I hope your panelists will discuss how the falling dollar can be strengthened. A stronger dollar would go a long way to help the middle-class deal with these difficult economic times.

I have to respectfully disagree with Joe B’s focus. I can’t see how a strong dollar does much of anything to help average workers in this country. What workers need is higher wages and jobs.

I hope your panelists will discuss how the falling dollar can be strengthened. A stronger dollar would go a long way to help the middle-class deal with these difficult economic times

The only part of the US economy which has been showing much strength during 2008 has been our export industries. A stronger dollar would squash that.

Also, as an environmentalist, I rather like the way the high cost of oil has been encouraging conservation and alternative energy efforts, so a weak dollar is fine with me.

Here’s a question for your guests:
The government has taken over financial institutions, cut interest rates, opened lending windows, passed a bailout bill, and raised FDIC limits, all in an effort to entice banks to lend. But this morning the LIBOR was at a record for 2008 so there’s no sign of a thaw in the credit markets.

Has ANYONE - the Fed, the Treasury, Congress or the President, actually sat down with the bankers to ask them what it’s gonna take to get them to lend? Why are we treating the banking industry like some impassive, primordial force of nature that we can only beseech with prayers and make sacrifices to? It’s the banking industry that’s sitting on big piles of cash, not lending it out. So obviously THEY know what they need to induce them to lend. Why can’t Paulson get an audience with Ken Lewis, say, and if he kisses his ring finger and offers the right salutations, get an answer less obscure than the Oracle at Delphi?

I commend John McCain for proactively thinking about ways to deal with the root cause of the credit crisis – the homeowners who are defaulting or are in danger of defaulting on their mortgage. However, his and others’ suggestion to write-off a portion of the principal on now over-priced mortgages strikes me as contrary to market principles and patently unfair to those of us who have seen the value of our properties decline but would not receive any assistance because we are not in danger of defaulting.

High adjustable interest rates, on the other hand, represent one reason for the defaults that we can address using market principles. I think the government should actually take over mortgage loans in danger of default by paying off the remaining principal and then re-issuing the mortgage with the same principal value through Fannie Mae as a 6 percent fixed-rate mortgage. This would constitute an immediate infusion of liquidity into the market, thereby solving the credit crisis. No homeowner taking advantage of this program would be allowed to default by appropriately setting the length of the mortgage. This solution solves the credit crisis, helps homeowners get out from under high interest payments while still requiring them to pay off their original loan, and does all of this without huge government involvement in the workings of the private market.

My question concerns an alternative plan for the bailout: have those holding near-worthless securities swap them to the government for preferred stock in a government-owned rescue corporation. This would mean the banks etc. in question would own the rescue/bailout rather than the government owning the banks.

Is this a real solution or does it just delay the day of reckoning?

Question for guests: I am a registered Democrat. My happiness at seeing the Republicans thrown out is only exceeded by my fear that the Democrats will be in charge! (See RNC video showing Barney Frank and others saying a few years ago there is no Freddie Mac crisis) The Republicans won’t even talk about how they opened the door with the Enron loophole late in the night. They point fingers at each other but neither is honest. Why should we trust them with finances? (Okay, now lets hear the “blah, blah, blah” answers from the party reps)…

I disagree with what Mr. Goolsbee just said that McCain’s proposal would assist the bad lenders. No homeowner was forced into buying a property by a lender. Home prices go up and they go down according to the market. Homeowners bear that risk, not lenders.

I am frankly surprised that a substantial raise of the minimum wage was not on the bargaining table for the bail-out, and still is not talked about as ways to help “main street”. This is a point the Democrats should push that would really help everybody.

My second point is that: you hear how important it is to give tax breaks to small businesses, because they create jobs and are a big part of the economy. But aren’t these the purveyors of most minimum wage or low wage and no-benefits jobs?

Does McCain still believe in Trickle down Economics?

If so what evidence (in history or research) is there that it would benefit the middle class?

Holtz-Eakin is dodging the question! Make him explain whether he or the McCain website is LYING, and they say different things! Admittedly the website is confusing, so that will be his escape.

Please can the guests not demonize the other candidate? I would like to hear more analysis instead of another negative ad.

On the day that the first rescue bill did NOT pass, McCain was giving speeches saying how his work at the Capitol led to the passing of the bill.

McCain says he cares about and understands the middle class. It seems he cares more about his nine houses, numerous cars, and at least on sinking ship on which rests his campaign.

