The collapse of Lehman Brothers investment bank, due to $60 billion in bad real estate holdings, is very bad news for the country and the world. Stock markets are already faltering, and the ripple effects on the American economy in terms of unemployment and inflation will no doubt get worse. (CNN just reported - at 4pm - that Dow Jones plunged nearly 500 points today - "its worst point drop in more than seven years".)
Which of the Vice Presidential candidates can better advise a President on what to do about this?
Sarah Palin has zero experience in national economics.
Joe Biden is Senator from Delaware, a state at the very heart of the credit-card economy. Biden has on occasions been criticized for being too close to the credit-card companies, but his in-depth knowledge of how these finances work, and effect Americans, will be priceless in the weeks ahead, and when Obama and he take office.
No one would wish for the bankruptcy of any business. But the collapse of Lehman Brothers may be just the economic wake up call American voters needed.
3 comments:
Man, I wish Biden could come up with some sort of message that would really land with the media. It's starting to feel like he got picked as VP and then just disappeared. Maybe addressing the financial crisis would work for him.
The bigger problem is this 'Corporate Socialism' that America has adopted. We let people get their houses foreclosed on after they get screwed on bad mortgages, and let them end up with no equity and no credit, but we'll jump so that TAX PAYERS can shoulder the burden of saving these massive conglomerates that fail. Why save them? American Jobs? these places outsource like crazy, and employ very few Americans meaningfully, and a fair number marginally.
This is the same business model where driving a company into the ground as a CEO gets you millions in bonuses at the end of the year- but your low level employees can't get dental.
PS- today is the 221st birthday of the constitution- signed on sept 17, 1787.
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