The Opinion Blog

Ripe for regulation

Tuesday's editorial supports new restrictions on the payday lending industry.

When S.C. lawmakers return to Columbia this week, high on their list of priorities will be overturning Gov. Mark Sanford's veto of a compromise bill to regulate predatory payday lending practices, and we wish them the best of luck.

Channel your anger toward D.C., not Wall Street

Ripped from the wires ... Cal Thomas adapts an aphorism made famous by the first Mayor Daley to the financial crisis:

By Cal Thomas

One of the more familiar sayings in politics is "don't get angry, get even.''

The anger caused by using millions in taxpayer bailout money to pay "retention'' bonuses to current and former AIG employees and to fund banks that mostly won't tell what they did with the money is an object lesson for all of us. It offers taxpayers an opportunity to "get even'' with those who have violated the U.S. Constitution, helped put our nation in peril and spent us into economic servitude to the Chinese.

'Get it' on Wall Street, Mr. Geithner, or begone

Ripped from the wires ... When the president's staunchest supporters, such as columnist Eugene Robinson, turn on the treasury secretary, you know he's really a public liability:

By EUGENE ROBINSON

President Obama's claim that Timothy Geithner faces a more daunting set of challenges than any Treasury secretary since Alexander Hamilton may be an exaggeration, but not by much. Geithner may indeed be the hardest-working man in Washington. But in order to survive, let alone succeed, he's going to have to make a more convincing case that he's part of the solution and not part of the problem.

GOP bears the blame for our econo-collapse

Ripped from the wires ... Myriam Marquez takes issue with the view that Americans who took advantage of the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act bear ultimate responsibility for the economic meltdown:

By Myriam Marquez
 
Blame the hedge fund managers. The subprime mortgages. Mismanagement at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac. Detroit automakers' stubborn refusal to build more energy-saving vehicles.

Blame the regulatory apathy of the Bush years. The bookkeeping tricks. (War? What war? Not in W.'s deficit numbers.) The unregulated credit default swaps. The blind devotion to Wall Street without a thought for Main Street.

More good than harm in mortgage 'cram-downs'

Ripped from the wires ... Froma Harrop makes the case for allowing bankruptcy courts to rewite mortgages:

By FROMA HARROP

Let bankruptcy courts modify the terms of home mortgages, says President Obama and legislation now before Congress. Banks don't like the idea, but it's a good one, possibly even for them.

With or without stimulus, the federal deficit will grow

At his press conference Monday, President Obama made a point some of you may find startling: The federal deficit will expand regardless of whether Congress passes an economic stimulus bill.

"My administration inherited a deficit of over $1 trillion,'' the president said, "but because we also inherited the most profound economic emergency since the Great Depression, doing a little or nothing at all will result in even greater deficits, even greater job loss, even greater loss of income, and even greater loss of confidence. Those are deficits that could turn a crisis into a catastrophe.'' (emphasis added)

Crack down on credit-card industry now, not in 2010

In an editorial Tuesday, the Miami Herald argues that Congress should quickly impose necessary new restrictions on the credit-card industry because the Fed is taking too long to get the job done:

Near the end of 2008, the Federal Reserve Board adopted new rules that would end some of the worst abuses by credit-card issuers. These rules, 18 months in the making, would put an end to such practices as hiking interest rates on customers who have never made a late payment and kept their accounts current, as well as the practice of increasing interest rates on money already borrowed. Trouble is, the rules won't take effect until July of next year.

Corporate jets the wrong metaphor for waste, excess

From today's e-mail ... The president of the National Business Aviation Association argues that corporate jets are not only a useful business tool but a major generator of high-pay jobs:

By Ed Bolen

These days, nearly everyone has heard a news story, a joke on a late-night talk show, or another snickering reference to business aviation. First, it was the story about auto industry executives flying to Washington last fall in company planes to seek government loans. This week, it's been the financial services company that received government funds and was reported to be taking delivery of a new business airplane.

'There is no pill' for our economic mess

Friends: Due to budget cutbacks, I no longer have the rights to the work of Tom Friedman of the New York Times. But his Sunday column about the global recession and what it's going to take for us to get out of it is worth readers for those who have the time.

Essentially, Friedman is saying there's no single cause or simple fix for what's wrong with the economy: "We are going to have to learn to live with a lot more uncertainty for a lot longer than our generation has ever experienced."

He's right, which is why this is recommended reading. dc

Stimulus the best hope for stalling out the recession

Today's editorial argues (without great enthusiasm) that mounting a responsible stimulus plan would be a better course for Congress than doing nothing to intervene in our dying economy:

What's the difference between pork-barrel spending and economic stimulus? Economic stimulus is pork-barrel spending with an important purpose: increasing the speed with which money circulates through American communities, thereby thawing their frozen economies and stalling out the recession.