Thursday Roundup: Out of The Market and Under the Mattress

The Dow woke up this morning, looked around, and then promptly dove over 150 points. Looks like it is going to be another fun day if you have investments.

And why not? Yesterday everyone was cooing over Fed Chairman Bernanke as if he were some sort of sorcerer shrouded in arcane magicks, bending the will of international markets to deliver investors from a terrifying free fall. At the same time, though, the Commerce Department reported that growth in the last quarter of 2006 was only 2.2 percent, lower than forecasted and substantially lower than long-term trends.

In state news, Attorney General Greg Abbott got all reasonable and bent to the will of angry county clerks all over Texas and gave everyone 60 days to figure out how to follow the new rules regarding Social Security numbers in legal documents. I'm not sure it will help in the long run, but at least the county clerk's offices don't have to immediately shut down, as some of them did upon being unable to handle the new regulations.

If you feel like the House Republican Caucus is doing more this session, it might be because they're making a concentrated effort to look busy. Hiring a public relations guy seems like the thing to do if you're in politics, and I'm surprised they didn't have one before.

Former Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman is returning to Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP to advise them on political issues. Whenever I hear stories like this, I wonder if bizarre things will happen, like if he and Vernon Jordan will arm-wrestle in the break room on Fridays. Highly unlikely? Yes. Entertaining? Unquestionably.

South Carolina is already re-establishing itself as the worst place in America to run in a Presidential primary — anonymous mailers are being sent out attacking Mitt Romney's liberal leanings. These aren't just push cards, by the way, but rather Paine-style pamphlets weighing in at six pages. They've also been sending out some email blasts, deriding Romney's "movie star looks and crafty words."

Speaking of Presidential politics, John McCain announced — again — that he's running for President on Letterman. That was a good move. Seemingly less so was his declination to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference, which event organizers are publicizing as a "diss". If you have to put a word you're using in quotation marks when you use it, you probably aren't hip enough to use it. Although, having been around a political gathering or two, I know there will invariably be signs or t-shirts that say McCain "diss"ed them, and thus should be equitably "diss"ed in some electoral fashion.

Chuck Todd has a piece this morning about how the 2008 primaries are important. We knew that, but he makes the worthy point that the primaries are even more disparate this cycle because Bush is so polarizing and won't be actively involved until after the conventions. He also points out that Bush will be so totally lame duck that the country will in effect have three Presidents starting in February 2008 -- Bush and the two major party nominees, who will be making every effort to be as Presidential as possible.

Finally, if you've been in a car accident in Texas lately and had insurance like you're supposed to, you know that insurance companies are getting more and more difficult to deal with, especially if you have an uninsured or underinsured motorist claim. This editorial in the Statesman discussed a recent Supreme Court ruling which states that an insurer doesn't have to pay underinsured or uninsured motorist claims until a court determines liability. That can take years, and usually does. Insurance companies keep getting more and more slack in this state, and those of us who need the coverage are often harmed the most by the increasing lack of regulation on their behavior.