Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Photos from UM Pro Day
They're from this spring's UM Pro Timing Day where players leaving school (either graduating or leaving early) showcase their skills in drills in front of NFL scouts.
The shoot was pretty difficult because the press was stationed about 100 yards from where the action was taking place on the Greentree practice fields.
To make matters worse, it was a cloudless, sunny day so lighting on all the shots was problematic. In fact, I learned the hard way that picking the right exposure settings, even on a point-and-shoot like mine is important, probably even more than if I had been working with professional-level equipment.
These are all of Calais Campbell, by the way, who was taken in the second round of the NFL Draft by the Arizona Cardinals. He was the featured athlete that day since Kenny Phillips decided his results from NFL Combine workouts were good enough.
I think I took around 80 shots, mostly fidgeting with settings on exposure length and some with rapid shot to reduce blur and get the lighting right.
As I alluded to earlier, I had to scrap about half of them because the lighting just wasn't going to work in print. I'll share one of those at the end. Definitely a hard learning experience since a couple really nice shots were ruined due to the fact that they were way too bright.
As you can see from the first shot to this one on the left, I started to realize which settings were best and began to get better color, which you can see in even the color of the grass.
I think the zoom worked well without too much distortion, especially considering the resolution for which I was working.
Anyway, here's two more, the former being one of the better I took, and the latter being one I am not too proud of. I think I got a few usable shots, and the article, which has suffered from a website redesign, turned out decent.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Maybe's there a debate tonight... maybe not...
CNN.com, usually my first stop, had a link at about noon to watch live coverage of debating whether the actual debate would go on. The Miami Herald had a story updated early in the morning questioning it but didn't have news that it's on until mid-afternoon. The first place I saw the news was on Time.com, which incidentally has a partnership with CNN.
I guess I was a little caught off guard by the fact there was a lot of speculation and not much information out there, especially (selfishly) since I wanted to know my evening plans. I guess I should learn my lesson and not rely on immediate political campaign trail news since it's all about playing favorites anyway. Or just TiVo the thing like I'm doing now once I realized my roommate got one...
Monday, September 22, 2008
My rewrite of bailout story
---
President Bush again pressed for quick action Monday on a $700 billion government bailout plan for Wall Street, but Congressional negotiations continue as key Democrats urged a more deliberate approach.
Amidst the most dramatic financial bailout since the Great Depression, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down more than 370 points Monday.
Bush issued a statement at the White House saying "the whole world is watching" how the U.S. government addresses the continuing turmoil in the worldwide financial markets, as investors await more details about the government's plan to buy banks' mortgage debt.
Monday, some key congressional Democrats called for a more deliberative approach than that favored by Bush.
While Congress has been cooperating with the plan, many lawmakers insisted that any rescue include more government accountability, aid troubled homeowners and prevent Wall Street executives at taxpayer-aided firms from reaping generous payouts.
...
A few minor changes and a couple re-orderings but overall they had an effective first few graphs.
Bailout story recap
But what about those readers reading after 1:30 p.m., when they last updated the story? There are little things that could have easily been updated, like the statement in the second line about how the Dow Jones was down 200 points at midday. Unless I'm reading that at midday, I want to know how it closed, more importantly.
Another, if minor, update it could have used is to fix where it says at the bottom "Roger Yu, Associated PRess" in the list of contributors. Nit picky I know.
Overall, I think the major update approach served this story well since major news broke Monday, changing the primarily important factors without meriting an entirely new story. Still, I would have liked a few more updates throughout the day to add developments to the story and keep it fresh. I feel like since they last updated the story at 1:30 this afternoon the readers are left with a story that's almost old news by the early evening.
I'll write how I would have begun the story in my next post.
(final version) Bush presses for quick action on $700B bailout bill
Bush presses for quick action on $700B bailout bill
By Sue Kirchhoff, Barbara Hagenbaugh and Paul Davidson, USA TODAY
The uncertainty helped send the Dow Jones industrial average down almost 200 points at mid-day.
Bush issued a statement at the White House saying "the whole world is watching" how the U.S. government addresses the continuing turmoil in the worldwide financial markets, as investors await more details about the government's plan to buy banks' mortgage debt.
Anxious lawmakers have vowed cooperation but insisted that any rescue include more government accountability, aid troubled homeowners and prevent Wall Street executives at taxpayer-aided firms from reaping generous payouts.
Monday, some leading congressional Democrats were calling for a more deliberative approach than that favored by Bush.
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd voiced confidence in Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, saying that "we've got the right man" to deal with the problem that has roiled not only Wall Street but international markets as well. But his counterpart in the House, Rep. Barney Frank, accused Paulson of pushing Congress to move too hastily.
