...the FDIC moves into your neighborhood (via Calculated Risk):
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. plans soon to sign a major lease of office space in Orange County, probably in Irvine, where as many as 600 people would liquidate the assets of troubled banks and thrifts based in California and other Western states.
The agency needs 200,000 square feet of space and has looked at locations across Southern California, FDIC spokesman David Barr said.
"It's a temporary office—three to five years is what we're looking at," Barr said Tuesday. "We hope to find the space within the next few weeks."
Three to five years. "Short term." Heavens.
The Chicago Tribune today endorsed the Democratic candidate for President, for the first time in its 160-year history:
The Tribune in its earliest days took up the abolition of slavery and linked itself to a powerful force for that cause--the Republican Party. The Tribune's first great leader, Joseph Medill, was a founder of the GOP. The editorial page has been a proponent of conservative principles. It believes that government has to serve people honestly and efficiently.
With that in mind, in 1872 we endorsed Horace Greeley, who ran as an independent against the corrupt administration of Republican President Ulysses S. Grant. (Greeley was later endorsed by the Democrats.) In 1912 we endorsed Theodore Roosevelt, who ran as the Progressive Party candidate against Republican President William Howard Taft.
The Tribune's decisions then were driven by outrage at inept and corrupt business and political leaders.
We see parallels today.
Possibly some of this has to do with Sam Zell, but possibly it has to do with the 45-year slide of the Republican Party into, well, whatever it's become today.
OK, I'm a little behind here, being overcome by Hofstra Pride, being from the class of...uh...a while ago. (I've actually been poking other HU alumni on Facebook.)
20:10 CT: McCain sounds a little like Rain Man tonight. Seriously, is he repeating himself? Repeating? Himself? A lot?
20:17: McCain remembers the Depression-era program first-hand, no doubt.
20:19: Enough about the damn planetarium!
20:23: "If I've mistaken your polices for George Bush's policies...is because you're proposing eight more years of the same thing."
20:26: "Look each other in the face..." Yeah, that was coming.
20:33: John, some, not too many, but some, of the people at your rallies are scary. Deal with it. That's what Obama is saying.
20:39: This isn't about McCain winning the election. It's about him setting up the loss. McCain's goal seems to be trying to take a future President Obama's legs out from under him, so the 2012 campaign can be about how the 2008 election "got stoled from us."
20:42: Palin is a role model to women? Like, "Be careful or you'll end up like her?"
20:48: I hate to say, we're going to import oil for more than 10 years, and we won't have any control over its origin.
20:52: Obama "has never traveled south of our border?" Isn't Indonesia pretty far south? Or did he mean our border with Antarctica?
21:16: Did McCain just make air-quotes?
21:27: McCain looks hurt and angry.
"We" in this context means "we American taxpayers:"
The Treasury Department, in its boldest move yet, is expected to announce a plan Tuesday to invest up to $250 billion in large and small banks, according to officials. The United States is also expected to guarantee new debt issued by banks for a period of three years, officials said.
...
Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase were told they would each get $25 billion; Bank of America and Wells Fargo, $20 billion each (plus an additional $5 billion for their recent acquisitions); Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, $10 billion each, with Bank of New York Mellon and State Street each receiving $2 to 3 billion. Wells Fargo will get $5 billion for its acquisition of Wachovia, and Bank of America the same for amount for its purchase of Merrill Lynch.
The goal is to inject massive liquidity into the banking system. The government will purchase perpectual preferred shares in all the largest U.S. banking companies. The shares will notbe dilutive to current shareholders, a concern to banking chie executives, because perpetual preferred stock holders are paid a dividend, not a portion of earnings.
The capital injections are not voluntary, with Mr. Paulson [and Luca Brasi—ed.] making it clear this was a one-time offer that everyone at the meeting should accept.
Any other administration—any other—and I'm including Harding's and Grant's in there—and I would have some modicum of trust that this was the right thing to do. As it is, I'm deeply suspicious. Only 98 days left.
