Letters to the Editor don't always get posted, but sometimes I see one anyway.  I thought I would pass along this one that was sent in response to a Wall Street Journal article:

To the Editor:

        In “Mortgage Madness” [Wall Street Journal, Friday, August 3, 2007, page A9], Lawrence Lindsey looks forward from the present nationwide mortgage default and foreclosure crisis.  He cautions lawmakers that laws have unintended consequences -- for buyers, sellers, and the real estate markets themselves.

        He warns of consequences if remedies against lenders and their transferees are altered.  Yet the unintended consequences of the status quo must be considered too.  Change is needed because existing mortgage remedies have been proven inadequate.  As an example, undisclosed bonus cash to brokers for pushing borrowers up to the highest interest rate was okay.  When challenged, the practice got regulatory blessing (and then the markets themselves did not seem much concerned about maxed out borrowers).  The very weakness of remedies fostered mania, and inane and dangerous financing schemes, now exposed.  A hawk eye must certainly be kept out for consequences, but that is no excuse for inaction.

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Just about a week ago, Pearl Jam was playing the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago. The concert was webcast by AT&T as part of its “Blue Room” series. At one point in the performance, Eddie Vedder and the band started vamping on the old Pink Floyd tune, “Another Brick In The Wall.”

Vedder sang, instead of the usual chorus, the words, “George Bush leave this world alone.” He started to sing it again, and the sound stopped. The webcast was silent through the end of the song as Vedder sang, “George Bush find yourself another home.”

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At the tender age of 78 I am slowly learning my way around the blogosphere. I enjoy the give and take in those blogs where participants lay out serious arguments rather than merely curse and vent. (I started my journey as a student of Martin Buber who taught me the merit of dialogue). Rarely have I benefited more from such discussions as the 160 responses that followed my posting on Good Samaritan laws, which I favor. These laws express the community’s expectation that when a person can save a life without risk to him or herself, then that person should do so. I am unable to respond to every comment, but will try to deal here with several key issues these postings have raised.

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This morning’s papers are filled to the brim with informative reports on yesterday’s sharp drop in financial markets.  Krugman explains the fundamentals with characteristic clarity, and both the Post and the Times lead with reports on what’s going on and why.

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We’ve been talking this week about how to fix our nation’s health care system, which is in critical condition. As a physician for the past 30 years, and now as a Congressman, I understand how difficult it is for families to pay for their necessary treatments. People today all across America find themselves choosing between their next pill and their meal.

But you don’t have to be a doctor to know what the problem is: ordinary working people don’t earn enough to pay for skyrocketing insurance premiums and prescription drugs.

My initiative - the Declaration of Health - calls for injecting real competition into the system and guaranteeing universal access to affordable care through Open Disclosure of all health care costs, Unitary Pricing so that each of us pays the same amount for the same product or service, and forming a Single Risk Pool to leverage down prices for every Citizen.

Today, let’s look at the fourth step — common-sense deductibles and a renewed commitment to cover those who are in need.

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With the end of this year’s legislative session already in sight, 2006 having been touted as the “Year of Healthcare,’ California’s healthcare reform activists are being pushed hard to “do something.” We are confronted with a challenging question—how to do as much of the right thing as we possibly can without doing more harm than good.

(Full disclosure—my boss, State Senator Sheila Kuehl who chairs the California State Senate Health Committee, has 1.) authored single-payer legislation (SB 840); 2.) voted, for now, to keep AB 8, a Democratic compromise bill that would expand state health coverage, mandate an employer buy-in, preserve private insurance along with unequal coverage and not offer universal healthcare alive; and 3.) displays the following sign on her disk: Do No Harm.

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The case for beginning impeachment proceedings against President Bush and/or Vice President Cheney is as simple and unarguable as the case against: It is that the crimes, misdemeanors and constitutional violations of the administration – even those it has admitted or made feeble efforts to deny or disprove – vastly exceed those for which President Clinton was impeached nine years ago (here is where the comparison to a consensual act of oral sex is usually invoked) and quite probably equal or exceed those for which the House Judiciary Committee passed articles of impeachment, with support from seven of the committee's 17 Republicans, against President Nixon in 1974.

The case against impeachment (as made by Todd Gitlin and Michael Tomasky) is simply that it would be futile – given that there aren't 67 votes to impeach in the Senate and there aren't going to be -- and, for that reason, it would appear to be more partisan showmanship, a mirror image of the Clinton impeachment. And even if it succeeded, we would then have President Cheney, and if Cheney (who perhaps should be the first to go) were removed from office, then perhaps we would have a few months of President Pelosi, which would be fine but by that time it would be mid- or late 2008 and only a few months would remain anyway.

