Is President Barack Obama's stimulus doing anything to help the economy? GOPers have been bitching it's a bust. And I confess: it's hard to suss out a good answer. You could also ask, has it done any harm?

A press release I received this morning contains some information that may help us evaluate the stimulus:

A small fraction of the total federal stimulus bill has been awarded in contract awards thus far, and while the pace of contract awards has increased in the last four weeks, the full effect on job creation has yet to be felt, according to Mike Pickett, CEO of Seattle technology company Onvia, whose data powers Recovery.org.

Testifying before the House Government Reform Committee today, Pickett described the most current state of stimulus spending.

Recovery.org is reporting that 1,330 contracts - totaling $21 billion in stimulus spending - have been awarded to local contractors. Applying the White House's Council of Economic Advisors' formula to the $21 billion in awards, Recovery.org estimates that 230,000 jobs have been created or retained so far.

"Employers are not going to retain or hire new employees until they have the contracts in-hand." said Pickett. "The job creation will come once the contracts are awarded."

Overall, Recovery.org is currently tracking $90.7 billion in stimulus spending over 18,451 projects. This is the total stimulus funding figure for projects that are in the "pipeline," having been publicly reported by Federal, state, local or regional government agencies...

"The good news regarding the nation's employment picture is that the pace of stimulus spending has accelerated dramatically over the last month," Pickett continued. "There is fifty percent more stimulus spending in the pipeline now than there was one month ago."

Of the $90.7 billion in stimulus funding currently being tracked, $18 billion is presently at the RFP stage, up from $11 billion at the RFP stage at the start of June.

"Since job creation comes from businesses winning government contracts and thereby hiring or retaining employees to perform on the contract, we are now in a position to determine how many jobs have been created by the Stimulus Bill," Pickett continued.

If  indeed only $21 billion of the $787 billion stimulus bill has actually hit the pipeline, then no one should expect much of a bang yet. And by Pickett's analysis, the pace is picking up dramatically.

Obama has called for patience in assessing his economic policies--including the stimulus plan--and has said that the best way to judge the stimulus spending will be to look at the jobs picture next year. He might be right.

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On Thursday night, I attended the National Magazine Awards ceremony in New York City. Mother Jones was nominated for three awards, including two for general excellence, but, alas, it bagged no Ellies. (The winners receive a gold elephant statuette; don't ask me why.) Our torture package lost in the public interest category to an article in Bicycling. But I was able to hobnob with all the swells of magazine publishing at cocktail receptions before and after the program. And I was struck by one thing. A couple of editors of top mags asked me about President Barack Obama's press conference of Wednesday night, noting that they had not watched the full show.

Not watched it? Are people already bored with Obama? For their benefit, I summed up what I had written: that Obama did not have to contend with a single question about either Afghanistan or the various financial system bailouts. And these are the two big-ticket items of his president and high-wire policies that could lead him into trouble. Interesting, my conversation-mates said. (Were they just being polite?) But this brought home a point for me. If New York Times-reading, intellectual, engaged editors didn't catch the fact that Obama wasn't pressed on the mega-matters of his nascent presidency, then I'm sure most Americans aren't fixing on this.

So is the president getting something of a pass? The in-control Democrats of Congress are hardly griping about the bailouts. Nor are they raising too many questions about Afghanistan. And who cares what the Republicans have to say? Obama, for the moment, has plenty of running room. I'm not sure that's good.

Which reminds me. Here's what I would have asked at the press conference, had he called my name:

Mr. President, earlier today at a town hall meeting in St. Louis, you said it was critical for us to restore "fairness" to the economy. But there are lots of Americans wondering if they're being taken for a ride. The Fed has issued about $2 trillion in loans to banks and financial institutions and won't reveal to the public which firms have received this money and under what conditions. The special inspector general for the TARP program says Treasury is not forcing TARP recipients to certify how they are using TARP money. And Elizabeth Warren, the head of the Congressional Oversight Panel, recently testified that "without more transparency and accountability" it is "not possible to exercise meaningful oversight" over Treasury's assorted bailouts. Doesn't all this signal that trillions of taxpayer dollars going to Big Finance institutions are not being managed well?

Too long?

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This was first posted at MotherJones.com....

During the White House press conference Wednesday night marking the hundredth day of his historic presidency, Barack Obama was asked not one question about the Afghanistan war or the multiple-trillion-dollar federal bailout of the financial system. He managed to tout his many achievements--passing the $800 billion stimulus package, winning congressional approval of budget that devotes record amounts to health care and clean energy, initiating the withdrawal of troops in Iraq, signing legislation to boost the number of children covered by health insurance, banning the use of torture--without having to explain or justify perhaps the two most controversial (and perhaps problematic) big-ticket items of his high-wire presidency. Was that just good luck?

These one hundred days have been something a blur--or, at least a policy blur. There is too much to keep track off, too much to juggle.

The questions put to Obama covered a wide range of substantial matters. (Nothing on the Air Force One fly-over of New York or the dog, though Jeff Zeleny of The New York Times did ask what about the presidency has "enchanted" Obama.)

I purposefully did not pay much attention to the so-called tea parties of protest held yesterday by right-wingers upset by President Barack Obama. This was an event ginned up by a few conservative commentators and given undue coverage by an overly excited Fox News. Why bother with it?

But on Wednesday, as I left the daily press briefing at the White House, I had to pass by two hundred or so soggy teabaggers. And what I saw convinced me that many of them were--oh, how to put this politely--too dumb to know to come in from out of the rain. How could I tell? The signs they carried. The messages painted on the placards included, "Taxes are theft"; "It's my money"; "Give me my money back"; "Say No To Taxes"; and the like. There also were numerous signs blasting Obama as a socialist. (By the way, unless you want to dismantle Medicare, you, too, are a socialist.)

These people were not protesting particular policies of Obama; they were decrying the foundation of the American political system: citizens pay taxes that cover the costs of government services. How many of the conservative talking heads and political leaders who hailed the tax day protests would agree that there should be no taxes? In this nation, adults debate tax rates and the proper use of tax funds and even the form of taxation implemented by the government--not whether or not there should be taxes.

The folks in the rain outside the White House were marginal government-haters. Some had been bussed in from who-knows-where--maybe from ultra-libertarian survivalist compounds in rural West Virginia. As I gazed at them, I couldn't help thinking:

Next time, you're in a car crash and you're taken to the emergency room at a hospital, imagine the doctors there saying, "Before we operate and save your life, you first have to pay us $43,000, because that's what we estimate it's going to cost. And in our full-free-market economy, we only deliver services to people who can pay the full costs--up-front.....What, you don't have the money? And no insurance card? Sorry."

There are people who do not want to live within a community of citizens, where taxes are collected and used (we hope) to serve and protect that community. (Try testing all your food for carcinogenic substances on your own at home!) To them, we can only say: tough luck. The battle has been lost. This is a country where we collectively decide how to manage our resources. We hold elections to determine how much to tax and how to use the tax money collected. A protest against the very notion of taxes is akin to a childish rant. These people ought to be brandishing juice boxes, not tea bags.

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Tax Day is always a bitch. And I believe the Democrats have never fully gotten this. I'm not about to join one of those silly rightwing "tea parties" in protest of taxes. (Are the yahoos participating in these events willing to burn--or eschew later--their Medicare cards?) Nor am I advocating a simplistic flat tax that will result in big breaks for the well-to-do. But the tax system is convoluted, unfair, and totally exasperating. Many people--if not all--who interact with the IRS end up with good reasons for hating government. Years ago, I was involved in an audit during which the auditor refused to accept explanations for legitimate deductions with this argument: "I don't believe it." The result: pay $7000 in fees and penalties or take the IRS to court (which would have led to legal bills of $3000 to $5000, and perhaps more). I was forced to make the logical choice and write a check for $7000 that the government did not deserve. The system did not seem rational or functional--that is, functional for the taxpayer.

That's not only my complaint. Because I am fortunate to earn money for freelance work in addition to my salary, each year I have to pay estimated taxes in quarterly lumps to cover this outside earning. The problem for my accountant each year is guessing how much estimated taxes I will owe. At the start of the year, I have no way of knowing what gigs I will get. Thus, I cannot calculate how much I will have to pay in taxes on freelance earnings. A rational approach would be for me to earn what I earn and then pay the IRS the appropriate amount of taxes at the end of the year. But the IRS insists on quarterly payments that reflect the total amount owed. In order not to end up being penalized, I have to overestimate these payments. I am no tax rebel, but I do believe that a citizen should not have to pay more money to the government than he or she might owe. This is exasperating. And another thing: you don't have to be an advocate of a regressive flat tax that helps the well-to-do to ask, why can't the tax code be simple enough so that taxes can be easily calculated (using, say, a three-page form) without professional assistance?

