But the trend typically involves some high status male who gets caught cheating and then forks over some obscene amount of money in divorce. Tiger Woods is simply the most obvious example and I should also note that Michael Douglas’ ex accused him of having an affair. Or hell, just think of the Democratic leadership of recent decades: Bill Clinton, John Edwards, and now Al Gore. Al Gore is way beyond infidelity. He’s facing sex abuse charges, which is probably the fault of global warming… he couldn’t control himself, it was just too damn hot.

Here President Clinton discusses the crux of the G20 meetings, whether the US is headed toward a double dip recession, and whether governments should be pursuing austerity measures. He also lets us know that you “can’t get milk out of a turnip.” In so many ways, it’s hard not to miss Clinton. I haven’t heard a President make this much sense about the economy since, well, the late 90s. While I don’t agree with it all, it’s a refreshingly slight disagreement, in comparison. Keep in mind that leaders of the G20 nations agreed this weekend to cut their deficits in half by 2013.

The carbon trading scheme that passed the House and is making its way to the Senate is a new derivatives market set up at the behest of Goldman Sachs and other major Wall Street financial firms. Out of curiosity, how did the last financial derivatives market turn out? And yes, it is also a regressive tax, (Who do you think is hurt most by higher energy bills?).

Like the title says:

Here’s a very interesting article in the New York Times from 1999. Steven Holmes discusses how Fannie Mae was reducing its lending standards and increasing the issuance of subprime loans. This was a big cause in our current financial crisis, however, back then, everyone thought it was just dandy:

As seen in Part 1, political terms, such as liberal, conservative or libertarian, are muddled enough. Unfortunately, political organizations, popular terms and ideologies have many of the same issues. The political parties in the United States have gone through whole sale shifts in political ideology. Republicans used to be the party of tariffs and protectionism, now they are avid free traders. Democrats were the party of slavery and Jim Crow, before becoming the party of Civil Rights and Affirmative Action.

Inflation was thus misinterpreted as wealth, leading American consumers to borrow more and more, especially against their overvalued homes. Total mortgage debt in the United States is now around 12.5 trillion, up from $1.5 trillion in 1980! Total household debt was around 50% of GDP in 1980 and is over 100% today. And the personal saving rate was around negative 1%, for most of the last decade.

…from what I have gathered, our current president believes we need to change a few things. Well, I agree with him. I thought President Bush was a disaster. Unfortunately, though, other than the ridiculous hero worship and cult of personality that Obama’s got going, it really doesn’t seem like much of anything is changing.

In eight years, Bill Clinton only increased the budget from 1.41 trillion to 1.86 trillion, a 32.2% increase which is notably not adjusted for inflation. As a percentage of GDP the budget fell from 21.4% to 18.5%. Under eight years of Bush the budget increased from 1.86 trillion to 3.11 trillion, an uncanny 66.8% increase.