[New York, October 7. Image via Bauer-Griffin]

[New York, September 30. Image via INF]

[New York, September 14. Image via Getty]

A woman holds a placard outside Federal Hall in New York, NY, as US President Barack Obama delivers a major speech on the finacial crisis September 14, 2009. Obama on Monday warned Wall Street it must not return to the 'reckless behavior' and 'unchecked excess' which he blamed for unleashing the global financial crisis. The president, in a major economic speech at the heart of the mighty US financial system just blocks from the New York Stock Exchange, laid out a wide ranging prescription for rebuilding the US finance system. He said the crisis was a 'collective failure' of Washington, Wall Street and across America, vowed to press G20 powers for action on regulatory reform, and cautioned top executives not to squander public trust with huge bonuses. AFP PHOTO/Jim WATSON (Photo credit should read JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)

• Now that it's been a full year of shitty economic news, we are officially in a recession and have been for a year. Aren't you glad to know? [MSNBC]
• The market is not glad to know, and it slid almost 700 points after learning the obvious. [NY Times]
• In other obvious news, Condoleezza Rice doesn't plan to give much advice to Hillary Clinton. What advice she does give, we're guessing Clinton doesn't plan on following. [MSNBC]
• Bill Clinton is pretty happy about Hillary's nomination, though. [Real Clear Politics]

• White people at CNN just don't know 'bout Susan Rice, our soon-to-be Ambassador to the UN. [Think Progress]
• Joe Biden gave his first post-election speech today, so people wouldn't forget that he's about to be VP. [Politico]
• Palin talked, too, at a rally for Saxby Chambliss, so people wouldn't forget that she wanted to be VP before she wanted to be President. [Politico]
• Saxby Chambliss pervily grabbed himself some incestuous tween side-boob in a new commercial. [Indecision 2008]
• The Department of Homeland Security is more fucked up than watching Saxby Chambliss feel his tween granddaughter's breast. [Boston Globe]
• LGBT rights organization Impact-Florida plans to protest Governor Charlie Crist's (fey, if not gay) marriage this weekend, because protesting breeder weddings is a good plan to get more voters on your side. [The Sun Coast News]
• The cherub-faced Chairman of the FCC, Kevin Martin, wants to force the winner of a new wireless auction to set aside a portion of its win for free, porn-free wifi. Apparently, Republicans are all into not regulating the market until it comes to porn, when they get are regulatory up in there. [Silicon Alley Insider]
• Former Clintonista Phil Singer thinks Chris Matthews should get off the air if he's going to start campaigning for Arlen Specter's Senate seat. [Politico]
• Tina Brown thinks Rachel Maddow should get the coveted Meet The Press chair, among other, non-boring people. [Daily Beast]
• With Hillary Clinton's imminent resignation from her Senate seat, two names keep popping up: New York Attorney General Andrew "Shucking And Jiving Is Not A Racist Term, I Swear" Cuomo and Bill Clinton. And you thought nothing could get you to vote for Bill again. [The Hill, CNN]

• P.U.M.A. hunter Katie Halper put together a campaign commercial for John McCain so that his female supporters all understand what they're voting for — including unequal pay, a lack of reproductive choice and half-assed health insurance coverage. Politics starts at home, ladies. [Katie Halper]
• Actual McCain staffers and Sarah Palin are trying to convince John McCain to open up Wright debate again because — as Sarah said yesterday — they've got nothing to lose. McCain, however, still likes his dignity some, so they're sneaking around behind his back to find other people to fund it. [Politico, CBS]
• Yes, of course, Obama is totally prepped to talk about Ayers tonight. He's probably prepped to talk about Wright, too, if it comes to that. [Chicago Tribune]
• McCain's been prepping, too, if this leaked debate prep video is anything to go by. Join in on my liveblog (thread starts at 7:30 ET, I start blogging at 9:00 ET) to see if he takes any of their advice! [The Jed Report]

• Wonder Woman Linda Carter thinks Sarah Palin is the anti-Wonder Woman, calling her "judgmental and dictatorial" and suggesting that Hillary Clinton is more the W.W. archetype. Go Linda Carter! [The Hill]
• Apparently, since Colin Powell is now a confirmed African-American, having announced it at a rally in Africa, Fox News is ready to guarantee that he's going to endorse Obama. There's nothing racist about that, though, nope, not at all. Don't you know all black people do everything together? [Washington Independent]
• Kansas Senator Pat Robert's Democratic opponent, Jim Slattery, has a new ad that makes it look like Wall Street is pissing on us little people. That's kind of what it feels like some days. [Attackerman]
• With another stock sell-off on Wall Street, today was one of those days. [NY Times]