Dodd, D-Conn., said Monday morning that there will be a division of thought in Congress about how best to proceed on a $700 billion bill the Bush administration is seeking from lawmakers to buy up bad mortgage loans that have been weighing down financial companies since they became engulfed in a severe credit crisis 14 months ago.
Dodd, interviewed on CBS's The Early Show, said many members of Congress believe a legislative relief package also should be tailored to protect taxpayers in the best way possible. He said they should be "first in line" to get money back once conditions in the industry stabilize and recover.
Under a proposal outlined Monday by Dodd, a draft of which was obtained Monday by the Associated Press:
• Judges could rewrite mortgages to lower bankrupt homeowners' monthly payments.
• Companies that unloaded their bad assets on the government in the massive rescue would have to limit their executives' pay packages and agree to revoke any bonuses awarded based on bogus claims.
• The government would have broad power to buy up virtually any kind of bad asset, including credit card debt and car loans, from any financial institution in the U.S. or abroad in order to stabilize markets. But it would end the program at the end of next year, instead of creating the two-year-long initiative that the Bush administration has sought.
• An emergency board would be established to keep an eye on the program with two congressional appointees, and a special inspector general appointed by the president.
Also Monday, finance officials from the globe's major economic powers said they welcomed the steps taken to stem the crisis. The Group of Seven, made up the the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada, issued a statement saying it was "ready to take whatever actions may be necessary, individually and collectively, to ensure the stability of the international financial system."
On Sunday, Paulson made the rounds of the major TV news programs to make the case that hisprogram to buy up toxic mortgage securities is vital to keep financial markets functioning and prevent a collapse.
"The credit markets are still very fragile right now and frozen," Paulson told NBC's Meet the Press. "We need to deal with this and deal with it quickly."
Acknowledging that taxpayers and some members of Congress are dubious — and upset — about rescuing wealthy firms that made risky business bets, Paulson said there is simply no other path given worldwide carnage in financial markets.
"It pains me tremendously to have the American taxpayer put in this position, but it is better than the alternative," Paulson said. He and President Bush are urging Congress to pass a plan by the end of this week.
If approved, the government's commitments related to the credit crunch would be about $1.6 trillion. At $700 billion, the latest pledge would approach the more than $750 billion that's been spent for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and fighting terrorism since Sept. 11, 2001.
On Capitol Hill, top lawmakers from both parties said they understand the enormous stakes and want to act this week. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Congress would "not simply hand over a $700 billion blank check to Wall Street and hope for a better outcome," adding that the "party is over for the Bush administration's anything-goes, failed economic policies."
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., whose support is pivotal as he's the senior Republican on the Banking Committee, said he is "unconvinced that Treasury's proposal strikes a balance between the interests of the taxpayer and the economy."
A list of changes
Frank gave Treasury a list of changes he wants in any bailout bill: limits on executive compensation at firms aided by the government; regular reports by Treasury, including audits by Congress' Government Accountability Office; and more intense federal efforts to help homeowners prevent foreclosure.
The White House plan would give Treasury sweeping power to issue up to $700 billion in bonds to fund the purchase of residential and commercial loans that have gone bad, either in the form of mortgage-backed securities or regular loans.
Treasury officials, who would report periodically on their holdings, could buy other assets if necessary to stabilize financial markets. The program, to be overseen by private asset managers, would run for two years, covering loans made before Sept. 17. To qualify, financial institutions would have to have "significant" U.S. operations, though Treasury and the Federal Reserve could widen the program. Congress would increase the federal debt limit by $700 billion to $11.3 trillion.
Paulson said on ABC's This Week that the White House will push to include foreign firms in the plan. "If a financial institution has business operations in the United States, hires people in the United States, if they are clogged with illiquid assets, they have the same impact on the American people as any other institution," he said. "The key here is about protecting the system."
Dodd said lawmakers want to improve the legislation, not derail it. He said a briefing by Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke outlining the potential devastation from a financial-sector meltdown was so grim that he "had to go back almost to the reactions I had to the 9/11" attacks to describe his state of alarm.
The plan follows a series of government efforts over the past year that failed to stabilize credit markets. Spooked investors last week pulled an estimated $200 billion from money market funds, sent stock markets gyrating and forced central banks to pump in hundreds of billions of dollars to keep credit flowing.
In another sign that troubles in financial markets are far from over, the Fed late Sunday announced that it had approved the applications of investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to become bank holding companies — pending a five-day waiting period. The change gives the firms more power to bolster their financial bottom lines by raising deposits. It will also allow them to borrow directly from the Fed's discount window as commercial banks can.
