Category: Main Page

Have you heard about this yet?

CNBC Business News Analyst Rick Santelli blows up over President Barack Obama's plan to help Americans who can't pay their mortgage:

“The government is promoting bad behaviour! … How many of you people want to pay your neighbour's mortgage?”

and the next day, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs responds. Boy, does he respond:

Q On the foreclosure plan, aside from Rush Limbaugh and that cable rant on the floor of the Exchange, there really does appear to be some —

MR. GIBBS: Chuck's network? (Laughter.)

Q — there really does appear to be some anger out there from people who just don't believe the President when he said that only people who acted responsibly are going to be helped here. How can you assure people that you're going to reward only people, only homeowners who acted responsibly?

MR. GIBBS: Well, let's go through this, because I do think this is very important. And I've watched Mr. Santelli on cable the past 24 hours or so. I'm not entirely sure where Mr. Santelli lives, or in what house he lives, but the American people are struggling every day to meet their mortgage, stay in their job, pay their bills, to send their kids to school, and to hope that they don't get sick or that somebody they care for gets sick and sends them into bankruptcy.

I think we said a few months ago the adage that if it was good for a derivatives trader that it was good for Main Street. I think the verdict is in on that.

Here's what this plan will do: For the very first time, this plan helps those who have acted responsibly, played by the rules, and made their mortgage payments. This will help people who aren't in trouble yet keep from getting in trouble. You can't stay in this program unless you continue to make mortgage payments. That's important for Mr. Santelli and millions of Americans to understand.

Here's what this plan won't do: It won't help somebody trying to flip a house. It won't bail out an investor looking to make a quick buck. It won't help speculators that were betting on a risky market. And it is not going to help a lender who knowingly made a bad loan. And it is not going to help — as the President said in Phoenix, it is not going to help somebody who has long ago known they were in a house they couldn't afford. That's why the President was very clear in saying this was not going to stop every person's home from being foreclosed.

But Mr. Santelli has argued, I think quite wrongly, that this plan won't help everyone. This plan will help, by the money that's invested in Freddie and Fannie — will drive down mortgage rates for millions of Americans.

The President in his speech was very clear in saying that every American with a mortgage payment should call their lender and see if they can refinance right now. This plan helps people that have been playing by the rules but can't get refinancing, get that refinancing so their home doesn't become foreclosed on.

And Mr. Santelli might also know that if you live in a home that's near one that's been foreclosed, your home value has likely dropped about 9 percent, which for the average home is about $20,000.

Now, every day when I come out here, I spend a little time reading, studying on the issues, asking people who are smarter than I am questions about those issues. I would encourage him to read the President's plan and understand that it will help millions of people, many of whom he knows. I'd be more than happy to have him come here and read it. I'd be happy to buy him a cup of coffee — decaf. (Laughter.)

Chuck.

Q I want to sort of follow up on the criticism that —

MR. GIBBS: Let me do this, too. This is a copy of the President's home affordability plan. It's available on the White House web site, and I would encourage him: download it, hit print, and begin to read it.

Q The criticism that's coming on the housing plan is similar to the criticism that came on the bank bailout vote before you came into office and in Phase II, which is there are people who were irresponsible who will be helped — period. It's going — that is a fact, that is going to be — that is going to be — people are going to use that to say this is not fair. So what do you — how do you — you know, how do you justify that? I mean, how do you —

MR. GIBBS: Well, look, there is — there will be people that made bad decisions that, in some ways, will get help. This plan, though, I think it's important for the American people to understand, was designed to help those that have been responsible.

As the President has said, if your neighbor's house is on fire or if several houses are on fire, you don't debate it; you get a hose and try to put the fire out. That's what's most important. This plan will stop the spread of those foreclosures because it addresses those that are — that potentially could be in trouble but aren't there yet, get the help they need so that the foreclosure sign doesn't go up on their front yard.

But I also think it's tremendously important that for people who rant on cable television to be responsible and understand what it is they're talking about. I feel assured that Mr. Santelli doesn't know what he's talking about.

Technorati Tags: barack obama, economy

Friend and former colleague Daniel Leblanc of The Globe and Mail hits the big time this weekend with an appearance on Tout Le Monde en Parle:

Le journaliste Daniel Leblanc ne lâchera pas mot. Celui qui fut éloquent lors de son enquête sur le Scandale des commandites sera muet comme une carpe pour protéger sa source Ma Chouette. Malgré les lourds risques légaux encourus pour ce refus, le journaliste reste fidèle à ses convictions pour que le lien de confiance entre délateur et média ne soit jamais romp.

