This is a bit of an experiment, but the New America Foundation is trying a live web feed for some of our events — including this big economic forum tomorrow. We’ll be starting promptly at 8 am EST and ending at 9:30 am.
The Fed just dropped the fed funds rate by 75 basis points — the largest such Fed move since 1982 and the market barely noticed. No matter what the issues were yesterday, it is clear that the economy — domestic and global — is now the biggest political issue today and tomorrow. . .
When the Fed drops the fed funds rate by 75 basis points and the market doesn’t react. . .well, that’s really, really scary. I’ve talked with a number of economists this morning who are stunned by the lack of market reaction to the interest rate drop.
I’m not going to run through every detail of this extremely interesting debate, and I wish I had heard none of the political commentators afterward because listening to Mark Halperin (a virtual friend of mine) after, I was very irritated.
I’ll be watching the debates tonight closely. Hope all of you will be too. House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) has encouraged Bill Clinton to tone it down but did not say that the former President had crossed the line in his rough-handedness with Barack Obama and his campaign.
Facebook is no longer a college kid rolodex. It’s becoming part of emerging new media in the country — a distribution network for causes as well as news and opinion. I’m about to recruit my 900th friend on Facebook.
This is a video clip of Barack Obama’s speech yesterday in Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church — Martin Luther King’s church. I reflected on it here — and despite Obama’s surprising and refreshing critique of intolerance in the African-American community, I still don’t like politicking from churches.
OK — I don’t like politicians speaking in churches. I’m behind (or way ahead of) the times. It’s not my kind of thing, and the beginning of Barack Obama’s speech today at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta is the kind of verbage that doesn’t click with me.
One of the few things that would depress me more than Bill Kristol getting a regular column in the New York Times would be Nicholas Kristof or Paul Krugman giving up theirs. Luckily, I don’t think that will happen.
The next President of the United States — whether it’s Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, or Mitt Romney — is going to have the crap kicked out of him or her by friends and foes around the world. The problem is that America’s mystique as a superpower was shorn off by Iraq….
