Former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan will endorse Barack Obama. He joins former Secretary of State Colin Powell in backing Obama.
This obviously won’t have as much effect as the Powell endorsement, but it adds to the narrative of Republicans coming out for Obama. Earlier today, several granddaughters of Barry Goldwater endorsed Obama as well.
We will be spending the next several years trying to understand the various causes of the financial collapse. As most agree, there’s plenty of blame to go around.
There’s no doubt that the credit rating agencies played a huge role in this crisis. I worked on bond deals in the 90’s that were very similar to the mortgage-backed securities at the root of this scandal. The role of the rating agencies was very clear. It was up to them to assess the risk tied to each security, and that process involved quite a bit of due diligence regarding the underlying income streams.
It has been clear for years that the rating agencies were not doing their jobs with respect to pooled mortgages. Now Congress is holding hearings in order to learn more about what happened. Needless to say, you can learn quite a bit by following the money.
Conflicts of interest were largely responsible for the disastrous performance of credit rating agencies in assessing the risks of mortgage-backed securities, two former high-ranking officials at Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s said in Congressional testimony on Wednesday.
The agencies are paid to issue ratings by the securities issuers, whose interests can eclipse those of investors, Jerome S. Fons, former managing director of credit policy at Moody’s until 2007, told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
“While the methods used to rate structured securities have rightly come under fire, in my opinion the business model prevented analysts from putting investor interests first,” he said.
And Frank L. Raiter, former head of mortgage ratings at Standard & Poor’s for 10 years, characterized the failures at that company by saying simply: “Profits were running the show.”
This reminds me of the problems we had with the accounting firms in the 1990’s. It was impossible to expect accounting firms getting huge deal fees to be objective when they were auditing the same client. Efforts were made to block this conflict of interest back then, but Congress blocked the reforms. Things didn’t get fixed there until we had the Enron and Worldcom debacles.
With the rating agencies, it’s painfully clear that more regulations are needed here as well. Let’s hope that we get it right going forward.
So much for small-town Sarah! This news story is hilarious.
The Republican National Committee appears to have spent more than $150,000 to clothe and accessorize vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her family since her surprise pick by John McCain in late August.
According to financial disclosure records, the accessorizing began in early September and included bills from Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York for a combined $49,425.74.
The records also document a couple of big-time shopping trips to Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis, including one $75,062.63 spree in early September.
The RNC also spent $4,716.49 on hair and makeup through September after reporting no such costs in August.
Politico asked the McCain campaign for comment, explicitly noting the $150,000 in expenses for department store shopping and makeup consultation that were incurred immediately after Palin’s announcement. Pre-September reports do not include similar costs.
One could argue that this is “shocking” in light of our economic crisis, but it shouldn’t be surprise. Sarah Palin has always been a prop in this campaign. We now know that she’s totally unqualified to be president. Not because she has little experience, but rather that she doesn’t appear to have the requisite intellect.
The fact that the campaign wanted to dress her up makes sense. Her job was to look and sound good – to recite the campaigns attack lines with a smile.
Of course, the strategy fell apart when she couldn’t handle simple interview questions without a scripted response.
The disclosure of these ridiculous expenditures just puts an exclamation point on the most absurd VP choice in history – even worse than Admiral Stockdale.
Rachel’s new show on MSNBC is doing quite well in the ratings. She’s obviously tapping into the enthusiam on the left, which will likely continue if Obama closes on the deal on November 4th.
The Daily Show has a field day with Sarah Palin’s town.
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