Paulson's solution is for the government to buy up all of the toxic mortgages and mortgage-backed securities at the heart of the credit crisis. Banks cannot easily sell them because their values are dropping as housing prices fall and mortgage delinquencies rise. They've written down the value of those securities by billions of dollars, which has shrunk their capital and the amount available to lend.
The credit squeeze has already spawned 12 bank failures this year, including one on Friday in West Virginia. It has made financial firms wary of lending to one another for fear they won't get paid back and made them tighten lending standards for businesses and consumers alike.
'Fearful and unconvinced'
House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Sunday he would work for the plan. But a number of GOP lawmakers were skeptical about the huge price tag and enormous expansion of federal authority, especially after Treasury's recent takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the Fed's emergency $85 billion loan to struggling insurance behemoth American International Group.
"I'm skeptical, fearful and unconvinced," says Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, who fears the nation is moving toward European-style socialism. "Having said that, it may be the most important vote I cast in my congressional career, so I continue to keep an open mind about the subject … study it, think about it and pray about it."
Economists said decisive action is needed — and well overdue. "They let the crisis go on for too long. They fiddled around with these liquidity programs" that let investment banks borrow money at low rates, said Brian Bethune, chief U.S. economist of Global Insight. "The bottom line is that it has not been enough."
Yet analysts disagree over whether even $700 billion is sufficient and whether the plan will inflict long-term damage on the economy. Bethune says the funding should be adequate. He estimates the face value of the mortgage-backed securities is $1.25 trillion, of which banks already have written off about $500 billion, leaving about $800 billion.
But he says they will likely write down an additional $100 billion to $200 billion: "I think ($700 billion) seems reasonable in terms of the total number, and it's more than what I expected."
The distressed assets are now selling on average for about 40 cents on the dollar, with even viable securities getting sharp markdowns. The government, he says, will likely pay more than that but less than the securities' actual worth if they were held to maturity — perhaps about 60 cents on the dollar.
Several months may be required to fund the plan and buy the securities, but the announcement itself could calm spooked markets, letting banks attract new investment even before they unload the bad debt. In fact, it could boost the value of the securities, causing some banks not to sell and cutting the bailout's cost, Bethune says. "Some banks may not even bother to sell," he says.
Yet the plan also carries big risks. Christopher Whalen, managing director of Institutional Risk Analytics, says the government ultimately will have to spend as much as $1.4 trillion buying sour mortgage assets, depending on how many foreign banks participate. Its ability to borrow all that money is not a given, he says.
Whalen predicts the bailout will set off economic upheaval. The government will have to borrow so much that it will drive up interest rates, weaken the dollar and worsen inflation.
"I think you can see interest rates in the double digits," he says. "Congress thinks they can borrow forever. The dollar is going to fall. Nobody is going to want to hold U.S. debt."
Whalen says, "I don't think we need to rescue Wall Street. Wall Street is curing itself quite nicely. If we don't allow our people to feel pain, it's not going to inoculate them" against future crises.
Some economists warn that the long-term costs to the USA will loom even larger, as the bailouts hurt future federal spending for health care, Social Security and education.
"They're just blowing the bank wide open right here," says Jagadeesh Gokhale, senior fellow at the Cato Institute. "We still really don't know what the exposure may be."
The financial sector is lobbying for changes and clarifications in the plan. The Financial Services Roundtable, which represents 100 of the largest financial services companies, said Sunday that while it supports the general thrust of the proposal, it wants a mechanism to figure out what kind of assets the Treasury should buy, and at what price.
Unforeseen results
More generally, banking and financial firms say that a series of bold actions taken by Treasury in recent days could have unintended consequences on financial firms. Just Friday, for example, Treasury said it would temporarily insure the holdings of money market mutual funds up to $50 billion to firms that pay a fee to participate in the government program.
Money market mutual funds hold about $234 billion of asset-backed commercial paper. In recent days, investors have acted to get out of money market mutual funds, forcing firms to sell holdings to pay the investors. But the crisis in financial markets has made it harder for firms to sell even their high-quality holdings.
Independent mortgage consultant Howard Glaser says the bailout puts the government in an awkward, conflicted position. "The federal government is both the owner of the loan and so may want to seek maximum return by foreclosing, and they have an express interest in keeping people in their homes and trying to avoid foreclosures."
But he says, "My broad sense is there are no arrows left in the quiver for the federal government.
"They have to take action. It's not perfect, but it's the only avenue they have at this point."
