NEWS
Argentina's President Cristina Kirchner announced plans to nationalize Argentina's private pension funds. Speculation that the move was imminent sent the country's stocks down 11%. The government said the takeover of the private system aimed to protect investors from losses due to the global market turmoil. Economists speculate that the true motive is to provide the government with about $5 billion in annual pension contributions that it needs to plug a gap in financing next year and avert a debt default.

Yahoo announced another restructuring effort that seeks to cut annual expenses by $400 million, including plans to cut at least 10% of its work force. The Internet giant reported a 64% drop in quarterly profit and revenue that was flat from a year earlier, as the company continues to struggle with slowing demand for online ads and stiffer competition.

The McCain campaign is ceasing campaign activities in three states it heretofore thought it could win: New Mexico, Colorado, and Iowa. The Campaign is re-doubling efforts in Florida, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. Recent polls show McCain leading only in Florida (where early voting starts today) . Polls suggest Senators McCain and Obama are tied in Ohio. The re-organization makes Nevada's five electoral votes crucial to McCain's strategy. It is unprecedented for a Presidential candidate to announce he will surrender a battle-ground state. That the Republican candidate planned a capaign in traditional battle-ground states only to find that the usual suspects were hard to contest might reflect the reality that this election fractures the electorate in unusual dimensions--or that he simply isn't going to win... or doesn't have enough money.

Walter

If I understand Walnuts here, this is his recovery plan to help the economy in a time when the economy has, at least, a liquidity crisis that, today, required the Treasury to inject cash into the market to the tune of 250 taxpayer dollars. Walnuts, committed to making up for the untimeliness of this bailout (see below: timing, not a profound lack of regulation, is to blame), wants to allow America's 100mm seniors to pull their cash out of the market and spend it! (presumably on Chevrolets and Metamucil, because taxpayers are going to pick up their mortgage tabs) amid a liquidity crisis whose tardy solution (for which Walnuts voted) is to put astronomical amounts of cash INTO the market--and to spend billions more protecting banks from dangerous runs (exactly the sort of thing that this plan positively encourages). I mean, Jesus Christ, I would have expected such a counter-productive, nihilistic, populist, and profoundly misguided economic proposal from Sarah Palin, but this is John McCain. I will say, it's very maverick.

This is a bald-faced appeal to the basest denominator of scared old people who want to put their cash under their pillows or in completely unproductive resources like gold or depreciating assets like their health (as the government won't be paying for that)--that and gambling. He will amend the tax code to incentivize their runs on banks, requiring young people to bail those banks out so that the world doesn't stop moving and they don't have to cancel The Price is Right… meanwhile every neurotic old person in Florida will sleep with (and, physically on) the comfort of their secure, liquid life savings and the reality that they will die before they pay the cost of the financial ruin begotten by their reckless consumption. Meanwhile, you and I know that, no matter what genius entrepreneurship we engage in in the future, its fruits will be taxed away to payback the cost of our grandparents terrorizing assault on liquidity in America. Wasn't it enough that we thanklessly and without consultation committed to paying for senior's social security? Now this?

I am beginning to wonder whether it is within the charter of the Treasury--and perhaps positively required of it under the bailout plan--that Paulson censor McCain from advocating such prodigious nonsense in public.

To quote the IHT:
In a plan in which most of the benefits would go to older voters, McCain proposed that people 59 and up who withdraw money from IRAs or 401(k) retirement plans in 2008 and 2009 pay a tax rate of 10 percent on the money rather than their higher normal rates. That part of the plan would cost $36 billion, based on the McCain campaign's internal estimates.
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"So much of this decline in our markets and value destruction was due to the failure of Congress and the Administration to come out with a timely rescue package," -J McCain
(?)
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"Investors are always responsible for their investment decisions, but the hard-earned savings of Americans should not be penalized by the erratic behavior of politicians." - J McCain
- I think the targeted voter is senior citizen Dick Fuld, demanding that he not be penalized for banking on a federal bailout.
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This plan is "targeted at people who have been hurt by the recent financial crisis — seniors, savers, workers, people who are trying to get to college." - Douglas Holtz-Eakin
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McCain also reiterated his plan for the Treasury Department to buy troubled mortgages at face value and give qualified homeowners government-guaranteed, low-interest mortgages based on their residences' reduced value. McCain first said lenders would pay the difference, but subsequently his campaign said taxpayers would.