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I feel bad cribbing from two fantastic pieces -- one from Glenn Greenwald and the other from Matt Yglesias but not bad enough not to do it. (I link to Yglesias because he links to Greenwald PLUS there is that photo). But they are that good.

The bottom line, as far as I'm concerned, is that Democrats are not much better than Republicans when it comes to foreign policy because both parties take their advice from masters of the CW who have not had an original thought since the Potsdam conference.

And that especially applies to the Middle East where neocon orthodoxy governs our Israel-Palestinian policy as well as our policies on Iran and Iraq. (Along these lines, read this and this about Steny Hoyer's current visit to the Middle East).

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This is a reminder of how truly global the credit market has become - even one as traditionally local as home finance. The fact that turmoil in the American home loan market can cause substantial concern among European central bankers bolsters the case for reasonable regulation at home.

This piece set off so much cross-Atlantic vitriol at the Guardian Unlimited, including repeated references to me from domestic commenters as a "moron" and "hysterical," that I would be remiss not to let cafe denizens have at it:

It is becoming increasingly clear that one of the reasons why so much has been going wrong for the United States in recent years can be boiled down to a single word: arrogance. The conservative movement, which has dominated political discourse in America since Ronald Reagan's first inauguration, has perpetuated the mindset that the US knows best about everything. Republican presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani recently unleashed rhetoric of that sort when he lambasted the "socialist" health care proposals of his Democratic counterparts, warning: "You have got to see the trap. Otherwise we are in for disaster. We are in for Canadian healthcare, French healthcare, British healthcare." If only. Actually, it is the right's refusal to learn lessons from abroad and cooperate with other countries that have bogged down the United States with the most inefficient healthcare system in the industrialized world and ensnared us in a multitude of other quagmires, foreign and domestic.

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I have responded to Matt Yglesias’s op-ed in the LA Times last week today on the LA Times website. I would welcome further responses on the actual strategy I am proposing re Iraq; I will respond later today both to Max Sawicky and on how I think there is a chance of developing a bipartisan group that can actually put real pressure on the Administration to change its strategy now, rather than just running out the clock and handing the mess over to a new Administration. But before everyone jumps in, let me try to respond generally to the many (almost 100) comments to my post yesterday and to Max’s response.

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All week we’ve been talking about ways to solve the nation’s health care crisis, the single most important domestic priority facing us today.

From open disclosure of all prices to unitary pricing so that each of us pays the same amount for the same product or service, we’ve looked at practical ways to make the system more transparent as we guarantee universal access to affordable care for every citizen.

Today, let’s talk about one of the biggest common-sense changes — a Single Risk Pool.

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Well they say there is no such thing as bad publicity. Ms. Slaughter's post aims to Naderize me. Not the first one to try, when strong criticism of Democratic Party/U.S. foreign policy doctrine is saddled with an extremist political label, rather than addressed in its own terms.

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Hello, elected Democrats! I haven’t been blogging lately, because I’ve been too busy writing a book and tending to some important family matters. But I couldn’t help noticing that you suffered a world-historic collapse last weekend, and I want to help.

So I’ve written you a speech for the next time something like this comes up (and it will, I assure you). I hope you’ll use it– I think you’ll find it very effective. See, the thing is that you’ve got to keep reminding people– and, in the process, reminding yourselves– that President Bush is widely disliked and mistrusted, and with very good reason. You have to keep reminding people– and reminding yourselves– that when you trust him, you get screwed. And you have to keep reminding people– and reminding yourselves– that Republicans, far from being “tough on terror,” are in fact “the President’s party” and “the President’s remaining supporters,” i.e., the ones who brought you Iraq, Katrina, secret torture programs, and crumbling municipal infrastructure. Keep referring to them that way: the President’s party, the President’s supporters. You’ll be glad you did.

It’s really very simple, you know. When the criminal gang in the White House demands that you excise a few more clauses from the Constitution, your job is to just say no. Please don’t forget this next time. In fact, you should probably print out this post and keep a copy handy at all times. Thanks for listening!

OK, now repeat after me:

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I returned from a family reunion in a place that had no email (I learned to survive) and found some very thoughtful responses to an excerpt of my book posted here at TPMCafe.  Here with regrets are my delayed answers. Naturally, most of those who posted commentaries did not read the book itself; hence I must briefly repeat here some points I made there in much greater detail.

