THEY AINT NO PLAN..!

yo! 'kaletski march'...innit

PALOOKAVILLE SPORT stardate capitulation day+8


MAKE A NEW PLAN STAN...DROP OFFA QUAY LEE

Save the world? Hank just didn't have a clue

The staggering incompetence of the US Treasury Secretary is now acknowledged - and is a disaster for George Bush

anatole : "Until last week, I was in a minority of one in arguing that Mr Paulson was personally responsible for suddenly turning the painful but manageable credit crunch that had been grinding away 18 months in the background of the US economy into a global catastrophe. Mr Paulson's appearances on Capitol Hill, marked by the characteristic Bush-era combination of arrogance and incompetence, are turning my once-outlandish view into conventional wisdom: Henry Paulson is to finance what Donald Rumsfeld was to military strategy, Dick Cheney to geopolitics and Michael Chertoff to flood defence.

Mr Paulson may be a former chairman of Goldman Sachs, but as US Treasury Secretary he does not know what he is doing. His recent blunders, starting with the “rescue” of Fannie Mae, have triggered unintended consequences around the world, resulting in the death-spiral of financial values. But last Friday Mr Paulson outdid even these Rumsfeldian achievements, when he demanded $700 billion from Congress for a “comprehensive and fundamental” solution to the global financial crisis, without apparently having any idea of what he would actually do....

...When further details of the Paulson plan failed to appear on Sunday it was assumed that the details were being untangled in late-night political negotiations. When there was still no plan on Monday, the view was that Mr Paulson must be holding back the details for his testimony to the Senate Banking Committee the following day. But then, to everyone's astonishment, Mr Paulson turned up to the committee on Tuesday morning with only the briefest opening statement, which simply repeated what he had already said the week before: the sky was falling and the only way to stop it was to give him authority over $700 billion in public money, to be spent in unspecified ways.

And suddenly the sky did fall down - not on the world economy, but on Mr Paulson. Consider the reactions from American politicians, including Republicans: “Stunning and unprecedented in its lack of detail”... “a $700 billion blank cheque to Wall Street”... “neither workable nor comprehensive”... “foolish waste of massive taxpayer funds”... “eerily similar to the rush to war in Iraq”. Best of all was John McCain's comment: “When we're talking about a trillion dollars of taxpayer money, ‘trust me' just isn't good enough.”..." Times

bluepetey : admiral paulson...not having a good day...innit!

PREVIOUSLY ON KALETSKI VIEW

..."Does this hyperactivity mean that the world economy is on the brink of catastrophe? Or does it suggest that the credit crunch is now almost over, and that the world economy faces only a moderate slowdown or, at worst, a mild recession?

The risks are certainly greater today than they have been since the 2001 US and European recession – and for Britain the prospects seem dimmer than at any time since 1992. But is this really, as George Soros proclaimed, in an article for the Financial Times, “the worst market crisis in 60 years”?

The claim is unequivocally wrong, since the 20 per cent fall in share prices and the US mortgage problem cannot remotely compare with the crises that racked the world economy in the 1970s and early 1980s, when inflation and interest rates soared to 20 per cent, stock markets plunged by 80 per cent in real terms, big banks fell like ninepins and unemployment was double or triple the present level...." TIMES 28 jan. 2008 my emphasis

peteythesportswriter : unemployment still risin...innit!..DEflation likely innit!..markets inna wily e coyote moment...innit...