Actually, probably more related to the fact that the don’t have anyone left to borrow from, because credit lines have been collapsing for at least 7 months now.

George Soros is the one person who always seems to see the Big Picture pretty clearly. He predicted most of this back in early 2006 in his ‘The Age of Infallibility’. No wonder the wingnuts can’t stand him; he sees right through their bullshit and it makes them crazy.

with a flair for largesse at the vanguard for a resource extractive AK economy.

Precisely!
The mindset is still a Gold Rush mentality (which you’d have seen in Silicon Valley, and I saw while sitting among what I call ‘paper millionaires’ — most in their 20s — in the Puget Sound region about a decade ago).

But the software boom had a different culture — one that values environmental and natural resources.

The Alaskan culture that I’m familiar with…. no regard for anything other than getting as much money, as fast as possible before the next jackass shows up to grab what’s leftover. It’s been so coddled by government policies and loopholes that it’s never, ever really had to cut it in ‘the real world’. For all their talk of fictions, they’ve created the biggest fiction of all — that no matter how much destruction you wreak, there are no consequences.

Well… my only surprise about Wall Street today is that it’s happening before the election; McCain must be collassally pissed at the timing.

I was somewhat saddened to see Lehman stumble, but it was on a risk taking edge; Stearns had been foolhardy, but Lehman always had class. AIG I have little concern for. The terrist and response to terrist has changed a lot for insurance companies. The denial of global warming and refusal to acknowledge global warming means stronger hurricanes is part of the sham the administration has exercised upon insurers. Merrill Lynch I am glad to see engulfed by a principled, if stodgy, bank. There are a lot of good companies doing what Merrill Lynch has been doing, more insightfully than ML did it. ML was the only company a few years ago to manage to lose money on portfolios that increased in value, in one fund group I monitor. One of the interesting aspects of the washouts might be who the players are who fail to make it thru the gap to the next administration’s aegis. I would expect SEC’s Chris Cox to be pretty relaxed through the current turmoil. I think the US and global economy would be much worse if the Republican thoughtTank which is managing McCain were to have eight or twelve more years to promulgate the current shifts in the economy, gas $10. a gallon by 2012, food prices double yet again. I think it was ReaderOfTeaLeaves who the other day highlighted the character of AK’s economy as a perfect fit for the Republican gouge economy, to paraphrase (her). Perusing some of Palin’s news trail over the years has shown RoTL’s characterization of AK politics to be verisimilar, Republican, hinterland, business oriented, oilco driven; but, like the linked photo, a place with a cohesive vision that extends only back to 1958 when AK obtained statehood, the picture is of the parade at that time led by a new 1958 Ford Fairlane, a known gashog, with a flair for largesse at the vanguard for a resource extractive AK economy. Perhaps uncharacteristically, I am among the supporters of the Ketchikan bridge construction in Gravina, even though there is political pork for Sen. Stevens in the deal, as this drifts perhaps further OffTopic. The photos show the richness of the forest, and the headlong technique used for clearing to build the bridge’s connector road. Like events on Wall Street of late, a key issue seems to be whose cronies enjoy the most favorable outcome. I suppose I just like bridges, and facilitating people’s commerce. But, reportedly, if one lives in MI and has had foreclosure papers served, and plans to vote, one needs to be prepared for a caging list challenge based on those court documents’ having published the names of all persons who have had mortgage problems in MI. A way to convert middle class economic strife into Republican advantage on election day; some of McCain’s thinkTank are denying that scheme, but some are less disengenuous.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..01974.html

“The showdown with the vice president the day before had been excruciating, the pressure “so great it could crush you like a grape,” Comey said [6]. This was worse.”

Where does the money come from in an “open line of credit” extended to these companies? Did Lehman have an “open line of credit” extension? Do the Welfare King and Queens (being driven around in black shiny SuV’s) who run these companies profit personally from these “open lines” between the time they admit that they are in trouble and when they default?

if the president could effect the economy positively why wouldn’t they?

Because he’s an incompetent ignoramus heading a party of crooks?

Uh, Hoover lost to Roosevelt in 1932. The stock market crash was in 1929. A propos incompetent ignoramuses.