This year, there's another problem--for me and my accountant.

Imagine if George W. Bush were still president.

Don't gag. But ponder what might have happened at the G-20. Would Bush have arrived with the same-old agenda and urged other nations to cut taxes for individuals and corporations and to resist the calls for too much reregulation of high-flying financiers? Would he have also advocated, as his fellow Republicans in Congress are doing these days, spending cuts in order to restrain government deficits? And if so, would he have been laughed out of London?

The problem in years past was that Bush, no matter what any foreign leader thought of him, led the biggest economic and military power on the globe. So he could not be laughed off. (See Iraq). Barack Obama, on the other hand, is appreciated, not merely tolerated. And though Bush had entered office promising a certain amount of humility in foreign affairs (and then dumped that vow after 9/11), Obama actually demonstrated how such a pledge could be put into practice. During a Thursday press conference, he said:

GM execs--those still with a job--were probably not happy when they saw the front-page of The New York Times on Thursday morning. The lead story: China wants to be the top dog in manufacturing electric cars:

TIANJIN, China -- Chinese leaders have adopted a plan aimed at turning the country into one of the leading producers of hybrid and all-electric vehicles within three years, and making it the world leader in electric cars and buses after that.

The goal, which radiates from the very top of the Chinese government, suggests that Detroit's Big Three, already struggling to stay alive, will face even stiffer foreign competition on the next field of automotive technology than they do today.

"China is well positioned to lead in this," said David Tulauskas, director of China government policy at General Motors.

There are advantages in running a command economy. Chinese leaders can snap their fingers and force the production of such cars, the purchases of such cars, and the installation of electric power-up stations throughout the nation. Sure, designing and building good products is always a challenge. But the Chinese government is in a better position to compel change than the US Energy Department, which has its own $25 billion program to develop electric-power cars.

China's move might also be a threat to Japan, where automakers have pushed ahead with electric cars and hybrids. But imagine this: what if China and Japan were to hook up? If the design and marketing experts of Honda or Toyota made common cause with Chinese carmakers, that would be one helluva challenge to whatever remains of Detroit. It may well be that in the 21st Century the motto of many nations will be, if you can't beat the Chinese, join 'em.

Detroit better wake up and hear the hum. And so should President Barack Obama. In addition to all his heavy burdens, he practically runs GM now. He has backed its and Chrysler's warrantees. And presumably there will soon be a deal that will lead to more federal billions for General Motors--and more direct federal oversight of the manufacturer's decisions and actions. If all that does happen, what will be bad for GM, will certainly be bad for Obama.

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Under what definition of news is the following not front-page news: the federal government cannot tell whether its spending $3 trillion well and effectively.

On Tuesday, the Senate finance committee held a hearing where three government watchdogs testified about the TARP program and other various corporate bailouts. Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, noted that the total amount of money being spent by the US government on TARP and other programs is $2.97676 trillion. (Yes, he was that specific.) And he noted that since government IGs typically worry that 10 percent of any given government program can be lost to fraud and waste, he's looking at potentially $300 billion worth of fraud.

That statement--a hypothetical warning--received media attention. But perhaps more alarming were the reports from the hearing that the feds are not doing all they can to monitor the bailout money they are throwing at various banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions. Barofsky said that in December he had proposed that "Treasury should require TARP recipients to monitor their use of funds and be required to provide certified reports to Treasury on how they are using taxpayer money." That sounds simple and logical, right? You get billions from the taxpayers, you state how you're using those billions. But that hasn't happened. Barofsky told the senators that this modest proposal has not been adopted.

More troubling was the testimony of Elizabeth Warren, who chairs the Congressional Oversight Panel that oversees TARP and the other bailouts. She offered several disclosures that ought to make a taxpayer flip his or her lid. Warren noted:

I hate posting stories on Friday afternoon. They can easily fall into the black hole of the near-weekend. So while I'm traveling, let me promote two pieces I had to put up on Friday because that's when the news happened.

First, after a White House briefing on Barack Obama's new Afghanistan policy, ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, continued to talk to the reporters in the room. Prompted to address the opium trade's impact on the potential for success in Afghanistan, he called for "a complete rethink" of the war on drugs in Afghanistan and suggested that he was hardly gung-ho on the poppy eradication program there. So is Holbrooke off the (anti-drug) wagon? He did note that the review process had not been able to produce any consensus on this knotty matter. You can read my full account of Holbrooke's comments here. Holbrooke's remarks certainly deserve follow-up.

Later, in the day, banking CEOs had a lunch with Obama. Afterward, they spoke to reporters and said that the meeting had been been full of frank and productive exchanges and that they and president agreed that "we're all in this together." Trying to cut through the spin, I asked these finely attired bankers if they owed the American public an apology for having helped to screw up the financial system that all of us depend on. None of them seemed eager to field that question. But Kenneth Lewis, the president of Bank of America, did step to the microphone and said, let's stop talking about the past. Read all about it here.

After seeing the article about the non-apology, Robert Wright of Bloggingheads.tv sent me an email noting that these guys (and they are guys) have a lot for which to apologize. He included some clips from an interview with William Cohan, author of House of Cards, a take-down of Bear Stearns. Here they are:

Okay, now I'm officially scared.

Ever since I did an article reporting how former Senator Phil Gramm slyly prevented the regulation of credit default swaps, I've worried about the shadow economy of financial derivatives--financial instruments bought and sold by large financial institutions off public markets, often to hedge or cover their wild and woolly speculation.

Now, The Motley Fool guys are pointing out that the trillions of dollars being devoted to the various financial bailouts--$13 trillion, by their count--comprise not much more than a drop in the bucket when compared to the total (and shaky) derivatives markets. Writing about Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's plan to mop up toxic assets held by big financial firms and other bailout initiatives, one of their site's bloggers notes

Fools may be right to question whether any amount of money will prove sufficient to sate the hunger of this deleveraging beast. According to the Bank for International Settlements, the notional value of over-the-counter derivatives worldwide reached a mind-boggling $684 trillion last summer. That's more than six times the scale they had reached by 2002 when Warren Buffett dubbed derivatives "financial weapons of mass destruction".

Perhaps the trillions pledged can plug the leaks from subprime mortgages and failed auto loans, but can we reasonably expect to keep a derivatives market afloat that is at least eight times the size of a contracting global economy? I don't know, but I sure hope Bernanke and Geithner do....

To be clear, a sizable disconnect remains between the number of casino chips presently in play and the pile from which more chips may be drawn as needed.

Wow. What if this derivatives market needs bolstering? It does seem too large to be propped up. (Imagine holding back a tsunami.) But what if it does collapse? I don't know. So much of derivatives activity is complex and opaque, and apparently few people truly understand it. But my hunch is, an implosion of a $684 trillion dollar market won't be good.

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My take on President Barack Obama's second press conference, first posted at MotherJones.com....

At the second press conference of his two-month-old presidency, Barack Obama sent a clear signal: I'm an establishment progressive, not an angry populist.

Before taking questions from reporters, Obama read a statement--a sort of mini-speech--off a teleprompter and recounted all the economic measures he has put into play: the stimulus package, a mortgage crisis plan, various plans to unclog credit within the financial system (including the toxic assets buy-back program), and his proposed budget.

Only after he explained how all this will help the economy recover did he note that was "as angry as anyone" about the bonuses paid to executives of AIG, the bailed-out insurance giant. Obama noted that the bonuses were another "symptom" of the culture of greed that allowed Wall Streeters to bring down the rest of the economy. Corporate executives, he warned, must realize that they cannot enrich "themselves on taxpayer's dime" and engage in "reckless speculation that puts us all at risk." But, he added, the "rest of us can't afford to demonize every investor and entrepreneur."

On Monday, as I was heading to the White House for the daily briefing, I ran into one of President Barack Obama's senior economic advisers. This person was holding a shopping bag from a bargain retail outlet.

"Shopping?" I asked. "On a day like this?" I was referring to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's unveiling of the administration's toxic assets purchase program.

"I'm not making any announcements today," this economist said.

I noted that the plan seemed a pretty good deal for the banks holding the junk and for the financial firms that will receive federal insurance to cover most of the purchase price of the assets they buy.

"It's not the only way to do this," this person said. "There are lots of ways you could do it."

