The housing meltdown and subsequent credit crisis primer

Not completely accurate but close enough for someone to get a decent background

The Credit Crisis Of 2008a

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and this

Creditcrisis 30slides Final

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and our experts have lots to say even if it means contradicting their own statements... ah, the bliss of slective memory

Experts on the Credit Crisis

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So You Think You Can Dance?

Let's get serious here for a bit

A review of conservatism

David Brooks, in this article, explores a missed opportunity for McCain. He points out that McCain could have rejected Burkean conservatism (which in its modern incarnation posits the role of government is to promote individual liberty of the kind later espoused by Ayn Rand), and FDR styled liberalism (which posits that the role of government is to provide equal opportunity and equality), for the centrism of Hamilton and Lincoln (which posits that the role of government is to enable people to progress, by providing a helping hand). It's a fascinating exploration. He says, McCain essentially ceded the center to Obama.

The interesting nugget of news in the opinion piece is that Obama's economic team actually had a project called the Hamilton project to actually create a centrist economic plan.

The one shortcoming of Brooks' analysis is his complete avoidance of a discussion of social conservatism. Brooks' explanation seems to conflate the Burke and Goldwater conservatism with social conservatism, and view the more extreme positions of Sarah Palin as being the exception or the fringe, rather than the norm. This is a misrepresentation of history.

Social conservatives posit that government has a moral responsibility to use its power to protect their values. This is somewhat consistent with Burkean conservatism. However, modern social conservatism goes further. It is based on the belief that America is a Christian country whose values are evangelical Christian and ultimately draw from white traditions of America. They posit that the role of government is to protect those "American values". The unstated undercurrent of these assertions is that non-white non-Christians are less moral and less American.

Historically, due to Lincoln's role, the GOP was the party of liberty and the DNC attracted the social conservatives. After FDR, though, the central value of the DNC became equality. After the Brown v. the Board of Education decision in the mid 1950s, Eisenhower moved to impose Civil Rights, but hesitated. The mantle of Civil Rights was taken up by the Democrats, who saw this as an issue of equality that seemed a natural offshoot of FDRs philosophy. After initially moving slowly, after Kennedy's death, Lyndon Johnson was able to get the support needed to pass the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act. With that decision, the DNC lost their hold on the social conservatives. Nixon moved in to capitalize, with his Southern Strategy.

It was not until Reagan though that this strategy was built into a significant movement. The Reagan team's brilliance was to conflate two extraordinarily different political philosophies (Burkean Conservatism and Social Conservatism) into one movement by using some touchstone issues that they agreed on: Roe v. Wade and taxes.

This brings us back to the current elections. The McCain camp seems to be talking about simple issues in fiscal conservative voice. However, people who understand the history, know what the actual statement underneath is for the Social Conservatives. Here are some examples:

• "Spreading the wealth around" in the social conservative code that government will take your money and give it to undeserving un-Americans (read African Americans, liberals, non-Christians, Hispanic, etc.)
  
• "American exceptionalism" asserts America is the greatest country in the world and the naysayers and those who criticize America are not patriotic. This, of course, is about saying to the Southerners that America does not have to apologize for slavery or segregation.
  
• "Real America" and "pro-American regions" is a direct reference to the social conservative belief in the evangelical Christian, White values of America.
  

A successful Obama in many ways would challenge the fundamental precepts of social conservatism. Obama, after all, is not white and is not of the evangelical Christian movement in the same way as say Sarah Palin. The social conservatives are reacting heatedly to the crumbling of their ideology.

There are three interesting aspects to ponder:

• David Brooks' discomfort with the social right is symptomatic of the fissure between the social and fiscal conservatives in the GOP that this campaign has exposed. The question for the Obama camp is: 'Can they bring these disenchanted conservatives into the DNC fold?'
• Secondly, the Hamilton-Lincoln progressive conservative center that was captured by Reagan, Clinton and Bush, seems to be veering to Obama. The question is: 'Can Obama consolidate the center for DNC?'
• Thirdly, we see in the social conservative reaction, the vituperative attacks that will plague an Obama administration. They will be waiting for a slip-up. The question is: 'How far will Social Conservatives go?'
  

Obama's win is definitely not in the bag. However, if he wins, he will have an opportunity to redefine the political map. We will need to wait and see whether, if he wins, he is able to grab the opportunity and achieve a new coalition.

Is Obama an American?

