I mean, McCain loses his TR-quoting privileges when he says, 'Let's bluster, my friends, recycle filks of 'Barbara Ann' that were running around in 1980, (No, it's not even his *own* counterproductive joke) ...and then give away whatever 'stick' my policies have left us with.'

Anyway, Spidey, on this:

"The government should realize that shortselling DEFIES NATURAL SCIENCE. It is an ABNORMALITY. Nobody should be allowed to sell things that are not theirs."

Well, that's the most of Wall Street right there.

Ordinarily, 'shortselling' represents a sort of 'ballast' against unrestrained speculators' bubbles: it's like commodity futures: essentially you buy into promising *now* to buy something at a later date. If the price is lower, you get the difference. If higher, you pay the difference. In context of bubbles and inflated values, we can have some problems, though.

I don't like and never have liked how much of our economy is in 'financial services,' ...pushing money around without making or building anything. It's foolish to try and call that 'prosperity' while relying on a decaying infrastructure, and in fact a workforce whose education and skills are constantly being cut... the inflated values of homes and mortgages have ended up putting us in a situation where people are taking losses on homes that were too hard to afford in the first place.

Some folks bought their homes during the bubble, with de-regulated predatory lenders charging usurous rates... and when the inevitable crash came, a lot of common people ended up having paid on houses for years and ended up owing more on the things than they were worth... then the resulting foreclosures have caused chain reactions ...people still can't afford housing, but those who have it end up with negative wealth, all to the benefit of certain speculators.

Fact is, though, McCain wants to keep and increase the Bush tax cuts to the very wealthiest Americans... the shortsellers you so despise, in fact, (And if you give the very wealthy money, they sit on it) ...and present giving a five thousand dollar taxable break on twelve thousand dollar insurance policies as somehow a net gain, when the few it would benefit will end up in even *worse* shape after two years.

And he proposes continuing to cripple the real economy while trying to take it out of Grann's health care.

Potentially having the government use the near-trillion-dollar bailout to buy up bad mortgages and refinance them for homeowners in trouble isn't actually a new idea. Obama brought it up two weeks ago, and the bailout plan has *always* included that capacity.

As for Pakistan, it's actually very similar. You don't hand someone a bunch of money to do something, and then say, 'If you don't do it, we'll leave it undone.' It's *poor* foreign policy to go begging like that, or to take the military option completely off the table when *you don't have to.* Which is what McCain says, there.

Actual diplomacy does go better that way.

" spidermean2

BAN SHORTSELLING !! "

You're a couple of weeks too late for that.

It's been done, for now, anyway.

Kind of like McCain's mortgage idea... Something Obama said should be looked into a couple weeks before the debate.

BRAD HIRSCHFIELD

You wrote, "The price at which any object sells IS its value or worth. And the failure to appreciate that fact, was, and will continue to be, a major factor in creating today's economic woes."

Interesting statement, sad but interesting.

Do you really think that some of the prices that some people received for some of the real estate in the relatively recent past is what that real estate was "worth" or do you think that that is what they got for it?

Your statement could be taken quite a few different ways and one of the ways is that the house is absolutely worthless or even has a negative worth as in if no one buys it but the current owner still has to pay for the maintenance of it especially if it is owner-unoccupied.

Could the "value or worth" of the house actually be that people could have a roof over their head rather than extra profit?

Could it be that the "house of cards" called the economy is collapsing before our very eyes and we refuse to see both what it is and what is happening to it?

Does it ever seem that the "economy" is based more on buying more and more stuff to store in bigger and bigger (garages, basements, attics, whatever) spaces than in something that might be a little more important.

I have no answers but is not the economy and the advertising industry in particular in trying to convince people to buy things that they actually don't need and in many cases don't even want, what the economy is built on?

Has anyone ever noticed that the people that actually do what is necessary to keep life rolling along seem to somehow at least scrape by, yet some of those that have lost a few of the zeros at the end of their net worth seem to be panicking.

As I have said the "house of cards" is collapsing and it is important what we do and why we do it and what we know.

We are all brothers and sisters and we are all God's gift to each other, what kind of gift we are is up to us, is it not?

Take care, be ready.

Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.

"The sages of the Mishna ask, Who is wealthy? The best answer is, "the one who is happy with what he has"."

