after just a year and leaving Japan’s governing party scrambling to find fresh leadership ahead of crucial national elections. Fukuda’s surprise announcement, made at a hastily called news conference, stunned Japan and appeared to plunge the world’s second...

I first learned yesterday of a police raid gone wrong. Busting down the door when the warrant doesn’t specify no-knock? Bad. Shooting the dogs as they ran away, then leaving them to bleed to death while you interrogate the homeowner? Worse. Refusing to believe that the homeowner is in fact the Mayor as you force him to kneel on the floor handcuffed in his boxer shorts for hours? Worse still! But wait! there’s more! The unopened package containing the drugs giving the cops the “grounds”...

This time, the terror watch list has picked up Clinton-era assistant attorney general, Jim Robinson. He is on this list despite having a recently renewed set of security clearances. It’s ok for him to have access to nuclear secrets, but not to get on an airplane without some serious extra hassle. He’s been quoted several places: I suppose if I were convinced that America is a safer place because I get hassled at the airport, I might put up with it. But I doubt it. I expect my story...

No, this is not Indiana Jones fan fiction. This morning I’d like to take a few minutes to talk about Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and IndyMac. Let’s start with a little background. Fannie and Freddie are federally chartered entities that buy mortgages from the banks and mortgage companies that write them. The original mortgage holder gets (most of) their money right away instead of waiting 30 years, so they have the money to lend to somebody else in a neighborhood like yours. IndyMac...

Today we learned that in June, our economy lost roughly 62,000 jobs according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Along with this, we learned that even more jobs were lost in May than initially thought. The unemployment rate is remaining stable at 5.5% — this has to do with the very narrow BLS definition of “unemployed” (you had a full time job, you lost it, you aren’t working at all, and you are actively looking for work). Keep in mind, May and June are a time when our...

Thanks to the miracle technology of RSS feeds, I am able to look at hundreds of news stories, blog commentaries, and cute pictures of kittens every day. One of my favorite news sources is the Christian Science Monitor. Their research is solid, the coverage in-depth, and despite the things implied by their name, they are very low on bias. Today, the CSM asks “Can McCain Deliver His Home State?” And they ask, conceding at the outset that Senator McCain “consistently gets 80 percent...

Let me start by extending congratulations to Senator Obama and Senator McCain as the presumptive nominees for their respective parties. And thank whatever Deity you like that the primaries are over! But now the time to throw stones is over; the time to gather stones together is begun. They can throw them at the other party later. Senator McCain has the relatively quiet task of selecting a running mate. For Senator Obama, the task is more complicated. He first has to find a way to turn Senator...

This morning, financial news channel CNBC was kind enough to point out that “The Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers said the final reading in May for its index of confidence fell to 59.8 from April’s 62.6, slightly above the median expectation of 59.5 in a Reuters survey of economists. May’s reading was the lowest since 58.7 in June 1980….” That’s right, consumer confidence hasn’t been this low since, well, since oil was at record high...

On this, the eve of what I sincerely hope will be the end of the primary season, I am proud to bring you a letter from a registered, card-carrying Democrat. This letter is right now being submitted to the Clinton campaign, the Democratic party, and others. He says, among other things: As a child I was promised that anyone could grow up to be President. For the last 20 years only 2 families have controlled the White House and your election would extend that to 24 or 28 years. That is the death...

Let’s imagine a nice little community of 400 homes. It’s a perfectly average American community, and it could be anywhere: in town, in the ‘burbs, in the countryside. Thanks to the often-cited statistic that 68% of Americans own their homes, we can deduce that perhaps as many as 32% are rental homes, or 128. However, we are going to assume there is an apartment complex down the road, and that only a third of that number are in fact rental homes. We’ll round down to 42. Because...

This post does not reflect the opinions of TMV authors or editorial staff. It is strictly my own. The ArchCrone and the ShortWoman are proud to announce a Mothers Day blogging event called the Mothers Day Blogswarm for Maternal Death. The purpose of this event is twofold: first, it is a counter-protest to a staged "funeral" for embryos and fetuses that hae been aborted; second, we plan to bring attention to the lives of actual women whose lives have been wrecked if not outright ended...