Contributing: David Jackson, Edward Iwata, Kathy Kiely, Douglas Stanglin, Roger Yu, Associated PRess
(version 2) Bush presses for quick action on $700B bailout bill
Bush presses for quick action on $700B bailout bill
By Sue Kirchhoff, Barbara Hagenbaugh and Paul Davidson, USA TODAY
The uncertainty helped send the Dow Jones industrial average down almost 200 points at mid-day.
Bush issued a statement at the White House saying "the whole world is watching" how the U.S. government addresses the continuing turmoil in the worldwide financial markets, as investors await more details about the government's plan to buy banks' mortgage debt.
Anxious lawmakers have vowed cooperation but insisted that any rescue include more government accountability, aid troubled homeowners and prevent Wall Street executives at taxpayer-aided firms from reaping generous payouts.
Monday, some leading congressional Democrats were calling for a more deliberative approach than that favored by Bush.
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd voiced confidence in Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, saying that "we've got the right man" to deal with the problem that has roiled not only Wall Street but international markets as well. But his counterpart in the House, Rep. Barney Frank, accused Paulson of pushing Congress to move too hastily.
Dodd, D-Conn., said Monday morning that there will be a division of thought in Congress about how best to proceed on a $700 billion bill the Bush administration is seeking from lawmakers to buy up bad mortgage loans that have been weighing down financial companies since they became engulfed in a severe credit crisis 14 months ago.
Dodd, interviewed on CBS's The Early Show, said many members of Congress believe a legislative relief package also should be tailored to protect taxpayers in the best way possible. He said they should be "first in line" to get money back once conditions in the industry stabilize and recover.
Under a proposal outlined Monday by Dodd, a draft of which was obtained Monday by the Associated Press:
• Judges could rewrite mortgages to lower bankrupt homeowners' monthly payments.
• Companies that unloaded their bad assets on the government in the massive rescue would have to limit their executives' pay packages and agree to revoke any bonuses awarded based on bogus claims.
• The government would have broad power to buy up virtually any kind of bad asset, including credit card debt and car loans, from any financial institution in the U.S. or abroad in order to stabilize markets. But it would end the program at the end of next year, instead of creating the two-year-long initiative that the Bush administration has sought.
• An emergency board would be established to keep an eye on the program with two congressional appointees, and a special inspector general appointed by the president.
Also Monday, finance officials from the globe's major economic powers said they welcomed the steps taken to stem the crisis. The Group of Seven, made up the the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada, issued a statement saying it was "ready to take whatever actions may be necessary, individually and collectively, to ensure the stability of the international financial system."
On Sunday, Paulson made the rounds of the major TV news programs to make the case that hisprogram to buy up toxic mortgage securities is vital to keep financial markets functioning and prevent a collapse.
"The credit markets are still very fragile right now and frozen," Paulson told NBC's Meet the Press. "We need to deal with this and deal with it quickly."
Acknowledging that taxpayers and some members of Congress are dubious — and upset — about rescuing wealthy firms that made risky business bets, Paulson said there is simply no other path given worldwide carnage in financial markets.
"It pains me tremendously to have the American taxpayer put in this position, but it is better than the alternative," Paulson said. He and President Bush are urging Congress to pass a plan by the end of this week.
If approved, the government's commitments related to the credit crunch would be about $1.6 trillion. At $700 billion, the latest pledge would approach the more than $750 billion that's been spent for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and fighting terrorism since Sept. 11, 2001.
On Capitol Hill, top lawmakers from both parties said they understand the enormous stakes and want to act this week. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Congress would "not simply hand over a $700 billion blank check to Wall Street and hope for a better outcome," adding that the "party is over for the Bush administration's anything-goes, failed economic policies."
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., whose support is pivotal as he's the senior Republican on the Banking Committee, said he is "unconvinced that Treasury's proposal strikes a balance between the interests of the taxpayer and the economy."
A list of changes
Frank gave Treasury a list of changes he wants in any bailout bill: limits on executive compensation at firms aided by the government; regular reports by Treasury, including audits by Congress' Government Accountability Office; and more intense federal efforts to help homeowners prevent foreclosure.
The White House plan would give Treasury sweeping power to issue up to $700 billion in bonds to fund the purchase of residential and commercial loans that have gone bad, either in the form of mortgage-backed securities or regular loans.
Treasury officials, who would report periodically on their holdings, could buy other assets if necessary to stabilize financial markets. The program, to be overseen by private asset managers, would run for two years, covering loans made before Sept. 17. To qualify, financial institutions would have to have "significant" U.S. operations, though Treasury and the Federal Reserve could widen the program. Congress would increase the federal debt limit by $700 billion to $11.3 trillion.
