Oh, That Joe! (No. 29 in a Series) -- Obama & Biden's Three-Letter Word: J-O-B-S (Jake Tapper, October 15, 2008, Political Punch)
With the economy floundering, Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., told Ohio voters today that he and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., would focus on one specific issue that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has neglected."Look, John's last-minute economic plan does nothing to tackle the number one job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S," the Democratic veep nominee said at a morning rally in Athens.
McCain compares Obama’s tax plans to Hoover (Mike Sunnucks, 10/16/08, Phoenix Business Journal)
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that Sen. Obama wants to restrict trade and he wants to raise taxes. And the last president of the United States that tried that was Herbert Hoover, and we went from a deep recession into a depression,” McCain said the Hofstra University forum.That mirrors recent comments by Scottsdale economist Elliott Pollack. Hoover’s response to economic troubles in 1929 was to raise taxes because of large deficits and to impose tariffs on foreign goods to help boost American businesses, and those tariffs sparked trade wars that magnified the Great Depression, he said. [...]
Two new polls have the race tightening somewhat. A Rasmussen Reports poll shows Obama with a 50 percent to 46 percent lead over McCain.
A tracking poll by Investors Business Daily and the TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy & Politics gives Obama a 45 percent to 43 percent lead over McCain.
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'Gay gang drugged and infected us' (Agence France-Presse, 10/16/08)
HIV-positive men have told a Dutch court how a three-member gay gang tried to infect them with the AIDS virus at sex orgies.
"I feel fear, anger, sadness and anxiety," one of the alleged victims testified today before the district court in Groningen on the third day of the week-long trial."I have lost a lot of weight," lamented the student, who is infected with HIV.
The three accused, all HIV-positive, are charged with drugging gay men at sex orgies, raping them, and injecting them with blood contaminated with HIV.
Mocking the Jews (HAVIV RETTIG, 10/10/08, The Jerusalem Post)
If two recent initiatives from the Jewish Council for Education and Research are any indication, Obama's most ardent Jewish supporters may be one of the major causes for his relatively low popularity.These first of these initiatives is The Great Schlep, a project aimed at getting young Jewish Obama supporters to travel to Florida to convince their more conservative grandparents to vote for their candidate. In a video promoting the initiative, uncouth satirist Sarah Silverman urged the grandchildren of Florida retirees to make the trek.
The video has been discussed widely in major American newspapers, with reporters usually quoting Silverman's stock-in-trade surprise barbs, such as: "If Barak Obama doesn't become the next president of the United States, I'm gonna blame the Jews." The humor comes from the fact that the statement is clearly ridiculous.
Or is it?
Unlike the reporters, Silverman herself didn't stop there. Unreported in the media coverage are her next five sentences: "I am. And I know you're saying, like, 'Oh my god, Sarah, I can't believe you're saying this. Jews are the most liberal, scrappy, civil rights-y people there are.'
"Yes, that's true, but you're forgetting a whole large group of Jews that are not that way, and they go by several aliases: nana, papa, zaide, bubbie, plain old grandma and grandpa. These are the people who vote in Florida, and the Florida vote can make or break an election."
This is not "blaming the Jews," but it is blaming a certain kind of Jew. That equation - not all Jews are good Jews, and the bad apples could cost us the election - seems a strange way to try to convince those grandparents to vote for Obama. Even the name of the initiative, "The Great Schlep," is meant to mock more than convince.
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Just the Ticket (NY Times, 10/16/08)
Recall, for a moment, the latest monster traffic jam or hours wasted in airport purgatory. With each complaint, there should also come a question: Is there any way to take the train instead?Only six years ago, the answer would have been pretty much an automatic “no.” Amtrak managers were talking about a bankruptcy filing, and for two years the White House presented a federal budget with zero dollars for the struggling passenger system — a ploy that nearly killed the railroad.
Fortunately, attitudes have changed in Congress and the White House — and just in time. Congress passed a bill earlier this month that could nearly double Amtrak’s modest annual subsidy and would authorize more than $13 billion over the next five years for passenger rail. President Bush is expected to sign the bill, a moment of real progress that reflects the increasing popularity of the Amtrak option.