Lots of ways? At Geithner's press briefing that morning, Geithner had repeatedly insisted that the administration did not have many alternatives to its proposed program. Without such a plan, he said, the government would either have to buy up all the toxic waste on its own, or it would have to stand idly by as financial institutions fold and the credit system further collapses. But this economist was suggesting there was an assortment of actions the feds could have tried. I wondered about Geithner's line--which would be echoed later in the day by White House press secretary Robert Gibbs--that his plan was the only reasonable course of action.

But, I asked, will this particular way work?

It could, this economist replied, with a shrug. But then she/he switched the subject and criticized Christina Romer, the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. The day before, Romer had said of the firms that will be participating in the toxic assets program:

Sitck a fork in it. Obama's presidency is done. He's lost the people. He's adrift. He's screwed the pooch.

Some pundits are already pronouncing the O Era a bust--or suggesting it's near the cliff's edge. In the White House press room, reporters routinely ask press secretary Robert Gibbs if the Obama White House has already lost its mojo. Over at The Weekly Standard, Fred Barnes has declared Obama's stint a "flailing presidency." Given that Barnes considers the Bush presidency one of the best in this country's long history, his success-o-meter may be in need of recalibration. Barnes verdict is based mostly on the AIG bonus mess, which he calls a "crisis." Maybe for Senator Chris Dodd. But for most folks--including the man in the White House--the true crisis is the collapse of the economy. Certainly, the White House did not handle the AIG business well last week. But by bringing up Watergate while referring to the AIG business, Barnes shows how desperate he is to turn a bruise into a coma.

Over at Newser.com, media-poker Michael Wolff also went after Obama. He called him a "terrible bore." And--insult of insults--he compared him to Jimmy Carter. Obama's great sin, in Wolff's eye? He delivered a "turgid teachy fiscal lecture" on Jay Leno's show on Thursday night. Wolff goes on:

Rage against AIG is all the rage. The Washington Post reports on its front-page:

President Obama's apparent inability to block executive bonuses at insurance giant AIG has dealt a sharp blow to his young administration and is threatening to derail both public and congressional support for his ambitious political agenda.

That might be a bit hyperbolic. Is there anyone saying, "I won't support Obama on health care or clean energy because of AIG?" But the uproar over AIG is real. Senator Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, has even suggested that AIG execs kill themselves, a la disgraced Japanese leaders. Stephen Colbert wielded an actual pitchfork on his show.

It's obvious: AIG has become the scapegoat for the economic collapse. Members of Congress who have been loathe to name names previously are now rushing to blast AIG. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has vowed to introduce legislation to kill those lousy bonuses. Of course, the company and its reckless executives deserve condemnation and scorn--and maybe jail cells. But the amount of the bonuses is minuscule compared to the amount of taxpayer money that has been poured into AIG by the Federal Reserve; in fact, it's about one-tenth of 1 percent of the AIG bailout.

It's easy to get upset about the AIG rewards. Just as it it's easy to get upset about Bernie Madoff. But focusing on either is something of a distraction. The real issue is not the AIG exec money-grab. It's how the system permitted AIG to jump so far off the rails and how the American taxpayers have been placed on the hook for AIG and so many other financial firms. Members of Congress and media pundits should spend as much time pondering financial reregulation and scrutinizing the various bailouts (to determine if they are indeed worthwhile) as they do demonizing AIG executives. For instance, the Federal Reserve since the collapse of the market has loaned $800 billion to $1.2 trillion to assorted banks, and it has refused to identify these institutions. That secrecy ought to prompt at least 5 percent of the outrage stirred up by the AIG bonuses. But it hasn't.

The AIG bonuses are truly outrageous. But they're chump change compared to what else is happening. No doubt, many bankers and Big Finance leaders are delighted to see AIG suck up this much oxygen. That means there will be less heavy breathing about all the other outrages still under way.

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For months, I've been waiting for populist rage at the economic collapse and the subsequent bailouts to explode and cause political fallout. In fact last September I thought there was a chance John McCain, looking for a game-changer, would oppose the (first) Wall Street bailout as a conservative populist and reboot and reenergize his campaign. McCain made a few head fakes in that direction, but ultimately he chickened out.

In the months since, politicians on both sides of the aisle have bitched and moaned about Wall Street and the assorted bailouts under way, but no one has truly ignited a populist crusade against those big-money players who have ruined the economy and their pals in Congress. In January, a consultant told me that he had conducted focus groups with Americans of different economic standing, different party affiliations, and different levels of education, and that he had found that few of them were willing to express any anger at either Washington or Wall Street. Many, he noted, had said that perhaps they had spent too much money on things they really didn't need. He was quite surprised by this. No matter how hard he tried to stir up populist resentment--with loaded questions--he couldn't get that sort of a rise of these people.

So where's all the outrage? MSNBC's First Read newsletter has an interesting take on this:

Rage Against The Machine: Anger at Wall Street and at America's financial institutions has been simmering for a while now -- the numerous bailouts, Bernie Madoff, and Jon Stewart vs. CNBC have been just a few examples. But with the news over the weekend that AIG, 80% of which is now owned by the federal government, is awarding millions in bonuses to executives has most likely turned that anger into a furious boil. As the New York Times' Nagourney writes, this populist backlash presents a huge challenge for an Obama administration that might have to hand out additional bailouts to further stabilize the banking industry. ("The biggest risk is that we don't have the political will," Fed chairman Ben Bernanke warned last night on "60 Minutes." "We don't have the commitment to solve this problem, and that we let it just continue.") But the populist rage also might present a bigger challenge to the political party that's more associated with big business, less regulation, and tax cuts for the wealthy. In fact, if there was a time for the Obama administration and Democrats to push to let the Bush tax cuts to expire, to press for the Employee Free Choice Act (or "card check"), or to institute new regulations, this is the time, right? Still, now's a time when everyone in Washington is suddenly going to be channeling his/her inner-populist. Who will have the most credibility doing it? As for the short term, Congress is going to want a pound of flesh (and then some) from AIG. Obama also will discuss AIG during his remarks today.

The White House does have to make a careful calculation. It does not want to end up on the wrong side of a populist wave. And Obama and his aides know this; recall his not-yet-detailed proposal to cap executive compensation and perks. But at the same time, Obama has to fix the system--which means he has to work with the institutions that caused the damage. It's tough to bash and build at the same time. (Obama, no doubt, will be slamming AIG for awarding bonuses to the execs who lead the company to ruin.) The Obama gang has demonstrated that it can thread political needles. But this will continue to be a tough one. Moreover, there will continue to be an opening for Republicans--if any have the spine to go for it.

On the run, at the moment. But please check out this piece below I posted at MotherJones.com. The point of the vignette: it must be damn difficult these days to be working for the Obama administration and trying to contend with the multiple crises at hand. And the conversation I describe below occurred before the news came out that 651,00 jobs were lost in February. How would you like the first item in your job description to be "miracle worker"?

On Thursday afternoon, as the White House summit on health carereform was ending, a parade of Washington pooh-bahs moved from the Old Executive Office Building, past the outside of the West Wing, to the front entrance of the White House for a final meeting, where President Barack Obama would hold a seminar-like session. ("Senator Mitch McConnell, got any thoughts to share?") As I watched Sen. Chris Dodd, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, Rep. Henry Waxman and others strolling along, I spotted a senior administration official who handles economic issues. He, too, was heading to the East Wing, and he was holding a collection of thick briefing books.

"Having fun?" I asked.

"Any time I'm not working on AIG and Citibank, it's a good day," he said. "Health care is fun compared to that. Believe me, I'm glad to be out of the office doing this."

How encouraging, I thought.

"You know what makes everything so hard?" he asked me. Before I could answer, he stepped closer to me.

Two weeks ago, the major national political narrative was congressional Republicans taking on the new president regarding a stimulus bill they decried as wasteful and ineffective. But that has shifted. The big-news story now is Republicans bickering among themselves. I was on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show on Monday night to discuss the take-the-money-or-not-debate that is weighing down (and perhaps further ruining) the Republican Party:

Meanwhile, there's more evidence of a snark-ridden riff within the GOP.

Is this the fundamental problem of the economy: We have too much stuff?

That's the takeaway from a front-page article in The Washington Post headlined "Economy Strains Under Weight of Unsold Items":

The unsold cars and trucks piling up at dealerships and assembly lines as consumers cut back and auto companies scramble for federal aid are just one sign of a major problem hurting the economy and only likely to get worse.

The world is suddenly awash in almost everything: flat-panel televisions, bulldozers, Barbie dolls, strip malls, Burberry stores. Japan yesterday said its economy shrank at an 12.7 percent annual pace in the last three months of 2008 as global demand evaporated for Japanese cars and electronics. Business everywhere are scrambling to bring supply in line with demand.

