Tardy notice

Finally remembering to post a note here saying… I’m on vacation. That’s why the blog and the Election 2008 podcast have been idle. But fear not, I’m stockpiling good stuff for my return on 6 October. Alrighty then.

Biggest bailout yet…

It’s shaping up to be the biggest government intervention in the financial system since the Great Depression.

Floyd Norris in today’s NY Times suggests that the government’s criteria in deciding what companies are worthy of being bailed out and which ones aren’t, might be those “too reckless to fail.”

Economists on this week’s financial freak out

Thought I’d put up two long-ish interviews with economists from this week. Both of these guys are good at explaining complicated (to me, at least) financial news in an understandable way. The first is a conversation I had with Jared Bernstein at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.  We talked on Thursday, the day that central banks infused almost 300 billion dollars of liquidity into global market.  //10:44

Next, Gus Foucher from Economy.com. We talked Friday morning, about the “troubled-asset relief program” proposal being discussed by officials at the Fed, Treasury and Congress.

US image contintued

A long-ish front page story in today’s NY Times looks at the waning global influence of the US Supreme Court. Not so surprising, but interesting.

US image abroad

It was another one of those recommendations from the 9-11 Commission that was all over the news for months. President Bush even brought one of his most trusted confidants, Karen Hughes out of retirement to head up the effort at the State Department to help market Brand America worldwide. But public diplomacy is something you just don’t hear much about these days. It’s not entirely missing from the presidential race though, because our two major candidates both claim that they will repair the frayed relationships between the US and its most important allies. We thought the issue of America’s tarnished image overseas was worth looking at. This story aired today.

Related to all this of course is the financial turmoil playing out on Wall Street, one of America’s most important connections to the rest of the world. It’s early, but what’s doing in that regard?

Listen and read more on the global financial crisis.

Reporters?

We don’t need no stinkin’ reporters.

Fed bucket brigade

Following up on yesterday’s AIG story, turns out that yes, the insurance giant was indeed too big to fail.

David Leonhardt at the NY Times has a great story that puts the current round of financial freakout into context by comparing it to the Chrysler bailout in 1979. Leonhardt asks, when is someone going to start dealing with the root causes of the problem? Good question, eh?

Finally, a little good economic news. Economist Fred Bergsten says trade is saving us.

Global financial doom?

Monday was bleak. But was it really Black Monday 2: Dawn of the 21st century Great Depression?

Paul Mason isn’t so sure. He’s the economics editor for the BBC TV program, Newsnight. I rang him up on Monday afternoon after I stumbled across his blog post here, where he compares one version of possible financial meltdown to the problem of climate change, i.e. we know that it’s bad, that it’s man-made, but we’re not exactly sure how to deal with it. Here’s the audio of my interview with Mason.

My radio story that aired on Monday focused on the global impact of the news about Lehman and Merrill.

Markets around the world continued to sink on Tuesday and that highlights the question,… who’s next?

AIG is in the spotlight right now, in a very bad way. So, my assignment today (Tuesday) was to look at the global implications of a possible AIG failure. I had to chuckle when I called up one prominent economist who said he couldn’t answer that question. Too complicated. The truth about this story is that there are so many unknowns, about how bad debts are hidden, about how long the crisis will last, even about how parts of the modern, mystical, freewheeling financial system even work nowadays. One person I talked with today was economist Jared Bernstein. And I asked him if Joe Sixpack here in the US, and abroad for that matter, should be pulling for AIG at this point like it was the home team facing play-off elimination.

Here’s the story from Tuesday.

For the West Wing fans

Campaign 2008 seems like a re-run.

Election 2008 Podcast Episode 20

The World’s Election 2008 Podcast Episode 20 is here now for you and yours. Sarah Palin qualifies her statement about Iraq being part of God’s plan. The World’s Jason Margolis has a report on president Bush’s announcement to draw down US troops in Iraq. A BBC Newsnight interview with General David Petraeus. And finally, some leftovers from the RNC… including interview with former NBC newsman Tom Brokaw and Al Jazeera’s Washington bureau chief, Abderrahim Foukara. Check it out… theworldpolitics-at-gmail.com.

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