Print Edition: October 11, 2008
THEY SAID IT
Sometimes I get tired of listening to myself, so I know that readers of this column must also wish that I would hit the off button on the Neff hot air machine on occasion. To that end, this week I thought I’d offer a random selection of what others are saying about the issues of the day.
An editorial in the New York Times commenting on the mudslinging going on in the presidential campaigns: "Voters, as much as candidates, are being tested in the 2008 campaign as hate-filled propaganda oozes from televisions, radios, the Internet and mailboxes…we fear these slurs are the harbinger of a more offensive and widespread onslaught to come. The best way to assure that free speech is not despoiled by hate mongering would be for the campaigns to make a routine, unsensational point of denouncing the ads and their creators for what they are — the product of a radical fringe that has little regard for rational debate."
David Yepson, chief political correspondent for the Des Moines Register on Meet the Press added: "You go out on Main Street America and people are concerned about the economy. This isn’t about side show issues. This is about a job. This is about a future. This is about putting gas in the tank and holding onto you’re your house."
An editorial in USA Today also addressing the same topic: "Time out. Anyone who seriously thinks Obama sympathizes with terrorists or that McCain is a crook is either hopelessly partisan or hopelessly deranged. More reasonable people should take such charges as a sign of weakness in the accuser. Guilt by association and character assignation are bad enough in ordinary times. But given the challenges facing the next president, such behavior is irresponsible."
Liberal Democratic strategist Bob Becktel about the "rescue" of Wall Street by Congress: "The House of Representatives, with an approval rating just a tad better than a child predator, reached the bottom this week and started digging….What we’ve seen is a staggering indictment of partisanship in Washington today."
Conservative columnist Cal Thomas on the same topic: "No one in Congress can claim immunity…the politicians – pockets loaded with lobbyists’ cash – failed the American people…There needs to be a healthy balance between regulation and freedom. James Madison noted in Federalist paper No. 51, ‘If men were angels no government would be necessary.’"
Ted C. Fishman, author of China Inc.: How the rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World, also commenting on the current economic crisis: "Main Streets have every reason to believe that the financial crisis is indeed a massive moral failure of America’s elite. Over time, the most powerful moneyed interests rigged the global financial system so that money managers, banks and a rarified class of institutional investors profited from massive high-risk schemes that beggared financial logic. They never heeded the potential costs to their clients or the public."
David Rothkopf, blogging on The Daily Beast about the financial crisis: "The Washington response to the Wall Street financial crisis has been uncomfortably reminiscent of medieval villagers dancing in the town square to wish away an eclipse of the sun. No one knows what the hell is going on, but the situation demands action…
Nothing illustrates this point quite so well as asking the core questions posed by the crisis. Go ahead. Make a list of the key questions that really ought to have been answered before the government took any action or devised any strategy. Here are a few: What would happen if there were no bailout? What does systemic risk really mean? Would a bailout actually ensure that the crisis did not get worse anyway? Who actually holds the worst of the debt and would they sell it? Are we in a recession right now? How long will the downturn last? Why did the crisis happen when it did? How many players were really involved in driving the market down? What is the total amount of derivatives on the market today? How many of them are at risk? Who are the counterparties? Are some countries more at risk than others? Which financial players have the most exposure? The questions all have one thing in common besides their critical implications for our future: No one knows the answer to any of them."
These are but a few of the opinions and comments that I’ve collected over the past few weeks. If you like reading a varied sampling of different views, I hope you made note of the news source I cited for the last quote – The Daily Beast.
This is a new website that was launched this week – www.thedailybeast.com. It’s a new type of Internet news source that I think is really innovative. The Daily Beast doesn’t technically report the news it sort of assembles and organizes news and opinion.
For example, a feature called the "Big Fat Story" identifies a topic and then brings together news articles, editorials, blogs and from all over – left, right and center. You really get to look at a lot of different "takes" on the topic in question.
There’s also a "Cheat Sheet" section that says it covers "Must reads from all over." Essentially it’s a collection of articles with a short write-up on each with links to the original sources for the full stories. For a person, like me, who likes to read newspapers from all over the country, this makes the task a breeze.
In my opinion, nothing beats the experience of actually holding a newsprint copy of a newspaper in my hands, but The Daily Beast is still pretty cool.
Jim Neff is a local columnist. Comments to neffzone@gmail.com. Read Neff Zone columns online at www.neffzone.com/cadillacnews.
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