Daily Roundup, 3/17/08: Verifications and Banks in Tanks

The weekend brought presidential politics back to everyone (and Texas in particular) with a vengeance.

The big story as far as Texas is concerned, as you might have guessed, is the Clinton campaign's letter to the Texas Democratic Party requesting that county conventions be delayed until every signature gathered at the precinct caucuses can be verified. For a number of reasons — and not just because people plan far in advance and often rearrange weeks of scheduled events to facilitate caucus attendance — this could cause serious logistical problems for Texas Democrats. Although I do feel confident that the Texas Democratic Party has the infrastructure and the people in place to meet any requests they decide to grant.

State party organizations proceeding in a less orderly, efficient manner include Alaska's Republican Party, that could not stop the proceedings during their state convention from descending into bad craziness on Friday. Apparently there was shouting, leadership upheaval, and general feelings of malcontent.

Presidential politics came home to everyone in an untargeted but specific way as of late in the form of grocery prices, and you may soon see many news articles with titles like "The Food Crisis Is Here," and you'll see those headlines in the grocery store when you're suddenly discovering that everything that comes from a farm costs three times as much as it did about a year and a half ago. Right now the top level, noticeable thing is wheat prices, but dairy isn't far behind.

The Democratic wave that we all feel is underway is just starting to be noticed by the press, and not a moment too soon: John McCain is starting to lay out his agenda in a desperate hope that someone will notice him before the Democratic nomination is decided. It gives us a clear indicator that we were right about what we knew his message plan would be. He will be focusing on his military service and terrorism as leveraged fear. The latter is reminiscent of another Republican who may have recently been serving as our president.

Lastly today, we had the duty of bringing you some bad economic news on Friday, concerning the nearly coincidental crumblings of Bear Sterns and Carlyle. JPMorgan in the last few hours announced that they are going to buy Bear Sterns, all of it, for a paltry $2 per share. That's 90% below the value shares closed at on Friday. Is more consolidation ahead? Is that good? And what does it mean about the value of all banks if you can buy one at 10 cents on the dollar?