(Pardon my French here: Even though je suis né à Montréal, my French is embarrassingly bad – oh well, I'm plunging in:) Pour moi, je suis très enthousiaste pour Daniel. Il est la deuxième personne que je sais que d'être invité sur ce programme populaire, la plus populaire émission de télévision au Québec (je pense). Au cours de la dernière semaine de l'élection de l'automne, mon collègue de la tribune de la presse à Ottawa, Emmanuelle LaTraverse de Radio-Canada, a été invité.

And it's not just Daniel. The one reporter in the country who was able to knock Obama v. Harper off his paper's front page will also be on Tout Le Monde (Sunday night at 8 p.m. I believe). That would be Patrick Lagacé of La Presse who had an exclusive blockbuster that as many as three players for the Montreal Canadiens may have had close personal ties to man now charged with drug and other criminal offences and who may be connected to organized crime in Montreal. Ce scandale!

Technorati Tags: tout le monde en parle

A few weeks ago I declared that I was de-Twittering.

As I wrote then: “Basically, there's nothing I'm getting from the Twitter folks I follow that I can't get in person, via e-mail, via RSS or via the good old-fashioned phone.”

Plenty of folks in my business and outside my business begged to differ and, various fora, had some helpful and constructive comments.

My old friend Bill tweaked my nose a bit but his post got me thinking a bit more:

If he didn't get much out of Twitter, it's possible that's because he didn't put much in.

But I think he's right. One needs to focus their time and energy on things that provide the most return. Akin values Facebook, Google Reader and Google Notebook — along with old skool email.

…. I really confesss to shaking my head about how he finds the search capabilities of Twitter lacking when compared to, say, Google.

Bill certainly makes sense when he suggests you don't get much out of a social network if you don't put much in. Good point.

In a listserv I'm on (isn't it quaint that there are still listservs? 🙂 ) Peter Panepento, the Web editor of The Chronicle of Philanthropy noted that Twitter makes good sense from a publisher's perspective:

For the past month, our Twitter feed is our 8th-largest traffic source. Our followers are finding our content interesting and are clicking through to the site — and they’re passing along the most interesting stuff through “re-Tweets”, which means that we’re getting our headlines broadcast to a much larger audience than we reach on our own.

And Aron Pilhofer, who is the editor of interactive news technologies at The New York Times, also chimed in:

If you go into Twitter thinking it will be a scalpel-like one-way magic source/story generation tool, you'll be sorely disappointed.

What I love about Twitter is the serendipity you almost never get online. Think about it: For the most part, community on the web is about grouping people with people who are exactly like they are. Amazon recommends books others just like me liked. Facebook helps me create communities of people just like me. Etc, etc. Twitter is a community in a different way. For a very low price (click follow), and commitment (boy, it is the 140 character limit nice sometimes), you get to eavesdrop on folks — collectively and individually — you might never run into online any other way.

I'm following PR people, companies, UI gurus, academics, friends, family, comedians, filmmakers, programmers … and, yes, journalists.

Twitter is like riding a subway car with a bunch of interesting people all talking on their cell phones at once. Some conversations will be kind of uninteresting or over your head. Most, you'll ignore. Occasionally, you'll hear something that makes you laugh, or you'll get a “hey, did you hear about….” that intrigues you enough to click through or talk back. Sometimes, I'll post something that resonates with other people the same way.

Sometimes, you get a picture of Hartnett's cat.

What I get out of it on the whole far, far exceeds what I put into it. A lot of it is pointless, but a lot of it is kind of interesting or fun.

So all of that discussion was tipping me back towards another look and effort at Twitter when, today, our editor said all of the reporters at Canwest News Service would be serving up a community Twitter feed Thursday when we cover President Barack Obama's first international visit. [Find our tweets at #obamawa]

That prompted me to quickly look at some tools more efficiently monitor and generate tweets. And I'm pleased to say there's lots of tools out there which go a long way to addressing some of my initial signal-to-noise concerns about Twitter.