I am concerned that Mr. Obama seems to have dismissed Mr. McCain’s idea to address the issue of subprime foreclosures at the homeowner level. While I agree that the problem is complex, extending the bankruptcy code to encompass primary home loans, setting up special courts to specialize in these issues, and providing a federal entity to acquire loans restructured by the court could be implemented with reasonable effort. The lenders would be forced to accept appropriate write-downs and share in the pain with the taxpayers; and the homeowners would be required to share any appreciation of their homevalue to repay something to the government when they ultimately sell. Mr. Obama seemed to be looking at something along these lines until Mr. McCain put forth his idea. Here is something which should have bipartisan support with the debate being over the details and not the concept.

On a pubilc radio show yesterday, I heard a small business owner say that Obama’s tax proposal would not help him b/c he GROSSES over $300,000, and Obama’s cut off amount is $250,000. The business owner then talked about his expenses. I’ve always thought that what Obama was talking about was $250,000 of taxable income - i.e. after deductions, not gross income as the business owner thought. This is a crucial point that the Obama campaign needs to make clear!

The Trickle Down theory doesn’t work because the wealthy don’t put even half of their money into companies that create employment… they bet as much against the market as they do on it, they invest in exotic schemes and to a large degree they invest outside the U.S.

When more wealth goes into the hands of many, that money really does move more effectively through the economy creating real jobs. Millions of people spending money on all the variety of goods and services that they need spurs far more economic activity and spreads wealth far more effectively than one person with hundreds of millions investing less than half of it on real companies that actually create jobs.

Every dollar earned on this planet has a sort of curse attached to it in the form of what it takes to create that dollar of wealth… limited world resources are used, pollution is created, the environment is affected, etc. So what justifies one person hoarding so much more when every dollar earned costs the entire legacy of the world something in the way of a curse?

This is why the wealthy should pay a graduated increase in terms of the wealth they amass… no one person deserves to use up so much in terms of resource wealth and the cost to the environment without paying more proportionally for the good of the rest, especially when that one person has cost the rest in terms of legacy.

The cost in planetary legacy and the fact that wealth creation works more effectively when spread out among many is why so much of our system needs a massive reevaluation and drastic changes.

Pre-Trickle Down theory, there was economic wisdom in the United States… from between about 1935 to 1985, or the time during which New Deal and other progressive policies began to have an effect until Reagan and the Republican Revolution started dismantling these New Deal policies. The wealthy, for a short time, had a conscience in this country… a time when CEOs earned a few times the average workers pay instead of hundreds of times the average workers pay, and when company execs understood Henry Ford’s tenet that for the real success of corporations, workers had to earn enough to buy the goods and services that were being offered.

Sadly I’m starting to get sick of the negativity of this campaign. We should be interviewing non-partisan speakers so we can avoid the twisting of facts, flat-out lying, and the ‘your policies stink’ tactics employed by both Democratic and Republican “experts”.

I thought Obama’s plan was no raises for folks under 250,000 not 150,000. Austin has noted 150 a number of times???

I thought Obama said the tax would be applied to those over $250,000 What I’ve heard is the Obama person saying $150,000. Which is it?

Health care in this country is a market based commodity. It is not a system. Anyone looking at McCain’s health care market based idea would see that this is the worse idea. It wont work, you can’t buy insurance for a family of 4 with $5000. For an individual it is $2500.

Give me a break Tom. How can sit you there and ask, let alone support McCain’s nightmare of a health care plan?

From my perspective both parties have broken this country. The Republicans are the more cynical of the two, have done more damage to our country.

The government is broken.

This is a pretty one-sided debate (for the last 20 minutes when Austan Goolsbee has the microphone with no rebuttal from the McCain Campaign.)

Not very informative when you have such a partisan expert giving only one side of the story. Why didn’t you get a secondary McCain expert for the second half?

What gives????

Holtz-Eakin bailed early - not a great reflection of McCain and his tolerance for an opposing viewpoint. If your ideas can’t stand scrutiny then don’t come onto the show. H-E just came on, gave us the talking points, ripped on Obama a bit, then ducked out. I see this as On Point airtime being used to air a McCain ad instead of an actual discussion of the issues.

I can tell you that in 1996 you could get insurance for $5000….lol. Today it is over $14000.00 for the exact same coverage.