• Michelle Obama is so endearingly naive. Today, she told her audience "People shouldn't make a decision this time based on, 'I like that guy' or 'she's cute.' And I'm talking about me." Michelle, at this point, let's just do whatever it takes to get your husband elected, okay? [Huffington Post]
• Especially since voting machines in 10 swing states are still fucked up. [CNN]
• And because John McCain is standing behind his remarks about not meeting with the democratically-elected Prime Minister of Spain unless he determines that fucking Spain is sufficiently committed to human rights and democracy. Which country is torturing people again? That's us, right? [Politico]
• While we're at it, someone probably ought to tell Sarah Palin that mocking Joe Biden's age isn't a good idea when your running mate is Methuselah, let alone when you get it wrong. [USA Today]

• The stock market regained almost all the value it lost yesterday, once again proving that financial "experts" are about as expert at finance as monkeys are with Shakespeare. [Washington Post]
• The Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations finally got around to noticing that putting Sarah Palin on the dais was probably not good for their anti-Iran rally once Democrats started dropping like flies, so they dis-invited everyone. Should be a fun rally now! [Politico]
• There are six Barack Obamas running for office in Brazil because Brazil allows people to pick any name to run under. There are no John McCains. No way, no how, not now, not McCain. [The Guardian]
• George "Macaca" Allen, still surprised that being a racist in Virginia actually doesn't get you elected sometimes, will be headlining a racial unity rally in Fairfax. And it's actually not a Klan rally, it's supposed to encourage people of color to vote Republican. That'll work. [Think Progress]

• The Dow lost about another 450 points today even though the federal government has decided to buy out (read: nationalize) anything they need to to keep out economy from collapsing. [Washington Post]
• Speaking of, Morgan Stanley might merge with Wachovia, which would make Goldman Sachs the only remaining stand-alone investment bank in the United States. Seriously. [NY Times]
• But it's all going to be okay because the Bush Administration might use the end of its term in office to create a whole new agency dedicated to buying up all the bad debt and defunct financial institutions that its policies created in the last 7.5 years. Hey, did I mention the word "nationalization" already? Good. [NY Times]
• Hey, look! Something shiny! Don't watch the end of capitalism! Lori Drew is moving her family to an undisclosed location. [St. Charles Journal]

• Hillary Clinton canceled an appearance at an anti-Iran rally because the organizers thought it would be a supercoolfun idea to put her on the dais with Sarah Palin less than two months before the election and didn't think it necessary to inform her. Um, obviously. [Associated Press]
• The polls show McCain and Obama pretty damn tight in too damn many battleground states. [Marc Ambinder]
• Known elitist Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild and former major Democratic figure says all kinds of unbelievable crap about why she's now supporting McCain, but the funniest part is when she says it's about voter disenfranchisement and didn't know that the Republicans are actively seeking to disenfranchise legal voters in the general election to help he new best buddy. Ok, here's a woman you can hate on. Please, enjoy. [Huffington Post]
• McCain and Palin will be doing their deathly tango on Larry King tonight (and feel free to use this as an open thread if you're not watching Project Runway), but before that Swampland's Ana Marie Cox and I will be liveblogging her own torture: sitting through a McCain townhall meeting. Join us back here at 7! [Think Progress]

Like rampant fiscal irresponsibility to the greenback! Which leads me to a stupid but maybe-accurate metaphor that brings into account Maria Bartriomo's opinions on tax policy. Maria Bartiromo argues that people who make $200,000 shouldn't be necessarily described as "rich." This is because she lives in New York, but also because she must abide by the paradox that dictates that successful females invest not only colossal sums of money but roughly two hours extra daily simply to avoid the appearance of being "devalued." Of course, that investment, which is not optional, carries with it not only tremendous opportunity cost, which is devaluing in its own way, but the additional degradation of scrutiny and/or mockery re the process itself (Callan's heels, Bartiromo's Botox) and the additional nuisances of the Boy's Club, sexual harassment etc. It almost makes you want to just have kids and freelance and endure the contempt of people like Linda Hirshman, which is all fine and good, but after all that you're still stuck getting your period. So basically you're screwed either way and no wonder we are all programmed to be somewhat lesbian.