Oil Falls Near $70 a Barrel, 16-Month Low, Alarming OPEC (JAD MOUAWAD, October 16, 2008, NY Times)
Oil prices plummeted on Thursday, falling below $70 a barrel for the first time in 16 months, and prompting the OPEC cartel to call for an emergency meeting next week.The rapid decline in prices had alarmed petroleum executives and oil producers who are becoming increasingly nervous that it is undermining the stability of energy markets.
Obama takes big risk on driver's license issue (Carolyn Lochhead, January 28, 2008, SF Chronicle)
Sen. Barack Obama easily won the African American vote in South Carolina, but to woo California Latinos, where he is running 3-to-1 behind rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, he is taking a giant risk: spotlighting his support for the red-hot issue of granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.
It's a huge issue for Latinos, who want them. It's also a huge issue for the general electorate, which most vehemently does not. Obama's stand could come back to haunt him not only in a general election, but with other voters in California, where driver's licenses for illegal immigrants helped undo former Gov. Gray Davis. [...]
Democratic pollsters Stan Greenberg and James Carville issued a direct warning on the driver's license issue in an analysis last month designed to guide Democrats through the treacherous immigration quagmire.
"The findings about driver's licenses are particularly notable," they said. Two-thirds of surveyed voters oppose them, the pollsters found, and the safety argument fails to dent the widespread conviction that granting a driver's license rewards illegal behavior.
...Senator McCain speaks directly into the camera about how he'll reform immigration but how appalling the idea of licensing is.
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Gallup Daily (Frank Newport, 10/16/08, Gallup.com)
The "traditional" likely voter model, which Gallup has employed for past elections, factors in prior voting behavior as well as current voting intention. This has generally shown a closer contest, reflecting the fact that Republicans have typically been more likely to vote than Democrats in previous elections. Today's results show Obama with a two-point advantage over McCain using this likely voter model, 49% to 47%, this is within the poll's margin of error.
Fox to change World Series time for Obama: Presidential candidate's ad buy interfering with game (Paul J. Gough, Oct 15, 2008, Hollywood Reporter)
Barack Obama might have the power to move the World Series by a few minutes.To accommodate a half-hour Obama time buy on Fox on Oct. 29, Major League Baseball has agreed to move the start time of World Series Game 6 by about 15 minutes. That would move the start of the game from 8:20 p.m. ET or so to 8:35 p.m.
Neal Hefti, 85, Jazz and Hollywood Composer, Dies (BRUCE WEBER, 10/16/08, NY Times)
[H]is greatest sphere of influence was as an arranger and composer for other jazz artists. His early travels with jazz bands took him to New York, where he was mesmerized by the bebop playing of Dizzy Gillespie, and joined the Herman band — known as First Herd — in 1944. He was influential in moving that band from its swing roots in the direction of bebop.He spent only two years with the Herd; when he left in 1946, he took the singer Frances Wayne, his new wife, with him. But by then he had created new arrangements for Herman’s compositions like “Woodchopper’s Ball” and “Blowin’ Up a Storm,” and composed tunes like “Apple Honey,” “Wild Root” and “The Good Earth.”
He toured with Harry James and he arranged tunes for Buddy Rich. Though he also toured and recorded with his own bands, sometimes with his wife, he never achieved real success as a bandleader. For him, the decade of the 1950’s was characterized by his association with the Basie band, for which he wrote perhaps his best known jazz tunes, including “Splanky,” “Little Pony,” “Li’l Darlin’,.” whose tempo Basie famously slowed down to a luscious and sensual crawl, and the perky “Cute.”
“If it wasn’t for Neal Hefti, the Basie band wouldn’t sound as good as it does,” Miles Davis said in 1955. “But Neal’s band can’t play those same arrangements nearly as well.”
Starting in the 1960s, Mr. Hefti found great success writing television and film scores. In addition to writing the theme for “The Odd Couple” (1968), which would be burned into the memories of baby boomers with the creation of the television series in 1970, he composed the scores for two other Neil Simon films, “Barefoot in the Park” (1967) and “Last of the Red Hot Lovers” (1972). His other film work included “Duel at Diablo” (1966), a brutal Western; Elaine May’s farce “A New Leaf” (1971), and the gleeful sex comedies “Sex and the Single Girl” (1964), “Boeing Boeing” (1965) and “How to Murder Your Wife” (1965).