This is an old smear that is making the rounds again. It seems Philip J. Berg, Esquire, of Pennsylvania filed a lawsuit recently seeking a Declaratory Judgment and Injunction that Barack Obama does not meet the qualifications to become President of the United States. The fact is that Obama is an American citizen by virtue of his birth, as can be seen from his birth certificate reproduced here. What is interesting is that Mr. Berg goes on to claim that Obama "lied and cheated his way into a fraudulent candidacy and cheated legitimately eligible natural born citizens from competing in a fair process." Fascinating.

Pancham's astrological take on the elections

I am trying to predict this based on 3 factors:
- Overall strength of natal chart with some emphasis on planet positions related to winning in competitions/politics
- Current dasha and bhukti and their stranghts/weaknesses
- Transits (what are the planets doing on & around Nov 4)
Typically, the above framework shows good coverage as well as is MECE in nature.
We'll do a comparison of Obama vs. Mccain and also Palin vs. Biden for some of the above factors.
Also - a big assumption here is that the birth times and locations I get from the internet are accurate.
Overall strength:
McCain has a strong virgo ascendant and lord Mercury is placed on the ascendant making it a strong horoscope. Such strong Mercury should give sharp analytical/problem solving skills as well as articulation/language/sharp choice of words skills - have not seen him enough to comment on that. His 6th house (house of competitions) has Saturn well placed in his own sign Aquarius. That does make it strong however its motion is retrograde or backwards which reduces its power. It will give him patience in competition and long lasting fighting power against any kind of problem. One fairly significant weakness I see is Mars in his chart is debilitated (in weakest position) and its sitting in the 11th house of 'wish fulfillment' as the 3rd (house of efforts) lord indicating that he either loses interest in putting efforts or will put them in an undesired fashion. This will negate some of the fighting power of Saturn and perhaps he may go down fighting without his wish getting fulfilled. He has a well-placed Jupiter in the 3rd house which will help him as it aspects the weak Mars as well as protects the 'luck' of the 9th house. Overall definitely strong.
Obama's lagna is libra & its lord is also powerful, Venus is in the 9th house enhancing overall luck. His 6th lord Jupiter is retrograde & debilitated in capricorn however Saturn is in the same house (own sign) which makes this combination a very powerful 'vipreet rajyoga'. The combination aspects Sun in the 10th house (house of profession). Sun is very strong and in the 10th house is typically an indicator of a successful political career. Sun in the 10th house as the 11th lord (wish fulfillment) becomes digbala (extra strong) in that respect. 6th lord Jupiter (lord of competitions) aspects 9th lord Mercury (lord of luck) in effect making him lucky in competitions.
Current Dasha
McCain has Saturn Mahadasha and Jupiter Antardasha indicating end of Saturn Mahadasha. Generally at their end, Dasha's give poor results (recent e.g. Federer's sudden drop towards end of 2007 to end 2008.)
To me this factor by itself can signal a loss for McCain.
Obama has Jupiter/Sun (with Sun Bhukti having started in August 08)- it’s a strong strong phase for him indicating victory.

Transits
The transits are more or less equally strong with Obama's being a shade stronger as he has influence on Sun on lagna (another vipreet rajyoga), Jupiter in own 3rd house of efforts.
What also favors him here is that transits are very strong for Biden on Nov 4th (indicating prestigious job offer) compared to Palin. Palin has leo as the 12th house with saturn aspecting it and jupiter transiting natal ketu which makes it a weak transit and possibly 'deception' in some form. Otherwise though, her chart is that of a total warrior and a very strong one.
On all 3 dimensions, the astrological indications favor Obama. Lets see what happens.

Did attraction had anything to do with it?

This is a very interesting Op-Ed piece where Kathleen Parker speculates that McCain may have selected Palin because he was subliminally attracted to her. I wonder ...

What's up with the polling?

One of the interesting things about the election coverage are the polls. Like most people, I am intrigued by the daily movements, and love to speculate why the polls are moving. But, taking a step back and contemplating the polls a bit more rationally, you begin to realize that something is seriously wrong.

Most of these polls are supposed to have a +/- 3.5% accuracy. The 3.5% represents the 95% confidence interval. That means, that there is supposed to be only 5% chance that the actual result is outside the predicted range. Except that, when I look at the polls, the number of outliers are far more frequent, and the spread is far more than would be expected. So, it would appear that there is something seriously wrong.


I don't have a precise answer for why this is happening, I do have three potential hypothesis:

• The first is that the polls try to forecast "likely voters". A closer examination of the polls suggest that the polls that have Obama up by large margins tend to skew in favor of people who claim in the form that they intend to vote. In contrast, the polls which have Obama down in the dumps, appear to be overweighting prior election turnout ratios. Essentially, this suggests if the same people who voted lasted were to vote this time, this race would be a toss-up and Obama would probably have a high chance of losing. On the other hand, if all the voters who say they will vote turn out in large numbers, this could be an Obama landslide. They key uncertainty, therefore, is voter turnout, and the polls frankly are just getting at what will happen on this front.