That may be good news for shoppers who still have pocket money. But this raises a troubling notion: what is our economy based on when we're all shopped-out? If consumer spending is the engine of the economy, what happens when we run out of things to buy?

Here's my take on President Barack Obama's first White House press conference.

I was in the East Room for the event, had a rather nice seat in the fourth row of one of the two center sections--closer to the man than Fox News' Major Garrett. But like 90-plus percent of the journalists there, I was not called on. Garrett was. In fact, all the obvious folks were tapped by Obama to ask questions, as the president worked his way down a list that had been placed on his podium: AP, Reuters, NBC, CBS, Bloomberg, ABC, CNN, The New York Times, etc.

Most of the questions were obvious. Why will your stimulus plan work? What are you going to do with Iran? He could easily reply with well-prepared remarks. I had come bearing two queries--just in case. The first concerned a matter I have been obsessing about the past few days. And it went something like this:

So those few centrist-luvin' Republicans are having their 15 minutes (and $100 billion) worth of fame, crafting a so-called compromise stimulus package that slices a chunk off the House's $920 billion version, while adding more tax cuts to the plan. And President Barack Obama has blessed their efforts.

He shouldn't have been so magnanimous--at least, not at first.

A nation in trouble elected Obama and his fellow Democrats decisively in the past election. The Republicans were disavowed by the public. So Obama owes them little. True, on the campaign he talked often about rising above partisan rancor. But what do you do when there is a real split in opinion between the parties and the minority party tries to obstruct the efforts of the majority party to address a profound crisis?

Obama was right to invite the GOPers to the table and hear them out. But when it became clear they were only committed to their usual same-old/same-old (tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts), he could have shifted gears and played hardball. He had the votes in the House. And in the Senate, he could have forced the GOPers to use the filibuster--rather than the threat of a filibuster. In that case, he would have a clear debate on his hand, and it would be up to him, as job losses pile up, to convince the public that his course of action (rather than Republican no-ism) was the right one. If the Republicans did succeed in blocking the stimulus with 40 votes, Obama could then bend and work out a compromise with the few moderate GOPers to break the filibuster. But the point would have been made: the Republicans were obstructionists. The end result, substance-wise, would have been the same compromise bill that exists now. But in the meantime, most Republicans would have been put on the spot.

Obama has been reluctant to get tough with the Republicans. He has spoken eloquently about his plan's benefit. And he has taken indirect shots at the GOPers. For instance, in his radio address this past weekend, the president noted,

Yesterday, I noted that President Barack Obama, as he makes the case for the stimulus plan, needs to get out more. That is, he has so far played mainly an inside game, trying to work Washington to get a decent package out of Congress. In doing so,

Obama and his aides have encountered the typical difficulties of Washington. It's hard to find experienced influence-makers for high-level appointments who are not tainted by the town's K Street culture. It's tough to score bipartisan points by working with partisans. It's a bitch to ask Capitol Hill machers to change their ways (of appropriating and legislating). It's not easy to control the message when a cacophonous media focus (sometimes rightfully) on missteps and conflict.

The Obama White House has not followed the gameplan that was so masterfully used by the Obama campaign. It's done little to mobilize the millions of Obama supporters to apply pressure on Congress. (Organizing for America, the continuation of the Obama for America campaign, has a mailing list of 13 million names.)

Joel Achenbach of The Washington Post echoed these sentiments (or noted that I had echoed his sentiments on this point):

I read this excellent David Corn column just now, and once again became aware of my own uncanny and unnatural blogtriloquism.

Corn: "President Barack Obama needs to get outside the Beltway...Obama has the communication skills of Reagan plus communications technologies that the Gipper could not have dreamed of. But he is only now beginning to ramp up."

Achenblog : "Don't go wonky. Keep making speeches to adoring throngs. Just because you finally have a real, executive-type job, and 2.6 million employees under your particular branch of government, doesn't mean you should stop doing what you do better than just about anyone, which is campaign -- or, more precisely, inspire people. You got the biggest megaphone in the world, so don't hesitate to use it. And the Republicans don't have to sign off on any of your speechifying."

Others I have spoken to expressed surprise and/or frustration that Obama hasn't been swinging harder--either rhetorically or by using the powerful populist apparatus he developed during the campaign. A former Clinton White House aide told me s/he was astonished that the campaign mechanisms had been allowed to fade. After all, Obama's political advisers had almost three months after Election Day to figure out how to turn the campaign machine into a support-the-president machine--and have it ready to roll and roar on Inauguration Day. An expert on politics and technology told me that s/he suspects that Rahm Emanuel and others at the White House are just not that into grassroots politics. (David Axelrod, where are you?)

There's one quote from Dick Cheney's interview with Politico that says it all:

We did worry about [the economy], to some extent.

To some extent.

Has Rush Limbaugh finally turned into a liability for the Republican Party? That would be delicious for liberals

One progressive group is trying to use Limbaugh as a blunt object against Republican senators who might vote against President Barack Obama's stimulus package, which passed the House with absolutely no Republican votes on Wednesday. Americans United for Change--which has joined with MoveOn.org, SEIU and AFSCME to air television ads targeting five GOP senators in four states--has launched a 60-second radio spot against three other Senate GOPers, and the commercial's main ammo is Limbaugh. The three senators in this line of fire are John Ensign of Nevada, George Voinovich of Ohio, and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

The commercial notes that Limbaugh has declared that he hopes Obama fails, and it asks whether these senators will side with the radio loudmouth or with Obama. You can hear it here. And the script:

Bloomberg has one of my favorite perennial Washington pay-to-play stories:

Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s political action committee contributed the maximum $10,000 to Connecticut Republican Christopher Shays's effort this year to keep his House seat.

Shays lost. Two weeks later, the PAC gave $5,000 to the winner, Democrat Jim Himes, whom it had shunned during the campaign.

New York-based Goldman Sachs, which declined comment, isn't alone. Other company PACs, including AT&T Inc. and Bank of America Corp., also began filling the campaign coffers of the freshmen who ousted their preferred candidates, federal records show.

"When an incumbent loses, donors naturally turn their attention to the new officeholder," said Rogan Kersh, associate dean of New York University's Wagner School of Public Service. "It's the American version of, 'The King is dead. Long live the King!'"

This happens after every election. Corporations that picked the losing candidate quickly turn around and dole out campaign cash to the victors. Why would they do this? Duh--to get access to these legislators so they can try to influence their votes on key matters. There's been plenty of chest-thumping in recent days about Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and the corrupt pay-to-play system in Illinois. Yet a well-established version of pay-to-play exists in the nation's capital. It may be that Senate seats are not bought and sold in Washington; they're just rented. Which brings me to.....

In the past few weeks, I've been repeatedly asked by friends and acquaintances, "Well, what do you think of Obama's first appointments?" These various inquisitions gave me a chance to organize conflicting thoughts--which was fortunate, for The Washington Post's "Outlook" section asked me to contribute a piece on this question. The article will appear on the front page of the section on Sunday. But it's already been posted--old media meets new media--and here are some excerpts:

The more things change, the more they stay . . . well, you know. And looking at President-elect Barack Obama's top appointments, it's easy to wonder whether convention has triumphed over change -- and centrists over progressives.

A quick run-down: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who supported the Iraq war until she initiated her presidential bid, has been handed the Cabinet's big plum: secretary of state. And Bush's second defense secretary, Robert Gates, will become Obama's first defense secretary. The Obama foreign policy adviser regarded as the most liberal in his inner circle, Susan E. Rice, has been picked for the U.N. ambassador slot. Obama is elevating this job to Cabinet rank, but he's still sending Rice to New York -- and in politics and policy, proximity to power matters. For national security adviser, Obama has picked James L. Jones. The retired four-star general was not hawkish on the Iraq war and seems to be a non-ideologue who possesses the right experience for the job. But he probably would have ended up in a McCain administration, and his selection has not heartened progressives.

Obama's economic team isn't particularly liberal, either. Lawrence H. Summers, who as President Bill Clinton's Treasury secretary opposed regulating the new-fangled financial instruments that greased the way to the subprime meltdown, will chair Obama's National Economic Council. To head Treasury, Obama has tapped Timothy F. Geithner, the president of the New York Federal Reserve, who helped oversee the financial system as it collapsed. Each is close to Robert Rubin, another former Clinton Treasury secretary, a director of bailed-out Citigroup and a poster boy for both the corporate wing of the Democratic Party and discredited Big Finance. Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board will be guided by Paul Volcker, the former Fed chairman whose controversial tight-money policies ended the stagflation crisis of the 1970s but led to a nasty recession. (A genuinely progressive economist, Jared Bernstein, will receive a less prominent White House job: chief economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden.)