There was a politically incorrect strain to Mr. Hefti’s work, possibly tongue-in-cheek; for the 1965 biographical film “Harlow,” he and Bobby Troup wrote the bluesy, winkingly sexist tune, Girl Talk.” (For the same movie, Mr. Hefti wrote “Lonely Girl,” the Bobby Vinton hit.)
“He felt his true work was done for the movies and television,” Paul Hefti said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. What his father especially liked about writing for the screen, he said, was that he was not restricted by a band’s instrumentation, that he could write for whatever combo, for whatever musicians he wanted.
Oddly enough, his most famous tune is among his least musically interesting, even if it was somehow brilliantly apt: the jauntily arch and repetitive theme for the television series “Batman.” Mr. Hefti said that the show was so campy it took him weeks to come up with a suitable melody. It won him his only Grammy.
New Hampshire Voters Move Leftward (Conor Dougherty, 10/15/08, Wall Street Journal: Washington Wire)
As old voters move out and new voters move in, the Granite State is becoming increasingly Democratic, a change that could favor Sen. Barack Obama on Nov. 4th, according to an analysis of demographic and voter data by the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire.Behind New Hampshire’s leftward drift is one of the country’s most mobile populations. The southern part of the state has absorbed new, more affluent and Democratic-leaning residents from the Boston area. People from elsewhere in the U.S. have also settled in southern New Hampshire, as well as to the state’s centrally located recreation areas such as Lake Winnipesaukee.
Long-time New Hampshire residents, meantime, are moving out: Young people have left for work in other states, and retirees are heading south for warmer weather.
What this means is that the state’s voter base is radically different from eight years ago. According to the Carsey Institute report, about one-third of New Hampshire voters either didn’t live in the state eight years ago, or weren’t old enough to vote.
Obama Hasn't Closed the Sale: Both candidates continue to tinker with their strategies. (KARL ROVE, 10/16/08, Wall Street Journal)
Barack Obama holds a 7.3% lead in the Real Clear Politics average of all polls, but the latest Gallup tracking poll reveals that there are nearly twice as many undecided voters this year than there were in the last presidential election. The Investor's Business Daily/TIPP poll (which was closest to the mark in predicting the 2004 outcome -- 0.4% off the actual result) now says this is a three-point race.This week also brought a reminder that Sen. Obama hasn't closed the sale. The Washington Post/ABC poll found 45% of voters still don't think he's qualified to be president, about the same number who doubted his qualifications in March.
This is seven points more than George W. Bush's highest reading in 2000 and the worst since Michael Dukakis's 56% unqualified rating in 1988.
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Intensity may help the Republican (Peter S. Canellos, October 16, 2008, Boston Globe)
The difference in the senators' temperatures - a combination of long-evident personality differences and McCain's increasing sense of urgency about Obama's growing lead in the polls - probably struck different voters in different ways.But McCain's very intensity may have at least prompted some voters to take a second look at Obama and his policies.
"McCain came out swinging," said Wayne Lesperance, political scientist at New England College in Henniker, N.H. "Barack Obama was very cognizant of his lead and very cautious. It was reminiscent of the last round of a fight where a boxer is just trying not to be hit. If you score it on points, McCain won, but not by nearly enough to overcome Obama's lead."
MORE:
Debate exclusive: Obama wins by a hair (ALEXANDER BURNS, 10/15/08, Politico)
Forty-nine percent of respondents said that Obama won the debate, compared to 46 who believed his opponent, Sen. John McCain, came out on top. The three-point gap separating the two candidates was equal to the poll’s margin of error.Five percent said they were unsure which candidate had the better evening.
Perhaps the best news for McCain is the rating he received from independent voters. Among respondents not identified with either major political party, McCain was judged tonight’s winner, 51-42 percent.
It was a tense debate in which McCain, behind in the polls and with less than three weeks before Election Day, tried to find some way to halt Obama's momentum. He did well, but it wasn't good enough. Obama was calm, in control, and won the debate.McCain has been portraying himself as a fighter in recent days, and he came to the debate spoiling for one. From his first mention of Joe the Plumber, he went after Obama's plan to redistribute wealth through the tax code, and pressed his charge that he would press hidden fines on small-business owners who didn't sign up for health insurance. He talked about Obama's connections to unrepentant terrorist William Ayers and ACORN. He ineffectively shorthanded his own policy ideas, but McCain was nevertheless able to fully articulate Obama's votes on abortion as a state legislator in Illinois. Even the arrows in the eagle above both candidates were pointed at Obama.
