Huffington Post carried another critical view of Hillary Clinton: an interview with former US Senator Bob Graham.
The blog post ends with Senator Graham saying: "I think Florida is a very winnable state in November. It will be close, it is not going to be 2000, but it will be much closer than in 2004. And we can't afford to irritate even a fraction of one percent."
Senator Graham is wrong. Florida will follow the US electorate in November, running at full speed away from the policies of the Bush administration.
Not wanting to irritate "even a fraction of one percent" memorializes a centrist point of view that is largely responsible for the Democrats standing for a hodge-podge of policies that seem most popular within the circle of Democrats when they most resemble policies the Republicans advanced, now discredited in the worst economic upheaval since the Great Depression.
Bill Clinton came to Florida before the 1992 election, readily absorbing Senator Bob Graham's call to centrist politics. The results were famously called "triangulation" by the president's strategist, Dick Morris, and helped Clinton to be re-elected in 1996.
But triangulation was devastating to the party and its candidates as a whole. For the most part, it served President Clinton. For the rest, it meant a paler shade of red. (Again it bears pointing out that John Edwards represented this perspective, in the early part of the Democratic campaign than the other challengers.) Ever since Barack Obama gained traction with voters, Hillary Clinton has been wrestling to hold a center that does not, and perhaps never, existed within the Democratic party as a whole.
Barack Obama has captured another spirit. It is unafraid of irritating that one percent that Senator Graham is curiously engaged by. Why should Democrats in Florida be worried about one percent, when there is scarcely one in five voters who support the policies of the Bush administration?
The challenge now is to be specific about the new direction that Americans yearn for, as do our allies and friends all over the world.
11 comments:
"the worst economic upheaval since the Great Depression"?
Stop already with you BS.
Unemployment is still at 5% (considered full employment).
More people own homes, per capita, than at any point in history.
No on is standing in bread lines.
It's democrats like you, who make democrats like me (yes I'm a registered democrat) vote for people like McCain.
Your doom and gloom, america sucks, we should be more like France attitude is not shared by a majority of people in this Country, State, or community. Why do you think all the candidates you support lose all the time. I'm sick of hearing all you DFA types bad mouth centrist candidates.
The "true believers" at either end of the political spectrum are what's wrong with american politics.
moderate
Gotta disagree with how you interpreted this one Gimleteye. I got Graham's message to mean somehting like "we don't need another Homestead Airport issue". It's pretty clear that issue and its snowball affect with Nader had more to do with Gore losing Florida than the commonly used Elian Gonzalez excuse. All Elian did was boost turnout in the classically republican Cuban community.
We are blessed this year with a division in that Cuban community that will help a Democratic candidate. I got the feeling from Graham's comments that we can't f#*k up with this unseated delegates issue and allow a small percentage of voters to slip away.
A small percent makes a difference in rapidly growing Florida. It's a precarious balance between Repubs and the Dem strongholds in SFL, Pinellas, Leon and portions of the I-4 corridor. Yes, you're correct that us Dems need a dynamic figure to peel votes away in the Repub strongholds. The problems the GOP faces with the economy and Bush's aura like an albatross around their necks only helps us - if we don't screw it up. Our party has this habit of doing some bonehead moves, Graham was saying to me - let's not do that.
I do not care how screwed up the democratic party becomes this election. I had enough of the Bush administration to last a lifetime and anyone who would even think of voting for McCain is not thinking at all. Do you really want four more years of a Bush clone?
Well, I think you've hit the themes of this presidential campaign on the head. McCain must distance himself from Bush but not alienate himself from the GOP machine by beating up on Bush. A tough dance for McCain seeing his volatility in the beginning of the Repub. primaries that took him from 1st to last. He recovered and fortunate for him Huckabee took out Romney and put him back in the driver's seat of the GOP.
It's no secret thought that McCain is not a fan of Bush, the 2000 election South Carolina primary comes to mind - down right nastiness that was a clear message to what we would get from the Bush II crew.
So, I agree Mensa; another 4 years (god forbid 8) of a Repub. president would be terrible for this country. The pendulum is set to swing the other direction, it's already started with Dem control of Congress. A Dem president who is not at odds with Congress is what we need to start unraveling the web of poor policy that is killing us a nation.
Bottom line: (Getting back to the thread's purpose) Graham is trying to say - Don't let this problem fester, address it now, make peace and lets move on.
The Fed is Getting Desperate in Dealing with a Liquidity Crunch that Shows Little Signs of Relenting
Nouriel Roubini | May 6, 2008
Financial markets – especially the equity markets – have somewhat recovered since the financial markets reached a point of near meltdown around the time of Bear Stearns collapse. But the strains in money markets and credit markets remain severe and show little sign of improvement.