First, I've been playing with Twitterific (a geek note here: My home machines and my work machines are running either Mac OS X.4.x or .5.x My mobile computing device/phone is a BlackBerry) and I like it. But I really want to monitor “hashtags“. Maybe I'm dumb but I can't figure out how to “follow” hashtags in the same way I'd follow username. I tweeted about this and most replies told me to follow my hashtag subject using RSS. Yeah, yeah. I know that. But I wanted something that would, like e-mail on BBerry, get pushed to me – in real time.

Don't have anything yet for my BlackBerry that does that but I do for the desktop:

• TweetDeck works great in my work environment where I'm running two monitors (TweetDeck is great if you have a second monitor that you can devote to it) running off my OS X.5 Intel Powerbook. TweetDeck needs Adobe's Air platform which you must install first. That's kind of a drag but what the heck. At home, where I've an Intel-based iMac running OS X.4, TweetDeck doesn't seem to want to install the trick is running the install for Adobe Air first and then going back and running the install for TweetDeck. Works great. In any event, TweetDeck is still a beta product so no complaining is allowed.

• Then one of Evil Geniuses who does technology for the Conservative Party messaged me to try out Monitter, a Tweetdeck-like Web app which also looks good. Very nice.

• Other suggestions I've had: Twhirl and Twitterfox.

OK so with these new tools, how has that changed as a journalist?

Well, journalists approach Twitter, I assume, as both publisher and as newsgatherer. As publisher, I want to be quick, I want to post photos, and I want my tool to deal with link length issues. Tweetdeck does all of that. Very nicely. As a newsgatherer, I really don't know, to be honest, who I want to follow. I do know, however, I want to follow certain topics or subjects. So I need a tool that lets me monitor, in real-time if possible, whatever conversations I'm interested in. Again: I come back to Tweetdeck but Monitter is a good backup. RSS feeds of Twitter hashtag conversations is a distant backup only because I need to fire up my RSS reader; hit refresh and even the, I'm not sure the RSS feed is being generated with the immediacy I require.

After all of two days on #obamawa has it made a difference? Not a big one but some little stuff. There's some anecdotes and trivia that I did not know about that might make it into stories I'll be writing tomorrow. Like most reporters, I may not need every factoid I'm given but I'd rather have them than not.

So we'll see how Twitter and its associated apps get road-tested tomorrow. I'm still a little sceptical but I'm curious and I wish the service well.

Technorati Tags: journalism, twitter

Now I'm not nearly as Scottish as my good friend and colleague John Ivison. While I was born in Montreal, both my grandfathers — John Cedric Leith Akin and John “Jack” Lang — arrived in Canada as wee babes from old Stony. John C.L. Akin is my paternal grandfather and through him, I assume, my father and his children inherit their clan affiliation.

Now all along I thought 'Akin' was merely part of Clan Gordon but today I ran across a business in Scotland — House of Tartan — that suggests that 'Akins' has its own tartan. Indeed, we've got not one but two — and they're both mighty sharp, if you ask me.

And I'm even more chuffed to note that 'Akins Red Family Tartan”(pictured on the left) was designed by a Canadian – Steven L. Akins of Alberta. Beauty, eh?

Technorati Tags: akins, tartan

Here is what the U.S. Congress passed in the stimulus bill Thursday that has folks on our side of the border a little nervous:

SEC. 1605. USE OF AMERICAN IRON, STEEL, AND MANUFACTURED GOODS. [PDF – see page 489]

(a) None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used for a project for the construction, alteration, maintenance, or repair of a public building or public work unless all of the iron, steel, and manufactured goods used in the project are produced in the United States.

(b) Subsection (a) shall not apply in any case or any category of cases in which the head of the Federal department or agency involved finds that

(1) applying subsection (a) would be inconsistent with the public interest;

(2) iron, steel, and the relevant manufactured goods are not produced in the United States if sufficient and reasonably available quantities and of a satisfactory quality; or

(3) inclusion of iron, steel, and manufactured goods produced in the United States will increase the cost of the overall project by more than 25 percent.

(c) If the head of a Federal department or agency determines that it is necessary to waive the application of subsection (a) based on a finding under subsection (b) the head of the department or agency shall publish in the Federal Register a detailed written jurisdiction as to why the provision is being waived.

(d) This section shall be applied in a manner consistent with United States obligations under international agreements.