Vote for Barack ObamaMcCain had some strong moments, such as when he distanced himself from President Bush and when he stood up for the majority of his supporters at his rallies. But his attacks came like out of a Gatling gun. He wasn't particularly mean, but his approach had a scattered feel to it. None of the many shots felt like they did any real damage. At times he was downright snippy, needling Obama about his lack of travel in the southern hemisphere and rolling his eyes at an Obama answer.
McCain raised the exchange several times, and after Obama’s suggestion that only wealthy business owners would pay higher taxes McCain looked into the camera and declared: “Hey Joe, you’re rich!”Judging from his facial expressions, Obama had been expecting that McCain might make use of the exchange from Toledo. It’s hard to know what viewers made of it, but Obama’s look of bemusement, if that’s what it was, could easily be mistaken for an arrogant smirk. Either way, it’s probably not the kind of look you want voters to see as your opponent makes a serious (and effective) point about your tax policies.
More important for McCain, all of this discussion about Joe the Plumber at the debate ensures that the original Obama-Joe exchange will be in news stories tomorrow. As McCain adviser Matt McDonald put it in the spin room, it’s a moment that will last well beyond Wednesday night.
McCain seemed sharper than he had been in the first two debates, often picking up on something Obama had said and quickly turning it against him. So when Obama noted that he’d consider further offshore oil exploration, McCain pounced. “I admire his eloquence, but you really have to listen carefully,” McCain declared. “He said he’d ‘look at’ offshore drilling. Look at.”
It wasn’t just that McCain had many good moments; Obama had several bad ones. Bob Schieffer asked the candidates which programs they would scrap given the hard economic realities facing the country. Although it’s a question that has been asked in previous debates, Obama gave the same worthless answer he has given before: “Programs that don’t work we should cut. Programs we need we should make better.” It was the debate equivalent of voting present.
Obama contradicted himself on the magnitude of the current economic problems, at one point saying that “the fundamentals of the economy were weak even before this crisis” and later downplaying the “immediate” economic issues and arguing that energy independence “is the most important issue that our economy is going to face.”
And did I hear Obama say that the right to privacy is found in the Constitution in much the same way as the First Amendment? I would guess that even most of those who buy the “privacy” argument would concede that a “right to privacy” is not in the Constitution in the same way as the Bill of Rights.
This time, John McCain kept Barack Obama on the defensive.The feisty Republican tried hard to find a lifeline Wednesday night, challenging his Democratic rival at every turn over his truthfulness, associations and record.
By that measure, McCain won the last debate of the 2008 campaign.
Consumer prices flat in September (Associated Press, October 16, 2008)
Stripping out energy and food products, "core" prices inched up by just 0.1 percent in September, an improvement from a 0.2 percent advance in August.The latest showing on inflation was better than economists expected. They were forecasting a 0.1 percent increase in overall prices and a 0.2 percent rise minus energy and food.
Searching for the Antidote to Ahmadinejad : In Tehran, reformers and conservatives are preparing to fight for the Iranian presidency in 2009. The opposition is pinning its hopes, once again, on former President Mohammad Khatami. But will he run? (Dieter Bednarz, 10/16/08, Der Spiegel)
The religious scholar will need backing, including backing from within the highest circles, if he is to submit to the wishes of his many supporters and run for president, once again, in elections next June. Although elections in the Iranian theocracy have never been clean by democratic standards, political observers in Tehran fear that "the next election campaign will be dirtier than all others." Khatami's successor in the office, the zealot Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is determined to defend his power. For reformers and conservatives alike, the next election will be an all-or-nothing vote.One question Iranians have asked themselves is whether Khatami -- who left the presidency, by law, in 2005, after two consecutive terms -- can breathe new life into a more or less defunct reform movement, as his supporters hope. Or will the re-election of President Ahmadinejad isolate the country even further, thereby ruining the reputation of the conservatives once and for all, as critics within their own ranks fear?
