Shocked Edition

"I am shocked...SHOCKED to find that gambling is going on in here!"

"Your winnings, sir."

"Oh, thank you very much. Everybody out at once!"

--Claude Rains, Casablanca

Greenspanning the Nation

He was once the "Professor," the guy everyone consulted as if he were an oracle. Deregulator extraordinaire and free-market maven. But yesterday Alan Greenpan showed up on Capitol Hill to probably the most scathing skepticism he's ever gotten in his life. And it was good. As reported in the NY Times: "Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders' equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief," he told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. In a contentious Q&A session, Greenspan declared that a "once-in-a-century credit tsunami'' has engulfed financial markets and conceded that his free-market ideology shunning regulation was flawed.

"Yes, I found a flaw,'' Greenspan said in response to grilling from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. "That is precisely the reason I was shocked because I'd been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.''

Lemme get this straight. You slashed interest rates to below anything seen before, allowed housing prices to balloon, basically created a giant housing bubble, while fighting regulation of the mortgage market tooth and nail. You permitted the growth of this shadow market of bizarre credit and derivative instruments and then knowing how much cash could be "made" with all that low-hanging fruit, you expected the banking industry to regulate itself. In fact, you were shocked--SHOCKED--that there might be people out there who would work against the interests of their own company in favor of serving their own personal aggrandizement? You're shocked that human beings might be greedy? I haven't been on this planet for 40 years and _I_ could have told you that.

You know what? Maybe Obama's not an "economic guru" like you, but looks like you pretty much sucked, so I for one, am willing to give the new guy a shot.

Check out Obama's speech in the Richmond Coliseum. Scary good. This guy is scary good...Remember, this is Richmond, Virginia. He's drawn a crowd of 12,500 to a speech in the city that served as the capital of the Confederacy. (35,000 came to his speech in Leesburg earlier that day.) The Richmond event started a half an hour late because Obama apparently stopped to greet some of the estimated 7,000 people who couldn't get into the coliseum for the speech.

And here is Obama giving a quiet commentary on his visit back to Hawaii to see his sick grandmother at a critical moment in the campaign.

Not that Obama has been without his gaffe-moment, but check out the Daily Show clip from last night, as McCain STILL manages to outgaffe him...Astonishing.