It's no surprise that many progressives are -- depending on whom you ask -- disappointed, irritated or fit to be tied. Sure, Obama's appointments do represent change -- that is, change from the widely unpopular Bush-Cheney status quo. But do these appointments amount to the kind of change that progressives, who were an essential part of Obama's political base during the campaign, can really believe in?

Perhaps Obama is trying to pull off something subtle -- a sort of stealth liberalism draped in bipartisan centrism. But it's understandable that progressives are worried....

So with these hawkish, Rubin-esque, middle-of-the-road picks, has Obama abandoned the folks who brought him to the dance?

My hunch is that Obama has made a calculation. In constructing his administration, he has decided not to create a (liberal) Washington counter-establishment. Instead, he's fashioning a bipartisan, centrist-loaded version of the Washington establishment to carry out his policies, which do tilt to the left. (And good news for the establishmentarians: Having screwed up on Iraq or the economy is no disqualification.) When asked at a Nov. 26 news conference whether his appointments of old Washington hands indicated that his administration was not going to be a festival of change, Obama replied, "What we are going to do is combine experience with fresh thinking. But understand where the -- the vision for change comes from first and foremost. It comes from me." His job, he added, was to "make sure . . . that my team is implementing" his policies. In other words, la change, c'est moi.....

For the moment, the watchword for progressives ought to be a version of an old Reagan trope: hope, but verify....

You can read the conclusion and the entire piece here.

I'm on the run today and will be on holiday for the rest of the week. Thus, postings will suffer. But this morning The Washington Post, reporting on the federal rescue of Citigroup, notes:

The government is not firing Citi's executives, but it is requiring that their compensation be approved by federal authorities under terms that are not yet finalized. And it is requiring that the bank help people at risk of losing their homes avoid foreclosure by using the same aggressive approach that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has required of IndyMac, a California-based bank it took over in July.

Is it too much to expect that some of the folks responsible for the mess lose their jobs? As I watch friends, relatives, and strangers get slammed by the economic downturn, I am angered by the notion that many of the people who steered us into this disaster--yes, the Robert Rubins of the world--were able to make millions of dollars a year screwing up and now do not face the same consequences as those thousands of Americans who are being laid off or those who have lost their retirement security.

Let's have some heads roll. On the campaign trail, John McCain was right to show some anger about all this--but it was never clear if he really meant it. Meanwhile, there aren't too many corporate honchos being given the boot or having their mansions repossessed, while the Rubin gang rides back into town to save the system. (I revisited Larry Summers' culpability yesterday.) Is it too Grinch-ish to want to see the geniuses that failed suffer?

Barack Obama wins. Mitch McConnell is talking nice about the president-elect. And Henry Waxman bounces John Dingell from the chairmanship of the all-powerful House energy and commerce committee.

It's a good time to be a liberal in Washington.

Sure, Clintonites are scoring well in the Obama administration sweepstakes, and the Clinton years are remembered by liberals for the exasperating triangulations of Bill, Hill and their crew. But the combo of Obama's triumph and the far-from-over economic meltdown has provided liberals with their best opening since the days of the Great Society, or even the New Deal. Forget--for the moment, only for the moment, I promise--Hillary Clinton's possible appointment as secretary of state. There's something larger going on and it's truly a fundamental change: the market is dead. It cannot even take care of itself. So how can anyone rely on--or call for--market-driven solutions for the challenges that face the nation: the economy, the health care crisis, and global warming?

I have a day of medical stuff to do today--nothing serious--so I'll be brief.

Remember weeks ago, when a small number of public voices were counseling to go slow on the $700 billion bailout for Big Finance? They said there was--despite Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's urgent pleas--no need to rush. They said that Congress ought to hold hearings and examine various alternatives to Paulson's blank-check plan. They said that the Bush administration and the Democrats in Congress (including then-presidential candidate Barack Obama) were merely throwing money at a problem without proceeding in a deliberate manner. You can see here for examples of such naysaying.

Well, they (which includes me) were right. Take a gander at the top of the front page of The Washington Post. To the right, you will find a story reporting:

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. announced a series of moves yesterday that redefine the federal government's $700 billion rescue plan for the financial industry in order to tackle what he called a dire situation in the consumer credit markets.

In recasting the program, the Treasury no longer plans to buy troubled assets from financial firms, the idea initially presented to the country, but instead will offer aid to banks and other firms that issue student, auto and credit card loans in part by jump-starting the market that provides financing for these companies.

That is, Treasury is taking those hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars Congress gave it and now using it in a completely different manner than it said it would. Maybe this will be a better deployment of those bucks. Maybe it won't. But shouldn't there have been some public debate or discourse about the shift? Whose money is it, anyway?

Next, shift your eyeballs slightly to the left, and you will see a related article reporting:

In the six weeks since lawmakers approved the Treasury's massive bailout of financial firms, the government has poured money into the country's largest banks, recruited smaller banks into the program and repeatedly widened its scope to cover yet other types of businesses, from insurers to consumer lenders.

Along the way, the Bush administration has committed $290 billion of the $700 billion rescue package.

Yet for all this activity, no formal action has been taken to fill the independent oversight posts established by Congress when it approved the bailout to prevent corruption and government waste. Nor has the first monitoring report required by lawmakers been completed, though the initial deadline has passed.

"It's a mess," said Eric M. Thorson, the Treasury Department's inspector general, who has been working to oversee the bailout program until the newly created position of special inspector general is filled. "I don't think anyone understands right now how we're going to do proper oversight of this thing."

Get the picture? The program was misdirected, is being redirected, and has no oversight. By the way, it will probably cost more than the $700 billion first mentioned.

It is a mess. A gigantic mess. Just one of the several George W. Bush (with the help of Congress) is bequeathing Obama. The new president and his people better have some good ideas for making it work better. For even though it was made in the Bush administration, if this quasi-con game continues along this present course after January 20, Obama will own it.

Here's my take on the final McCain-Obama duel, first posted at MotherJones.com....

A political campaign can be like a rock slide. At some point, it's just going to continue in the direction it's heading--and not much can stop it. After the final debate between Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain, it may well be that the 2008 presidential contest has reached not the tipping point, but that rock slide point. This is not a prediction of a pro-Obama avalanche on November 4--though that's a possibility. It's merely an observation that the campaign may be done in the sense that there are no major inputs to come (barring a bolt-from-the-blue event) that will affect the final tally. Polls will show that there are still some undecided voters out there. (Who are these people?) But whatever's going to determine this election--economic concerns, a desire for change, racism, you name it--is probably already in place, and the candidates may not be able to alter this, at least not in a proactive manner. Certainly, at any time, either can turn the race upside down by saying or doing something particularly dopey.

Neither got dopey on Wednesday night. McCain even had his best (or his least unsuccessful) debate performance, but it was no--damn, I hate this cliché--game changer. McCain was more aggressive than in the previous face-offs, and he finally dared to challenge Barack Obama directly on the--drum roll, please--Bill Ayers Question. But there was this: viewers watching McCain's reaction shots during the evening could have easily wondered if the Republican presidential nominee would make it to the finish without his head exploding, for he seemed to be in the midst of an exercise in anger control.

Prior to the debate, there was much chatter about whether McCain would play the Ayers card. Judging from video of his recent rallies, it appeared that his base was demanding blood on this front. But polls indicated that these sorts of attacks have been hurting McCain with in-the-middle voters. So he faced a tough decision: ignore Ayers and upset the diehards or accuse Obama of being a pal of a domestic terrorist and alienate the indies.

McCain and his strategists came up with a hybrid approach: take a shot on the Ayers front and combine it with a traditional political assault. "I don't care about an old washed-up terrorist," McCain huffed, but then he went on to say, "we need to know the full extent of that relationship." Huh? If you don't care about Ayers, why do you care about the relationship? And why repeat the false claim that Obama launched his first political campaign within Ayer's living room?

This was essentially McCain's love letter to the GOP base. ("Now get off my case, okay?") More important, he attached it to his true attack of the night: Obama will raise your taxes. After quickly running through his Ayers index cards, McCain noted, "My campaign is about getting this economy back on track...I'm not going to raise taxes the way Senator Obama wants to raise taxes." In what was probably the last big moment of the campaign before Election Day, McCain offered this meta-argument: Obama is a liberal tax-and-spend Democrat, and I'm a conservative. (He left off the Republican part.)

Repeatedly, McCain accused Obama of wanting to throw money at problems and of yearning to raise taxes. When Obama maintained he would give tax breaks to the bottom 95 percent--and more tax relief than McCain would to this large slice of the American public--McCain replied: hey, this guy wants to raise taxes. And, by the way, he wants to spend your money.

