Looking through old e-mails, I read an article from the FT in 2006 that surfaced claiming that HBOS (Halifax Bank of Scotland)were poised and ready to go offer loans for 125% of value. That’s right, HBOS thought it a good idea to cover 95% of the house price and loan another 30% over appraised value unsecured as a personal loan.

Now that the UK has joined the housing bust, one must ask where are the massive writedowns that have to be sitting on HBOS’ books? Why aren’t they looking to do another rights issue like RBS? I fully expect some pretty horrific things coming from HBOS as the housing crisis heats up in Britain.

What if Hillary wins? Well, she’ll have some scores to settle, according to Eleanor Clift. Think John Kerry, Bill Richardson.
Read more here.

Watch the video.

George McGovern spoke to Sam Stein at the Huffington Post about this year’s Democratic nomination race and its similarities to the 1972 race. Rather than describe what he said, I’ll provide a link and you can read it for yourself. See story here.

2008 is a year in which the Democrats should be able to win a Presidential election with one hand tied behind their backs. There is a stalled economy, a housing crisis, an unpopular war and an even more unpopular Republican President. All this speaks to a Democratic landslide come November. Yet, they seem [...]

I have been feeling like Obama had this thing sewn up for weeks. Elizabeth Drew confirms my reasons as to why only suicidal maniacs would try to nominate Hillary Clinton this summer. Read her article here.
(a) Hillary Rodham Clinton is such a polarizing figure that everyone who ever considered voting Republican in November, [...]

The city and police force that Giuliani built has done it again. They’ve acquitted the shooters of another unarmed black man. Looking to outdo the travesty from 1999 against Amadou Diallo when 41 shots were fired, the police fired 50 shots at the unarmed man, Sean Bell and his companions, who were at Bell’s [...]

A friend in Washington, D.C. just sent me a New York Times article from April 1992 entitled, “THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: The Front-Runner; Like Voters, Superdelegates Have Doubts About Clinton.” This article is about doubts over Bill Clinton as he became the front-runner that year.
You could replace Bill Clinton’s name with Barack Obama’s and 1992 [...]

I just caught an interesting analysis by Matthew Yglesias over at the Atlantic Monthly. His analysis suggests that we are hugely misreading the class issue in voting patterns by confusing class and race. His point is simple: if you take ALL voters who made less than $50,000, John Kerry won that group [...]

There was heavy overbuilding in Spain as the global housing bubble caught fir there these past years. Now, Spain’s bubble has burst and it is having dire economic consequences. The Spanish National Statistics Office released the most recent unemployment figures showing an enormous jump from 8.6% to 9.6% in one month, the largest [...]