Sunday, January 17, 2010
Surely Just Coincidence
When Obama announced that he would travel to Massachusetts to campaign for Coakley against Scott Brown, her probability of winning the election according to Intrade's prediction markets plunged from 80% to 40% in the approximately 48 hours following the announcement. I'm sure it's just a coincidence. Surely Obama's presence could only help?
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15 comments:
Heh. I saw a number of comments before Obama's announcement predicting exactly that, many citing Obama's failure to pack a hall on behalf of Governor Deval Patrick. One had a quote from an alledged senior member of Coakley's team that Obama was "radioactive" when tested by their internal polls. Here's an example.
I wonder if, after this, Obama will threaten people with "if you don't vote the way I want, I go and campaign for you in your home district/state".
Well, I will wait for the upstate vote to come in, but for those who favor gridlock instead of government, this could be a moment to savor:
The Republicans destroy the economy, losing Congress and the White House after 8 years of what they apparently regarded as stellar performance; and the Democrats, one vote in the Senate shy of being able to have their way with the helpless republic, blow off the safest seat in the country.
Ain't democracy grand?
Dorothy Rabinowitz' last-minute assault on Coakley seems to be swaying lawyers, but even in Massachusetts there probably aren't enough of them to settle and election.
The pusillanimity of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts is echoing down the decades.
Harry Eagar wrote: "The Republicans destroy the economy, losing Congress and the White House after 8 years of what they apparently regarded as stellar performance..."
The Republican VOTERS clearly didn't think the performance of the Republican POLITICIANS was all that stellar and that's part of what set the stage for the Obama sweep. Now they're having serious buyers remorse.
From my point of view it looks like if I vote Republican they do a really bad job and if I vote Democrat they do even worse. I guess I prefer really bad to even worse and I'll remember that in the future.
I have met people who DO prefer gridlock.
I'm not one of them, but in a nation that really doesn't have problems, gridlock has a certain appeal.
Gridlock in congress can be a good thing.
"The Republicans destroy the economy...
Silly me, all of this time I thought that Barney "roll the dice" Frank was a (D) and not an (R).
I like the way you think Howard. ;-}
Howard, look up commercial real estate values and get back to us with your explanation how Barney Frank drove those down.
That's interesting.
I didn't realize that the definition of "economy" was "commercial real estate values".
I guess that must be the definition or that was quite an impressive non-sequitur.
The point was, Bret, that commerical real estate values are down even more than residential values.
That cannot be laid at Frank's door, so Howard's explanation fails.
Harry,
I'm still lost. An economy can handle prices going down (and up). Indeed, that's the whole point of the price-signal mechanism. Howard's not blaming Barney Frank for driving prices of anything down. I don't like to speak for others, but I think Howard is assign responsibility to Barney Frank for being one of the key architects in putting together a financial environment in which millions of people defaulted on their mortgages which in turn severely strained the financial system of this country.
That's utterly unrelated to commercial real estate values being down. Furthermore, if "values" are down that would imply "prices" are up and I don't think that's the case.
Harry, this is a real easy one. Commerce isn't a function of government. It depends on people buying and selling stuff. When the real estate market crashed under the weight of the CRA/ACORN intimidated mortgages lent by local banks which were then sold to ever larger banks, the financial markets collapsed, regular people lost their jobs, couldn't keep up their payments including their regular, non-CRA/ACORN inspired mortgages, so naturally commercial real estate along with all commerce experienced a down turn.
The creeping socialism in Washington as was entirely predictable exacerbated the situation by nationalizing the auto industry, trying to take over the banks and mightily trying to take over the health insurance industry ...
The election in Massachusetts last night changed all that. It almost makes one believe the Big Buy in Sky looked down and said enough is enough.
Unless effects precede causes in your world, that cannot be what happened.
erp,
thanks
Harry,
erp and Bret describe things pretty well, but I'll do some separate posts with more clarification. The Barney Frank reference was meant to finger the GSEs for enabling and promoting so much Ponzi finance in housing. Many other things contributed to the problem but that was the epicenter.
Howard, looking forward to it.
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