Paulson said on ABC's This Week that the White House will push to include foreign firms in the plan. "If a financial institution has business operations in the United States, hires people in the United States, if they are clogged with illiquid assets, they have the same impact on the American people as any other institution," he said. "The key here is about protecting the system."
Dodd said lawmakers want to improve the legislation, not derail it. He said a briefing by Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke outlining the potential devastation from a financial-sector meltdown was so grim that he "had to go back almost to the reactions I had to the 9/11" attacks to describe his state of alarm.
The plan follows a series of government efforts over the past year that failed to stabilize credit markets. Spooked investors last week pulled an estimated $200 billion from money market funds, sent stock markets gyrating and forced central banks to pump in hundreds of billions of dollars to keep credit flowing.
In another sign that troubles in financial markets are far from over, the Fed late Sunday announced that it had approved the applications of investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to become bank holding companies — pending a five-day waiting period. The change gives the firms more power to bolster their financial bottom lines by raising deposits. It will also allow them to borrow directly from the Fed's discount window as commercial banks can.
Paulson's solution is for the government to buy up all of the toxic mortgages and mortgage-backed securities at the heart of the credit crisis. Banks cannot easily sell them because their values are dropping as housing prices fall and mortgage delinquencies rise. They've written down the value of those securities by billions of dollars, which has shrunk their capital and the amount available to lend.
The credit squeeze has already spawned 12 bank failures this year, including one on Friday in West Virginia. It has made financial firms wary of lending to one another for fear they won't get paid back and made them tighten lending standards for businesses and consumers alike.
'Fearful and unconvinced'
House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Sunday he would work for the plan. But a number of GOP lawmakers were skeptical about the huge price tag and enormous expansion of federal authority, especially after Treasury's recent takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the Fed's emergency $85 billion loan to struggling insurance behemoth American International Group.
"I'm skeptical, fearful and unconvinced," says Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, who fears the nation is moving toward European-style socialism. "Having said that, it may be the most important vote I cast in my congressional career, so I continue to keep an open mind about the subject … study it, think about it and pray about it."
Economists said decisive action is needed — and well overdue. "They let the crisis go on for too long. They fiddled around with these liquidity programs" that let investment banks borrow money at low rates, said Brian Bethune, chief U.S. economist of Global Insight. "The bottom line is that it has not been enough."
Yet analysts disagree over whether even $700 billion is sufficient and whether the plan will inflict long-term damage on the economy. Bethune says the funding should be adequate. He estimates the face value of the mortgage-backed securities is $1.25 trillion, of which banks already have written off about $500 billion, leaving about $800 billion.
But he says they will likely write down an additional $100 billion to $200 billion: "I think ($700 billion) seems reasonable in terms of the total number, and it's more than what I expected."
The distressed assets are now selling on average for about 40 cents on the dollar, with even viable securities getting sharp markdowns. The government, he says, will likely pay more than that but less than the securities' actual worth if they were held to maturity — perhaps about 60 cents on the dollar.
Several months may be required to fund the plan and buy the securities, but the announcement itself could calm spooked markets, letting banks attract new investment even before they unload the bad debt. In fact, it could boost the value of the securities, causing some banks not to sell and cutting the bailout's cost, Bethune says. "Some banks may not even bother to sell," he says.
Yet the plan also carries big risks. Christopher Whalen, managing director of Institutional Risk Analytics, says the government ultimately will have to spend as much as $1.4 trillion buying sour mortgage assets, depending on how many foreign banks participate. Its ability to borrow all that money is not a given, he says.
Whalen predicts the bailout will set off economic upheaval. The government will have to borrow so much that it will drive up interest rates, weaken the dollar and worsen inflation.
"I think you can see interest rates in the double digits," he says. "Congress thinks they can borrow forever. The dollar is going to fall. Nobody is going to want to hold U.S. debt."
Whalen says, "I don't think we need to rescue Wall Street. Wall Street is curing itself quite nicely. If we don't allow our people to feel pain, it's not going to inoculate them" against future crises.
Some economists warn that the long-term costs to the USA will loom even larger, as the bailouts hurt future federal spending for health care, Social Security and education.
"They're just blowing the bank wide open right here," says Jagadeesh Gokhale, senior fellow at the Cato Institute. "We still really don't know what the exposure may be."
The financial sector is lobbying for changes and clarifications in the plan. The Financial Services Roundtable, which represents 100 of the largest financial services companies, said Sunday that while it supports the general thrust of the proposal, it wants a mechanism to figure out what kind of assets the Treasury should buy, and at what price.