[The Joint Explanatory Statement indicates:]

Section 1605 provides for the use of American iron, steel, and manufactured goods, except in certain instances. Section 1605 (d) is not intended to repeal by implication the President's authority under Title III of the Trade Agreements Act of 1979. The conferees anticipate that the Administration will rely on the authority under 19 U.S.C. 2511 (b) to the extent necessary to comply with U.S. obligations under the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement and under US free trade agreements and so that section 1605 will not apply to least developed countries to the same extent that it does not apply to the parties to those international agreements. The conferees also note that waiver authority under section 2511 (b) (2) has not been used.

Canada's Minister of International Trade, Stockwell Day, was asked about this yesterday. Here's what he told reporters in a scrum in the House of Commons foyer Thursday after Question Period:

Reporter: Wouldn't it have been better if they had taken the Buy American provisions right out of this bill?

Hon. Stockwell Day:Well, we're waiting for now — there is agreement on the bill from what we understand and they now go over it line by line – there's hundreds of pages – and then it goes to the President. We are understanding that President Obama's request that there be words in there to the effect that this should not in any way impede their international agreements – which is what we specifically asked for – we understand it's going to be in the bill that goes to the President and that's what we're waiting for. But it does underline the fact that we have to continue to push back against protectionism. This is why we're so aggressive on pursuing our free trade agreements. As you know, we've got one in the House right now with countries in Europe. We have others that we've signed, one from Peru that's coming to the House, one from Colombia. We've got one from Jordan. We're pursuing broader free trade economic agreements with India. We're being very aggressive to make sure that Canadian exporters have expanded credit through the Export Development Corporation. On every front we are demonstrating the importance of moving away from protectionism and going for broader, freer and more open free trade agreements with other countries.

Reporter:The Buy American provisions are still in the stimulus bill. There's still protectionism that can be used against China, India, countries that (inaudible) under the WTO Procurement Agreement. So are you saying that it's okay that Canada is not affected — to have a protectionist bill that doesn't affect Canada?

Day:I've said all along we stand up for Canadian interests first obviously. In doing that, we also speak to the broader interests of freedom of trade and staying away from protectionist trade walls. If other countries are hit with protectionist trade barriers, then that affects all economies. We need to be able — as Canadians, we need to allow Canadians to sell their products and their services as freely as possible around the world so as much as we are standing up for Canada but we also ask the United States to think of the broader global implications of protectionism and that's why we're asking them to stay away from it.

Reporter:How concerned are you, sir, about this language in the stimulus bill about protectionism? On one hand you're hearing from President Obama let's not violate any trade agreements. Do you have — what's your level of concern about that that there will be problems with protectionism with the relationship between the United States and Canada?

Day:If the bill in its final form which is presented to the President, if it has the language that says clearly from the President's point of view that nothing in that agreement should in any way violate their international agreements with us or with anyone else, then that will be some comfort to us.

Twitter just e-mailed me to say:

Disgruntled Canadian (Harpooned) is now following your updates on Twitter.

Should I be worried that I am being followed by Disgruntled Canadian?

Minutes ago, MPs voted on the Budget Implementation Bill. It passed with Conservative and Liberal members supporting it.
The NDP caucus, perhaps because they were feeling the bitter sting of rejection after the Libs tore up their coalition deal, have been saying for days that there is now a new Conservative-Liberal coalition and that these two parties are now married to each other.
As if to underline that point, as the Liberal MPs were voting, the NDP caucus started singing "Going to the Chapel"…

Incidentally, the government's first "probation report" is due to be tabled, as per the Liberal budget amendment, "on or before March 12," Liberal House Leader Ralph Goodale told the Commons.

David Akin
Canwest News Service
http://www.davidakin.com
Cell: +1 613 355 5347

Influential American columnist Fareed Zakaria looks north with, dare I say it, a tinge of envy:

Canada has done more than survive this financial crisis. The country is positively thriving in it. Canadian banks are well capitalized and poised to take advantage of opportunities that American and European banks cannot seize. The Toronto Dominion Bank, for example, was the 15th-largest bank in North America one year ago. Now it is the fifth-largest. It hasn't grown in size; the others have all shrunk.

So what accounts for the genius of the Canadians? Common sense.

….

Canada has been remarkably responsible over the past decade or so. It has had 12 years of budget surpluses, and can now spend money to fuel a recovery from a strong position.

…

If President Obama is looking for smart government, there is much he, and all of us, could learn from our quiet—OK, sometimes boring—neighbor to the north.