I appreciate your guest’s response to my previous comment. My information was based upon an Oct 5 AP story “Obama rejects McCain Mortgage Buy Up Plan” which did not address this aspect of Mr. Obama’s criticism. Mr. Obaba is absolutely correct in saying that a program to purchase home loans must do so at the market value, not the face value, of those loans. (Hence my comment about the extension of the authority of the bankruptcy courts or a similar specialized court, to restructure and determine the value of these defaulted or foreclosed mortgages.)

Sara, if you’d listened you’d have heard that the McCain rep, Douglas Holtz-Eakin had to leave.

Austan Goolsbee rocked. Tom, I’d love to hear him on the show again. He’s a clear thinker and speaker.

This has been a waste of an hour show and hardly a debate of the economic issues. If your McCain advisor was not available for the full allotted time frame you should have rescheduled rather than let the Obama advisor blather on unchallenged over and over again. The softball questions lobbed at him contrasted with the tone taken with the McCain advisor as well. But, of course, there is no bias in the media. What a joke.

Good question Sara.

I also wonder why we don’t hear from candidates who do not support the bailout: Ralph Nader and Bob Barr.

Sure, they probably won’t win. But they definitely won’ win if no one hears about them.

I might agree with David, except that it is one-sided, not two sided. The Republicans have been totally distorting their REAL programs for 25 years so as to sell them to the general public who then pays the piper. So Democrats have decided to stand up for themselves. But it is in the interest of the Republicans to make it look like a food fight and turn off people who have not been keeping up with the issues and thus see the exchange as a food fight.

Rob touched on a point that bothers me: What if the “vanished” equity belongs in large part to me, not to the lender? Mortgages that were no-money-down, interest-only, balloon-payment deals are one thing; mortgages that involved ten to twenty percent down and have been faithfully paid for many years are something altogether different!
It seems to me that should the government buy up my mortgage, pay off the face value to the lender, and hand me a new note for the reduced value, I will have been robbed of every dollar of principal I paid in. No?

I was listening to “On Point” on NPR on my way home from class this morning, and McCain’s economic advisor, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who is no doubt a smart guy, avoided answering questions with similar two-part answers: (1) the Democrats are stupid and (2) Obama is full of it. I’d love to have heard his economic ideas, but he didn’t share any actual ideas, just position points and accusations. Meanwhile, Goolsbee, senior economic adviser to Obama, actually shared some ideas on possible solutions. And, although Goolsbee took some pot shots at Bush and McCain, because his thoughts were not presented strictly in an “Us vs. Them” format, they had a quality Holtz-Eakin’s answers lacked: clarity. I wish McCain’s economic policy advisor took more time to share his candidate’s position, and less to dis the other side, as it would have been a more interesting discussion.

Memo to McCain: (1) The blame game is tiresome; quit playing it. (2) Most U.S. citizens understand that the White House, Wall Street, and Congress are culpable for the current economic crisis. (3) If you want to play ball, talk about the issues at hand. The more time a salesman talks about his competition, the less selling he’s doing.

And if Holtz-Eakin was not available for the whole interview, what was his other priority today, Oprah? To win, one must play. Perhaps the McCain camp could have arranged to have one of its 35 other economic policy advisors participate:

Grant Aldonas
Managing Director For Split Rock International & Former Under Secretary For International Trade At The U.S. Department Of Commerce

Carlos Bonilla
Senior Vice President For The Washington Group & Former Special Assistant To President George W. Bush

Jeff Brown
Associate Professor Of Finance At The College Of Business, University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign

Juan Buttari
Independent Consultant And Researcher In Development Economics

Kathleen Cooper
Dean, College Of Business, University Of North Texas

Steve Davis
CRA International And University Of Chicago Graduate School Of Business

Richard Dekaser
Senior Vice President And Chief Economist, National City Corporation

John Diamond
Edward A. and Hermena Hancock Kelly Fellow in Tax Policy, Baker Institute Of Public Policy, Rice University

Emil Frankel
Transportation Consultant And Former Assistant Secretary For Transportation Policy, Department Of Transportation

Luke Froeb
Professor, Vanderbilt University

Senator Phil Gramm
Former U.S. Senator From Texas

Kevin Hassett
Resident Scholar And Director Of Economic Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute (AEI)

Greg Jenner
Former Executive Vice President, American Council Of Life Insurers & Acting Assistant Secretary (Tax Policy), U.S. Treasury Department

