The Credit Crisis Seems To Be Easing… Signs Of Recovery Starting To Show

Fantastic news!  And it looks like things are going to be getting better!!!

CNBC

Global interbank lending rates fell sharply Monday, fueling hopes that central banks have succeeded in their massive efforts to unlock credit for cash-strapped banks and borrowers.

Other measures of stress in credit markets ebbed to levels not seen in more than a month….

Money markets plunged into near-chaos a month ago, contributing to U.S. and European governments’ taking over part or all of some banks and financial companies.

However, credit availability appeared to be on the increase recently.

Encouraged by better credit conditions, traders shifted money to stocks and riskier investments from cash and low-risk U.S government bills.

The move sent Treasury bill rates to their highest in about a month and demand for new six-month bills to its weakest since April.

Less jittery banks charged each other less for dollars in the unsecured lending market.

The London interbank offered rate for overnight dollars fell to a 4-year low, drifting closer to the Fed’s target federal funds rate of 1.5 percent.

Traders widely expect the Fed to trim its target rate on overnight loans of surplus reserves between U.S. banks by at least another quarter percentage point after its two-day policy meeting next week.

More telling about a credit thaw was the plunge in longer rates suggesting banks grew more comfortable about lending rather than just hoarding cash….

Overnight rates on unsecured CP dropped below 1 percent on Friday, while 30-year unsecured CP rates averaged as low as 1.43 percent, according to Fed data released Monday.

More help is on the way in the CP market, where many companies had relied on funds for their day-to-day operations.

The Fed will launch its program to buy high-quality CP next Monday.

Ok, so a translation…

Basically, 3 things have happened and 1 more thing is coming…

First, banks began to lend eachother money again and felt a bit better about it.  The proof of that is in the interest rates they are charging eachother.  The inter-bank rates are dropping, which means they feel the risk of loaning each other money is falling.

Second, traders felt better about the economy in general, stopped hoarding their money away and started investing in the stock market and in the general economy again, pushing the markets up.  The fear of risk is going down and money is starting to flow again… thus the 400+ point jump in the DOW.  This is fantastic news!

Third, banks are also feeling better about companies and are loaning to businesses once again.  Companies often borrow money overnight to meet their payroll and day-to-day operation expenses.  This short term business borrowing for operations purposes is called the “CP” market.  It was squeezed over the last month or two because no one knew who was solid and who was not.  Now the banks are now feeling better about the wider economy and lending in the “CP” market again and feeling less risky about doing it, as is evidenced by the rate drop in this market sector as well.

Fourth is the coming government investment in the CP market which will improve the lending rates, margins and volume.  This is great news for businesses as it will make their operating costs cheaper and provide much needed liquidity, and thus making the wider economy much more solid!

All in all, we had a rough couple of months, and while there are still a few things to shake out, the foundations of the economy are all back into place and getting on to solid ground again!

The political implications of this bode well for McCain and not so well for Obama, who has banked (pardon the pun) on a failing economy to put him in the White House.

If the stock market continues to improve steadily, and fears of economic collapse dissipate in the next couple of weeks, there could be a major shift in the polls.

Biden And His Scary Comments – International Crisis… Gird Your Loins… Trust Us???

UPDATE:  Madeline Albright agrees with Biden…  Click HERE

 

Ok, so Joe Biden made these scary comments during a stump speech…

ABC.

“Mark my words,” the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy….  Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

“I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate,” Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. “And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you – not financially to help him – we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.”

“Gird your loins,” Biden told the crowd….

“There are gonna be a lot of you who want to go, ‘Whoa, wait a minute, yo, whoa, whoa, I don’t know about that decision’,” Biden continued….

“I probably shouldn’t have said all this because it dawned on me that the press is here,” he joked.

Why does this scare the absolute bejesus out of me?  Simple.

First, Obama is young, inexperienced and naive…  the world knows it and Biden just confirmed that he knows it too. 

Not exactly the guy I want for President.