When it comes to the upcoming election, the one certainty is that reformers and conservatives have both lost a great deal of support within the population. The conservatives are seen as braggarts who have failed to fulfill rosy promises of affluence, even for the poor. The reformers, on the other hand, whose rise to power began in 1997 with the landslide election victory of then-newcomer Khatami, are considered spin doctors whose promises have routinely foundered on vetoes by the arch-conservative Guardian Council, or religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Nevertheless, even a declared realist like Mohammed Atrianfar, 55, is confident that the reformers can regain their former popularity. Atrianfar, who wears a salt-and-pepper beard, is the editor-in-chief of the weekly political magazine Sharwand-e Emrus (Citizens of Today), one of Iran's relatively critical publications.
In the 2005 presidential campaign Atrianfar was an advisor to Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, supposedly the clear favorite in that election. After two previous terms in office, and a mandatory interim period required under Iran's constitution, Rafsanjani -- probably the country's richest man -- had decided to try for a third term. But many citizens unwilling to vote for an oligarch like Rafsanjani opted not to vote at all. Ahmadinejad was elected on a tide of right-wing populism.
This time around, Atrianfar believes it will be easy to mobilize students and the middle class to support Khatami. Hardly anyone questions his personal integrity.
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Gasoline Plentiful, Perspective Scarce (Gregg Easterbrook, 10/14/08, Tuesday Morning Quarterback: ESPN)
"Financial chaos is sweeping the world," a New York Times lead story said last week. I didn't notice any chaos in my part of the world -- every business was open, ATMs were working, goods and services were plentiful. There are economic problems to be sure. But chaos? Collapse? Next Depression? Please, media and political worlds, let's stop hyperventilating and show some perspective.What is going on is a financial panic, not an economic collapse. Financial panics are no fun, especially for anyone who needs to cash out an asset right now for retirement, college and so on. But financial panics occur cyclically and are not necessarily devastating. The most recent financial panic was 1987, when the stock market fell 23 percent in a single day. Pundits and politicians instantly began talking about another Depression, about the "end of Wall Street." The 1987 panic had zero lasting economic consequences -- no recession began, and in less than two years, stocks had recouped all losses. (See John Gordon's excellent 2004 book on the history of financial panics, "An Empire of Wealth.") Perhaps a recession will be triggered by the current financial panic, but it may not necessarily be severe.
President Bush
And the punch line is, we borrowed all the money from China! Oh man, that's hilarious!Politicians and pundits are competing to see who can act most panicked and use the most exaggerated claims about economic crisis -- yet the fundamentals of the U.S. economy are, in fact, strong. Productivity is high; innovation is high; the workforce is robust and well-educated; unemployment is troubling at 6.1 percent, but nothing compared to the recent past, such as 11.8 percent unemployment in 1992; there are no shortages of resources, energy or goods. Here, University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan shows that return on capital is historically high; high returns on capital are associated with strong economies. Some Americans have significant problems with mortgages, and credit availability for business could become an issue if the multiple bank-stabilizing plans in progress don't work. But the likelihood is they will work. When the 1987 panic hit, people were afraid the economy would collapse; it didn't. This panic is global, enlarging the risks. But there's a good chance things will turn out fine.
Why has a credit-market problem expanded into a panic? One reason is the media and political systems are now programmed for panic mode. Everything's a crisis! Crises, after all, keep people's eyes glued to cable news shows, so the media have an interest in proclaiming crises. Crises make Washington seem more important, and can be used to justify giveaways to favored constituent groups, so Washington influence-peddlers have an interest in proclaiming crises.
An example of the exaggerated crisis claim is the assertion that Americans "lost" $2 trillion from their pension savings in the past month, while equities "lost" $8 trillion in value. "Investors Lose $8.4 Trillion of Wealth" read a Wall Street Journal headline last week. This confuses a loss with a decline. Unless you cashed out stocks or a 401(k) in the past month, you haven't "lost" anything. Nor have most investors "lost" money, let alone $8.4 trillion -- crisis-mongering is now so deeply ingrained in the media that even Wall Street Journal headline writers have forgotten basic economics. People who because of financial need have no choice but to cash out stocks right now are really harmed. Anyone who simply holds his or her ground with stocks takes no loss and is likely, although of course not certain, to come out ahead in the end. During the housing price bubble of 2003 to 2006, many Americans became much better off on paper, but never actually sold their homes, so it was all paper gains. Right now many Americans holdings stocks or retirement plans are much worse off on paper, but will be fine so long as they don't panic and sell. One of the distressing things about last week's media cries of doomsday is that they surely caused some average people to sell stocks or 401(k)'s in panic, taking losses they might have avoided by simply doing nothing. The financial shout-shows on cable tend to advise people to buy when the market is rising, sell when the market is falling -- the worst possible advice, and last week it was amplified by panic.
