I assume all interested Cafe-ers are watching the hearing.

I'm experiencing congestion problems so I may have missed something but my big annoyance is that no senator has pressed Paulson or Bernanke on the question of why there's this "crisis" (nothing about last week's "meltdown" threat) which requires immediate Congressional action.

Anyone pick up anything along these lines?

"Recent Reader Posts" wiped out -- 9 identical entries(?) -- by man suffering ADHD.

'Nuff said!

Giblets is back!  Enuf said.

A lonely nation turns its eyes to you.

As much as I admire the contributions of Dean Baker, Jared Bernstein, and Maggie Mahar and appreciate their willingness to join the discussions, I'm afraid  their stories -- Dean (It's the housing bubble, stupid!), Jared (The middle class isn't getting its just deserts), and Maggie (Health care reform is possible but boy is it hard to do) -- are yesterday's news.

Over the past 25-30 years an economy modeled on industrial-capitalism has been transfigured into one modeled on finance-capitalism.  The results are obvious:  asset inflation; increased debt loads; large current account deficits; deteriorating infrastructure; unproductive investment; widening of income differences -- you can add your personal favorites.

These are results that most liberals should find unsatisfactory and ones they should want to correct.  As Paul Krugman says America suffers from a "malaise" (a Carter parody?) whose cure is uncertain, as uncertain as are the understandings of the three Presidential aspirants.  And he's right; the political elite has not yet come to grips with the economic changes which have taken place and has offered no real corrective.  Indeed, the political elite has been a principal enabler.

Today's questions are straightforward:  Should we turn away from the practice of credit-debt inflation?  How harshly?  How quickly?  Who should bear the greatest suffering?

Where have you gone, Kevin Phillips?

That's how long it takes to post a comment (at 1100GMT on a Saturday morning).  For those new to the site, there were once conversations, here -- really!  How 'bout a poll?

Site management is
a) anti-user
b) lazy
c) incompetent
d) all of the above.

I've got an itsy-bitsy CPU -- a Celeron 566 running at 850 (Hey! Knock off the giggling!  What with my 768MB of CL2 PC100 and my new HP LCD display and G550 I've got the hottest 1999c. system around). Anyhow ---

In the past I've never been affected or even particularly annoyed by internet ads. And then suddenly, there appeared the "Verizon FiOS" Flash ad. This ad regularly consumed whatever CPU resources were available (forcing my CPU to run at 100% and heating it up), but more importantly, it fought over the resources with my internet radio apps -- winamp and realplay. Thus ---

For the first time ever (going back to 1998) I installed blockers -- here, Adblock and Flashblock. And all for the purpose of blocking one objectionable ad.

I wonder how many others have done the same thing. And I wonder whether other internet advertisers should sue Verizon for incompetent coding since that single ad has resulted in my rejecting all Flash ads.

And too, what's the effect on owners of sites like Josh if his advertisers learn his visitors no longer accept Flash downloads.

 

Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, Mike Barnicle, Maureen Dowd, Margaret Carlson, Ceci Connolly! I could go on, but my question is: Has anyone got anything good to say about any of them?

Is it all about their pre-conciliar cathecism? Pope John XXIII just wasn't Jesuitical enough for them, not Irish enough?

Anyone got any ideas as to why they turned out so badly?