No game changer at the debate plus more on the economy
Quick comment on tonight's debate: the title says it all. We went into the debate with John McCain needing a game changer to reverse his recent fall in the polls. It didn't happen. There were no knockouts tonight for either side. Unfortunately for the McCain campaign, they need one to get back into the race.
Update: I've obviously already decided my choice for President. What really counts in the debates is what undecided people think. Once again in the CBS post-debate poll of undecided voters, Obama won.
516 people were polled. 40% said Obama won. 26% said McCain won. 35% called it a draw. The other main takeaway from the poll is this: Seventy-two percent of uncommitted voters remained uncommitted after the debate. Fifteen percent committed to Obama, and 12 percent to McCain. I'd have to say that's within the margin of error, but remember that McCain is behind overall and this reinforces the view that he didn't make up any ground tonight. We'll see what the polls show in the coming days.
On a different note, I've a little self-correction for a comment I posted a couple entries down. The acronym I was looking for related to the economic crisis is CDS, not CDO. The term is Credit Default Swap, and it has a great deal to do with our current crisis as banks were leveraged to the hilt on CDSs, which are a form of insurance on mortgages. Millions of mortgages were given out by brokers who had no significant stake in whether or not those mortgages went bad. Banks issued and traded CDSs backing those mortgages. Home values went down. Far more mortgages started going bad than what issuers and buyers of CDSs anticipated, and we got a huge economic crisis.
Of course it's more complicated than just the CDSs. For one thing, deregulation caused banking sectors that were previously shielded from each other to be thoroughly intertwined. Both parties bear some responsibility for that deregulation. One key example is when Republicans in congress pushed for a bill that gutted the Glass-Stiegel Act, which was originally designed to prevent another S&L crisis. However, Clinton signed it into law after the Republican congress passed it. One of the main architects of the repeal was Phil Gramm, a key economic advisor in the McCain campaign.
Update: I've obviously already decided my choice for President. What really counts in the debates is what undecided people think. Once again in the CBS post-debate poll of undecided voters, Obama won.
516 people were polled. 40% said Obama won. 26% said McCain won. 35% called it a draw. The other main takeaway from the poll is this: Seventy-two percent of uncommitted voters remained uncommitted after the debate. Fifteen percent committed to Obama, and 12 percent to McCain. I'd have to say that's within the margin of error, but remember that McCain is behind overall and this reinforces the view that he didn't make up any ground tonight. We'll see what the polls show in the coming days.
On a different note, I've a little self-correction for a comment I posted a couple entries down. The acronym I was looking for related to the economic crisis is CDS, not CDO. The term is Credit Default Swap, and it has a great deal to do with our current crisis as banks were leveraged to the hilt on CDSs, which are a form of insurance on mortgages. Millions of mortgages were given out by brokers who had no significant stake in whether or not those mortgages went bad. Banks issued and traded CDSs backing those mortgages. Home values went down. Far more mortgages started going bad than what issuers and buyers of CDSs anticipated, and we got a huge economic crisis.
Of course it's more complicated than just the CDSs. For one thing, deregulation caused banking sectors that were previously shielded from each other to be thoroughly intertwined. Both parties bear some responsibility for that deregulation. One key example is when Republicans in congress pushed for a bill that gutted the Glass-Stiegel Act, which was originally designed to prevent another S&L crisis. However, Clinton signed it into law after the Republican congress passed it. One of the main architects of the repeal was Phil Gramm, a key economic advisor in the McCain campaign.
posted by Patrick at
10:54 PM
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