Second, because the world knows that he is young and naive, there are 5 scenarios that could explode in Obama’s face.  Biden even names them and says that any one event, and indicates that more than one, will happen…  and not because they would happen naturally, not because they were going to happen anyway, and as a corrollary would not happen with McCain as President…  they would happen BECAUSE Obama is President.

Not WHEN…  BECAUSE.

Simply electing Obama would incide one or more MAJOR international incidents?  Well why the hell would I want that?

Third, the comparison that Biden makes is to the young Kennedy.  While I greatly admire Kennedy and how he handled himself during the Cuban Missile Crisis and a few other scenarios, there were some grievous errors on his part that led us to near certain full scale nuclear war.

The Kruschev-Kennedy summit was an embarrassment.  Kennedy was completely outclassed.

The Bay of Pigs incident was a total disaster.  A trainwreck.

The escalation of the Vietnam War was not the best idea ever…  and that nearly tore the country apart.

These incidents and the image of a young, naive, and weak President led to the closes the world has ever been to all out nuclear war.  Kennedy’s initial fumbling nearly cost every single person on the earth their lives.

That said, Kennedy did some wonderful things domestically and Kennedy’s management of the Cuban Missile Crisis was superlative.  It rewrote the books on international diplomacy….  I would just prefer not to get to that point again.

Fourth, I wanna know what the hell Biden is talking about when he says to basically just trust them because ”it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right”?????

What the hell is he talking about?!?!?!  What the hell kind of decision is Obama going to make where the whole country is gonna do a “WTF?”

This mystery decision is the most ominous part of the whole thing.  Damn that is scary.

What’s it gonna be?  An invasion of Pakistan?  Backing Hamas (who is endorsing the Obama/Biden ticket) and Palestine?  Institution of a draft?  A crazy jump in taxes?  Mass nationalization of banks?

And we are supposed to suspend our own judgement and substitute it with that of Dear Leader Chairman MaObama?  Are you kidding me?

Oh hell no…  No Deal.

McCain’s Tour Bus Shot At?

From Sacunion

We learned at this morning’s Stop Obama Rally here that the McCain/Palin Straight Talk Express came through town yesterday.  It arrived with a window shattered by a .22 caliber weapon.  It had also been hit by an unknown number of paint balls from a paint ball gun or guns.  There were reportedly no injuries and neither candidate was on board.

One local man who saw the damage and spoke with the McCain/Palin staffers said the attack(s) had occured in southern New Mexico that same day. 

Wow…  that’s pretty friggin crazy! 

If this really happened, I am shocked that this has not made it to the major media outlets…  I would like confirmation from a larger and more reputable source, so for now I am filing this in the “developing stories of a questionable nature” box.

The Powell Endorsement… ROFL

This is a  joke and I cannot believe the Obama campaign and their legions of Obots are peeing their pants with joy about this…

This is a textbook case of the moral relativism found on the “progressive” left today.

Remember 6 months ago when the “progressive” left bashed Clinton viciously for “voting for the war?”

Remember when Obama said that it was his “superior judgement” on the war that made him a better option for President?

Remember when the “progressive” left said they could never support anyone that voted for the war?

Remember when Obama nominated Biden, a person that “voted for the war” as his VP nominee and the “progressives” loved it?

and now… 

One of the chief architects of the Iraq War…  the man that made the case to the international community…  the man that said there were definitely WMD’s…  the man that told the world we had to invade…

Yeah, that guy, Colin Powell, has endorse Barack Obama…  and the “progressives” love it, love it….  Love.  It.

But it gets even better….

According to the AP, Obama has said that Powell will be either an unofficial or official adviser in his administration.

The reaction from the “progressives?”  Pure and unadulterated glee.

I cannot believe it.  This just goes to show that there is no moral compass of judgement guiding these people.  Just amazing. 

This event, above all others, illustrates what a joke these people are.  It’s just amazing.

The koolaid is strong with this one.

As a wise person once said… 

Old liberals have a moral center.  The new progressives do not.