Unforeseen results
More generally, banking and financial firms say that a series of bold actions taken by Treasury in recent days could have unintended consequences on financial firms. Just Friday, for example, Treasury said it would temporarily insure the holdings of money market mutual funds up to $50 billion to firms that pay a fee to participate in the government program.
Money market mutual funds hold about $234 billion of asset-backed commercial paper. In recent days, investors have acted to get out of money market mutual funds, forcing firms to sell holdings to pay the investors. But the crisis in financial markets has made it harder for firms to sell even their high-quality holdings.
Independent mortgage consultant Howard Glaser says the bailout puts the government in an awkward, conflicted position. "The federal government is both the owner of the loan and so may want to seek maximum return by foreclosing, and they have an express interest in keeping people in their homes and trying to avoid foreclosures."
But he says, "My broad sense is there are no arrows left in the quiver for the federal government.
"They have to take action. It's not perfect, but it's the only avenue they have at this point."
Contributing: David Jackson, Edward Iwata, Kathy Kiely, Douglas Stanglin, Roger Yu, Associated PRess
Rescue's $700B price tag unnerves some lawmakers (version 1)
Rescue's $700B price tag unnerves some lawmakers
By Sue Kirchhoff, Barbara Hagenbaugh and Paul Davidson, USA TODAY
On Sunday, Paulson made the rounds of the major TV news programs to make the case that his $700 billion program to buy up toxic mortgage securities is vital to keep financial markets functioning and prevent a collapse on Wall Street that could harm businesses on Main Street for years.
"The credit markets are still very fragile right now and frozen," Paulson told NBC's Meet the Press. "We need to deal with this and deal with it quickly."
Acknowledging that taxpayers and some members of Congress are dubious — and upset — about rescuing wealthy firms that made risky business bets, Paulson said there is simply no other path given worldwide carnage in financial markets.
"It pains me tremendously to have the American taxpayer put in this position, but it is better than the alternative," Paulson said. He and President Bush are urging Congress to pass a plan by the end of this week.
If approved, the government's commitments related to the credit crunch would be about $1.6 trillion. At $700 billion, the latest pledge would approach the more than $750 billion that's been spent for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and fighting terrorism since Sept. 11, 2001.
On Capitol Hill, top lawmakers from both parties said they understand the enormous stakes and want to act this week. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Congress would "not simply hand over a $700 billion blank check to Wall Street and hope for a better outcome," adding that the "party is over for the Bush administration's anything-goes, failed economic policies."
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., whose support is pivotal as he's the senior Republican on the Banking Committee, said he is "unconvinced that Treasury's proposal strikes a balance between the interests of the taxpayer and the economy."
A list of changes
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., gave Treasury a list of changes he wants in any bailout bill: limits on executive compensation at firms aided by the government; regular reports by Treasury, including audits by Congress' Government Accountability Office; and more intense federal efforts to help homeowners prevent foreclosure.
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, D-Conn., said the Senate is also considering allowing bankruptcy courts to restructure mortgages and requiring more help to homeowners facing foreclosure.
The White House plan would give Treasury sweeping power to issue up to $700 billion in bonds to fund the purchase of residential and commercial loans that have gone bad, either in the form of mortgage-backed securities or regular loans.
Treasury officials, who would report periodically on their holdings, could buy other assets if necessary to stabilize financial markets. The program, to be overseen by private asset managers, would run for two years, covering loans made before Sept. 17. To qualify, financial institutions would have to have "significant" U.S. operations, though Treasury and the Federal Reserve could widen the program. Congress would increase the federal debt limit by $700 billion to $11.3 trillion.
Paulson said on ABC's This Week that the White House will push to include foreign firms in the plan. "If a financial institution has business operations in the United States, hires people in the United States, if they are clogged with illiquid assets, they have the same impact on the American people as any other institution," he said. "The key here is about protecting the system."
Dodd said lawmakers want to improve the legislation, not derail it. He said a briefing by Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke outlining the potential devastation from a financial-sector meltdown was so grim that he "had to go back almost to the reactions I had to the 9/11" attacks to describe his state of alarm.
The plan follows a series of government efforts over the past year that failed to stabilize credit markets. Spooked investors last week pulled an estimated $200 billion from money market funds, sent stock markets gyrating and forced central banks to pump in hundreds of billions of dollars to keep credit flowing.
In another sign that troubles in financial markets are far from over, the Fed late Sunday announced that it had approved the applications of investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to become bank holding companies — pending a five-day waiting period. The change gives the firms more power to bolster their financial bottom lines by raising deposits. It will also allow them to borrow directly from the Fed's discount window as commercial banks can.