David John
Senior Research Fellow, Heritage Foundation

Tim Kane
Director, Center for International Trade and Economics, Heritage Foundation

Melissa Kearney
Assistant Professor Of Economics, University Of Maryland

Anne Krueger
Professor At The Johns Hopkins School Of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) & Former First Deputy Managing Director, IMF

Adam Lerrick
Visiting Scholar For The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) And Friends Of Allan H. Meltzer Professor Of Economics For Carnegie Mellon

Phil Levy
Resident Scholar for the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and Former Senior Economist for Trade on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers

Will Melick
Gensemer Associate Professor of Economics, Kenyon College

Michael Moore
Professor Of Economics And International Affairs, George Washington University

Tom Miller
Resident Fellow for American Enterprise Institute (AEI)

Tim Muris
Foundation Professor, George Mason University School Of Law

Gerry Parsky
Senior Economic Advisor

Nancy Pfotenhauer
Former President, Independent Women’s Forum

James Rill
Partner, Howrey LLP and Former Assistant Attorney General (Antitrust), U.S. Department of Justice

Kenneth Rogoff
Professor Of Public Policy, Harvard University

Harvey Rosen
Professor Of Economics And Business Policy, Princeton University

John Silvia
Managing Director, Chief Economist, Wachovia Bank

Acquiles Suarez
Vice President For Government Affairs For National Association Of Industrial And Office Properties & Former Special Assistant To The President For Domestic Policy

Dr. John Taylor
Professor Of Economics At Stanford, Senior Fellow At The Hoover Institution & Former Under Secretary Of Treasury

Anthony Villamil
Chief Executive Officer, The Washington Economics Group, Inc. & Former Under Secretary Of Commerce For Economic Affairs

Joseph Wright
Chairman Of The Board For Intelsat

Mark Zandi
Chief Economist For Moody’s Economy.Com

James Rill
Antitrust Attorney at Howrey LLP; Former Assistant Attorney General in charge of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division

Sean O’Keefe
Former Secretary Of The Navy, NASA Administrator, & Deputy Director Of Office of Management & Budget, The White House

Both candidates do not have good solutions for what is happening now. They never saw it coming.

Obama has emerged as better candidate due to his calm and collective demeanor which is very reassuring in times like these. McCain’s reactionary and compulsive style, and his angry diatribes is not a good sign for the kind of president we need now.

We need a person who can remain calm, who can think through the issues with clear rationality and has the mind set to have good advisers to work on the problems we are now facing.

McCain’s not showing he can do this. I’m not saying he can’t however he does not seem to able to.

His pick of Palin also shows that he is compulsive and her recent disgusting attacks on Obama, which have turned into hate mongering rallies, shows that she might be a right wing populist but she is not fit for the office of the vice presidency let alone the presidency.

As of today the Obama/Biden ticket has 277 electoral college votes. It remains to be seen if this track will keep moving in this direction, but if it does it might be a landslide for Obama/Biden.

I have more respect for the crooks that rob the local 7-11 than the crooks in the congress.

McCain seems to be morphing into a Peter Lorre character from one of his ‘B’ movies.

Palin is now holding hate rallies with uniformed police officers opening up for her, what is going on here?

****My second point is that: you hear how important it is to give tax breaks to small businesses, because they create jobs and are a big part of the economy. But aren’t these the purveyors of most minimum wage or low wage and no-benefits jobs?*****

It’s so true though. I for one don’t like to work at a small business company. Usually they don’t provide good benefit and don’t reinforce their policy. If you are being harassed at work in a small business, good luck!

I like bigger corporations with better structure, of course they have to in order to protect themselves too. But bigger corporations law need to be modified too. Same thing with the free market ideology, it need tighter regulation to monitor abuse.

I still don’t get it.

Bush told us if we cut taxes the economy would grow and the market would boom.

We now have huge deficits, two wars being fought off the books, and the financial market in chaos.

So, Bush asked us to give Wall St. a trillion dollars.

Naturally, we complied.

But the Dow continues to plummet. Economists don’t seem to understand what is going on, and no one knows where it ends or how bad it will get.

People on the political right are blaming it all on Jimmy Carter, which would be hilarious if people weren’t so dumb.

McCain and Palin are responding to all this by calling Obama a terrorist. God help us if that foolish old man is elected president.