Hannity’s Obama & The History Of Radicalism Volume II

Find Volume I Here

I Call Bullshit – Obama Raises $150 Million In ONE Month???

CNN

Barack Obama’s campaign announced Sunday the Democratic presidential candidate raised $150 million in donations in September, setting a new high-water mark in campaign fundraising.

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said a record 632,000 new donors gave to the campaign, with the average contribution under $100….

The Obama campaign raised $65 million in August.

BULLSHIT.

Obama is not just breaking fundraising records…  now he is friggin crushing them by multiples.

Prior to this election cycle, IIRC, the record fundraising for one month was something like $30 Million.  Obama was crushing this number at $50 million…  and now he raised $150 million…  when people are broke?

My ass.

There has been no significant shift in the polls…  no big jump in popularity…  nothing at all to indicate such a massive increase in general support that would corrollate to a 250-300% jump in fundraising?

Previously I wrote about the investigations into Obama’s fundraising activities (Here and Here), and it looks like the trend that concerns so many is continuing.

Here is the basic issue…  when a person makes a donation that is less than $200, a campaign is not obligated to release their name.

The theory was that such small donations would not have an impact on the race and it was harder to keep track of these people’s names than it was worth.

With internet fundraising, times have changed and so should the rules.

John McCain does not seem to have any problems releasing the names of every single donor to his campaign no matter the amount…  nor did Hillary Clinton.  Both had all their donors listed on their websites.

But apparently Obama does.  He has released the names of only about 30-40% of his “small donors” and even in that batch, large numbers of fraudulent donations have been found….  including foreigners, fake names, multiple $200 donations that added up to tens of thousands of dollars from a single donor (the legal limit is $2300), donors not providing names, and more.  There are now even reports from people saying that their credit card numbers had been stolen and donations to Obama were made without their consent.

As a matter of fact, more than half of Obama’s fundraising in the last 2 years has been through donations of less than $200 each.  As a matter of fact, the campaign proudly proclaims that the average donation is under $100.

$300 million in “small donations” of less than $100 on average…  really?

$63 million of that from NEW DONORS THIS MONTH?  So wait…  you are trying to tell me that NEW DONORS in September with donations of less than $100 gave as much as ALL the fundraising efforts produced in August?

My ASS.

Credit Card numbers need to be checked and cross referenced, billing addresses verified, citizenships validated.

I have followed ACORN’s incredible voter registration fraud nation wide, and the stunning efforts of the DNC to prevent the proper validation of absentee ballots in Ohio…  And because of this, I have no doubt that the same thing could be perpetrated in terms of fundraising.

The FEC needs to investigate and investigate now.

UPDATE:  As one of my readers points out in the comments section, people tend to donate in round numbers, yet a vast amount of the “small” donations Obama gets are odd numbers like $97.32 and as pointed out by this savvy reader, this point directly to currency conversion.

Nice catch.

Joe The Plumber Interview on Huckabee Show

Now Hamas Endorses… Biden???

From WND

In an exclusive interview tonight, a senior Hamas official heaped praise on Sen. Joe Biden, calling him a “very nice” person and a “great man” whose record “speaks volumes” and who can be counted on by the terror group to engage in the “right policy” toward the Middle East.

During the interview with WND’s Aaron Klein and WABC Radio’s John Batchelor, the Hamas figure also expressed hope regarding Sen. Barack Obama’s “vision for change,” announcing Hamas will send Obama a letter of congratulation “the moment he will win the election….”

“His record speaks volumes. I do believe Mr. Biden is a great man. And we do count on him also as a good partner with Mr. Obama to put the right policy regarding how to handle the problems in the region.”

Speaking about Obama, Yousef commented that it’s “good for America to have a new administration with someone like Mr. Obama and his vision for a change.”

“I do believe actually with this administration, with the Bush administration we don’t have luck (ending Hamas’ isolation). …We as Palestinians are thinking that we might have better luck with a new administration, maybe, if Obama wins the election. I do believe he will change the American foreign policy … in the way they are handling the Middle East,” Yousef said….