My take on the second debate, first posted at MotherJones.com....

Last Thursday, during a McCain campaign town hall meeting in Denver, one participant stood up and challenged the GOP presidential candidate: "When are you going to take the gloves off?" His fellow McCain supporters in the downtown hotel roared with approval. "How about Tuesday night?" John McCain replied, referring to his second debate with Obama.

How about not? The McCain campaign in recent days has pumped up its effort to delegitimize Barack Obama, with its top strategist apparently calculating that McCain cannot vanquish Obama if the election is about issues. At a recent rally in a California suburb, GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin declared "Our opponent...is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country." (This was a reference to Obama's past association with Bill Ayers, the former Weather Underground radical who became an education expert). And on Monday, McCain delivered a blistering attack on Obama that was loaded with inaccuracies and distortions. So one expectation among the politerati was that McCain would continue swinging--or thrashing--at the second debate. Work in Bill Ayers. Refer to Jeremiah Wright. Depict Obama as shifty and untrustworthy.

That did not happen. McCain, trailing Obama in the polls, mainly trained his fire on policy matters. He did continue to hurl misrepresentations at Obama. (As the debate proceeded, I received 40 emails from the Obama campaign making this point.) For instance, McCain once again claimed that Obama has voted 94 times to raise taxes, a charge that has been widely debunked by various factchecking outfits. But there was no frontal assault on Obama's character--and only one or two slight digs on his qualifications. The debate was more high-minded than anticipated. But it demonstrated a tough reality for McCain: he is out of sync with his own campaign. He cannot pull the trigger, when his advisers seem to believe a machine gun blast is needed.

Obama and his campaign are fully integrated. He calls for a break from the past eight years on both domestic and foreign fronts and famously urges fundamental change. As a new face--and a black man--he sure does represent change. He is his message. And his campaign for over a year and a half has not had to go through any strategic lurches or had to reconfigure either its candidate or its core pitch. That's not true on the McCain side. His campaign has been nothing but lurches. And the most recent one--a turn toward even more negative campaigning--undercuts his old and now practically worn-out reputation as a straight-talking maverick. So come Debate II, McCain was confronting a tough choice: damned if he does (go negative) and stalled if he doesn't.

Deciding to forego the nasty stuff, McCain relied on policy differences to hammer Obama. The problem: Obama's policy prescriptions are not unpopular.

Driving to work (late) this morning, I was listening to The Diane Rehm Show on NPR (plug: I'll be on Friday morning), and I heard a comment that almost caused me to strike a pothole. The topic of the day was the financial crisis and the under-construction bailout, and Simon Johnson, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and former IMF economic counselor, commenting on the $700 billion package being thrown together on Capitol Hill, said, We're more in the realm of "chaos theory than economic theory."

Wow. And whoa. This rush to save Wall Street's backside is not only unseemly but perhaps perilous. Yesterday, Peter Orszag, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, testifed that the bailout could worsen the ongoing economic crisis. And even if the Democrats succeed in crafting a package that includes necessary provisions regarding accountability and transparency, CEO compensation, bankruptcy reform, and mortgage protection for homeowners, there are still plenty of questions about the overall approach of this bailout: the feds using taxpayer dollars to buy lousy assets from poorly-run companies to keep these poorly-run companies afloat. There are alternatives. The federal government could lend money to needy financial institutions instead of buying their crappy assets. Or it could buy better assets and pump money into the financial system that way. My Bloggingheads.tv sparring partner Jim Pinkerton advocates restructuring the entire financial sector to make sure none of its major players get too big to fail. Economist James Galbraith (a regular Mother Jones contributor) proposes pouring half a trillion dollars into the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (to preserve depositors' confidence in banks and prevent a run), putting $200 billion in reserve so the Treasury, if necessary, can buy preferred stock in banks to recapitalize these institutions, and waiting to see what happens. That is, let the folks who screwed up do what they can with their bad paper. Galbraith notes that serious economic problems will remain, but the threat of systemic collapse would be abated.

The point is that the Paulson path is not the only one. In fact, it may be the wrong one. Certainly, a few days--or a week or two--of debate and discussion before committing $700 billion would not be unwarranted. "We need more than three days to sort this out," Simon Johnson said. And he's right. The Democrats in Congress ought not be force to quick, decisive and misguided action by the we-must-act-today pronouncements from George W. Bush and others in his administration. On Thursday, John McCain said "time is short" and that a deal must be completed before the financial markets open on Monday. Barack Obama should reply: not if it's a bad deal.

Obama certainly wants to--and needs to--come across responsibly. (Who wants to be blamed for the crash of an entire sector?) But this train is probably moving too fast for the public. Slowing it down to get the response right could be a twofer: good policy and good politics.

If the "fundamentals" of this economy are strong, why then is President Bush proposing a $500 billion bailout of financial firms?

Even though John McCain cannot answer that question, he still bangs his fist and decries Wall Street greed-meisters and Washington influence peddlers (the same sort of people who are working for his campaign). And, as I wrote elsewhere, he may be out-populisting Barack Obama.

The economic crisis under way surely is scaring voters and pissing off many of them. How dare these Wall Streeters and their lobbyist pals game the system and put our economy in peril? How many of them will be losing their second homes (with heated pools)? At this stage, McCain is expressing some of that anger, though he goes back and forth on the substance. (First, don't take over AIG; then, hooray for the take-over of AIG.) Obama has reacted more coolly. And he better watch out. Many voters freaked out by the economic meltdown do not want only calmly-delivered policy proposals. They want to see someone voice their own worries and feelings--as in outrage. In fact, I would bet that many of those still-undecided voters care more about how a candidate reacts than what a candidate proposes.

Democrats usually have the edge over Republicans when it comes to voters' perceptions of who would best deal with economic matters. But in a crisis, many voters are going to look for leadership, not policy details. So McCain may not have to answer the above question. He just has to stop making stupid comments and come on strong, decisive and mad. And Obama should ponder how to prevent himself from winding up on the wrong end of an anger gap.

After all, Americans have a right to be livid with the screw-ups of Big Finance, the deregulators of Washington, and the game-riggers of K Street. And they are entitled to a president who feels not only their pain, but their anger.

As regular readers can tell from the past few days, I've been fixated on a point: as mega-finance firms fail, it's absurd for McCain to beat on Wall Street when his campaign is chockfull of corporate lobbyists (past and present) who have been paid lots of money to rig the system for Big Finance firms. And that includes UBS executive and McCain adviser Phil Gramm, who, as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, pulled a backroom legislative stunt in 2000 to make sure that credit default swaps--a certain financial instrument that helped pave the way to the subprime meltdown--would remain completely unregulated.

The nice thing about having an obsession and being head of a Washington bureau is that you can assign reporters to stories. So I asked Jonathan Stein and Nick Baumann, two colleagues of mine at Mother Jones, to go through a list of 177 lobbyists working for the McCain campaign and find those who have been influence-peddlers for financial firms. They did and discovered that over 80 of these lobbyists have been game-riggers for financial corporations. Consequently, we had a story to post:

In the past few days, as the economic crisis has deepened, Senator John McCain has been decrying the excesses of Wall Street. At a campaign rally in Tampa on Tuesday, he vowed that he and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, if elected, "are going to put an end to the reckless conduct, corruption, and unbridled greed that have caused a crisis on Wall Street." He noted that the "foundation of our economy...has been put at risk by the greed and mismanagement of Wall Street and Washington."

He blasted CEOs who "seem to escape the consequences." He denounced Wall Streeters who "dreamed up investment schemes that they themselves don't even understand" and who used "derivatives, credit default swaps, and mortgage-backed securities" to try "to make their own rules." He excoriated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for gaming the system. And he slammed financial industry lobbyists for misguiding members of Congress. "I can promise you the days of dealing and special favors will soon be over in Washington." On Wednesday morning, after the federal government committed $85 billion to prevent the collapse of the American International Group (AIG) insurance conglomerate, McCain again assailed irresponsible corporate executives. "We need to change the way Washington and Wall Street does business," he proclaimed.

McCain has been quick with fiery, populist-tinged speeches. But one thing has been missing: any acknowledgment that McCain's own campaign has been loaded with the type of people he's been denouncing. As Mother Jones previously reported, former Senator Phil Gramm, McCain's onetime campaign chairman, used a backroom maneuver in late 2000 to slip into law a bill that kept credit default swaps unregulated. These financial instruments greased the way to the subprime meltdown that has led to today's economic crisis. Several of McCain's most senior campaign aides have lobbied for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And the Democratic National Committee, using publicly available records, has identified 177 lobbyists working for the McCain campaign as either aides, policy advisers, or fundraisers.

