AFSCME 3357-HOF'S BLOG

McCain & Neel
Neel before Zod?

Last night's Town Hall debate between Obama & McCain was mostly an uneventful rehash of the two candidates' stump speeches. I'm always amazed at what the audience takes out of these these debates. One man interviewed switched his allegiance to McCain because he liked McCain's plan to solve the financial crisis by buying the problem mortgage loans. Uh, isn't that why we're spending $700 billion?

Speaking of the $700 billion, there was a story on NPR about assistant treasury secretary Neel Kashkari. Kashkari is the person Hank Paulson is tapping to figure out how to spend our $700 billion. He's a 35 year-old ex-rocket scientist, so apparently that makes him good at everything. As it turns out, Kashkari is the person who came up with the idea of the Hope Now program. The Hope Now program involves voluntary restructuring by creditors. As it turns out, nobody has seen a Hope Now loan except Luna Lovegood. Hence, I call the HopeNow loans "Luna loans". See my blog from February for details. Based on the Luna Loan fiasco, it does not appear that Kashkari understands how securitization and credit default swaps have distorted the market and created a tangled web of conflicting interests.

We don't need a rocket scientist to figure this stuff out, we need a couple hundred good bankruptcy judges with the authority to modify loans and the willingness to get their hands dirty. That's what our lawmakers have so far refused to give us.