HAVE YOU THANKED EVERYONE BUT THE HOUSE GOP TODAY?:

Bank-Lending Boost Could Spur Thaw (EMILY BARRETT, 10/20/08, Wall Street Journal)

On Friday, three big banks led by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. made multibillion-dollar offers of three-month funds to European counterparts, causing an immediate stir in the shriveled markets for unsecured lending.

That raised expectations that lenders would finally open their doors and businesses would be able to borrow again, removing one of the biggest stresses on the global economy.

In response, futures markets are predicting sharp declines in the rates banks charge one another to borrow, with the benchmark three-month Libor, or London interbank offered rate, expected to drop by around half a percentage point from 4.41875% Friday. That would be a multiweek low, but still some way above the 2.8% seen before the collapse of Lehman Brothers in mid-September.

Libor is the benchmark for pricing of all kinds of debt, including corporate borrowing and mortgages. A lasting drop would be a powerful signal of recovery in the banking sector. If banks are prepared to lower their lending rates, it means they are regaining sufficient confidence to resume their normal relationships as creditors, instead of plunging their cash into government bonds and considering central banks the only trustworthy counterparties.

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McCain Missed a Trick (Conrad Black, 10/20/08, The Daily Beast)

When he interrupted his campaign to return to DC to manage the economic crisis, McCain was onto a winning streak. But he blew it.

President Bush did his best to manage the financial crisis in a way that would have enabled John McCain to turn it to his advantage, but the candidate missed his great chance. [...]

With only a month to go before what at that time was a toss-up election, President Bush handed McCain the chance to add to the relief measure any flourish he might find politically useful. McCain could have demanded that executive compensation be capped and financial reporting be amplified.

He could have packaged up his entire tax plan, added a vote-flavored stimulus proposal, and presented the whole confection as a statesmanlike, imaginative, just plan of action. He could have held the public's attention all the way to the election.

It was the greatest opening for an incumbent to assist his preferred successor since Lyndon B. Johnson conjured out of thin air a phony peace breakthrough in Vietnam six days before the 1968 election, for the benefit of Hubert Humphrey against Richard Nixon.

It didn't happen. McCain said almost nothing at the White House meeting, and stripped the gears of the Straight Talk Express.

If john McCain loses, he will have lost on that afternoon when the House GOP bailed on its president and nominee.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 20, 2008 6:57 AM