Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Monday, September 22. 2008

A few Monday morning links

Insider info from last night: forget the polls - Obama's internal polling data is not encouraging. Evaluate his behavior in that context. They do not know what to do. And watch for the McCain ads this coming week. They are going to stress the truth about Obama, unless I have been wrongly informed. That's why we are seeing this kind of junk.

And a note to McCain, who made a fool of himself last week talking about the banking mess: When you don't know what you're talking about - shut up.

Palin drawing ginormous crowds. Something interesting about the fact that you can put a regular, normal, practical, wholesome American lady up on a podium, and people go nuts. Maybe America is saner than I sometimes think.

Biden and Obama say it's patriotic to want to pay more taxes. Tiger has some ideas for those who don't have the money to display this sort of enthusiastic patriotism.

Fred Barnes: The GOP brand is looking better. Maybe so, but it doesn't deserve it.

How Fannie and Freddie blew it for all of us. Don't forget - they are government agencies, and now they are govt agencies who have confiscated my equity in those businesses and placed it in their own account. Rightly or wrongly, that is what they did, and I got screwed by buying government agency securities. Fool me once...

Paul Krugman discovers the hazard of inviting audience participation. Guess what? Canadians hate their ""health care system," but they are trapped in it, just like so many Americans are trapped in their public schools. Monopolies are bad things - but they usually get there via successful competition. But government monopolies are very bad things, and maintain failure forever on the backs of the taxpayers.

France bans internet wine advertising

Posted by The News Junkie in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 05:29 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)

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Holy Snot! A winner in the "Describe the Boston MTBA in thirty words or less Contest".

"Monopolies are bad things - but they usually get there via successful competition. But government monopolies are very bad things, and maintain failure forever on the backs of the taxpayers."
#1 John on 2008-09-22 06:52 (Reply)
fannie and freddie may now be quasi-gov't agencies but they were 100% private before the feds uh I mean we saved them.
#2 opie109 on 2008-09-22 09:27 (Reply)
How do you figure? They had implied government backing. Lower cost of funds and tax exemptions unavailable to 'private' sector competitors. They were political entities and subject to all the political machinations which could be used to benefit it's supposed regulators. They are called GSE's because they are in fact governmnet sponsred entities. They were created by government, supported by government and fullfilled a government purpose which devolved, like all governmnet programs, into vote and influence buying schemes, while immunized to a great extent from market discipline. FNM was taken off-budget by LBJ. It's equity was sold to the public. It's regulatory scheme was never changed. It's 'equity' is now worthless but a failure of it's bonds would be catastrophic because they were purchased under the assumption of taxpayer backing. They were never '100% private entities'!
#2.1 Tom C on 2008-09-22 11:24 (Reply)
"Fannie Mae was founded as a government agency in 1938 as part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal to provide liquidity to the mortgage market. For the next 30 years, Fannie Mae held a virtual monopoly on the secondary mortgage market in the United States.

In 1968, to remove the activity of Fannie Mae from the annual balance sheet of the federal budget, it was converted into a private corporation.[5] Fannie Mae ceased to be the guarantor of government-issued mortgages, and that responsibility was transferred to the new Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae)."

Tom, how do you figure it was still government after 1968? Are you considering government endorsed the same becuase there are shareholders. I am so cinfused withthe daily events that I am sure I am wrong here too.
#2.1.1 opie109 on 2008-09-22 14:10 (Reply)
What's with the stupid "brand" thing. The GOP is not a jar of peanut butter. Didn't BD or the Barrister write about this some time ago. And Fred Barnes is part of the big-government problem of the GOP.
#3 grant1863 on 2008-09-22 11:58 (Reply)
The GSE's debt has implied backing of the taxpayer. GSE means gov't sponsored entity. Calling it a private corporation doesn't necessarliy make it so. Their lower cost of funds, implied triple-A credit ratings, exemptions from state and local taxes by federal mandate, etc.,etc make them a federal responsibilty in fact. LBJ made them quasi 'public' in order to 1)raise funds through the equity sale 2)make it appear that their liabilities were removed from the federal balance sheet.3)create another vehicle for influence peddling and vote buying on the taxpayers dime. Pure smoke and mirrors. What is ocurring today proves my point since the agency debt was always peddled as gov't backed thus the lower yields and triple A rating.
#4 Tom C on 2008-09-22 14:32 (Reply)

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