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David Sirota has what looks like a shrewd idea for overcoming the House's bad judgment in voting to give the president the power to instate warrantless surveillance. The Senate can step up, specifically about appropriations:

Any Senator can offer a floor amendment to the Defense Appropriations Bill or the Commerce/Justice/State Appropriations Bill banning the use of government funds for warrantless wiretaps. Similarly, any House or Senate lawmaker on the Appropriations Committee can offer an amendment in these bills' conference committees to do the same thing. If such an amendment became law, the warrantless wiretapping program may still remain technically "authorized" by Congress (though unconstitutional, of course), but the White House would be prohibited from actually using it.

Senators, the next call is yours. And it would be interesting to see how Senators Clinton and Obama would vote, if such an attempt came to a vote.

The debate over bipartisanship continues. I wrote a response to the many responses I got, on this blog and others, to my initial article calling for more bipartisanship in the Washington Post. I've just submitted an op-ed to the LA Times that is really a response to Matt Yglesias's piece there last week.

But Max Sawicky's post last week attacking what he sees as the entire American national security establishment summarized EXACTLY what I am worried about in the current state of netroots politics. He argued that "to set the ship on a better course, you have to be able to sink it." That was Ralph Nader's view in 2000, and he succeeded precisely in sinking Al Gore's candidacy. That was a victory?

Here is my nightmare. The Cheneyites succeed in creating a situation in which Bush does decide to bomb Iran. Iran retaliates, as they openly threaten to do, with terrorist attacks against us on U.S. soil. That tilts the election. I can imagine a Karl Rove political calculation that would buttress a Cheney-Addington national security calculation, probably with Eliot Abrams' support.

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We’ve been discussing our nation’s health care crisis this week and reviewing the essential elements in my initiative to guarantee universal access to affordable care for every citizen.

My purpose is not to destroy profit centers in
medicine, as some of my partisan opponents have and will continue to falsely argue. The purpose must be to allow every Citizen to benefit from the efficient delivery of affordable care in a transparent and competitive marketplace.

Today, let’s look at Step Two in my Declaration of Health - Unitary Pricing.

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Suppose you are the President of the United States. The CIA tells you that they've spotted Osama bin Laden having tea under a tent in Afghanistan. Would you launch an airstrike? Suppose you are told that he's in a factory in Sudan. Would you launch an airstrike?

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The foreclosure crisis (current or pending, depending on one's perspective) should play a major role in the presidential primaries. In particular, it poses a terrific opportunity for one or more Democrats to articulate the fundamental rationales of the regulatory state: not to micromanage the decisions of consumers or supersede market mechanisms, but to protect against predictably dangerous outcomes, provide the type of safety net that only the government can, and avoid negative externalities that strain markets in lean times. Personally, I'll be paying close attention to see which candidates, if any, can make the case.

Yesterday Matt Miller had a thought-provoking op-ed in the Financial Times pointing out how ridiculous the fear-mongering about
"populism" in the U.S., is-- especially compared to mainstream thinking in the U.K.:

Miller used Edwards supposedly “populist” proposals as an example:

"Mr Edwards wants to lift the minimum wage substantially, and to boost wage subsidies for low-income work besides. But the outer limits of Mr Edwards' ambition would leave low income work less generously compensated than the minimum wage and subsidy blend enacted by Britain's New Labourites Tony Blair and Gordon Brown - arrangements Conservative party leader David Cameron says suit him just fine."

"The fact that a Thatcher-Cameron-[Warren] Buffet agenda can be hyped as ‘populist’ says more about propaganda success and media norms thananything else,” Miller continued.

“Over three decades, America's conservative movement has so deftly shifted the boundaries of debate to the right that even modest
adjustments to the market system can be cast as the second coming of Marx without anyone blushing. Today's phony populist fears also remindus that the real problem with the media is not ideology but stenography. If official sources call something ‘populist’ often enough, it is."

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Yesterday, I argued that the nation’s health care system is in critical condition and offered an overview of my four-part plan to fix it.

The goal is to guarantee universal access to affordable care for every citizen and open up the marketplace to drive down prices — and taxes. Because while middle-class families struggle to afford their own health-care premiums, state and local governments also face rising insurance costs and look to those same middle-class families, as taxpayers, to foot the bill.

So today, let’s take a closer look at step one of my Declaration of Health — open disclosure.