Callan, Gregory Out At Lehman [WSJ]
Becky Quick Teaches You How To "Dress Like A Financier" [Dealbreaker]

• For some inexplicable reason publishers seem to think Michelle Obama could write a bestseller. Perhaps it was that college thesis? The admirable physique? Just hard up for cash in a challenging credit environment? [Observer]
  
• McCain: the "first real postmodernist candidate for the presidency." ? [NYT]
  
• Why would you assume our passports were made in U.S. America? [Washington Times]
  
• Sigh of relief for society! Jamie Lynn Spears is engaged. [US]
  
• Boycotting the Olympics: actually a pretty powerful condemnation of repression, when you think about it. Oh, well. [Slate]
  
• Some guy made up a story about how Diddy knew about Tupac's assassination plot and the LA Times totally bought it but the source turned out to be a "wildly impulsive, overweight white kid from Florida whose own father once described him in a letter to a federal judge as 'a disturbed young man who needed attention like a drug.'" [TheSmokingGun]

• I am fucking sick of all these polls saying 28% of Hillary supporters would vote for McCain if Obama is the Democratic nominee and 19% of Obama supporters feel the same way, especially when the national matchup polls prove they are talking out of their asses. [Gallup
• Wait, let's broaden that statement: I am fucking sick of all of it. And: what he said. [Politico]
• Also, what Nancy said too. I think. [CNN]
• Foreclosure bus tour! [Breitbart]
• Wall Street losses from the collapse of the subprime mortgage market may amount to $460 billion, which is half a trillion dollars. (Wow, Moe, way to put shit into context there.) [Bloomberg]
• Jezebel in the news: our very own commenter RyanB writes about being a tragic mulatto like Barry and how she's — scandale! — still registered to vote in Pennsylvania. If you ask me, the real tragedy is that there are no jobs in Philly.
• The Hills premiere was the highest rated thing on cable all year, which isn't really saying much, although it's saying something, and whatever that is is sufficient to depress me. [US]