In mid-March – at the peak of the crisis - the Fed did not just partially bail out the Bear Stearns shareholders who would have been totally wiped out in the case of a disorderly collapse of Bear Stearns; more importantly the Fed effectively bailed out JP Morgan that had – like Bear – and still has a massive exposure to the CDS market; it bailed out the creditors of Bear Stearns who would have suffered massive losses if the Fed had not outright bought $29 billion of toxic securities held by Bear; and it effectively bailed out Lehman, Merrill and a good chunk of the shadow financial system as the Bear Stearns bailout – together more importantly with the new TSLF and the PDCF facilities – ensured – for the first time since the Great Depression - that systemically important broker dealers would have access to the lender of last resort support of the Fed. Without these new facilities and the Bear bailout a generalized run on many institutions of the shadow banking system would have occurred.
While the extreme tail risk of a systemic financial meltdown – and we were in mid-March one epsilon away from such a generalized run on most of the shadow banking system – was avoided by the trifecta of the Bear Stearns bailout, and the creation of the TSLF and the PDCF facilities the stresses in the financial markets – liquidity and credit crunch - remain severe as even the FOMC had to admit in its latest statement.
Let us analyze in more detail in which ways this liquidity crunch remains severe and persistent…
The severity and persistence of the liquidity crunch is evident from the fact that in the interbank markets spreads remain extremely high and still close to their peaks since this crisis started last summer in spite of 325bps Fed Fund ease by the Fed, in spite of the creation and vast expansion of the TAF auctions (now up to $150 billion over a month), in spite of the creation and extension of the TSLF, in spite of the creation of the PDCF.
So now after the Fed has already allowed banks and non banks primary dealers to swap hundreds of billions of dollars of illiquid MBS (and now even any “good quality” ABS), after it has allowed the non bank primary dealers to have access to the Fed discount window on same terms as the banks, it has now decided to allow even non-US banks outside of the US to have access to the liquidity support of the Fed: indeed given the stubborn recalcitrance of term Libor spreads to fall in the US, UK , Europe and around the world the Fed now claims that this stress in money markets is due to the fact that non-US banks are short of dollar liquidity and are thus putting pressure even on the borrowing rates of US banks. So while foreign banks and foreign primary dealers already present in the US can have access to the Fed liquidity and Treasuries-swap-for-illiquid-assets facilities foreign banks without US operations now also need to be provided with the lender of last resort support of the Fed.
How to do that? The Fed just announced a significant increase of its swap facilities with European central banks: the latter will be able to swap their euros, swiss francs, etc. for US dollars and then relend these dollars to their own banks that are structurally short of dollar liquidity. So, via foreign central banks now the Fed will also try to provide its safety net to non-US banks.
So as the stress in interbank markets is showing no sign of relenting the Fed has increasingly resorted to new operations that incrementally increase the number of institutions that have access to its safety net and the nature of its safety net: direct Fed Funds easing of 325bps and parallel sharp reduction of the discount rate; creation and now massive extension of the TAF that provided term liquidity to US banks; creation of the term facility (TSLF) that allowed both banks and non-bank primary dealers to swap illiquid MBS and now ABS for safe and liquid Treasuries; creation of the primary dealers credit facility (PDCF) that vastly extended the lender of last resort support to systemically important non banks (primary dealers); creation and now further extension of swap facilities with foreign central banks that will allow even non-US banks operating abroad to have access to the Fed’s dollar liquidity. The Fed is getting most creative and desperate as all these facilities have done very little to reduce the liquidity crunch in spite of the fact that now $500 billion out of the $700 billion of safe Treasuries held by the Fed are now committed to be swapped for illiquid assets on the balance sheets of US and non-US banks and non-banks. That is why the Fed recently leaked even more non-orthodox ideas that are being discussed on how to buy even more illiquid assets once it runs out of safe Treasuries to swap: borrowing from the Treasury bonds to be swapped for illiquid MBS/ABS, issuing Fed debt notes (like the sterilization bonds used by some central banks to perform sterilized intervention, paying interest on reserves to potentially massively increase the liquidity available to banks without blowing the monetary base, etc.).