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I take it as highly plausible, very close to a given, that the president and vice-president of the United States deserve impeachment. If ever a president and vice-president committed high crimes and misdemeanors, you would have to tally Bush and Cheney high on the list simply on the strength of what's already on the public record--and not simply when measured against the laughable standard set by the House against Bill Clinton in 1998.

Bush and Cheney are abusers of power whose heap of evident crimes rises to Nixonian and Agnewesque heights: the violation of treaties, the unlawful arrest and deep-sixing of American citizens, the authorization of warrantless wiretaps in violation of the extant FISA law. In the words of the very much retired Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, "A state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens." Even if there were a Congressionally sanctioned state of war.

On top of the evident crimes--high in constitutional import and the scale of their violation of essential republican principles--are the lies and suborning of lies, and the violations of the presidential and vice-presidential oaths in defense of the Constitution.

But impeachment is one those apparently golden ideas that tarnish in the bright light of day. Take consequences into account and you too will be concerned, like Michael Tomasky in yesterday's WP, lest an apparent short cut to justice turn into a dead end.

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Ignatieff's piece in NYTimes Sunday mag makes me crazy.

He doesn't even begin to know all the reasons why he was so completely nutso about Iraq. It makes me wonder if anyone who was wrong about Iraq has yet gotten right about why they were wrong. Does it matter? If you think that those who misread their own history shouldn't be trusted with the power to make the same mistakes twice, then yes.

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The nation's health care system is in critical condition, and slapping another Band-Aid on it won't help. Believe me, I know. As a physician, I've been healing my patients for 30 years. But I had to run for Congress to begin to make sure they can afford their prescriptions without having to choose between taking their next pill or eating their next meal.

It's time for my fellow members of Congress to stand up to Big Insurance and guarantee universal access to affordable care for every citizen. Here's how:

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Take a look at this interesting article about the complexity of the new mortgage securities market from the consumer's perspective. While pooled ownership and risk spreading enabled strong growth in the sector for a long time, as well as increased access to credit, they also have had the effect of increasing the complexity of the market and, in many instances, of shifting what have traditionally been mortgagee obligations onto imperiled homeowners.

And remember: all of the difficulties to which this article refers exist before one factors in complicated, sometimes dangerous mortgage instruments.

The New Yorker's Jane Mayer has an extremely important piece in the 13 August edition of the magazine titled "The Black Sites: A Rare Look Inside the CIA's Secret Interrogation Program."

I knew from other sources that Mayer was working on a major article that would expose a closely held International Committee of the Red Cross report finding that American interrogators were using torture techniques -- but did not know that her piece would be so comprehensive. This article -- which is very long -- should be read in full by anyone who wants to understand the details of the "darkness at noon" like intrigue that we have created. And it doesn't even produce results that are dependable.

Much of this story is about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confession that he beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Pearl's wife and many others close to the case don't have confidence in the confession or the CIA interrogators involved and their techniques for extraction of information from detainees.

The two parts of the essay that are of particular interest to me are first, the section about the ICRC report on US torture habits and second on the view that many have that despite all of the drama about Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and the various "black sites," it turns out in one of the highest profile cases involving Mohammed, there is enormous doubt about the information he coughed up.

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Surprise, surprise, surprise, the havoc in the subprime mortgage market is spreading to the rest of the mortgage market. Credit is tightening up at the fastest pace in decades and some of the high flying hedge funds are now bankrupt. This has sent the stock market plunging and house prices are falling in large parts of the country. We may not have yet entered the full meltdown phase of the housing bubble; still it is a good time to start assigning blame.

The media stand at the top of the list. While there were occasional pieces that hinted at a possible bubble, the mostly widely cited expert on housing was David Lereah, the chief economist of the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and the author of the book Why the Housing Boom Will Not Bust and How You Can Profit From It.

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There’s been a spate of economic reports of late sending out all kinds of disparate messages as to what’s going on in the current economy. Here’s one wonk’s view, ifyi (“if you’re interested”).

The big economic stories of the past few weeks are the stock market tumble, the status of underlying overall growth (as in real GDP, the broadest measure of the economy’s health), and the jobs situation.

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Floyd Norris's piece in today's Times nicely encapsulates the current insecurity in the mortgage lending world, calling it "the first correction of the modern neo-credit market."

One has to wonder whether the correction would be less painful if the federal government had regulated the most obviously precarious lending instruments. At least some people seem to think so, including Federal Reserve Governor nominee Larry Klane.