Of those 177 lobbyists, according to a Mother Jones review of Senate and House records, at least 83 have in recent years lobbied for the financial industry McCain now attacks. These are high-paid influence-peddlers who have been working the corridors of the nation's capital to win favors and special treatment for investment banks, securities firms, hedge funds, accounting outfits, and insurance companies. Their clients have included AIG, the newest symbol of corporate excess; Lehman Brothers, which filed for bankruptcy on Monday sending the stock market into a tailspin; Merrill Lynch, which was bought out by Bank of America this week; and Washington Mutual, the banking giant that could be the next to fall. Among these 83 lobbyists are McCain's chief political adviser, Charlie Black (JP Morgan, Washington Mutual Bank,, Freddie Mac, Mortgage Bankers Association of America); McCain's national finance co-chairman, Wayne Berman (AIG, Blackstone, Credit Suisse, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac); the campaign's congressional liaison, John Green (Carlyle Group, Citigroup, Icahn Associates, Fannie Mae); McCain's veep vetter, Arthur Culvahouse (Fannie Mae); and McCain's transition planning chief, William Timmons Sr. (Citigroup, Freddie Mac, Vanguard Group).

When cable news shows air footage of McCain railing against greedy execs and the lobbyists who rig the rules for the benefit of Wall Street dealmakers, there ought to be a crawl beneath him listing these lobbyists. (Talk about a fair and balanced presentation.) Short of that, here's the list of the McCain aides and bundlers who have worked for the high-finance greed-mongers McCain has pledged to take on. So far, it seems, none of them have been cast out of the campaign. If McCain were serious about his outrage, he might throw these money-changers out of his own temple.

To see that list, click here.

It is almost literally unbelievable.

John McCain, responding to the current economic troubles, says that "Wall Street has betrayed us." He calls the current mess the "result of excess and greed and corruption." He adds,

We've got to make sure that people like Fannie and Freddie, organizations such as Fannie and Freddie, never have the influence again that they had in Washington. You saw it, Joe. The old boy network -- Republicans, Democrats, they had influence with everybody. So therefore, we didn't act to have the sufficient oversight while these organizations grew and grew and became the corrupt institutions that they are today."

Old boy network? Influence? Can't McCain smell the stench of old-boy influence-peddling every time he enters his campaign headquarters? As I noted yesterday, several of McCain's top campaign aides lobbied for Fannie and Freddie. His campaign overall has at least 177 lobbyists working for his campaign. These are people who get paid large amounts of money to win special treatment for corporate interests, public interest be damned.

Then there's Phil Gramm, the onetime chairman of McCain's campaign. As I explained elsewhere, when Gramm chaired the Senate banking committee in 2000, he slipped into a massive must-pass spending bill a piece of legislation totally deregulating the the market for credit default swaps, a little-understood financial instrument. The swaps market then exploded, and the rampant use of unregulated swaps--which function kind of like insurance policies for big financial institutions--helped grease the way for the subprime meltdown.

So whose greed and excess is McCain now decrying? It is the greed and excess of some of the people who have helped run his campaign. His denunciation of influence peddlers, asleep-at-the-switch regulators, and me-first CEOs is absurd, given his own ties to these folks. His most prominent economic policy surrogate is Carly Fiorina, who pocketed $42 million in severance pay and other goodies when she was forced out as CEO of Hewlett-Packard. The question is, how long can McCain get away with this?

Obama has a slight but narrowing edge in the polls when voters are asked who's best able to handle the economy. It's certainly obvious that voters don't review the details of each presidential candidate's economic policy before deciding whom they want in the driver's seat when the economy heads into a ditch. Many voters pick a favorite based on impressions. Right now, McCain is sounding a more populist tone than Obama, whose strategy seems to be to portray McCain as too tied to George W. Bush and too out of touch to be trusted with this hurting economy. So even with McCain stumbling (by declaring the "fundamentals" are strong), McCain looks more like the fighter, the guy who's ready to knock heads together--the heads of the greedy SOBs responsible for this mess--and get things going again with a healthy dose of reform. It's phony populism. It's like the head of a Mafia family decrying a crime wave caused by his own lieutenants. But that doesn't mean it cannot work politically.

In politics, being right doesn't always count. You have to show you can fight. McCain is ignoring reality to position himself as a populist reformer. Obama better burst that bubble.

As Barack Obama turns from overseas issues to economic matters--with a scheduled meeting on Monday in Washington with economic leaders--I noted elsewhere that there was a potent economic issue waiting for Obama: economic transparency. Referring to the subprime meltdown, I noted:

So here's a populist issue for Obama: the U.S. economy is too important to be placed in the hands of wheeler-dealers who in the shadows engage in transactions that have the potential to send waves of harm throughout the highly-interconnected financial world. Americans are entitled to feel insecure when they see that the economy can be so severely affected by a few big firms that go off the reservation, thanks to the imaginative machinations of a small number of traders. More transparency, more regulation--whatever the policy prescriptions are (and they will be technical and hard for most of us to understand), Obama could by addressing this issue gain a political advantage over John McCain, who tends to celebrate the workings of the markets.

Then I came across a story in Monday's Washington Post that was headlined, "Transparency Sought as Speculators' Activity in Oil Market Grows" and that reported:

Big Wall Street firms representing the interests of pension funds, endowments and wealthy individuals around the country have grown in just a few years from minor participants in the oil markets to their most dominant force.

These financial firms -- whose holdings of oil contracts are now larger than the collective demand of airlines, trucking firms and other companies that need oil to run their businesses -- have become the focus of an intense debate in Washington over whether their exponential growth is contributing to the surge in oil prices.

The agency that regulates commodity trading has been tracking some of the activities of these investors. But a year and a half ago, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission decided to keep that information secret, rebuffing thousands of requests from industry groups and individuals to make the data public. The CFTC noted in a report that only one group supported this decision: the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, which lobbies on behalf of the Wall Street firms.

The biggest financial speculators, called swap dealers, trade "futures contracts" that allow them to make money by betting on the price commodities will fetch in the future. They rarely take delivery of the goods themselves. In 2000, swap dealers held about 140,000 oil contracts, according to CFTC data obtained by a House Energy and Commerce Committee investigation. That has surged to about 1.8 million today, including a three-fold jump since 2006.

Here's an instance when a small number of those wheeler-dealers may be having a serious impact on the economy and the financial health of households across the United States, and the regulators take the side of the speculators and allow them to continue their trading far from the prying eyes of the public.

This is a good--and populist--issue for Obama and the Democrats. Regulators ought to be working for the public, not industry. And transparency ought to be the rule. During the W. years, unregulated segments of the economy that are cloaked in secrecy--such as the swaps market--have grown in size and significance. It's time for pushback.

It's no happy July 4th for the economy. According to the latest government stats, several tens of thousands of Americans lost their jobs in June. Of course, that's news that the presidential candidates have to respond to. Look at their statements.

Barack Obama:

As we head into the 4th of July weekend, today's report that our economy has lost another 62,000 jobs is a stark reminder that far too many Americans will spend this holiday out of work and struggling to provide for their families because of the failed policies of the last eight years.

Our economy has now shed 438,000 jobs over the past six months, while workers' wages fail to keep pace with the skyrocketing cost of gas, groceries and healthcare. The American people are paying the price for the failed economic policies of the past eight years, and we can't afford four more years of more of the same. That is the essential issue of this campaign because Senator McCain has fully embraced the Bush economic agenda. I believe it has to change.

But, as these numbers demonstrate, the American people can't wait another six months. We need action now. That's why I'm calling on Congress and the President to enact real, immediate relief with energy rebates for working families this summer, a fund to help families avoid foreclosure, extended benefits for the long-term jobless, and assistance to states that have been hard-hit by the economic downturn.

As President, I'll move us in a new direction with policies to restore broad-based, bottom up growth that benefits all Americans. I will provide working families with a middle-class tax cut; fight for affordable health care and college tuition; work to help raise workers' wages, and invest in infrastructure, education and a clean energy future to create millions of new jobs. That's the change the American people need."

John McCain:

Americans across this country are hurting and today's job numbers are just the latest indication. From rising gas prices to home foreclosures, families are struggling to meet economic challenges that become greater every day. Washington can no longer abdicate its responsibility to act. Our focus must be clear: enact policies to create jobs today.

