Word: toxicants
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Even before the political landscape turned toxic, Republicans were struggling. They are defending nearly twice as many seats as are the Democrats and were hit by a wave of retirements. What makes the turnabout more striking is that the Democratic challengers aren't particularly strong candidates. Several are inexperienced; others are more liberal than their states. Many seemed almost struck dumb when, as gasoline prices soared this summer, Republicans hit on the suddenly popular idea of drilling for more oil. But the market meltdown has replaced $4-per-gal. gas as voters' top concern, and ever since Herbert Hoover, voters...
...second desirable quality of leadership, especially now, is toxic even to mention for its allegedly élitist overtones: intelligence. Not necessarily anything as crude as raw IQ scores, though something closer to that than to the kind of mystical wisdom attributed to Ronald Reagan. Call it intellectual curiosity, perhaps, or a willingness to engage with complicated ideas. This financial crisis is extremely complicated. Surely the best and the brightest can screw up, as they famously did in Vietnam. But four decades later (and after eight years of George W. Bush), maybe we can agree that on balance it would...
...question such a specter poses to both banks and governments is vexing: doesn't extending new loans to companies and individuals whose income might significant suffer during economic shrinkage risk creating the same sort of toxic debt that provoked the on-going global crisis in the first place...
...bigger question: Is there enough money to pay for everything the government is proposing? The new plan accounts right off the bat for a big hunk of the $700 billion that Congress approved. Will there be enough left over to buy up the toxic debts in the financial sector, for which the $700 billion was originally designed? Some analysts have estimated that those bad debts could total well over $1 trillion. It would be politically unappealing, to say the least, for the Administration to have to go back to Congress for more bailout money...
...banking world and led to a seizure of the global system. And they also believe that the $700 billion bailout plan was badly misdirected because it didn't set out to recapitalize the banks in a swift and clear fashion, but rather aimed to buy up the portfolios of toxic assets, which would be far more complicated and time-consuming. Paulson himself is now changing tack and looking to inject money directly into U.S. banks, too, which of course makes the Europeans feel even better about their plan...