• The second reason has to do with demographics. The historical polling data used a segmentation scheme that was appropriate for a white man running against a white man. Having an African American and a woman on the tickets has completely changed which demographics are relevant. For instance, do pollsters know which groups tend to be racist and which tend to be sexist? Pollsters have got better as they can extrapolate from state and local elections. However, it seems that different agencies are using different weights and samples of the various groups, thereby skewing the results differently.
  


• Finally, there is a systematic methodological error that may be hugely significant this time. Most polls are telephone polls, conducted over land lines. Unfortunately, land line use in the US has dropped dramatically in the last four years, particularly among young people. Pollsters were still confident in their results as they assumed that there were no statistically significant systematic differences between those with land lines and those without. That may not be true this time. If the people who use land lines behave differently from people who don't, then the polls could be wrong. Different pollsters have been oversampling different demographics to adjust for this, which may explain some of the variance.

Overall, all I can say is that currently the polls suggest that this race is anything from a toss up to an Obama landslide. It all depends on who votes. Beyond this, any inference from any poll, is pretty much meaningless.

One interesting side note is this article, which shows that the polls actually mirror Google Trends. Here is how McCain, Palin, Obama and Biden track on Google trends in October:

(Obama - Yellow, McCain - Blue, Palin - Red, Biden -Green)

India launches moon mission

India just launched Chandrayan 1, a two year unmanned moon mission. The orbiter carries two NASA equipment and is supposed to conduct scientific tests. Here is a more detailed story.

Did he say "Recession"? In 2006?

While many of us (incl. your's truly) lament "we did not see things turning sour - so bad, so fast; it is a real shame when we ignore the warnings and dismiss Peter Schiff as a doomsday prophet. In fact he was nicknamed "Dr. Doom".

Watch this.


As one of my friends who forwarded this said "I wonder where that moron who kept arguing (with Peter) is." Well, Arthur Laffer is a well regarded economist and known for "Laffer curve". Definitely read the two wiki articles. It will give a perspective of why Laffer was so convinced/unwilling to concede.

Picture referenced by Colin Powell

This
This is the photograph that Colin Powell referenced in his extraordinarily moving rebuke to the GOP for calling Obama a Muslim. This is the link to the whole photo history in the Newyorker.


Here is what he said:

"I'm also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say, and it is permitted to be said. Such things as 'Well you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.' Well the correct answer is 'He is not a Muslim, he's a Christian, he's always been a Christian.' But the really right answer is 'What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?' The answer is 'No. That's not America.' Is there something wrong with some 7-year old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she can be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion he's a Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

"I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo-essay about troops who were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery and she had her head on the headstone of her son's grave. And as the picture focused in you can see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards, Purple Heart, Bronze Star, showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old. And then at the very top of the headstone, it didn't have a Christian cross, it didn't have a Star of David. It had a crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Karim Rashad Sultan Khan. And he was an American, he was born in New Jersey, he was 14 at the time of 9/11 and he waited until he can go serve his counrty and he gave his life."

Sarah Palin in advertising

This ad in a Manhatten shop window suggests that opinion on Palin has crystallized to a point where she is now iconic for inexperienced.

Could this crisis have been foreseen?

Many have commented that this economic crisis took the world by surprise and no one really understood the gravity. This link has a compilation of people who predicted part of all of what has unfolded in this economic crisis.

However, for me the more compelling one is The Economist. As readers of the magazine would be aware, that publication has been warning of this since 2007. Don't believe me, see the covers from 2007 below:






PS: Many of the prescient theorists who warned of impending crisis, such as Joseph Stiglitz and Warren Buffet, are Obama's advisers. Others like, Paul Krugman, have endorsed Obama and are on the advisory panels for key Democrats, such as Hillary, who would be involved in any final rescue effort.

Voter suppression

This is an extraordinary example of the type of voter suppression strategies being used by the Right. Put simply, millions of newly registered voters and volunteers for Obama have received letters that state that they could be sued or be subjected to intrusive investigation if they continue promoting their views.

I have to say, some of these GOP tactics seem nothing short of voter intimidation. Huh? This is the "freedom" that these "patriots" want to promote?

Is it racism?