MOE: Hey hi what's up shit is pretty fucked huh.
MEGAN: It makes me a little glad I never leave my house. Hooray for blogoraphobia.
MOE: Okay, first things first: there are violent protests in Tibet, and China has to quell them in a way that doesn't make Stephen Spielberg look good, and now the protests have spread to other provinces.
Tibet has long been a pretty sweet separatist province to have, what with the exiled leader advocating nonviolence and spending most of his time with Beastie Boys etc. etc.
MEGAN: And getting to meet practically every head of state in the world, albeit unofficially...
Except for, obviously, those countries in Africa rapidly becoming Chinese client states.
MOE: China has a whole other separatist province called Xinjiang and no one pays attention to those guys. Because they're angry Muslims. Hey Sudanese Islamofascists? How's about some CONSISTENCY??
MEGAN: Wait, didn't we care about that for like 2 seconds last week when Al Qaeda did a video of training there? I didn't realize that we'd forgotten to care about that.
MOE: Hey, look, a story about a recent thwarted hijacking attempt by a Uighur Al Qaeda girlbomber! I think the Chinese government thinks you should care again.
MEGAN: Oh, thanks nameless Chinese propagandists newswriters!
Anyway, so, how soon until they start beating monks in the streets and we issue some sort of vague milquetoast protest about it that in no way compares to our reaction to the monk beatings in Myanmar? Or did I blink and miss it?
MOE: Oooooh, think Laura Bush drop her cookie sheet again and get on the phone with Hu Jintao?
MEGAN: Maybe she could send him cookies? I'll bet some chocolate chip ones could go a long way toward repairing US-China relations
MOE: I
Yikes, that disappeared.
MOE: Okay yeah so, it's very tricky what is happening with Tibet, but either way, it led to an incredibly cerebral discussion of Bjork on the comments over the weekend, did you see? My father was impressed with Bjork's timing on that one, but perhaps if he knew Bjork's tears cure cancer (too bad she never cries) he wouldn't be so surprised. Interestingly, this week Taiwan is holding elections, and he's headed out there. Taiwan is interesting because, you know, they really have it best, as "splittist" provinces go. Elections, democracy, a decent standard of living, no painful shared history of, like, cannibalism or Cultural Revolution or any such thing. The pro-China Kuomintang party is supposed to win though.
MEGAN: Interesting. Wait, now, Taiwan's pro-China even though China considers them a rogue provice? Taiwanese politics are so hard to understand. Is it possible that China's financing the Kuomintang or something
MOE: hahahaha well China's financing the entire economy, sort of like ours. The thing is that the Kuomintang came from mainland China and fled to Taiwan, with numerous palace treasures and such, in 1949. There they found a happy population of ethnic Chinese who spoke another dialect and also, Japanese because the Japanese colonized it, and proceeded to pretty much subjugate them until the seventies, when a democracy movement began burgeoning and our relations with the mainland made it a lot easier for Jimmy Carter to pressure the Kuomintang to treat the "ethnic Taiwanese" better. Somewhere in there Chiang Kai-shek died, his much nicer son Chiang Chingguo took over, and a kind of slow, steady democratization took hold. The thing is that most Chinese, no matter what dialect they speak, are pretty pragmatic and rational and no one wants war with China, but while they have us around a lot of them also don't feel like taking shit from China. On the other hand, of course, Taiwanese control most of the factories in China. It's complicated.
MEGAN: [Awkward segue alert] As complicated at Dina Mattos McGreevey's sex life?
MOE: Hey, good call. That conversation was certainly venturing into prurient and meaningless territory so I'm glad we can now focus our attention on The McGreevey-driver threesomes. I think my favorite part is that they were described as "intense" "hard-core consensual sex orgies".That sounds so...cardio! It's a good thing too I guess if they all started with get-togethers at T.G.I.Fridays.
MEGAN: Like, taking a date to TGI Fridays is so Jersey and let us not pretend that it is not because it is. Also, their intense 3-way orgies (which, can an orgy really only involve 3 people?) always involved one of the guys jacking off while one of them fucked Dina.
But what's sort of really interesting to me is that in earlier publications, he's said not to have started working for McGreevey until 2000, which throws off his timeline I think, and that Dina's divorce lawyer wants financial records about financial records and correspondence with McGreevey's rich boyfriend. Also, apparently, they're due in court soon to litigate over the money McGreevey is hiding from Matos so that he doesn't have to pay as much in child support and alimony. Fucker. Like, aren't gay men supposed to be the good ones?
MOE: Um yeah they shared a room at the TRUMP PLAZA in Atlantic City. Here is what I have to say about that; okay, there is a hotel room shortage in Atlantic City, sure. But if if you are the governor you get the "casino" rate and that is seventy bucks. "It became almost laughable — I would never have my own hotel room," Pedersen said. Okay, so a few things: what does this mean about Silda Spitzer? How long has the New York Post been sitting on this story just waiting for everyone to remember that they once for a brief moment cared about Dina Matos McGreevey?
MEGAN: I'm personally hoping that Silda's sunning herself on a beach somewhere foreign and being served tropical alcoholic beverages by inappropriately young but attractive cabana boys.
And that she and Eliot didn't fuck around with 3rd parties because it's one thing imagining Gay McGreevey jerking off and another entirely grosser thing to have to picture Eliot Spitzer in a wide variety of sexual situations
Excuse my while I go wash my brain out with bleach. Maybe you could talk about the financial markets and i'll try to think of something to say that makes it sound like my summer interning for the Bank of New York wasn't a complete waste of time for everyone involved?
MOE: Okay, well, the government is going to have to print money to bail out the banks because they made the financial instruments so complicated no one has a fucking clue how much, if anything, they're worth, and everything is so interconnected that it could all collapse like in the Asian Financial Crisis unless the Fed steps in and offers a quarter trillion dollars to save it. Or something.
Here it is explained by someone named Dave Wilson who is on some email list that my ex-boyfriend is on.

There's currently a kind of cascade failure happening throughout the financial community, spurred
both by extraordinary levels of borrowed money that was used to speculate (it's like those mortgages that were issued for 110% of the value of the house, except that type of "investment" has, unbeknownst to most people, actually been taking place in pretty much every investment sphere you can think of); if those speculative investments go South, investors have to come up with lots of cash, fast, (this is known as a margin call) meaning they wind up selling everything they own to raise cash, which then depresses the value of the stuff the investors had to sell (as well as similar stuff owned by others) since suddenly there's a lack of scarcity combined with a suspicion on the part of would-be buyers that perhaps this stuff is being dumped for reasons other than a need for quick cash...

Last fall, the former Treasury secretary confessed to Fortune magazine that until the mortgage storms broke over his head in the summer of 2007, he was unfamiliar with the kinds of complex mortgage structures with which Citi's own balance sheet was packed. Almost certainly, the gulf between competence and compensation on Wall Street has never been wider.

"Why not set an example of Bear Stearns, the guys who have this record of dog-eat-dog, we're brass knuckles, we're tough?" asked William A. Fleckenstein, president of Fleckenstein Capital in Issaquah, Wash., and co-author with Fred Sheehan of "Greenspan's Bubbles: The Age of Ignorance at the Federal Reserve." "This is the perfect time to set an example, but they are not interested in setting an example. We are Bailout Nation."