Listened to your show; liked it; still don’t get the economy.

With all of the talk about making health care available, why doesn’t someone mention that the costs for individual health care coverage is only one part - they all have incredibly high deductibles. If you’re sick you can’t get coverage - so how do you meet the deductibless? This is all a joke.

Thank you

I have been watching CNBC for some of my question about this whole financial mess. It helped me to have better sense by learning more information from them. Although it won’t help me to gain back my loss on my 401K yet, but it does help me to calm down, not panic.

Also they help me to channel out my frustration toward this economic morality deficiency.

Here’s a question for your guests:
The government has taken over financial institutions, cut interest rates, opened lending windows, passed a bailout bill, and raised FDIC limits, all in an effort to entice banks to lend. But this morning the LIBOR was at a record for 2008 so there’s no sign of a thaw in the credit markets.

Has ANYONE - the Fed, the Treasury, Congress or the President, actually sat down with the bankers to ask them what it’s gonna take to get them to lend?

Peter, how quickly you’ve forgotten your own words of wisdom, knowledge of system, and “logic” that you threw my way regarding NPR inviting other candidates. So, here’s a reminder:

1. Tom Ashbrook is not obligated to ask his guests any questions *you* may think are meaningful and intelligent. Besides, you already know it all, so why would you want to listen to other experts?

2. The Feds, Treasury, Congress or the President are not obligated to sit down with the bankers and ask them what’s the way out.

Didn’t your class on Virgil’s Aeneid give you an insight in how politicians work? Too bad you didn’t attend a class on “learning to listen (or in this case, read) to others” instead of always tooting your own horn.

1. Tom Ashbrook is not obligated to ask his guests any questions *you* may think are meaningful and intelligent. Besides, you already know it all, so why would you want to listen to other experts?

Didn’t your class on Virgil’s Aeneid give you an insight in how politicians work? Too bad you didn’t attend a class on “learning to listen (or in this case, read) to others” instead of always tooting your own horn.

where did I say anyone was obligated to?

Also, where did I say I “know it all”?

Really, AV, work on your reading skills before responding my comments - you have a persistent pattern of making stuff up out of thin air instead of responding to literally what I say.

Too bad you didn’t attend a class on “learning to listen (or in this case, read) to others”

. . . and what is this a specific reference to? What did I not read that you are referring to?

Mortgages that were no-money-down, interest-only, balloon-payment deals are one thing; mortgages that involved ten to twenty percent down and have been faithfully paid for many years are something altogether different!
It seems to me that should the government buy up my mortgage, pay off the face value to the lender, and hand me a new note for the reduced value, I will have been robbed of every dollar of principal I paid in. No?

But wouldn’t you be “robbed” of that in any case?

If you buy a house for $400K and today it has a market value of $300K that $100K is gone. It doesn’t matter if you keep your original mortgage or get it refinanced by the government.

Lots of people make this basic mistake - when they pay principle on a mortgage they think of it as putting money into the HOUSE. But they’re really paying off principle on a LOAN, and it’s quite independent of the house. If the house totally disappeared you’d still owe principle on the loan (hopefully you’d have disappeance-insurance on the house!).

Years ago when we first started pre-paying principle on one of our mortgages it made my wife nervous. “What if we pay off all that principle, and then the value of the house drops? Wouldn’t we lose that money?” she would ask. I had to explain to her that even if the value of the house dropped to zero it wouldn’t reduce the principle we owed on the mortgage by one penny!

She’s a smart woman but even smart people sometimes find it hard to wrap their heads around this concept. The house is simply collateral for the mortgage, but it’s the mortgage you’re putting your money into, not the house.

I would like an expansion of the IRA accounts to encourage savings. 1. Greatly raise the yearly contribution limit and peg it in the future to inflation so the limit continues to go up over time. 2. Allow minors to have IRAs which parents and grandparents can contribute to for long term savings. This would encourage personal savings and provide capital for the banks.

Hillary and Barack, already winners in the historical sense, have re-instilled a long missing sense of national pride and for the first time the claim id factual: “We the people of the United State….regardless of race, religion or gender….irrevocably declare certain inalienable rights”. Now next month, with our heart or our minds, we choose the next president. But with our gut, the electorate of both Parties must vote out the 88% of Congress seeking re-election. Incumbents O-U-T; term
limits I-N (until they truly represent the masses). “This time let’s not re-elect any of the scoundrels”.