Paulson's solution is for the government to buy up all of the toxic mortgages and mortgage-backed securities at the heart of the credit crisis. Banks cannot easily sell them because their values are dropping as housing prices fall and mortgage delinquencies rise. They've written down the value of those securities by billions of dollars, which has shrunk their capital and the amount available to lend.
The credit squeeze has already spawned 12 bank failures this year, including one on Friday in West Virginia. It has made financial firms wary of lending to one another for fear they won't get paid back and made them tighten lending standards for businesses and consumers alike.
'Fearful and unconvinced'
House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Sunday he would work for the plan. But a number of GOP lawmakers were skeptical about the huge price tag and enormous expansion of federal authority, especially after Treasury's recent takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the Fed's emergency $85 billion loan to struggling insurance behemoth American International Group.
"I'm skeptical, fearful and unconvinced," says Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, who fears the nation is moving toward European-style socialism. "Having said that, it may be the most important vote I cast in my congressional career, so I continue to keep an open mind about the subject … study it, think about it and pray about it."
Economists said decisive action is needed — and well overdue. "They let the crisis go on for too long. They fiddled around with these liquidity programs" that let investment banks borrow money at low rates, said Brian Bethune, chief U.S. economist of Global Insight. "The bottom line is that it has not been enough."
Yet analysts disagree over whether even $700 billion is sufficient and whether the plan will inflict long-term damage on the economy. Bethune says the funding should be adequate. He estimates the face value of the mortgage-backed securities is $1.25 trillion, of which banks already have written off about $500 billion, leaving about $800 billion.
But he says they will likely write down an additional $100 billion to $200 billion: "I think ($700 billion) seems reasonable in terms of the total number, and it's more than what I expected."
The distressed assets are now selling on average for about 40 cents on the dollar, with even viable securities getting sharp markdowns. The government, he says, will likely pay more than that but less than the securities' actual worth if they were held to maturity — perhaps about 60 cents on the dollar.
Several months may be required to fund the plan and buy the securities, but the announcement itself could calm spooked markets, letting banks attract new investment even before they unload the bad debt. In fact, it could boost the value of the securities, causing some banks not to sell and cutting the bailout's cost, Bethune says. "Some banks may not even bother to sell," he says.
Yet the plan also carries big risks. Christopher Whalen, managing director of Institutional Risk Analytics, says the government ultimately will have to spend as much as $1.4 trillion buying sour mortgage assets, depending on how many foreign banks participate. Its ability to borrow all that money is not a given, he says.
Whalen predicts the bailout will set off economic upheaval. The government will have to borrow so much that it will drive up interest rates, weaken the dollar and worsen inflation.
"I think you can see interest rates in the double digits," he says. "Congress thinks they can borrow forever. The dollar is going to fall. Nobody is going to want to hold U.S. debt."
Whalen says, "I don't think we need to rescue Wall Street. Wall Street is curing itself quite nicely. If we don't allow our people to feel pain, it's not going to inoculate them" against future crises.
Some economists warn that the long-term costs to the USA will loom even larger, as the bailouts hurt future federal spending for health care, Social Security and education.
"They're just blowing the bank wide open right here," says Jagadeesh Gokhale, senior fellow at the Cato Institute. "We still really don't know what the exposure may be."
The financial sector is lobbying for changes and clarifications in the plan. The Financial Services Roundtable, which represents 100 of the largest financial services companies, said Sunday that while it supports the general thrust of the proposal, it wants a mechanism to figure out what kind of assets the Treasury should buy, and at what price.
Unforeseen results
More generally, banking and financial firms say that a series of bold actions taken by Treasury in recent days could have unintended consequences on financial firms. Just Friday, for example, Treasury said it would temporarily insure the holdings of money market mutual funds up to $50 billion to firms that pay a fee to participate in the government program.
Money market mutual funds hold about $234 billion of asset-backed commercial paper. In recent days, investors have acted to get out of money market mutual funds, forcing firms to sell holdings to pay the investors. But the crisis in financial markets has made it harder for firms to sell even their high-quality holdings.
Independent mortgage consultant Howard Glaser says the bailout puts the government in an awkward, conflicted position. "The federal government is both the owner of the loan and so may want to seek maximum return by foreclosing, and they have an express interest in keeping people in their homes and trying to avoid foreclosures."
But he says, "My broad sense is there are no arrows left in the quiver for the federal government.
"They have to take action. It's not perfect, but it's the only avenue they have at this point."
