Indeed. Fungibility is the point of money in the first place!

How about Jerrold Nadler? Or Carolyn Maloney? I'd mention Nita Lowey also, but she apparently has made it clear she wouldn't want to give up her seniority in the House to move to the Senate.

I have no problem with either Kennedy or Cuomo running for the seat in 2010, and if the voters select them, that's fine. But I don't think either should be appointed - doing so would add an advantage of incumbency to their strong name recognition brands.

This dates me pretty darned well: I'm old enough to have watched the '70s version when it first aired, and young enough to have thought it was cool!

Well, depending on the spread and the reset index, a variable rate loan may be less expensive than a fixed rate loan. In an idealized theoretical market, it should be: if you're bearing nominal interest rate risk, you should be compensated, so one might expect a floating rate loan to be cheaper.

When I bought my house over a decade ago, however, it was only initial teaser rates that made the loan seem less expensive. The reset index plus margin was above what I could get a comparable fixed rate loan at, so I chose a fixed rate loan. But had the pricing been lower, I might well have chosen a floating rate loan.

I think the bigger issue is that lots of people enter floating rate loans with the assumption that they'll pay off the balance before the rate actually floats, so they expect they'll only pay the teaser rate. But if they later can't refinance or sell their home, they could in theory be stuck in a more expensive loan.

I recall that the margin of an ARM is typically 2.75% above its index. The average 1 year treasury yield is a common mortgage index, so if your ARM is resetting at 2.75% above the 1 year treasury, then a reset now likely lowers your rate, because t-bills are yielding almost nothing right now. So actually, right now ARM loans themselves aren't likely to be a problem, because the ARM indices are at quite low levels. Loans resetting now may rise a bit above a teaser rate, but they're likely to reset lower than comparable fixed rate loans right now.

Seriously, I like the concept of increasing public spending on, well, public common goods: parks, schools, mass-transit infrastructure.

In an idealized cashless society, where all money is digital and must be kept in some form of financial institution, then I suppose negative nominal rates might be possible. At least imagining such a world might make a decent premise for a novel.

And I'd never say negative nominal rates are utterly impossible: 3 month T-bills traded briefly at a tiny negative yield last week. But that's anomalous, and only is remotely rational in a world where return of capital is far more highly valued than return on capital.

I would think a senior member of New York's congressional delegation would be a better choice. And if Kennedy chooses to run later, the voters can decide whether they want her to represent them. But she shouldn't simply be handed a seat.

Yes, this is a huge assumption. Prof. DeLong's four factors can be further reduced to two: inflation expectations and an all-encompassing risk premium. You rightly note that inflation has generally been above 2%.

But the risk premium of 2% also strikes me as rather low, especially as the economy is sliding into recession. Default risk should be rising - people who are laid off have trouble making mortgage payments. Comparing the price-to-rent ratio suggests that real estate prices may have further to fall even now, suggesting another vector for default risk. And don't forget that markets which overshoot on the upside can easily over-correct on the way down.

Prof. DeLong argued default risk should be small "in a well-run housing market", which begs the question of whether the housing market is yet well-run, or has been within the past half-decade. Let's just say I'd be reluctant to make too many mortgage loans at 4% right now.

FWIW, while I wouldn't be particularly thrilled by Andrew Cuomo being picked, either, at least he's held elective political office.

I agree that it would be better for her to actually run for office if she wants it. She'll still have the name recognition (and likely fundraising) advantage, but at least she would have to convince the voters.

It's an interesting parallel of calling her campaign "too big to fail", but unlike Wall Street firms, or the automakers, where once the government decides on a bailout, it simply happens, Obama can't appropriate funds to retire Clinton's campaign debt. All he can do is ask his supporters, which he's deputized Joe Biden to do.

Those of us who donated to Obama can still choose not to donate to Clinton, either because we lack the funds, or we lack the desire to pay off her campaign debt.

The value of Obama's fundraising list is likely overrated right now by political consultants. Sure, he has "direct contact" with millions of voters, but having their e-mail address doesn't mean you control their minds.

Undoubtedly the appeal will convince some supporters to send money to Clinton who otherwise might not have, but that's still ultimately the decision of those who donate.

How effective have the Obama appeals been? I quickly tried to find data on the size of her campaign debt, and I saw a recent AP story saying she still owes about $7.5 million to creditors. This doesn't say whether there's additional funds the campaign owes to herself. From May, I saw totals of about $10 million in unpaid bills *plus* about another $10 million she'd loaned to her campaign, with some stories citing total debt as high as $30 million. If the recent figure of $7.5 million is all that's left, then Obama's appeals during the campaign (and Hillary's continued fundraising) have made significant progress already. If instead she's written off the $10 million loan she made to her campaign (which she publicly said she'd do), that suggests Obama's previous requests didn't have that much effect.

I'd decompose this into two different discussions.
1. Is this issue an appropriate use of Obama's political capital?
2. Is a college football playoff a good thing?

For point 1, I think so long as Obama's involvement doesn't go beyond the jawboning he's done so far (and recall that the 60 minutes quote you use is in response to a question from Steve Kroft), I have no problem with it. It's said a little tongue-in-cheek, with mock seriousness, like the deliberations over picking the Presidential Puppy. It projects an image of Obama as a regular guy, and, as you note, helps humanize him to a part of the electorate Democrats have historically had problems with. I think it's smart politics, so long as he doesn't spend any serious time or energy on it. So far, so good, IMO, but if he appoints a commission or does more overt lobbying, he's gone too far.

