I short stocks with some frequency. It is not for the faint of heart. However, it came in quite handy this year. Despite what you may hear, short sales ultimately support the market, because when you cover a short you have to buy the stock back.

When oil was at $145 a barrel, we heard a lot of people blame speculators. Now that oil touched $90 earlier this week, you don’t hear them praise speculators because oil went down by over 40%. I am sure that if markets rally, you won’t hear much about shorting either. This is the one part of the plan which I completely disagree with — I think it’s an effort to do something, even if it’s the wrong thing.

I understand the universal addiction to credit, being that I am, myself, one of the worst addicts. I speak, alas, from experience…

But I understand your arguments, as well – and I’ve made that very choice you posit as a hypothetical on more than one occasion, so I guess I’m also the ultimate hypocrite on this issue…

Fine, make it 15% above LIBOR…I just threw that out as a basis for discussion…but (and there are credit cards out there with 24% interest) 21% above LIBOR strikes me as absurdly excessive…

I’m sympathetic, but not convinced.

The problem is that, for better or worse, we, as a society, have effectively made possession of a credit card nearly a requirement. Try to rent a car without a credit card. Try to buy something online. Try …

If we cap interest rates, there are many people who currently are able to obtain a credit card, who will no longer be able to. I don’t think there’s any dispute about that.

Now, if you offered me a choice between no credit card at all, or a card at 24% APR, I would gladly choose the 24% APR. That’s easy for me to say, because I never carry a balance. And, the rational thing for anyone, faced with such a choice, to do is to put only what’s absolutely necessary on the card, and be sure to pay off their balance at the end of the month.

You could, at this point, say: “Well, what if you lost your job, or had unexpected medical expenses, and suddenly found yourself unable to pay off your credit card balance?” That’s indeed a worry. But, if my only source of credit is a card with 24% APR; if there’s no other place I can borrow the money, at a lower rate, then I’m screwed. And taking away my ability to get that card (even with its usurious interest rate) won’t help me.

Anyway, to help Chris out, here’s McCain’s original statement (http://www.youtube.com/v/igAmVs0cvY8 ), on Sept 15. By later in the afternoon, even he was singing another tune. But it’s hard to expect much better, given that his key economic advisor is (still) Phil “nation of whiners” Gramm.

Here’s what McCain said:

Our workers are the most innovative, the hardest-working, the best-skilled, most productive, most competitive in the world. That’s the American worker. And my opponents may disagree, but those fundamentals — the American worker and their innovation, their entrepreneurship, the small business, those are the fundamentals of America, and I think they’re strong.

You want to retract your bulls**t statements now?

You want to quote his original statement, instead of his lame-ass attempt to backtrack, after the fact?

Or perhaps in May of 2006, when John McCain spoke about it.
Or perhaps in September 2003, when Bush proposed a new agency to oversee Freddie and Fannie.

The Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005 never made it to a vote (either in the Senate or in the House), at a time when Republicans controlled both Houses of Congress. It was, evidently, not much of a priority among your party’s leadership.

I’d be more than happy to discuss whether this bill — had it actually been brought to a vote — would have made things any better.

Its main provision was to abolish the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (established in 1992, in the wake of the Savings and Loan debacle) and replace it was a new agency, the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Agency. That, and other similar shuffling around of responsibilities would not have made much of a difference, especially since the bill actually weakened (among other things) the securities reporting requirements on the Federal Home Loan Banks.

But, hey, if that’s the straw you want to grasp at …

And this is another reason why I don’t like what’s going on with Bernanke and Paulson – why are they having all these closed door meetings? It’s the people’s money, and the people’s business, and they are hoarding information from market participants, to boot…