In other words atheists. We don't need god fantasies . We are simply happy with what we have. Religion is all about selfishness - the selfish desire to be forgiven for your wrongs and the selfish desire to "live" forever.

I've said it before that once Obama become president, America is ready to burn. I liken it to the spraying of high octane gasoline over a certain house. Why?

First, his choice of judges will anger God. Surely he will put very liberal judges in our courthouses.

Second, he could antagonize many countries because of his trade protectionist tendencies. Democrats are very hard ball players in matters of trade. Good for America in the short term but it could backfire in the longer term.

Third, Democrat's foreign policy are idiotic. Look at how they treat Pakistan. He is not president yet but I can sense that Pakistan is already very wary about him.

Fourth, I believe that part of the reason we had many casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan is because of democrats' inputs about how to conduct the war. We've seen Obama complaining about air strike and suggest that we put foot soldiers. That's a VERY BAD strategy. That should be the job of Afghan soldiers. We've won the Afghan war easily thru air power side by side with very few Special Forces Operatives with the help of Afghan accomplices and ragtag Afghan freedom fighters.

Bush and Obama represents TWO BAD EXTREMES.

Bush is too accomodating to many people that he ends up being stupid. Obama stands on the other extreme.

McCain seems to be the man in the middle. He is the one who is proposing to bailout the people whose houses were foreclosed. That act would FIX the financial market meltdown from the BOTTOM TO UP and NOT from UP TO UP. He put sanity to the Georgian crisis when he stood firm very early against a dangerous aggressor. The list goes on.

Just an observation. Warren Buffet is one of the riches in America. Why is he not complaining that he is one of those who will be taxed heavily by Obama. McCain should look into how this man is paying his taxes. I can see a lot of acrobatics and magic here. The same acrobatics that's happening in Wall Street.

BAN SHORTSELLING !!

The stock market is shooting downward. Naturally, everybody should be saddened. But NO, not everyone. Who are these people? Who are they who profit from this downturn. It's the SHORTSELLERS. The government should realize that shortselling DEFIES NATURAL SCIENCE. It is an ABNORMALITY. Nobody should be allowed to sell things that are not theirs.

THIS IS THE CANCER THAT IS PLAGUING the stock market. It defies science and anything that defies science is HARMFUL. We are now reaping the bad fruits which SHORTSELLING sowed.

When a house is burning, everybody should grieve. If you see somebody who's overjoyed, Im sure HE/SHE IS THE ARSONIST. Shortsellers are the only people who are overjoyed now.

For as long as the "arsonists" are at large, people's money are NOT safe. LOCK THEM (shortsellers) UP BEFORE MORE HOUSES WOULD BURN. For as long as they are around, our money will not be safe in the bank. LOCK THEM UP SOON OR THE FIRE WON'T STOP.

These bailouts cannot continue forever. These water hoses would soon dry up. Stop the fire from its source -- the SHORTSELLERS.

Yeah, Ravi, make it about Jews. That always helps.

Every year at this time we get stories about Yom Kippur and its meaning. The implication is always that Jews are so ethically fastidious. In fact, they are just as self-righteous and self-interested as Christians. We don't need all this b.s.

Hi, Rabbi... Like the article, though I'm not sure if you're talking about the below in a spiritual or economic sense, but:

"The price at which any object sells IS its value or worth. And the failure to appreciate that fact, was, and will continue to be, a major factor in creating today's economic woes."

I say, no. What an object sells for is what circumstances mean you can be made to give it up for.

Wealth is what you can give away.

Financial markets certainly are detached from these simple facts, but 'the price for which an object sells' *isn't* what it's really worth when there are other compulsions involved. Anyone who's gotten shorted on selling their tools or objects of incalculable personal value when similar items are marked up five times past the price ....because the seller has nothing and is hungry, knows this.

Anyone who knows what a 'Company Store' is, knows this.

Yes, 'value' of a thing gets inflated beyond the reach of people to whom the thing is necessary, in the minds of financiers, and then the financiers act all shocked and cry for charity from the people they scorned politically, when nothing can be sold.

What used to be people's homes and dreams and life-efforts sit empty and 'valueless' by your accounting... cause they were priced out of the reach of those to whom they'd be dear, dear things... Now they sit empty and foreclosed, even ripped apart by scavengers for the copper in their wiring, while people who set 'prices' bemoan their loss of profit.

All value isn't in money.

Sometimes it's about who's buying. And who's selling.