That’s a direct quote from Hillary Clinton. She said it on Countdown last night. She went on to suggest that we would not allow Iran to be a threat to Israel, and that we could “totally obliterate” Iran. And just in case anybody thought it was a slip, she reiterated it on Good Morning America. Whatever you may think of Iran, they are a sovereign nation. It’s just a little reckless to go around threatening to “totally obliterate” them. Granted, some news sources...

Or: A Series of Ineffective but Obvious Quick Fixes for Complex Problems Let me begin, if I may, with two items on that oft-quoted report from 1983, A Nation At Risk: the first from Carrie’s Nation basically calls out the fact that several of the key assertions actually had very little data to support them; the second from the Economic Policy Institute manages to cram in a couple of key ideas, namely that better schools were never going to save Detroit, that you can’t blame the schools...

CNN has been running a series called “Empowered Patient”. The latest installment is entitled How to find the best ER for your child. I feel that this article is seriously out of touch with the way most Americans interact with the health care system in general, let alone the Emergency Department of a hospital. Most of us choose a hospital based on one of two criteria: it is the hospital our insurance will pay for; or it is the hospital closest to the scene of the accident. Even those...

A new report from the Department of Justice has good news and bad news. The good news is that the DEA had “a 50 percent reduction in the frequency with which laptops are lost and stolen” since 2002. Of course they can’t actually figure out what was on all those stolen computers, unlike the 160 laptops the FBI has lost or had stolen during the last 4 years — they think at least 10 of those actually had sensitive information on them. It is known that at least one of the missing...

Oh yes, I watched way too much television as a child. And one fond memory is Detective Columbo conducting his interview: he would ask a series of obvious, softball questions and come off as slightly bumbling; he would thank the person and turn to go; then almost without fail he would turn back and say “Oh! And one more thing!”. Then he would ask the one important question that would unravel the case. And that brings us to Bear Stearns. It was 9 months ago that they were forced to...

Senator Clinton: You remember that Fleetwood Mac song about “Don’t Stop Thinkin About Tomorrow” because “Yesterday’s Gone”? Let’s change tracks on that album. “Do you know how to pick up the pieces and go home?” Yes, dear, it’s that time. You’re behind on real delegates, and your answer was to ask for the rules to be changed regarding Michigan and Florida, and to say that we silly voters should be over-ruled by the almighty super-delegates....

Once again Tim Ionono has some of the better economics-for-Joe-Average commentary going on anywhere, complete with lots of colorful charts. Today he talks about the today’s GDP numbers. For those of you who are perhaps a little fuzzy on GDP — Gross Domestic Product — you can learn a bit about it here, and why it’s important here. The Short version is that “it’s a summary of how the economy is doing, based on who is spending what and whether the money stays here...

This election season we have heard a lot about “health care reform” and “health insurance reform”. Senator Clinton and Senator Obama have been sparring over the issue most of the month. On the other side of the aisle, Senator McCain has also had to address the issue of health care. Everyone agrees we have a “problem” when it comes to health care and health insurance, but there are wildly varying opinions about what should be done. We all know that almost...

If you were to randomly come across a commentary entitled “Stop Supporting a Tainted Food Supply,” where would you suppose you were? Alternet? PETA? Some random editorial that happened to get picked up by Buzzflash? How about financial news site TheStreet.com? After giving us the quickie-version of the latest massive meat recall — which the USDA says shouldn’t concern us because most of the meat has already been eaten and what we don’t know can’t hurt us —...

It was easy to overlook if you were thinking about baseball and mortgages and FISA yesterday, but Iraqi Parliament actually managed to get some good things done. They passed a budget, for one thing. They also defined the powers of the various states — making Iraq a “federal” government. They gave amnesty to thousands of prisoners. They declared that an upcoming election would be scheduled for October 1 (oh, if only the American election cycle were so short). Best of all, these...

The FBI would like to spend about a billion dollars — that’s $1,000,000,000, one thousand million dollars — “to create a massive computer database of people’s physical characteristics, all part of an effort the bureau says to better identify criminals and terrorists.” They admit that among other things, the efficacy and cost “will depend on how quickly technology is perfected.” By way of disclaimer, I do not mind the fact that my fingerprints had...