Loose Ends... Vol. IX

This has been quite a week. We are still down a computer here at the Wittlief household and battled colds all week. So, it's been a slow week for posting. But, it was a busy week on Wall Street! I will continue with my discussions on Fannie and Freddie, but not tonight as I want to be sure to give the subject the attention it deserves. That aside, we touch on a few other subjects...

This week, we had the first in a series of three debates for the race for Governor of Indiana. The debate saw incumbent Mitch Daniels (R) face off against Jill Long Thompson (D) and Andy Horning (L). I will cover this race in more detail before the election, but this was a nice introduction to the candidates. There are two other candidates who are official write-in candidates (both independents): Timothy Lee Frye, for whom I cannot find a webpage, and Christopher Stried, who is not constitutionally eligible at the age of twenty-one.

In the debate, I thought Mitch Daniels represented his case very well by sticking to facts and accomplishments of his administration. He acknowledged areas which needed improvement and roughly outlined some plans towards those subjects - specifically, education and the economy. Jill Long Thompson spent the entire night attacking Daniels and offered no concrete ideas or solutions. She stuck to her attacks and political rhetoric such as "I'll fix the economy", "I'll fix health care", etc. All of this was offered with no specifics. Horning stuck to a classic Libertarian playbook. I thought he was the most entertaining speaker by mixing in a bit of humor. His message was basically that "politicians are bad" and the government should "leave you alone." I can buy that. As I said before, we'll dive deeper into this race and provide an endorsement before November 4.

On the national scene, Wall Street was down, down some more, up again, and then back to where it started earlier in the week. In the midst of the roller coaster ride, Lehman Brothers, one of the oldest investment banks in the U.S. went bankrupt, billions of dollars were injected into the global economy by the world's major central banks, and the world's largest insurance company, AIG, was saved by the U.S. Government as it teetered on the edge of collapse. We have become quite the little socialist country this week. This whole subject will get more treatment over the coming weeks and months here on this blog. U.S. CFO Paulson is busy working up his plan to push through Congress this weekend. We'll follow that too.