Summary: Sorry for the long absence. I was busy. I hope I can keep it up again. Here's what I thought you'd like to hear about today: What's Really Going on in Basra?What Really Went on at Bear Stearns?What would a Hillary Presidency Look Like?What's Really Going on with FISA?What's Really Going on with Real ID?Listen: Download Subscribe Add Wizbang Podcast to iTunes What's Really Going on in Basra? The anti-war media, like the NY Times and the Washington Post, have been spinning the recent uptick in violence in Iraq as a loss for the Americans and the Iraqi government, and a win for Muqtada al-Sadr. Here is the Times on April 1:Last week, Iraq's defense minister, Abdul Kadir al-Obeidi, conceded that the government's military efforts in Basra met with far more resistance than expected. Many Iraqi politicians say that Mr. Maliki's political capital has been severely depleted by the Basra campaign and that he is in the curious position of having to turn to Mr. Sadr, a longtime rival, for a way out. David Price writing at Dean's World, in a post headlined: Sadr's Triumphant Surrender writesI haven't seen the media swoon this hard over a militant anti-American in decades. Is Sadr the new Che? To get another view of events in Iraq, I listened to the Pentagon podcast recording of a press conferences in Iraq with Major General Rick Lynch. We've heard from him before on the Wizbang podcast. He has a rather direct approach to events on the ground, a refreshing change from the spin of the Times. Lynch has been in charge of the area south of Baghdad for the past 13 months. In this clip he summarizes the progress he has made over that time, in terms of numbers of attacks per day, down from 25 to 2, or a 90% reduction. Play clip. In that clip Gen. Lynch attributes the end of hostilities to his success on the battlefield. In the minds of the press, the violence stopped because Sadr told his side to stop. Both are true, of course, but it's a matter of what caused what. He is also asked about reconciliation with his enemies. He has an interesting response. Play clip. He clearly is not happy with Iran sending munitions to kill his soldiers. And an unhappy General Lynch is going to make the enemy in Iraq very unhappy. What Really Went on at Bear Stearns? The recent melt down of the investment bank Bear Stearns as a result of a gradual, and then suddenly quite steep decline in the value of their asset base, which included many derivatives based on mortgage backed securities. Here is a somewhat simplified description of the events by the head of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, here describing the events that lead up to the merger of Bear into JP Morgan Chase on Sunday March 16 for $2 a share, down from $160 a share less than 12 months ago. The focus is on a liquidity crisis. Their assets on the books were significant, but they could not get access to them when they needed them due to other firms not wanting to do business with them. Play clip. So the fed extended liquidity to Bear to help them get to the weekend, when they then assisted with negotiations for the merger with JP Morgan Chase. But what is the taxpayer at risk in this arrangement? There is talk of a $30b bailout by the Fed. In fact what happened was the Fed extended credit terms and received assets in return that were "marked to market". This is a term in the financial community that reflects the valuing of an asset from its book value to how much a willing buyer would pay for it. Here is Bernanke explaining that to Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota. The Senator's speech is slurred due to the emergency brain surgery that saved his life in 2006. Back then, he was rushed to the hospital to repair serious bleeding in the brain. That he has recovered well enough to conduct questioning at this hearing is remarkable. He asks some excellent questions. The first question is about risk to the taxpayers, and the other is about the Moral Hazard problem. This is the economic term for the idea that