On the second point, I'm one of those who thinks college athletics (or at least football and men's basketball) is de facto a professional sports business, so I do think players should be paid by the NCAA. The system serves high profile coaches and schools that want the publicity of a successful athletic program, but it doesn't necessarily help athletes as much. So I'd say they should give up the pretenses, and at least pay the players some of the money the sports generate.

I don't think a playoff makes matters any worse for the athletes' academic lives, but it may indeed be a benefit for the fans. And, if it proves to generate more revenue, perhaps some of that will trickle down in ways to help the athletes, although I'm skeptical on that last point.

The NCAA is primarily designed to serve the schools and coaches, not the interests of the athletes. Note how students are "bound" by "letters of intent", or how they need to sit out a season if they transfer (unless they can get a special waiver approved, which is largely a function of how good your political connections are with the NCAA). If an athlete signs to go to Gargantuan State U. to play for Coach Legend, but then Coach Legend leaves to go to the NFL or some other school, the kid is still committed to attend Gargantuan State.

But this "commitment" isn't reciprocal: scholarships aren't guaranteed, they're dependent on the student staying in the good graces of the coach, and also on their continuing to compete. A coworker of mine won a track scholarship to a Division I school, but was threatened by his coach with losing his scholarship if he didn't compete in all three seasons (cross country, indoors, and outdoors). As he was struggling academically and athletically with the pressure, he finally decided to give up the scholarship and transfer to a local, less expensive school. His experience underscored the fact that when you accept that scholarship, you're an athlete first, and a student second.

Athletics is overly important in this country, especially in colleges. People miss classes or other activities all the time because they have a game, but, as my high school choir director once quipped, when was the last time you heard of a student athlete missing a game because they had a concert? Henry Reich, a senior on Division III Grinnell's cross country team, passed up a final Rhodes Scholarship interview (giving up any chance of winning) to run with his team at the NCAA national meet this past weekend.

So while I'm sympathetic with your hopes that colleges should do more to help the athletes succeed in the classroom, Fly, I'm too cynical to expect much to happen. The NCAA will eventually move towards a playoff, because the money will be irresistible. And I honestly don't think it will detract more from players' academic lives than college football already does, so the main downside is that it will be another sign of the increasing importance of sports in our society and culture. That's not a good signal, I agree, but it's probably inevitable. So getting out in front of this wave, like Obama did, is smart politics.

Point of correction - Obama advocated an 8 team playoff, not 8 games. This would require the two finalists to play 3 games, instead of the one bowl game they play now.

It is certainly possible to fit that in without adversely affecting class time, any more than bowl-bound teams in major programs already do. There's plenty of time in mid-December when teams currently are practicing when they can fit in an extra game.

As a larger point, the NCAA is this weird quasi-professional sports organization. The fact remains that at too many programs, lots of players are athletes first, students second (or third, or barely at all). The damage to athletes' academics is the large time commitment already required for the whole season. Tacking in an extra game or two, when you'd otherwise be preparing for the Gargantuan Fruit Bowl, wouldn't change things much. So while I'm sympathetic to your point about not over-emphasizing athletics, IMO that's already a sunk cost. So let the fans enjoy a playoff.

In some quarters, "hackish" is a compliment!

CT, I think you're undervaluing the effort and its successes. Sure, the NASA budget dropped after we reached to the moon. But that was the goal Kennedy quite publicly set, and we did reach it, with a huge boost for national pride and quite a bit of interesting technological advances along the way.

I actually agree with your larger point, that JFK was far more sizzle than steak. And indeed you could also have mentioned the Bay of Pigs fiasco, escalation of U.S. presence in Vietnam, and the recklessness of playing nuclear chicken with Kruschev during the Cuban missile crisis as other questionable decisions of his presidency.

But I do give him props for challenging us to go to the Moon, which is quite a significant achievement.

That Lieberman is saying he owes keeping his gavel to Obama's personal intervention is significant, too: he realizes that he owes his continued chairmanship to Obama. Obama looks magnanimous, and he also has an oversight chairman that owes him a significant debt.

By having this play out now, instead of after settling of the Minnesota, Alaska, and Georgia senate races, this also locks up another caucus vote which has some small chance to get to 60.

The dates are often near the end of the term, but not always: Clinton's number is from September 1994 (after the scuttling of Hillary Care, and shortly before the GOP took congress running on the "Contract with America"); Reagan's number is from January 1983, near the end of the recession during his first term; also both Johnson and Ford list multiple months.

Also note that approval plus disapproval usually add up to less than 100 in a poll taken at the same time. That is, lack of disapproval doesn't necessarily imply approval.

How does allowing Adam and Steve (or Adele and Eve) weaken marriage? If they're in a loving, committed relationship, why shouldn't they be able to seek the same state recognition that a heterosexual couple can?

"Starter" marriages, or drunken on-the-spot weddings weaken respect for the institution, but I fail to see how same-sex marriage weakens anything about traditional marriage. 40 years ago some states outlawed interracial marriage, too.

My best guess as to why some heterosexuals feel threatened by gay marriage is that some of them are latently closeted. Who knows - maybe if gay marriage were legal, Larry Craig might never have gotten married to a woman, let alone been busted for tap-dancing in that infamous men's room...