I am shocked - SHOCKED! - to see that Washington is busily casting blame on Wall Street for all of our current financial woes while ignoring the massive evidence of corruption inside the sacred chambers of Congress. Exhibit A - Chris Dodd:

Former Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld was under oath Monday when he was grilled on Capitol Hill about his role in the current financial meltdown. But if Members really want to understand the credit mania, they should also call Chris Dodd.

The Connecticut Senator has been out front denouncing the "companies that form the foundation of our financial markets," for "their insatiable appetite for risk." He has also decried "reckless, careless and sometimes unscrupulous actors in the mortgage lending industry" and he has proclaimed that "American taxpayers deserve to know how we arrived at this moment." To that end, we propose he take the stand -- under oath.

Former Countrywide Financial loan officer Robert Feinberg says Mr. Dodd knowingly saved thousands of dollars on his refinancing of two properties in 2003 as part of a special program the California mortgage company had for the influential. He also says he has internal company documents that prove Mr. Dodd knew he was getting preferential treatment as a friend of Angelo Mozilo, Countrywide's then-CEO.

Read the whole editorial, then contact your senators to see just how interested they are in getting to the bottom of this mess. I'm inclined to believe that in Dodd's case (as well as some others - see Exhibit B: Barney Frank), this isn't a case of "where there's smoke there's fire," it's a case of YOU'RE ON FREAKING FIRE, MAN!

Hell and Yeah. It's about time McCain started punching hard on this one:



Via hot air.

More on the close connection between the Dems and the financial meltdown from the UK Independent:

Of all the characteristics of a successful politician, none is more essential than bare-faced cheek. Never has this been more evident than in the past fortnight, as senior Democrat members of the US legislature have sought to lay all the blame for the country's financial crisis on the executive arm of Government and Wall Street.

Neither of these two institutions is blameless – far from it. Yet when I see such senior Democrats as Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and Christopher Dodd, Chairman of the Senate's Banking Committee, play the part of avenging angels – well, I can only stand in silent awe at the sheer tight-bottomed nerve of it. These are men with sphincters of steel.

It's all true, of course, but I sort of wish he'd found a different way to describe Barney Frank.

[shudder]

Oh, and he's a serial resumé puffer too:



It's about time somebody started tying this hump directly to the crisis he and his party helped to create and - oh by the way - did nothing to avoid.

Vid via HotAir

A major part of the problem that we face in mortgage and credit markets today stems from Clinton-era changes in financial oversight that allowed the expansion of credit to individuals who otherwise would have been too much of a risk to qualify. Out of that springs the subprime crisis, Fannie and Freddie, and the major tightening of credit markets that we're seeing now. How does Joe Biden propose to solve the problem that he had a hand in creating?

For a crisis essentially created out of government interference, Biden offers nothing more than a “hair of the dog” solution. He wants bankruptcy laws changed to force lenders to offer lower terms to people with higher risk, which is exactly what created this crisis in the first place. He claims to side with the man in the street against the shareholders, but his solution would create more crises like we face now, not less.

Hope and change, indeed. Let's double down on that bad bet! That's the ticket. Pay no attention to the folks advising the campaign on economics. Nothing to see there...

Towers and Tarmacs:

I'm sure we'll hear more in the coming days, but I'm not the only one wondering how the new behemoth carrier will be able to reach their synergy goals by keeping all 7 U.S. hubs up and running. Watch this space because I'm going to make myself a strong pot of coffee and fix a bowl of popcorn to watch this show.

The redtails may well be history - Northwest and Delta have announced a new global airline.

Dissecting Leftism notes this interesting passage in an editorial from Investors Business Daily:

We're so used to Democrats pushing tax hikes as the answer to all of America's problems that we were taken aback to find the following words buried in Pelosi's release on the stimulus deal: "Economists estimate that each dollar of broad tax cuts leads to $1.26 in economic growth."

Gee, that sort of sounds familiar. It's almost, though not quite, like what the much-reviled supply-side economists have been saying for, oh, 30 years or so.

Pelosi, and other Democrats now suddenly touting tax cuts, may be on to something. We might demur on the notion that all tax cuts must be "broad" to be effective. Evidence really lies more strongly with giving tax cuts to those who would start new businesses or expand old ones. But it's refreshing to hear a Democrat admit the obvious — that tax cuts work.

Also noted - this wonderful encapsulation of the whole stupid business:

"It's like taking a bucket of water from the deep end of a pool and dumping it into the shallow end. Funny thing -- the water in the shallow end doesn't get any deeper."

That's how George Mason University economist Russell Roberts describes the logic -- rather, illogic -- of the economic "stimulus" proposals that everyone and his uncle are proposing.

In the end, sure - I'll take my money back from the idiots in Washington. It's just too bad that they take it in the first place to do moronic things like this "economic stimulus package."