There is probably widespread consensus that a white person who votes against his or her economic and other interests because of the color of Obama's skin, is a racist. The question is whether the overwhelming support that Obama receives from minorities can also be classified as racism.

It is clear that the very fact that someone uses race in the decision could be classified as racism. Having said that, what race represents to white people cannot really be compared to the experience of minorities. This is an extraordinarily thought provoking examination of what Obama's race means to minorities. It's a trifle long, so, while I strongly urge you to read the whole article, here are some quotes that'll give you flavor of the article:

In describing how the author, a Hispanic, felt about his drive to succeed, he says: "I needed to succeed because I was a minority -- which meant there was no failure like success, what with the doubt and resentment that shadow one's accomplishments. (Was it because of affirmative action?)"

...

"Anyone who has ever felt in his own body the hot shame that awareness of color brings could not escape the myriad emotions that emerged in the course of Obama's campaign. There was cynicism. I certainly believed the axiom that my generation -- and who knew how many generations more to come -- would not live to see a black man become president. (The realization that I'd abandoned all hope shames me to no end.)"

...

"Obama's victory in the Iowa caucuses brought an oh-so-cautious optimism, and resurrected the ghosts of the past in fears over his safety. Then came Wright, and Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech in Philadelphia. My wife and I watched it live as we spoon-fed our twin baby daughters. Obama's attempt that morning to span the distance between his black pastor and his white grandmother -- to span the distance between all of us "others" in America -- brought tears to my eyes. (But I held them back.) It was a speech that addressed the confused kid who ran for student body president and the adult who'd endlessly wrestled with the contradiction of color."

...

"Much has been said about a "post-race" generation that Obama would seem to herald. But the very presence of the "r" word in the moniker tells us that there is more road left to travel. By insisting that we are past race, we betray how much it is still with us.

Which brings us to the intangibles of an Obama victory. What would it mean for the subject of race in America? Surely, some will see it as an opportunity to continue to open the kind of discursive space Obama himself did in Philadelphia. Others will no doubt declare the end of the story: If Obama can become president, then truly all barriers have fallen.

What difference will it make for my daughters to grow up pledging allegiance to a flag next to which hangs a portrait of Obama? Maybe, given the confluence of the economic crisis and this "historic election," America will finally be able to speak about race and social class at the same time.

In focusing on these things, perhaps I reveal myself as hopelessly trapped in the world of color I grew up in. Or maybe I'm pointing out the possibility that instead of "post-race" we are actually "pre-race" -- that is, on the verge of truly engaging the legacy of America's "original sin" and the way its reverberations affect us even today.

But right now, days before the election, I feel more than I think. I am my body, my color, with all the great weight of its shame, with all the anger about how I came to believe what others believed about me, and yes, the hope that survived my cynicism.

I am taut with tension -- as if I'm expecting a blow, as if I'm waiting for a storm to pass."

Voting deadline

The initial reading of the absentee ballot rules appears to suggest that you can submit absentee ballot applications well after the registration deadline. Which is true. Unfortunately, I looked at the absentee ballot form for Virginia and it seems that only voters who are already registered can apply. So, it seems if you haven't registered already, tough!

More racism in evidence

This video has been making the rounds. I have to say that the report doesn't focus as much on the fact that Obama supporters are also dressing up McCain in KKK robes to suggest he is racist. However, this is still disturbing:

Channeling Miss South Carolina

By popular demand, I am posting this video of Miss South Carolina trying valiantly to answer a question:



Compare this answer to the style of evasion employed by Sarah Palin in some of her interviews. For instance. consider these:

Sarah Palin on the Bush doctrine:




On Supreme Court decisions:




On foreign policy:



In some of these cases, she would have been forgiven for not knowing the answers. However, the way she tried to cover up was channeling Miss South Carolina, and to me, made it worse by making her seem inauthentic. In any event, she clearly uses a beauty pageant style for answering questions.

Powell endorses Obama

Powell Makes his endorsement official on Meet the Press. One of the more cogent arguments posited for Obama.


It was interesting to see him take on some of the senior Republicans who regularly drop hints that Obama is Muslim. Towards the end of the interview, worth a listen.

Undecided conundrum

Bertrard Russell said, "Fools are cocksure, the wise are split within themselves with doubt"

However, our friends at The Daily Show have a better take on the "still in doubt" electorate. Watch this episode - http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/index.jhtml?episodeId=188615

Extreme racists coming out of the closet

If anyone had any doubt what the whole "Who is Obama campaign" is about, here is a video that should dispel them.



I often wondered where the racists were. Well, now we know. By the way, this is the type of report the Arabs are seeing.