Come on, most of the time a well known pol uses the letters to make his or her point. (Often at a moment when the popular inbox is full) YOur letter has little or no chance against former elected officials. The letters section has been a drop down feature of the opinion page for a long while. When we finally trickle down to the local papers, a more insidious form of survival editorializing takes form. In a strongly partisan district no one wants to read the facts, or allusions to the facts, and letters critical of the encumbent are often edited beyond legibility. Only the most inarticulate critics of Bush ever make the OPEd page in my newspaper.

Often these small newspapers are managed as part of a chain, and the owners mail around the letters they want published. Like the franchise manager of McDonalds, you serve up the product they provide.

To be fair these newspaper people are bright articulate people, put to work in a corporate setting, and often facing a vocal and sometimes violent minority of opinions, often from their advertisors. None of them want to become a statistic.

Its hard to measure what role fear plays in all this, but I think the Democratic Congress elected in the midterm wilted rather quickly. Republican zealots aren't afraid to suggest that someone should kill such and such judge.

Now writing a letter extolling the virtues of McCain is only a small step from writing a letter questioning Obama's patriotism. But I would add that you should get paid for doing this kind of work? Would Tony Soprano whack somebody for nothing?

McCain needs to get out from under Gramm, and he could appoint Paulson right now, as a continuity appointment, couldn't hurt anymore than Ms. Moose Droppings...

We hit a new low, Bernanke repeated the Republican platform of reform, spoke about less regulation, smarter regulation, which is also the Paulson line of crap. (McCain talking points)

Why he didn't drill drill drill, perhaps there was no way to work it into the conversation.

Gee I wonder why they're all here, while the stock market is still holding above 10000, and housing prices are not collapsing. Could this be just one more crass extension of the Bushies political assault on the country? Well Iran is off the table, we have to get our boy elected somehow...

Throw the bums out, let the markets burn, not that they will.

He was just on CNBC touting this plan as a lead pipe cinch. He sees Treasury buying these mortgages at 65 cents on the dollar and earning a 10% yield on the investment? I look forward to checking his math, but this sounds vaguely like the Long Term Capital gambit, 10% returns after a 20% drop in the currency would be catastrophic. Or does he think putting 700 billion worth of deficit spending on the books would not affect the dollar?

Second question if this is such a sweetheart deal why aren't Buffett and Gross buying this stuff up? Third is his assumption about the ability of those mortgage holders to pay going forward is probably way too optomisitc, we aren't even in a recession yet.

Weapons of Mass Financial Destruction. Run hide my little ducklings, the eco(nomic) terrorists are after you.

Lets see if we have the outline of this bailout plan. 1) Treasury buys mortgage backed securites at a price somewhat higher than mark to market price, but at a discount to their full value 2) Treasury holds the securities, which accumulate value as the mortgage holders make their payments 3) Assuming the mortgage holders choose to keep making the payments, this premium is as high as 10% above what Treasury paid for the paper (According to Bill Gross)

In the real world however, revaluing a mortgage at 65 cents on the dollar has consequences.

4) After buying these securities, the Treasury resells them as highly desireable bonds, yielding 10% return, and reprices them accordingly, marking up the prinicple to reflect the premium to real interest rates. Between step 1 and 4 nothing happens but a bit of legerdemain.

If the bonds represent such a great investment, who needs the Treasury to play middleman?

By instantly devaluing the housing market, shock waves ripple through the economy. As recently as a few months ago these people were telling us they had to prevent the housing market from collapsing, now they're planting charges in the basement.

This stuff makes my head explode, it is the final bit of lunacy at the end of a long descent into psychosis.

And Congress gets nothing but worthless paper. What Congress should do is confiscate the mortgage paper, liquidate these toxic bonds, and reissue clean and clear titles to the surviving institutions, many of which, like Credit Unions, have avoided this entire mess. The rub is that in the rush to package mortgages and gets them off their books, the banks wrote more mortgages than they had reserves to cover. Tssk tssk. There are plenty of banks out there ready to do this, though not enough, at least at first to take care of all the paper. The Congress could pass these mortgages onto FHA, or a new RTC.

You can't save the economy by saving toxic debt. Bernanke has already polluted the supply of Treasuries, instead of firewalling this crisis, they threw open all the hatches, and then asking for progressively more money to bail out the problem. Add 700 billion to the deficit, and it is nearly 85% of GDP.

5) Enter the recession.