To get our economy back on track, we must enact a jobs-first economic plan that supports job creation, provide immediate tax relief for families, enact a plan to help those facing foreclosure, lower health care costs, invest in innovation, move toward strategic energy independence and open more foreign markets to our goods.

The American people cannot afford an economic agenda that will take our country in the wrong direction and cost jobs. At a time when our small businesses need support from Washington, we cannot raise taxes, increase regulation and isolate ourselves from foreign markets. These are the same old siren songs that have failed the American people time and time again.

Notice anything? Obama is in a position to blast current federal policies (i.e., George W. Bush) and to remind voters that over 400,000 jobs have been lost in the past six months of Bush's watch. Thus, change is needed. And who represents change? Well, you know.

McCain, though, bemoans the consequences of the faltering economy but he does not hold any specific player accountable. He merely swings at a generic target: Washington. Of which he has been a part of for decades. His target is not the Bush administration but the "economic agenda" of his unnamed political foe.

Summing up, Obama surveys the economic troubles, and he says that ongoing policies (Bush's policies) are wrongheaded and a new course--his course--must be plotted. McCain looks at the economic mess (which is associated with an administration he supports) and says let's stick with the general approach of the past seven years and don't trust that other guy's solutions. Which message do you think has the better chance of resonating with voters? After all, what's the real problem: "old siren songs" or present policies?

MORE BLOGGINGHEADS.TV. See me and Jim Pinkerton tussle once more on Bloggingheads.tv. On this edition, we ponder whether the Supreme Court is in play in the 2008 election. Is Wes Clark out of play? Has Obama put religion in play? And have the Taliban put Afghanistan in play? And there's more: Pinkerton explains why you should worry about China and India in space--and not global warming. By the way, he wants to build a giant pipeline across the United States--not to carry oil, but water, from East to West. Check it out.

FIRE UP THE BARBECUE. Enjoy your Fourth and all that potato salad. (Hmmmm, potato salad.) I'll be back next week.

Here's the McCain-Obama face-off--at least the domestic side of it--in a nutshell. This morning the latest jobs numbers came out, and the news was bad: the U.S. economy lost another 49,000 jobs and unemployment increase half a point to 5.5 percent. Immediately both campaigns put out statements. Let's compare.

From Obama:

Today's jobs report is deeply troubling. Last month, our economy lost 49,000 jobs and the unemployment rate saw the greatest rise in more than twenty years. This is a reminder that working families continue to bear the brunt of the failed Bush economic policies that John McCain wants to continue for another four years. In the first five months of 2008, our economy has lost 324,000 jobs, and workers' wages once again failed to keep pace with the skyrocketing cost of health care, and college tuition, and gas. That's why we can't afford John McCain's plan to spend billions of dollars on tax breaks for big corporations and wealthy CEOs, and that's why I'm offering change that will provide working families with a middle-class tax cut, affordable health care and college, and an energy plan that will create up to five million good-paying jobs that can't be outsourced. That's the change the American people are looking for, and that's how we'll build an economy of shared prosperity once more.

From McCain:

Today's news about unemployment is a stark reminder of the economic challenges facing American families. As the worst single monthly increase in the unemployment rate in two decades clearly shows, Americans across this country are hurting, and we must act now to support workers, families and employers alike. This means getting our economy back on track by providing immediate tax relief, enacting a HOME plan to help those facing foreclosure, lowering health care costs, investing in innovation, moving toward energy independence and opening foreign markets to our goods. These policies will help small businesses create the jobs that families need today. The American people cannot afford more inaction from Washington. The wrong change for our country would be an economic agenda based upon the policies of the past that advocate higher taxes, bigger government, government-run health care and greater isolationism. To help families at this critical time, we cannot afford to go backward as Senator Obama advocates.

Who's got the advantage? Obama, obviously. His position is clear and straightforward: the economic situation is terrible, current policies stink, Bush is to blame, I've got new ideas ready to roll. McCain has to acknowledge the current economic problems and tout his own policies (which are Bushian), but he cannot blast Bush, though he says the country "cannot afford more inaction from Washington," which is an indirect shot at Bush. He's left defining "change" as advancing Bush-like policies, and he has to slam Obama's "change" as nothing but backward movement. That's a tough political sell. McCain better hope the economic news is better in the months ahead.

After the CNN/YouTube Republican debate last week, fellow CQ blogger Richard Whalen observed:

The verdict: a very disappointing “debate.” After the worst-ever week for the greenback in the past half century, not one of the presidential candidates had anything to say about the economy, the dollar, the falling real estate market, the erratic stock market – zip.

These rich and powerful men are not concerned about how Americans are just getting by from pay day to pay day. Why aren't these candidates addressing the economic issues that are troubling most Americans and better yet, offering concrete solutions? Even a Thompson who flashes down-home folksiness had nothing to say about jobs, security and the future of the economy.

There were other matters not addressed during that debate. Iran, for instance--and global warming. (No YouTubers asked Thompson why a few months ago he delivered a radio commentary mocking people who worry about global warming.) But Whalen's posting prompted me to go back and look at the Democratic debate, held in Las Vegas on November 15. A search of the word "job" produced ten times the candidates used the J-word:

* Joseph Biden: "The American people don't give a darn about any of this stuff that's going on up here....They're worrying about whether they're going to keep their job."

* Christopher Dodd: "We Democrats have a job to do, and that is to unite this party, attract independents, Republicans who are seeking change....The American people want results, they want the job done, exactly what Joe Biden talked about here. But people get up in the morning and go to work, they sit around and they worry about their jobs, their retirement, their health care, this kids' education, and they wonder if anybody in Washington is paying any attention to them and whether or not the job is being done on their behalf.

* Bill Richardson: "Are we creating jobs and economic growth?

* Dodd: "I believe part of our job is to discourage those who want to come here [illegally]."

* Dennis Kucinich: "So I'm the candidate of workers in this -- this campaign because I've stood for jobs for all, full employment economy."

* Hillary Clinton: "you need to weed out the teachers who are not doing a good job."

* Richardson: "[Musharraf] is supposed to go after terrorists on his border. And he has done a very weak job of doing that."

* Barack Obama: "[American troops in Iraq] are doing a magnificent job."

* John Edwards: "NAFTA...has cost us millions of jobs.

* Richardson: "The federal government wasn't doing its job in stopping the flow of drugs and people....We should speak frankly to our friends [in Mexico], and it should be something like this: Mexico, give jobs to your people.

Note that none of these references were a pledge to improve the jobs situation in the United States or a proposal to do so. Sure, conventional unemployment numbers are low. But plenty of Americans are--to use a technical term--wigged out by the prospect of economic insecurity. In today's globalized economy, practically anyone can lose his or her job tomorrow and have a tough time finding a new one with good pay and benefits. Once upon a time, many Americans--even those with only a high school education--could look forward to sticking with the same decent-paying job for decades. No more. And add the accelerating costs of health care and education to the picture, plus the iffiness of many retirement plans, and you get a mood of unease and worry. (And I'm not including in this mix the fear of dirty bombs being detonated in malls during the Christmas rush.)

None of the leading candidates are speaking much about this declining (or lost) economic security. The Dems uttered the word "security" when discussing border matters and foreign policy (and, of course, Social Security). But they have not raised the wider issue of economic security as a main subject. (Edwards has come close in his populist attacks on corporate power in Washington, but just close.) And the Republicans are not even within a country mile of the issue. They're too preoccupied with providing tax "relief" to millionaires.

Jobs--this used to be bread and butter for Democratic candidates. Not that it always worked. Remember Michael "Good Jobs at Good Wages" Dukakis? But the last Democratic candidate to win the White House--Bill Clinton (a.k.a. Mr. Feel Your Pain)--did so by addressing the economic anxieties produced by the recession of the early 1990s.

The international economic tidal forces that are battering American workers are not easy to alter. Even though Democratic candidates do have position papers outlining how they would straighten the middle class and create some jobs, they are skimming the surface. None have yet connected with the deep-seated anxieties of today--and connecting with the voters is their No. 1 job.

LET THE GOOD TIMES...COME BACK. This weekend I attended a fundraiser held by the Future of Music Coalition, a nonprofit outfit focusing on music and technology issues, and Sweet Home New Orleans, a nonprofit organization that supports New Orleans musicians who lost homes during Hurricane Katrina. Part of the proceeds from the evening are going to help Al "Carnival Time" Johnson, a New Orleans musical icon for four decades. His home of 40 years was destroyed during the flood when a barge landed on it. He lost just about everything he owned. At the fundraiser, Johnson played some old-time New Orleans R&B, and Mike Mills of R.E.M. did a short set of his own. If you'd like to help musicians like Johnson, please check out Sweet Home New Orleans.