YouTube - Wassup 2008. Change.

Under the Radar: Revealing the Hidden Attacks against Obama. i like the “palin denounces robocalls and then makes one” including the actual recording.

Hedge Fund Manager: Goodbye and F—- You - Portfolio.com. that guy seems pissed.

Watching the Growth of Walmart Across America. pretty cool data visualization. via ram.

YouTube - Colin Powell Endorses Barack Obama on Meet The Press. His comment about McCain focusing on Bill Ayers over a litany of better issues is spot on. His follow-up comments to reporters was also pretty good.


Recent Charity Dinner Roast starring John McCain and Barack Obama. pretty funny stuff.


YouTube - Misconceptions of Obama fuel Republican campaign - 13 Oct 08. it’s so sad to see that people can still be that stupid and racist. via ram.

How Nate Silver Went From Forecasting Baseball Games to Forecasting Elections — New York Magazine . about the author of fivethirtyeight. via ram.

Daily Kos: State of the Nation. seems a whole lot of republican candidates are trying to avoid mentioning their republican.

buying airline routes and putting money under the mattress

I have to point out this morning’s NPR Planet Money podcast. It was just too good. There’s three segments and the last two are awesome.

The second piece has some guy trying to explain why we can’t just take all the crappy mortgages out of these big CDOs and call it a day. Well, it turns out that a lot of these CDOs have a collection of utterly disconnected things such as “income from a specific Friday night flight on Korean Airlines between Tokyo and Seoul” and “royalties from David Bowie’s songs” but more importantly things like “the mortgage for your office building” and “the mortgage for the cell phone tower your phone used this morning”. That’s one of the reasons why this toxic subprime debt is effecting things completely unrelated, like friday night flights out of Tokyo.

The last piece is talking with some bond and paper traders. The guy mentions how he has a client who had to buy treasury notes that day and ended up only getting 1 basis point for his trouble. That’s 1/100th of 1%. That’s a 1 cent return for $100. He also mentioned that some notes cleared this week for 0, the equivalent of hiding it under your mattress.


YouTube - U.S. National Debt Grows too Large For National Debt Clock. that’s what $10 trillion can do.

The Reckoning - Taking Hard New Look at a Greenspan Legacy - NYTimes.com. it seems derivatives might undo that too. the infographic showing the half quintillion dollar derivates market is also pretty enlightening.

Ex-Rocket Scientist To Oversee Financial Bailout : NPR. This one guy, Neel Kashkari, is in charge of $700B. definitely an odd process story.

reportonbusiness.com: Central banks slash rates in extraordinary move to ease crisis. “Central banks in Canada, the United States, Britain, the European Union, Sweden and Switzerland cut key lending rates by half a percentage point.” the next story is going to be about where to buy shotguns and canned food.

This American Life - Another Frightening Show About the Economy. follow-up episode to the phenomenal “Giant Pool of Money” episode.


YouTube - Sarah Mania! Sarah Palin’s Greatest Hits. out. of. her. league.

“I’m not saying Secretary Paulson is Lex Luthor. I’m just saying $700 billion is exactly enough to build a death ray.
- Tim Siedell

house rejects bailout


From this graph, I’ll let you guess when the U.S House of Representatives rejected the Wall Street bailout.

McCain Wins Debate - The Fix. seems the mcCain campaign has already released online ads saying he won this evenings debate. forget the debate outcome, you’d think if they had a time machine they could do something more useful like tell us how to fix wall street or iraq. via boris.

Government Seizes WaMu and Sells Some Assets - NYTimes.com. Glad I didn’t move my banking over to Wasington Mutual. This might finally put a sag in Seattle housing prices.