In a move that is not all that surprising, the Treasury is extending the availability of TARP funds to life insurance companies that qualify as bank holding companies. Details have not been finalized, but the insurance stocks are rallying on the news, and this should help the group avoid further ratings downgrades which have been rolling in.
It’s hard to respond to Paul’s question-begging-all-the-way-down response here, and it leaves most of my prior arguments untouched. But especially since he seems to have stopped implying that there was something uniquely bad about the Iowa court’s ruling or that it was in some way comparable to the more singular lawlessness of Bush v. Gore (which is good, given the utter indefensibly of both claims) — meaning that he seems to be resting on the notion that judicial review in any form is straightforwardly “undemocratic” — we can use this to explore some of the issues djw and I have gone into at greater length elsewhere.
There is a famous compound interest story about the Emperor of China who offered the inventor of the game of chess one wish. The inventor replied that he wanted one grain of rice on square one of the chessboard, two grains on the second square, four on the third and so on through square sixty-four. The unsuspecting emperor agreed to the seemingly humble request. Yet, two raised to the sixty-fourth power is eighteen million trillion grains of rice, more than all the rice in China!
If there is a new money making system that seems to be working, would you think about giving it a try?
The chart above shows the Volatility Index, what I refer to on a daily basis as the VIX. The VIX is sometimes called the “fear index”, for it spikes higher when there is fear amongst traders, and moves lower as complacency sets back in.
The court’s decision can be defended, in theory, on various grounds.
(1) The state’s constitution actually required the court to rule as it did.
