I read a comment somewhere about how it didn't exactly instill confidence to hear McCain speak woodenly about "credit default swaps" when he sounded like it was the first time he'd heard the term. The economic crisis is the perfect time to put the nail in the coffin of the anti-intellectual propaganda of the right. I think most Americans are a little baffled by the nuances of the economy, but they're trying to understand it. And they probably are realizing that just bringing some random beauty queen off the slopes of Alaska to run the country has its risks. Rather than talk in broad generalities, Obama should take the time in each speech to explain the sources of the economic crisis in simple but accurate terms. He should demonstrate, as only he can, why we might want to put someone smart in the Whitehouse. Obama's surrogates should remind people that Obama is brilliant--bring out all the economists from UofC who can talk about how deep and broad his understanding is--and even remind people that he did work for a short time writing investment strategy advice to fortune 500 companies (even if it goes against his noble community organizer image). I also think he should mock McCain for his goofy faux-populism. "McCain says he's going to end greed on Wall Street. Well, I can't say that I'm going to change human nature, but I am going close the CMFA loophole, which Phil Gramm snuck into the 2000 appropriations bill, which encourages lenders to make risky loans and then compound that risk by betting on it, and this loophole, which Phil Gramm rammed through congress in 1999, which ended the protections put in after the depression and left sectors of the banking industry unregulated, and I'm going to put people in the regulatory agencies who actually believe in the mission of that agency...etc." And he should stop calling Gramm one of McCain's advisors--he should say Gramm wrote McCain's economic policy.

This is a fantastic new line from Obama, in my opinion.  I hope everyone of his surrogates starts using it as the shorthand for McCain's lies. 

Here's the story at Huffington (linked to Dkos):

"if you think those lobbyists are working day and night for John McCain just to put themselves out of business, well then I've got a bridge to sell you up in Alaska."

On April 3, 2008, Michael Greenberger explained on Fresh Air (starting at about 4:19) how a little noticed or understood bill called the Commodity Futures Moderinization Act, introduced by Phil Gramm and ushered through congress as it was recessing for Christmas in Dec 2000, allowed banks to place bets on their own mortgages and credit lines and then list the bets themselves as assets. 

Instead of these bets being placed through a regular hedge fund, however, the law allowed them to use "offbook" entities called structured investment vehicles.  So, when the banks started losing money not only from their mortgage investments, but from the bets they had made on them, they could postpone posting the full extent of their losses on their accounting sheets.  Greenberger thinks that when these losses do finally start appearing on the books it will cause a cascading financial crisis bigger than the mortgage crisis itself.

Last week when the Feds took over Freddie and Fannie, they cited vague anomolies in their accounting practices as the trigger that caused the takeover.  I immediately thought of this loophole provided by Phil Gramm's bill.

I'm hoping that someone can dig into this and see whether these offbook transactions, made possible by Phil Gramm, were the accounting practices that alarmed the Feds and triggered the Freddie/Fannie takeover.  Anyone want to call up Michael Greenberger and ask?  He's a law professor at University of Maryland School of Law.

(This post inspired by the discussion on this thread)

Dan Eggen at the Washington Post elaborates on the trend that Josh has been flagging for a while now:  Bush taking up Obama's foreign policy positions that McCain had criticized.

He cites: diplomatic talks with North Korea; timeline for withdrawal from Iraq; moving troops to Afganistan; and formally approving cross-border raids into Pakistan without that country's explicit permission.  He also mentions that the Bush administration just gave 1 billion in aid to Georgia, which Biden had proposed.

But the killer line is from Obama supporter Randy Beers: 

"The flip side of that is that John McCain is therefore to the right of George Bush, which I don't think is the way he conceived of his campaign."

If done right this could be a great commercial:

Obama said we needed to do X. McCain said no way, but Obama was right and now we're doing X and Y has happened....Obama's ideas are already moving our nation forwards.   McCain  would move us backwards.

I blogged about this earlier in a semi-joking way, but the more I think about it the more serious I am. 

Obama's campaign has always been about change from the bottom up; about the power of the American people when they work together in the face of adversity; about the shared responsibility of the American people for the fate of our country. 

And yet, here on this site, and on liberal blogs everywhere, I see constant complaining : When is Obama gonna do X?When is Obama gonna say Y?  I see brilliant ideas for lines of attack, but I also see passive defeatism and despair (and I feel it myself).

Obama's campaign is constrained in the ways that it can attack.  It  is a political reality that a black male politician, trying to win over white voters cannot get too angry or aggressive--something the GOP is fully prepared to exploit--using their white woman as a human shield.  It would also tarnish his "brand". The big 527's are slow to get off the ground, and ads with the name Moveon or Planned Parenthood associated with them may do more harm than good.

So I have a question for the blogosphere: How can small groups of individuals produce and finance their own 527-type advertising in swing districts ?  I'm not talking about primetime television ads in a metropolitan market.  I'm about talking radio, newspaper, classifieds, and paid web ads. And yes, maybe in some cases, harnessing the best of youtube creativity and putting it on the airwaves.  What are the legal requirements?  What are the districts to focus on?  How do you coordinate, without coordinating through the Obama campaign?

Is anyone with me?  Or are we going to wait helplessly for Obama to save us from above and then criticize him when we discover he really meant it when he said, "This election is not about me.  It's about you."