The announcement of a plan to inject billions of dollars in loans and investments was intended to show the government would stand behind the beleaguered companies. It is a bail out. What we should be talking about is a nationalization. The text of Secretary Paulson’s comments:

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac play a central role in our housing finance system and must continue to do so in their current form as shareholder-owned companies. Their support for the housing market is particularly important as we work through the current housing correction.

GSE debt is held by financial institutions around the world. Its continued strength is important to maintaining confidence and stability in our financial system and our financial markets. Therefore we must take steps to address the current situation as we move to a stronger regulatory structure.

In recent days, I have consulted with the Federal Reserve, OFHEO, the SEC, Congressional leaders of both parties and with the two companies to develop a three-part plan for immediate action. The President has asked me to work with Congress to act on this plan immediately.

First, as a liquidity backstop, the plan includes a temporary increase in the line of credit the GSEs have with Treasury. Treasury would determine the terms and conditions for accessing the line of credit and the amount to be drawn.

Second, to ensure the GSEs have access to sufficient capital to continue to serve their mission, the plan includes temporary authority for Treasury to purchase equity in either of the two GSEs if needed.

Use of either the line of credit or the equity investment would carry terms and conditions necessary to protect the taxpayer.

Third, to protect the financial system from systemic risk going forward, the plan strengthens the GSE regulatory reform legislation currently moving through Congress by giving the Federal Reserve a consultative role in the new GSE regulator’s process for setting capital requirements and other prudential standards.

I look forward to working closely with the Congressional leaders to enact this legislation as soon as possible, as one complete package.

Not to quibble, but it sounds like you’re more worried about the shareholders of two publically-traded firms rather than the clients of those firms whose homes are losing value in a real estate bubble. I suggest that you go to Sweden as soon as possible and look at what they did back in the early 1990s.

GSE, by the way, stands for Government Sponsored Enterprise. Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are GSEs. However, they are privately owned but publicly chartered.

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Tomorrow’s cover of the New Yorker is already causing a stir. The New Yorker calls it satire. The Obama campaign has called it tasteless. I call it marketing. I am sure the issue will sell out.

The cover is only the opening salvo. You should read the article written by Ryan Lizza, the chief political correspondent for the New Yorker and previously a senior writer for the New Republic. I am going to let you read the article on the New Yorker site and I encourage you to buy a copy at the newstand. That cover is bound to be a collector’s item. But let me entice you with a few select quotes:

Although many of Obama’s recent supporters have been surprised by signs of political opportunism, Preckwinkle wasn’t. “I think he was very strategic in his choice of friends and mentors,” she told me. “I spent ten years of my adult life working to be alderman. I finally got elected. This is a job I love. And I’m perfectly happy with it. I’m not sure that’s the way that he approached his public life—that he was going to try for a job and stay there for one period of time. In retrospect, I think he saw the positions he held as stepping stones to other things and therefore approached his public life differently than other people might have.”

On issue after issue, Preckwinkle presented Obama as someone who thrived in the world of Chicago politics. She suggested that Obama joined Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ for political reasons. “It’s a church that would provide you with lots of social connections and prominent parishioners,” she said. “It’s a good place for a politician to be a member.” Preckwinkle was unsparing on the subject of the Chicago real-estate developer Antoin (Tony) Rezko, a friend of Obama’s and one of his top fund-raisers, who was recently convicted of fraud, bribery, and money laundering: “Who you take money from is a reflection of your knowledge at the time and your principles.” As we talked, it became increasingly clear that loyalty was the issue that drove Preckwinkle’s current view of her onetime protégé. “I don’t think you should forget who your friends are,” she said.

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Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog. My posts, my views.

Via the BBC,

“Demand for land to grow food, fuel crops and wood is set to outstrip supply, leading to the probable destruction of forests, a report warns.”

The report in question was drafted by the coalition Rights and Resources Initiative focused on global forest policy. They advocate sustainable management of forestry as well as respects for the people living in and from the forests in their rights not to be forcibly displaced by logging companies who deprive them of their livelihood. As stated in the BBC,

““Arguably, we are on the verge of a last great global land grab,” said RRI’s Andy White, co-author of the major report, Seeing People through the Trees.

“It will mean more deforestation, more conflict, more carbon emissions, more climate change and less prosperity for everyone.”

Rising demand for food, biofuels and wood for paper, building and industry means that 515 million hectares of extra land will be needed for growing crops and trees by 2030, RRI calculates.

But only 200 million hectares will be available without dipping into tropical forests.”

Well, for logging companies and well as the biofuel and ranging sector, there is no problem: let’s just tap into these tropical forests. But this would make climate change worse since deforestation already accounts for 20% of carbon emissions. But the need for both fuel and food has triggered land speculation and whatever the global financial markets want, they usually get. It is a very unequal battle between Big Money and the rights of indigenous people to land.

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I have said this before but Obama is in the unenviable position of getting attacked from the left, right and center. No doubt, McCain is in the same position with critics on all sides, however, the attacks on Obama are harder hitting and more prevalent. Moreover, the attacks seem to be having an effect on Obama’s polling numbers. Where McCain’s numbers seem to be holding steady, Obama’s numbers are not. His negatives are on the rise. Trust, or the lack there of, has become a big issue for Obama. It’s not an issue for McCain.

