Market at bottom? 

Guardian: Now Wall Street may shun $700bn bail-out. "Analysts believe that the mere presence of the government as buyer of last resort will be enough to get credit markets moving again, and that a large number of banks would not need to take part for the legislation to succeed."

Time to buy?

Update: Latest This American Life tutorial on the financial crisis.

I'd like to have a word with Republicans 

If there are any Republicans out there...

I know some of you are honorable people, good Americans, taxpayers, people who love your families, pay your taxes, do your best to live by the Golden Rule. People who try to do the right thing, whatever that is. It's to those Republicans that I wish to have a few words.

1. Barack Obama is an honorable person. You may not agree with him, or like where he would take our country, that's your right of course, but he doesn't "pal around" with terrorists. I think we all know that, right? If you have any doubts, you can skip the rest of this post, and please don't leave any comments.

2. Your candidate is pretty safe from Democratic counter-attacks because the they don't resort to tactics like that. Note that it would be easy to do so, McCain has lots of skeletons in his closet. The press knows about them, people who study this stuff do too. And Obama has the money to make these national issues, but he isn't doing it.

3. All you need to know about me is that I've voted Republican in Presidential elections more often than I've voted Democratic. I belong to neither party. I only want good choices, I would love to have a choice for President where the toughest part of the decision is which of two excellent candidates do I vote for. Unfortunately I've never had that problem, quite the opposite, it's always been a matter of holding my nose and voting for someone I can't stand, only because I couldn't stand the other guy more. This election is the first time I've ever felt like I was voting for a good man. I've done my homework, read his books, watched him in some very difficult sitatuations, observed the kind of campaign he's running and the organization he's building. I would be proud to have him lead my country, I think he would do a good job, for all of us.

4. This crazy stuff about him palling around with terrorists is only serving to burn whatever bridges your party has left with people like me. If it goes far enough I will not only never vote Republican again, but I will swear an oath to do everything I can to put your party out of its misery, for the good of all Americans.

5. I urge you to use whatever influence you have with your party to get them to stick to the economy, the wars, energy, taxes, health care, education, housing, infrastructure, the stuff that is the proper domain of politicians. Deliberately misleading like this is bad politics.

6. Thanks for listening.