Marginal Revolution: Facts about banks
…the total liabilities of Deutsche Bank (leverage ratio over 50!) amount to around 2,000 billion euro, (more than Fannie Mai) or over 80 % of the GDP of Germany. This is simply too much for the Bundesbank or even the German state to contemplate, given that the German budget is bound by the rules of the Stability pact and the German government cannot order (unlike the US Treasury) its central bank to issue more currency. The total liabilities of Barclays of around 1,300 billion pounds (leverage ratio over 60!) surpasses Britain’s GDP. Fortis bank, which has been in the news recently, has a leverage ratio of “only” 33, but its liabilities are several times larger than the GDP of its home country (Belgium).
Bail that out suckas!
“The failings in our civil service are encouraged by a system that makes it very difficult to fire someone even for gross misconduct…” — John McCain
That sir, is because it take a majority of the house and 2/3rds of the Senate to remove the President.
… Same as the old boss.
So much for the divided government argument.
I, along with many others, have observed a disturbing trend over the past 8 years in the partisan nature of politics: Bush Derangement Syndrome. It started with Democrats who were quite upset at George W. Bush winning1 the 2000 election. Their anger at losing a very close battle not only made it difficult for Bush to govern, but it made conservatives and Republicans rally to the President’s defense.
There are many things that George W. Bush has done wrong: Medicare Part D, the Agriculture and Energy bills, the response to Katrina, postwar planning in Iraq, and never vetoing a bill while the GOP held the majority. Due to the left’s constant frivolous attacks, conservatives felt they had to stand by their man. So Bush got a pass from the donors and activists who helped get him elected. Republicans weren’t going criticize their President, while the left was calling him “dumb” or a “retard”.
We don’t see the same level of insipidness in Georgia Politics1.1. There are no massive sufferers of Sonny Derangement Syndrome. As a result, you see much harsher internal criticism of the Georgia Republican leadership from among those on the right.
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Politico’s Carrie Budoff Brown reports: At a press avail in Monroe, Mich., Barack Obama on Palin: “Back off these kinds of stories.”
“I have said before and I will repeat again: People’s families are off limits,” Obama said. “And people’s children are especially off-limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin’s performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. So I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know my mother had me when she was 18 and how a family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn’t be a topic of our politics.”
On charges that his campaign has stoked the story via liberal blogs:
“I am offended by that statement. There is no evidence at all that any of this involved us,” he said. “Our people were not involved in any way in this, and they will not be. And if I thought there was somebody in my campaign who was involved in something like that, they would be fired.”