When it comes to the economy, 47% of voters trust John McCain more than Barack Obama. Obama is trusted by 41% down from 47% a month ago. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey also found that, when it comes to the War in Iraq, McCain is trusted more by 49% of voters. Obama is preferred by 37%. McCain has an even larger edge 53% to 31%–on the broader topic of National Security. In terms of likely voters, McCain has been polling around 42% to 45%. Obama has been over 50% but now he is just above and within the margin of error McCain according to a Newsweek poll out last week.

So let’s check out the mocking of Obama from the left, center and right.

Here’s a video from Liberty News, a progressive news outlet, attacking Obama.

A ho-hum meeting of the Barack Obama campaign team gets an unexpected visit from a fact wielding, sword carrying, butt-kicking progressive.

Funny stuff, really unless you’re Barack Obama, then I am sure it isn’t too funny. It is anybody’s guess what percentage of the progressive left abandons Obama but I think it fair to say that the number will be larger than those who abandoned John Kerry. Nader is polling near 6% and he is hoping to be on the ballot in forty-five states. I personally think that the Green Party is making a mistake with Cynthia McKinney but it is possible that the hard left of the anti-Iraq War movement might find a home there. How many progressives may not even vote? Obama thinks he can overcome this by increasing the African-American participation and by pursuing the youth vote.

In the above video, I must say that I enjoyed the peak oil moment. There’s a reason I focus so much on energy and transportation. It is the one problem we have to solve. Not to discount the seriousness of other issues, but energy makes our lifestyles possible and to be frank we need to get Americans out of their cars five days a week by investing massively in public transit so that the overwhelming number of Americans are not commuting to work in their cars. For those of us who focus on energy, Obama is a real challenge. We haven’t forgotten that Obama, and not McCain, voted for the Bush-Cheney Energy Policy. What does that tell you?

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Ingrid Betancourt left Colombia within forty-eight hours of her rescue by the Colombian Armed Forces for France and she has no plans to return even citing security concerns for not going back to Colombia. Her husband, Juan Carlos Lecompte, meanwhile has remained in Bogotá telling the Colombian press that he didn’t want to suffer “any more humiliations from Ingrid” and that he realized that their marriage is likely over. Adding to the circus, former Senator Luis Eladio Pérez, who been held hostage with Ingrid and Clara Rojas until he was freed this past January, fled Colombia citing unspecified threats against his life. He is now in Miami. Pérez who is married reportedly had feelings for Betancourt that she rejected. Meanwhile Betancourt has taken to speaking rather nebulously about her former aide Clara Rojas. If this reads like a gossip column, it is because that is Ingrid Betancourt.

It did not take long for my antagonism towards Ingrid to resurface, less than a fortnight. This is typical Ingrid. She has a knack for pissing people off. Ingrid is the master of the chisme, the Spanish word for malicious rumour all the while appearing to be the saint. This week in between interviews speaking ill of all things Colombian, she made it to Lourdes to ask the Virgin to liberate all captives held by the FARC. The Virgin had nothing to do with her liberation, not unless she wears Colombian army boots and flies a helicopter.

Ingrid Betancourt who on the one hand stated on more than one occasion that what happened in the jungle stays in the jungle has also begun to circulate rumours and innuendo galore. Was she raped? She seems to suggest that she was. It was an inapproriate question to ask, let’s be clear on that. Larry King should be reprimanded on that score alone. We know that she was chained for years. But we have all known that for years. All FARC hostages have told us that they have been chained to trees or placed in wells and degraded on a daily basis so Ingrid’s treatment was no different. But only she plays the martyr.

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Today in Chicago, the Green Party committed political suicide. No wonder that Ralph Nader walked away. From the International Herald Tribune:

The Green Party, which captured less than 1 percent of the vote in the last U.S. presidential election, has chosen the former Democratic Representative Cynthia McKinney as its 2008 presidential candidate.

McKinney, 53, will be joined on the ticket for the election in November by vice presidential candidate Rosa Clemente, a hip-hop artist and activist.

McKinney received 313 out of 532 votes cast Saturday at the party’s nominating convention in Chicago, Scott McLarty, a spokesman for the party, said.

In the 2004 presidential election, the Green Party drew 119,859 votes, or 0.1 percent of the total votes cast, finishing in sixth place behind the two major parties and three other third-party tickets.

The party’s best performance came in 2000 when Ralph Nader led the ticket and won 2.8 million votes, or 2.7 percent of the total. Some political analysts say Nader, a political and consumer activist, may have drawn votes from the Democratic candidate, Al Gore, and helped tip the election in favor of George W. Bush.

Nader is running for president again this year, as an independent candidate.

McKinney served six terms in Congress but lost her bid for re-election in 2006. She was the first black woman to represent Georgia in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Another former House member from Georgia, Bob Barr, who served as a Republican, is running as the Libertarian Party candidate for president. The major-party presumptive candidates are Senator Barack Obama of the Democratic Party and Senator John McCain of the Republican Party.

The U.S. Green Party says it is a partner with the European Federation of Green Parties and the Federation of Green Parties of the Americas.

“Green parties are the first parties to recognize that our role in the world is stewardship of Earth’s natural resources rather than domination and unrestrained consumption of the goods of the Earth,” the party said in its proposed platform for the 2008 election.

I appreciate Ms. McKinney’s candor and zeal, but she is also divisive. For the Green Party, this is likely a step back. They would have been better served by nominating an environmentalist, not a political activist. I see the Green Party capturing less than one percent of the vote.

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