Contributing: David Jackson, Edward Iwata, Kathy Kiely, Douglas Stanglin and Roger Yu
Sunday, September 21, 2008
USAToday.com
One of the better features, to me, is the use of the color-coding system for identifying the sections employed in the paper version. When you click on a story from the Money section, for example, such as this one by David Lynch, several features along the top of the page turn green so you know which section you're reading from. Unnecessary, but a nice aesthetic touch.
Many of the stories featured in the main "top news" section on the home page and the lower, "more news" section have accompanying photos, while there is a separate "featured video" section on the home page. There could be more videos with stories to compete with other online sources, but hopefully that will improve soon.
Also, stories usually have links in the "jump" in the middle of the text. Many times this is distracting, and sometimes it's hard to tell if the story's done. This story even has two sets of links in a relatively short article. I don't know of a better way to increase clicks and advertisement, but this way is too distracting.
I read USA Today for the writing, but the website could use some tweaks.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Truthout.org
Ha anyway, TruthOut is kinda a hybrid of a news aggregator and a fully functioning news website. It relies primarily on wire services for its news stories, including sources such as the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, and even fellow online-only Politico.com, while providing original analysis and commentary.
The website is organized well, with even a specific "Issues" tab highlighting stories pertaining to several important political issues to help voters decide their stance.
As with any other organization, the opinions reflected in editorial pieces are varied and all have their own particular slant but the site offers TruthOut original pieces as well as those from various news organizations, such as the New York Times and The Nation.
I would strongly encourage you to check out the site, I think it does a really good job of bringing together a myriad of sources to keep the individual well-informed. I would encourage you to also sign up for the e-mail newsletter with the day's top stories, as I just did once again.
Monday, September 15, 2008
MLB.com reporting
MLB.com, along with all of the individual clubs' websites, have their own paid writers who cover the teams. In every story, after the reporter's information comes a disclaimer stating, "This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs." Now, I don't exactly know the logistics of these reporters covering the teams versus other independent media outlets' coverage, but this situation brings up a few questions in my mind...
Aren't journalists supposed to be completely separated from the institutions they're covering?
Do league-paid reporters get different access to the teams and players than non-league individuals?
How would coverage of a typical public relations nightmare (e.g. - a player getting a DUI) compare with independent sources' coverage?
If, for example in the story of the day after Carlos Zambrano's no-hitter, he had said he partied the whole night and done all sorts of reckless things to celebrate, how would that be portrayed?
Does it not at least hint at a conflict of interest for a reporter to be paid by the league he or she is covering, if not outright scream it?
If nothing else, if truly objective reporting is taking place, then it's in the wrong setting. I understand the leagues' desire to increase website traffic, but I have doubts about the legitimacy of these sites becoming real news providers.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
A different angle on the hurricanes
First, for those not familiar with Relevant, it's a magazine presenting music and culture in a way showing God's relevance today, and often it's pretty anti-status quo.
The article does a pretty good job of capturing the devastation in Haiti while focusing on one organization in particular that needs help. It blends journalism with activism but without directly calling for action, but rather allowing those involved to make their plea and giving readers the needed information in order to donate.
The images provided, including the picture behind the headline, grant real context to the story, showing readers exactly what they should be imagining while reading.
The article ends with a video of mudslides in Haiti around the orphanage. It's a rough video but gives even more powerful backing for the story. I'll post it below. Ending with the video definitely made the story more real and it was a nice final touch.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
CNN's Palin coverage
From about :15-21, the cameraman walking around the convention floor made for a shaky picture that was more Blair Witch Project than top-quality news video. Also, the shot at :50 of an onlooker taking a picture was kind of overdone.
In all, having so many different camera angles (looking over Palin's shoulder, from fifteen points around the stadium, reaction shots of about every state she mentioned in her speech, etc.) made the video feel more forced than it needed to. I understand CNN probably wanted to give the viewer a feeling of being there but it ended up coming across as an arrogant display of "hey, we're actually here and we have the budget to have ninety-eight camera angles." Maybe not, but close.
The camerawork did get a little simpler toward the end of her speech, but the early shots were enough to leave me scratching my head.
Here's a clip, check the link in the first paragraph for the whole video.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Hurricane Online makeover
The focus is clearly now on multimedia content, as a photo gallery leads off the front page and photos and videos feature prominently in many new, major stories. A couple of the videos were slow to load but that could be my connection or just an expected load time.
The right side of the front page seems a little cluttered with box after box of links but there are a few nice features there, including an XML feed of the paper's blog staff which makes it easy to follow the posts without checking each one all the time.
Hopefully we'll see some updates to the site throughout the year as they come up with improvements.