Minimalist elegance is a concept that's slipped from view since the late nineties, but in London it's marching back. The standard bearer is Richard Nicoll, whose show re-energized the monochrome aesthetics of clean, sporty dressing by drenching it in great doses of color-blocked tangerine, cyclamen, nude, and aqua. Nicoll said he'd been influenced by early Helmut Lang and (not so obviously) the late fifties, but if he meant the ease of mid-century American sportswear it makes sense.
It was uplifting to watch a young designer find something new to say about the validity of T-shirt-and-pants dressing and think about simple but impactful combinations of separates. That might mean an oversize T-shirt top in blocks of nude organza and pink silk tucked into a long, slim cyclamen skirt, or a tank with a one-shoulder toga drape over narrow pants. It's not the easiest thing to make borderline bad-taste colors seem cool, but there was something in this collection that palpably moved the audience. Likely, it has to do with Nicoll's growing into himself and acquiring the confidence to let his Australian understanding of relaxed, hot-weather lifestyles come through. If so, it's an epiphany that may well connect him with underserved customers in warm climates all over the world. After all this, Nicoll ended his show with a surprise finale of his Richard Nicoll Shirt second line, which has quietly developed into a cute collection of cotton dresses and shorts. Impressive on all fronts.
In politics, the more things change the more they stay the same.
With less than seven weeks remaining before the November presidential election, John McCain is turning to a tried and true tactic: attacking Barack Obama as a serial tax raiser who favors a "massive government".
McCain makes the case in a new ad released this morning:
"Obama and his liberal congressional allies want a massive government," insists the ad's narrator, adding that the Illinois senator favors "billions in spending increases" including "painful income taxes, skyrocketing taxes on life savings, electricity and home heating oil."
"Can your family afford that?" the narrator asks at the commercial's close.
McCain's campaign is also held a conference call today focused on the economy with the stated purpose of exploring Obama's "claims that paying higher taxes is 'patriotic'".
On that call, McCain senior policy adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin alleged that Obama has voted to raise taxes 94 times in the U.S. Senate and had proposed more than $800 billion in additional spending during the presidential campaign. "He has no credibility in his promises," insisted Holtz-Eakin.
The tax attack is not only rooted in decades of successful Republican campaigns -- from the statehouse to the White House -- but also backed by polling that seems to show people believe Obama would raise their taxes.
In the Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted earlier this month, more than half of those tested (51 percent) said that if Obama was elected federal taxes would go up; compare that to the 34 percent who said taxes would go up in a McCain Administration. The New York Times/CBS News poll released last night echoed the findings of the Post survey. Forty-nine percent said they believed their taxes would go up if Obama was elected president while 34 percent said their taxes would rise if McCain wins in November.
Given those gaps, it's easy to see why McCain is focusing on the issue in the final weeks of the race. As we have written many times before, successful political strategies are almost always rooted in playing on the preconceived notions about the two parties.
For Republicans, that means portraying Democrats as advocates of a nanny government that is involved in every part of your life and is funded by huge tax increases that take money from your pocket.
For Democrats, it's casting Republicans as favoring a go-it-alone, every-man-for-himself attitude and driving that message home specifically on domestic issues like health care and the economy.
The reality of the two candidates' economic plans then is secondary to the preconceived notions voters bring to the issues. (Again, we aren't saying this is the "right" way for politics to operate, merely acknowledging that it is the way politics works. Looking for a good, objective breakdown of what the McCain and Obama tax plans mean to you? CNN does it well.)
The big unknown when it comes to the tax question in this election is whether Obama's bet that people are, at their core, sick and tired of politics as usual is the right one. Obama has centered his campaign around the idea that the GOP attacks against Democrats that worked in the past won't work this time around due to the damage done to the Republican brand by President George W. Bush.
If Obama is right, McCain's attacks will fall on deaf ears as people will no longer see Republicans as credible messengers on the economy and taxes. That, in a nutshell, is what happened in the 2006 midterm elections when Republican candidates realized too late that casting their opponents as tax-and-spend liberals was not enough to win races.
Have things changed in the intervening two years? We'll know the answer to that question in 47 days.
By Chris Cillizza | September 18, 2008; 11:23 AM ET
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 18, 2008; 2:03 PM
Stocks struggled to regain some ground before falling into negative territory today as federal regulators moved to inject money -- and confidence -- back into a nervous market and keep the credit crisis from worsening.
The Federal Reserve and other major foreign central banks injected up to $180 billion into global money markets early this morning. In the coordinated action, announced at 3 a.m. Eastern time, the U.S. Federal Reserve provided additional dollars to financial centers around the world, including $110 billion for European banks, $60 billion for the Bank of Japan and $10 billion for the Bank of Canada. The move more than doubles the "swap line" -- essentially a short-term exchange of currencies -- available to the European Central Bank and the Swiss National Bank, and provides new lines to central banks in England, Canada and Japan.
money available through short-term loans to banks and financial firms that have, given the turmoil of recent days, become hesitant to lend to one another. Short-term loans among financial institutions are critical to the world financial system, but in the current environment banks have hoarded cash and demanded far higher than usual interest rates for that sort of lending.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York later made a separate, unscheduled infusion of $50 billion into the U.S. financial system.
Yet, despite the infusion, the stock markets vacillated between positive and negative territory during the day. The Dow Jones industrial average spiked by more than 160 points in the morning, then quickly fell shortly after noon to a loss of 126 points. That didn't last long, however, and by 1:15 it was flitting up and down slightly from the break-even point. About 30 minutes later it was up more than 100 points.
The frenzied restructuring of the financial market is also continuing as banks look for security. U.K. bank Lloyds TSB is acquiring mortgage lender HBOS for $22 billion, creating the country's largest mortgage lender. Constellation Energy Group, parent of Maryland's biggest utility, is being purchased by MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., a unit of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, for $4.7 billion in a cash-and-stock deal.
The panic in credit markets made for tough sledding for the two remaining independent investment banks, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, which fund themselves with short-term borrowing.
There were also reports today that Morgan Stanley had entered preliminary merger talks with Wachovia Corp. and other banks and that Washington Mutual is attempting to raise capital or sell itself. Morgan Stanley, along with Goldman Sachs, is one of the two remaining investment banks, following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers earlier this week. It has been fighting questions about its stability and fell 20 percent in trading during the lunch hour. Washington Mutual had gained 15 percent at midday.
Lehman's "collapse seems to have ushered in the long-awaited wave of industry consolidation," said Bill Stone, chief investment strategist for PNC Wealth Management. "Now you see what's going on with Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Even though they are the strongest left, the market has them in their cross hairs."
Buyout offers that these firms would have shrugged off weeks ago now appear to be under consideration, said Stone. "I think we're in just uncharted territory. They are doing what they can, but it's not making people comfortable."
Investors continued to rush to safer ground. The price of gold jumped another $27 today, while a barrel of oil rose again, to more than $100 a barrel, before falling slightly to $97.
In economic news, the number of U.S. workers filing new claims for unemployment benefits rose 10,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis to 455,000 in the week that ended Sept. 13, according to the Labor Department. "The data suggest that labor market conditions continue to deteriorate and the rate of unemployment should remain elevated," said Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist for Merck Investments, said in a research note today. "Given the current credit panic, large expected layoffs in the financial industry and the expected layoffs associated with this portion of the business cycle, we expect the rate of unemployment to continue climbing."
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