A cartoonist friend pointed out that I have done an awful lot of Wall Street cartoons in the past few weeks. Guilty as charged, but for us here in NY, it’s a very local issue. It just happens that my last two weeks of local cartoons have had an appeal beyond NY’s borders…

So. While financial markets sulk – I couldn’t resist pointing out the symmetry of the current crisis juxtaposed with a previous one. Repubs in Congress failed to support their own Dubya’s bailout bill and predictably, the stock market tanked. I’m not sure I disagree with them. Is it really the role of government to make sure the stock market has a good day, rather than say, ensure health care for its citizens?

The fact that we have to pump govt. money into sagging financial institutions probably indicates that whatever schemes they were engaging in were unsustainable. Market forces would dictate a painful redirection. But, like the President’s narrow advice pool on foreign policy, he got one side from Bernanke and Paulson, and instead of filtering and tempering it with varying prescriptions he parroted them in warning of a dire crisis that would cripple the world of borrowing/liquidity and end global civilization.

Borrowing. Call me a simpleton, but isn’t that what got us all into this mess in the first place??

I did this odd sized cartoon for our editorial page on Sunday The entire page was devoted to the economic bailout, in both editorial content and letters. The art ran down the center of the page, as opposed to the usual rectangle at the top right, and looked okay in my ever so humble opinion…

The spat between Obama and McCain over who came up with the idea first for a joint statement on the wall street bailout was silly. McCain rushing off to Washington to pretend to get to work on the bailout was (what we used to say growing up in England) taking the piss. Obama rushing off to be there too so they could both sit with the other guy who is out of the loop (The President) was also pure theater. On top of all that, McCain’s posturing to cancel the debate tonight, made him look ridiculous (admittedly a subtle sign of strength and desirability among some voters if the past few elections are to be considered..) UPDATE: This just in – Apparently McCain has not only agreed to debate, but according to an ad in the WSJ today, has already won it. Looks like an innocent case of he hit “send” on his blackberry instead of “save.” dang newfangled technology.

From two guys who are angling to take over this mess in a few months, they are not showing any noticeable signs of leadership. At least not this week, anyway.

Most people are very conflicted over the bailout. They want to save the economy, but don’t want to reward greedy, overpaid Wall St. execs for gambling with what has turned out to be one of the fundamental pillars of our economic existence as we know it…

On another note, I really wanted to avoid the obvious firefighting metaphor, but at 4:30PM yesterday, it really did work better than anything else I had in my sketchbook. So there.

Poor old Dubya. I can’t imagine he thought he’d spend the twighlight of his Presidency like this. I’ve spoken to a few supply side republicans who are really torn about it. With the market meltdown came the need for government assistance, in order to keep the “free market” healthy. It seems that the vaunted Adam Smith/Milton Friedman principles are being sorely tested, as Wall Street (naturally) pushed the absolute limits of what a market will bear.

Without the bailout, the Tri-State area will definitely suffer economically. And with the bailout? Finally a region that supplies tax revenue for much of the rest of the country will actually get some back.

As of now, Henry Paulson is getting rave reviews for his bold and decisive leadership. But you have to stop and ask how the “financial crisis” would have been handled if the Treasury Secretary wasn’t an ex-Goldman Sachs man. Perish the thought, but a person who doesn’t live and breath in the dense, self-adulating oxygen of Wall Street might not have been so quick to further indebt an already war-ravaged treasury over a ludicrously gargantuan Wall Street bailout. Why couldn’t strict regulations on shorting financial shares have been put in place six months ago, when we knew something was was wrong, before the implosion? Why couldn’t mortgage brokers, mortgage securities (and the Rip Van Winkles who rated them) have been reined in before all the credit dried up? And obviously the other burning question is: Why am I not the Treasury Secretary?

It’s a good day for analogies. How about: Wall Street took the magic Red Ryder bb gun of the free market, went running around like an idiot in the woods and effectively shot its eye out. And yours and mine too.
Now the govt has banned short selling on financial stocks for a cooling off period, and the hedge fund crowd are wailing and complaining, which must mean it was the right thing to do. They’d better get used to it. They are about to get regulated to death, which will also probably be no good for any of us. Way to go Wall Street wizards!

He changed his talking points after being briefed by handlers, but McCain’s initial response to this financial meltdown was eye-opening. To react to the collapse of major financial institutions with the equivalent of “needs further study” has handily erased his post Sarah Palin bump. He may as well have pulled out a copy of “My Pet Goat” and started reading to a cute assemblage of nearby Kindergartners.

If you could blame one single thing (other than our natural human propensity to want) it would be the 1998 repeal – Spearheaded by none other than exMcCain campaign Adviser, Phil Gramm – of the depression era Glass-Steagall Act, which basically prevented banks from doing stock broker business and vise a versa. Turns out in retrospect, that law was a pretty good one.

Apparently, you and I just bailed out AIG today (technically backed a really, really big credit line.) Maybe now we’ll get a friends and family discount on some insurance…
I don’t pretend to understand all this lunacy, but all my neighborhood friends work on Wall Street, and they do seem to understand, and are walking around with grave looks on their faces, which is a distinctly different look than they were wearing when they got their seven figure bonuses a few Christmases ago. Even though the cartoon correctly faults improperly regulated markets, to be fair, there’s no way regulators could have preemptively regulated a market that didn’t even appear to exist a few years ago. Regulators always respond after the damage is done…Leaving Wall Street brains to think up some exotic new instrument of unreasonably gargantuan financial bubbledom.

As to today’s financial dilemma. I recall Donald Trump once saying something like: When you owe the bank $10,000 it’s your problem – When you owe the bank $10,000,000 it’s the bank’s problem. Perfect.