We've also fallen into panic because we pay way too much attention to stock prices. Ronald Reagan said, "Never confuse the stock market with the economy." Almost everyone is now making exactly that mistake. The stock market is not a barometer of the economy; it is a barometer of what people think stocks are worth. These are entirely separate things. What people think stocks are worth now depends on their guess about what stocks will be worth in the future, which is unknowable. You can only guess, and thus optimism feeds optimism while pessimism feeds pessimism.
There is no way the American economy became 8 percent less valuable between breakfast and morning coffee break Friday, then became 3 percent more valuable at lunchtime (that is, improved by 11 percent), then became 3 percent less valuable by afternoon teatime (that is, declined by 6 percent) -- to cite the actual Dow Jones Industrials swings from Friday. And the economy sure did not become 11 percent more valuable Monday. Such swings reflect panic or herd psychology, not the underlying economy, which changes over months and years, not single days. For the past few weeks pundits and Washington and London policy-makers have been staring at stock tickers as if they provided minute-by-minute readouts of economic health, which they do not. It's embarrassing to see White House and administration officials seemingly so poorly schooled in economic theory they are obsessing over stock-price movements, which they cannot control and in the short term should not even care about.
Consider this. On Black Monday in 1987, the market fell 23 percent. If you had invested $100 in a Dow Jones Index fund the following day, it would be $460 now, a 275 percent increase adjusting for inflation. That's after the big slide of the past month, and still excellent. So don't panic, just hold your stocks. And if you'd invested $100 in real estate in 1987, it would be $240 today, a 30 percent increase adjusting for inflation. That's after the housing price bubble burst. A 30 percent real gain in 20 years isn't a great investment -- until you consider that you lived in the house or condo during this time. To purchase and live in a dwelling, then come out ahead when you sell, is everyone's dream. Not only do stocks remain a good buy, America on average is still coming out ahead on the housing dream. (This example uses the Case Shiller Index for the whole country; because housing markets are local, some homeowners have lost substantial ground while others enjoyed significant appreciation.)
Economic problems are likely to be with us for awhile, but also likely to be resolved -- the 1987 panic and the 1997 Asian currency collapse both were repaired more quickly than predicted, with much less harm than forecast. Want to worry? Worry about the fact that the United States is borrowing, mainly from foreign investors and China, the money being used to fix our banks. The worse the national debt becomes -- $11 trillion now, and increasing owing to Washington giveaways -- the more the economy will soften over the long term. It's long-term borrowing, not short-term Wall Street mood swings, that ought to worry us, because the point may be reached where we can no longer solve problems by borrowing our way out. TMQ's former Brookings Institution colleague Peter Orszag, now director of the Congressional Budget Office, was on "Newshour" last week talking about the panic. Orszag is a wicked-smart economist -- for instance, he is careful to say pension holdings have declined, not been lost like most pundits are saying, as if there were no difference between decline and loss! The below exchange occurred with host Jeffrey Brown. Remember these words:
PETER ORSZAG: One thing we need to remember is we're lucky that we have the maneuvering room now to issue lots of additional Treasury securities and intervene aggressively to address this crisis.
JEFFREY BROWN: Wait a minute. Explain that. Lucky in what sense?
PETER ORSZAG: That people are still willing to lend to us. If in 20 or 30 years we continue on the same path, with rising health-care costs and rising budget deficits, we would reach a point where we wouldn't have that ability.
Libor Loosens Up: Why You Should Care (Katy Marquardt, 1/15/08, US News)
Libor—the London interbank rate—is on the decline, thanks to the government's rescue package. Translation: Rates for borrowing between banks are falling. Why should you care? Because many consumer loans are tied to it, including more than half of U.S. adjustable rate home loans. Many small-business, student, and auto loans and home-equity lines of credit also take their cues from Libor. The higher the rate, the tougher consumers have it.Libor rates for three-month dollar loans are currently 4.55 percent, down from 4.64 percent on Monday. Some context: After the House of Representatives rejected the bailout bill at the end of September, Libor rates shot up to 6.88 percent, and a month ago, rates were less than 3 percent, according to the AP.