As of 7 minutes ago, fewer than 100 days remain in the worst presidency in American history.
Take out the trash day? Or just an ordinary Friday during these interesting times? Since lunch yesterday:
- Despite all the McCain Campaign's efforts to keep it under wraps for just three more weeks, an Alaskan legislative investigation released a report alleging Gov. Palin abused her power by trying to get her brother-in-law fired from a state job.
- Chrysler and GM are in merger talks.
- The administration (101 days, 4 hours left) took North Korea off the list of state sponsors of terrorism, leaving only one country in what can't really anymore be called the "axis of evil."
- Oil dropped to $78, its lowest price since last September, on fears of a global slowdown.
Finally, a wonderful quote whose attribution I can't find: "President Bush isn't so much a lame duck at this point as a wooden decoy."
The state that fought privacy rights all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1965 has now embraced them:
The Connecticut Supreme Court overturned a ban on same-sex marriage Friday in a victory for gay-rights advocates that will allow couples to marry in the New England state.
The court found that the state's law limiting marriage to heterosexual couples discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation.
Not the most important item of news today, but one more example of how the right wing have failed to secure their agenda, as Mark Morford described today:
They know their 15 minutes are up. They know they had their shot, gave it everything they had. Six solid years of complete control, their most potent leaders, their best ideas, war and terror and jingoism, anti-gay anti-women anti-science. Also: a million new surveillance cameras, ten thousand right-wing judges, a front-loaded Supreme Court, pummeling the line separating church and state, blaming gays for 9/11, keeping Christian rock alive, creepy museums in Kentucky where humans walk with dinosaurs.
And they failed. Spectacularly. Historically. Unsurprisingly.
I would be happier, I suppose, if 40% of my retirement savings hadn't gone away in the past month; but at least I'm not planning to retire for about 30 years.
San Francisco's Mark Morford also noticed the Economist's "if the world could vote" tool:
But come on, it can't be that much of a global landslide, right? Surely there must be some stiff, stoic nations out there who'd want a grumpy, tempestuous military man to lead the U.S., if only to have someone to play with in the grand sandbox of war and intolerance and oily greed?
Is there really no military junta, no dictator, no incensed bomb-gathering nation that really wants McCain, if only for the joy of mutual saber-rattling and for refreezing the Cold War? Putin fanatics? Tories? Papal knaves? Anyone?
Nope.
McCain gets Georgia (of course). And maybe Macedonia. Slovakia is relatively close, but leaning Obama. And, well, that's about it. At last tally, of the 9,875 available global electoral votes (195 participating nations, including the U.S.), Obama has 8,482.
McCain has 16.
Yeah. And those 16 include those in the U.S.
26 days, 16 hours until polls open.
There is a saying in law school: First year they scare you to death. Second year they work you to death. Third year they bore you to death.
I think the debate calendar skipped second year this time around.
Though, must say, the Vice-Presidential debate scared me to death.
Update, 20:58 CT: When is Brokaw just going to high-five McCain? I've seen more fairness in a high-school election.
Update, 21:35 CT: Well, it wasn't the laff-riot I'd hoped, but still. Wow. I think Tom Brokaw lost.
Chicago is finally getting high-speed rail service:
The ambitious project proposed for the Midwest would cover 3,000 miles in nine states. All lines would radiate from a hub in downtown Chicago. The cost of a fully completed Midwest network is estimated at almost $8 billion.
Travel times of almost 5½ hours on Amtrak's route between Chicago and St. Louis would be cut to 3 hours and 49 minutes on a high-speed train, according to preliminary estimates.
In the past year, more than 501,000 rides were taken on Amtrak's Lincoln Service route between Chicago and St. Louis, a 284-mile trip, a 15 percent increase over the previous year. Some 1.2 million rides a year would be taken when the route is served by high-speed trains, according projections by the Illinois Department of Transportation.
Imagine if we'd invested in this infrastructure five years ago, or even ten? Or forty years ago, as France did?