November 2008 Archives

It's getting increasingly difficult to simply imagine the amount of money the federal government is committing to get us out of the financial crisis.

Barry Ritholtz tries to put it in context by comparing it to the cost of previous big ticket government expenditures:

• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

TOTAL: $3.92 trillion

According to his estimate, the government has pledged $4.6165 trillion for this bailout. On Monday Bloomberg reported the government is prepared to make $7.76 trillion available to deal with the crisis.

Whatever the total, it's almost an unimaginable sum.

UPDATE: Full post on Barry's blog.

Atrios, on the media's speculation regarding the future Obama cabinet:

Most of it is even more useless than campaign horse race journalism. If they must do it they could at least provide more useful information about the people they're speculating about, but instead it's all just a soap opera.

I assume he's talking about the Senator Clinton for Secretary of State rumors, which have dominated TV news this week. And I agree--it would be nice for pundits to focus on what Clinton (or any other candidate) brings to the table for a specific position, rather than an endless rehash of the political power play by play.

Instead, the potential appointment is viewed merely as a primary postscript. If I received a dollar for every time a TV talker said "team of rivals" or "keep your friends close and your enemies closer," I'd get a nice check this week.

Another sign of recessionary times:

The average ticket price for NFL playoff games this season will decrease by approximately 10 percent from last season.

Citing economic challenges facing fans as the reason for the reduction, the NFL confirmed the lower prices Wednesday. But the specific leaguewide average playoff ticket price cannot be determined until the home playoff sites are decided; prices vary from market to market depending on costs for regular-season tickets.

"We want to be responsive to the economic challenges facing our fans," an NFL spokesman said.

I view professional sporting events as being so expensive that I'd like to think this move is a realization by the NFL that its ticket prices had gotten out of hand, so it's simply returning them to more reasonable levels. But for years people have demonstrated that they are willing to pay ridiculous ticket prices. The only thing that has changed this year is that fans are reaching the financial breaking point and can no longer afford to do so. If they had the money, they'd continue paying it. But hard times are reshaping people's priorities.

An interesting side question: If things continue to go south in the NFL economy for a season or two, will it be deemed "too big to fail" and thus become eligible for a federal bailout?

FiveThirtyEight.com has an interesting post comparing the 2008 electoral map with the 1992 electoral map. Which states voted more Democratic last week as compared with when Clinton won his first term? Which states voted more Republican?

Basically the Republicans have made notable gains in the western Appalachian states, the Mid-South, the southern plains, and the mountain west. Meanwhile, the Democrats have solidified their hold on the Northeast, while making gains in the Midwest, Pacific coast, and southern Rocky Mountains.

The summary:

Essentially, by sacrificing 50 or so Electoral Votes from the inland South, the Democrats have taken about 60 votes from former swing states and turned them into Lean Democratic states, and another 44 or so from former lean Republican states and turned them into swing states. This is a good trade-off.

See the post for a map and full Electoral College breakdown.

A belated congratulations to Preident-elect Obama, who ran one of the best campaign operations I have seen.

Obama's election is obviously noteworthy because he is the first African-American candidate to win. The 2008 campaign stretched out for so long, with Obama the front-runner much of the time, that on one level I had already adjusted to the idea of having an African-American president.

Still, as I watched him speak at Grant Park, I stepped back and tried to view the scene as I would have seen it just ten years ago. And in that light, it's totally unexpected. I imagined I might see a black president at some point during my lifetime. But given the dearth of black governors and senators at the time, it seemed unlikely that it would be anytime soon.

Looking forward, Obama is inheriting one of the biggest challenges an incoming president has faced since the Vietnam War. On the international front, he faces armed conflict on two fronts and simmering issues with several rogue states. But by far his biggest problem is the tanking world economy (bonddad has a series of graphs illustrating the situation here). This will dominate his first year in office . . . and likely well beyond that.

I hope President Obama is able to run the government as well as he ran his campaign. We're going to need it.

Because I can make guesses, like everyone else.

President: Obama 353 McCain 185

Obama wins Kerry states + NV, NM, CO, IA, OH, VA, NC, FL

My toughest call was NC and MO. They appear to be close enough that both could go either way. I picked one for Obama; one for McCain. I could have flipped a coin, but awarded NC to Obama on the basis of NC's early voting turnout.

Senate: 57(D) 40(R) 2(I) (GA runoff)

House: 263(D) 172(R)

Reports of high voter turnout presumably favor Democratic candidates. The issue is whether young and sporadic/first-time voters show up. If they do, we should see a Democratic wave tonight. If not, we may have a late night as overwhelmed election workers sort through the mess.

NOV. 5 AM UPDATE: The predictions were fairly on target. As expected, MO and NC were incredibly close. McCain is the apparent winner in MO. Obama has a slight lead in NC with "100%" of the precincts reporting, but no big media have awarded it yet.

With NC and MO tentatively outstanding, the only state I missed was IN, which itself was so close it took at least seven hours to sort out.

It's still too early to tell how the Senate may shake out, but I could potentially miss three races. A runoff has not yet been called in GA. Franken trails in MN, with a recount pending. And Merkley trails in OR, with the vote count ongoing.

House races are still being counted, but right now the Democrats are apparently two or three seats short of my projection.

This is a random musing; I don't have hard data to back it up. But I'm curious why the TV pundits have offered relatively little discussion on Hispanic voters this election cycle.

I recall quite a bit of conversation about the group in 2004. Who was doing better winning Hispanic-American voters: George Bush or John Kerry? It even loomed fairly large in the 2006 election. Immigration policy was certainly a hot topic, as many conservatives played up the immigration "crisis."

Yet this year I've heard very little on both fronts. I don't understand why. Did the growing Latino bloc vanish? Have all the illegal immigrants return home?

Off the top of my head, I can only come up with two possible reasons why this facet of the election has been downplayed:

(1) Last year Senator McCain maintained a more "liberal" stance on comprehensive immigration reform--much closer to that of Senator Obama's than the position held by many Republicans. This, to some degree, has taken the issue off the table.

It's worth noting that President Bush also has had a relatively liberal immigration position, yet that did not stop Republicans from making hay out of the issue in 2004 and 2006.

(2) The souring U.S. economy may have reduced the influx of migrant workers. Construction and service-sector jobs have been drying up, thanks to the recession. The economic magnet is much weaker than it used to be. As the flow of migrants has decreased, the issue has receded from the headlines:

Data released in September by the Census Bureau showed that overall immigration slowed dramatically in 2007, though the bureau does not distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants.
. . .
The Center for Immigration Studies, a research organization that supports tighter controls on immigration, has estimated that the number of undocumented immigrants in the country has declined by 11 percent, or 1.3 million, since August 2007. As of May, the estimated illegal immigrant population in the United States was 11.2 million.

Whatever the reason, the disappearing national discourse on Hispanic politics remains mysterious to me.