But in spite of all of these interbank spreads – both the Libor-OIS spread and the TED spread – remain stubbornly high and only modestly lower than their recent extreme peaks. Why? Banks and non bank primary having access to the Fed liquidity are hoarding such liquidity and not relending it to the other members of the shadow banking system for two reasons. First, they need that liquidity for themselves as the roll-off of SIV and conduits and concerns about future liquidity needs have led to a massive need for liquidity insurance; second, given the counterparty risk – who is holding the toxic waste and how much of it – that an opaque and non-transparent financial system has created no one trust its counterparties and is willing to lend them money on a term basis. Given this fundamental lack of confidence and trust in counterparties the money markets remain totally clogged and the massive orthodox and non-orthodox actions of the Fed have very little effects. Yes, now in addition to banks, a dozen non bank primary dealers have access to the Fed liquidity. But thousands of other members of the shadow banking system – SIVs, conduits, money market funds, hedge funds, private equity funds, smaller broker dealers and investment banks – don’t have access to such liquidity. And most of these members of the shadow banking system borrow short and in liquid ways, are highly leveraged and lend or invest in longer terms and more illiquid ways. So they are all subject to liquidity or rollover risk.
The near collapse of LTCM in 1998 was a pure liquidity crisis rather than the broader liquidity and credit/insolvency crisis that we are facing today. Then the economy was running at a 4% plus rate, we were in the middle of the Internet revolution and tech boom and with high productivity growth. Thus a pure liquidity crisis was dealt with a modest Fed Funds easing (only 75bps); and in a matter of a couple of months interbank spread went back to normal and the economy rate of growth accelerated to 5% plus by the middle of 1999. So traditional liqudity easing (Fed Funds rate cut without any of the unorthodox facilities created now) fully resolved in a short order a pure illiquidity crisis. Today instead the most extreme traditional and non-traditional monetary actions have done little to ease the liquidity crunch almost 10 months since it started. The reason is that the economy faces not only an illiquidity problem but also a credit and insolvency one: millions of households are underwater and bankrupt; hundreds of subprime - and now some near prime and prime lenders have gone bankrupt, dozens of home builders have gone bankrupt, dozens of highly leveraged financial institutions have gone belly up, many municipalities are under severe financial stress and even a fat tail of the non financial corporate sector is highly indebted, marginally profitable and will go into financial distress during the ongoing recession (business bankruptcies are already 50% above their 2007 level). Thus, monetary policy can address illiquidity problems but cannot resolve credit and insolvency problems. And this US economy now suffers of a virulent strain of illiquidity and insolvency problems.
So the liquidity crunch remains severe in spite of all of the extreme policy actions by the Fed and other central banks. In forthcoming note we will show why the recent stock market rally is just a bear market sucker’s rally; and why the credit crunch is getting worse rather than getting better. The worst is still ahead of us both for the real economy that is spinning into a more severe recession and for financial markets where unrecognized losses are much larger ahead than the losses that have been already recognized.
I do believe you are right.
Does anyone who comments on here only buy American Cars or American Products?
If not, I guess you are part of the reason America only consumes these days and makes barely anything.
m
Obama/Graham ticket---get out the barf bags please.
This Obama character is funny, better said, is something we should all worry about. But all you die hard D's out there do not want to reason because you are blinded with rage against Bush-you still dwell on Gore, and many of you think you are smarter than the rest of us.
Please what the heck is Obama going to do that is so great for this country? Gonna pull out of Iraq-watch the region totally destabilize and watch oil prices double. Gonna give welfare/healthcare and other entitlements to every person in this country-watch our taxes go up to 50%. Spread the wealth, redistribute income and assets. What a concept. These are just a couple of the great things Obama would do.
Folks, he has nothing to offer but verbal diarrhea-he is a good speaker, thats it. Nothing else. And to see America drooling with this character. I have not even talked about his America hating wife. Isn't she a work of art.
People wake up!!! These are socialists right in our back yard, and to think that they could end up in The White House.
last anonymous...or ditto head...
You made me laugh, pretty hard. There is not much more I can add to what you said. Pretty Repugnantcan!
Maybe Obama is a communist too. Go online person before G.o.D.'s post. Read about "the curse of Lawrence of Arabia." Then come back on this blog with some vision on our middle east policies instead of using all the Republican catch phrases for every issue. Think for yourself man, it will do you good.
BTW People cannot be described as a work of art, they produce works of art. Maybe you wanted to say she was an artist...?
ok, I feel stupid. I so want to understand what you guys are writing about. Could you please dumb down some the the economic remarks for those of us who desperately want to understand. Also, to the first guy who tore into Gimleteye...you are right, this is not like the Great Depression...its different, for many reasons. Where will we be if the world stops being our bank? How does oil speculation factor into that? Why is China our banker? Also, where will we be if there is another major act of terrorism right now? OK, I think I am gonna go back and take some college courses. Be back in a while.
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