THE FLASHLIGHT, September 13-19, 2008

THE FLASHLIGHT
September 13-19, 2008
No Peace without Justice, No Justice without the Facts
Mary K. Matossian, Editor
mary@matossian.net, 9-M

US Politics

PBS 9-12. McCain’s claim to be an agent of economic change is mainly based on his fight against earmarks on Congressional bills. But earmarks account for only 1% of the US deficit.

NYTimes 9-15. Obama raised $66 million in one month.

CNN 9-16. Palin has more favorable ratings among men than among women.

CNN 9-18. Obama now leads McCain by five points. Palin’s ratings have started to fall; Biden’s ratings have started to rise.

The US Economy, and its Influence on Politics

NYTimes 2-15. Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy.
Merrill Lynch agreed to sell itself to Bank of America on account of bad mortgage loans.

PBS 9-15. Experts predicted the financial crisis will not start to improve until mid-2009 and there will be no recovery until the middle of 2010. A thousand small and medium sized banks may go bankrupt. The Dow Jones fell 509 points, or 4.4%. The value of Goldman Sachs and Washington Mutual dropped suddenly. The AIG Company, a multifunction insurance group, received $85 billion in US federal loans to prevent an international meltdown
The economy became the #1 issue in the election. Obama said that this is the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression.
PBS 9-17. The Dow Jones fell 450 points. Home construction was down 6.2%. Both Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs were at risk. Citigroup and Wachovia may buy Washington Mutual. The AIG bailout did not restore investor confidence. Gold went up 9% in one day. Money market mutual funds were stable, but not covered by FDIC. The federal government was under pressure to make sweeping policy changes regarding financial markets instead of its current ad-hoc decisions under pressure.
CNN 9-18, The stock market rose over 400 points. Three out of five great investment banks have now failed or been taken over.

In a speech Obama criticized the Republican economic policy of giving more and more to those with the most, and hoping that wealth would trickle down. McCain is now sounding more like a populist, demanding government regulation of the market.
Obama’s proposals:
1. Provide capital to families, liquidity to businesses to help restructure mortgages and keep families in their homes.
2. Provide jobs and meet national needs by providing $50 billion to build new infrastructure and schools.
3. Change bankruptcy and tax laws to help more who are in need, not just the most affluent.
4. Rate potential home buyers on a system that measures their fitness to borrow.
The consensus among experts now is that this is the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Israel

BBC 9-17. Tsipi Livni won over two generals, by a narrow margin, the election for head of the Kadima Party. She must now build a coalition. [She is for a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians and the evacuation of illegal settlements from the West Bank. Her right wing opponents favor military power only to maintain Israel’s security. ]