WASHINGTON, Iowa – John Edwards vowed Saturday that corporate lobbyists would not be allowed to work in his administration, if elected.
“When I am president of the United States, no corporate lobbyists or anyone who has lobbied for a foreign government will work in my White House,” Mr. Edwards said, speaking at a public library.
He followed it up with an implicit attack on Mr. Obama.
“I hear people argue that the way you can get things done is you sit at a table with drug companies, insurance companies, oil companies and negotiate with them, and somehow they will voluntarily give away their power,” he said. “I think it is a complete fantasy.”
In a November speech to Iowa Democrats, Mr. Obama promised that lobbyists would not work in his White House. “I have done more than any other candidate in this race to take on lobbyists, and I have won,” Mr. Obama said at the time. “They have not funded my campaign, they will not get a job in my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of the American people when I am president.”
But he later amended his position, saying that lobbyists would not “dominate” his White House.”
Bill Burton, a spokesman for Mr. Obama, responded to Mr. Edwards’ announcement with a memo contrasting Mr. Obama’s record of lobbying reform proposals with Mr. Edwards’. “The truth is, in his six years as a U.S. Senator, John Edwards did not propose or accomplish a single thing to reduce the power of lobbyists while Barack Obama passed the most sweeping lobbying reform since Watergate,” Mr. Burton said in an e-mail message.
When campaigning, Mr. Edwards frequently reminds voters that he has never taken campaign contributions from lobbyists. Mr. Obama has banned lobbyist contributions from his presidential campaign.
But there are signs that potential caucusgoers are associating the message of fighting lobbyists and big corporations more with Mr. Edwards than with Mr. Obama.
Jana Warren, an undecided voter, attended an Obama event last night in Muscatine, and then an Edwards event Saturday morning. After filing out of the Edwards event, she said she was leaning strongly toward Mr. Edwards.
In the end, Ms. Warren said, her decision is guided by economic issues.
“I think Mr. Obama is inspirational,” she said. “But I think corporate greed is a really big problem in our country, and I like what Mr. Edwards had to say about that.”
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TEHRAN, Iran -- Russia is preparing to equip Iran with a powerful new air defense system that would dramatically increase its ability to repel an attack, Iran's defense minister said Wednesday.
The S-300 anti-aircraft missile defense system is capable of shooting down aircraft, cruise missiles and ballistic missile warheads at ranges of over 90 miles and at altitudes of about 90,000 feet. Russian military officials boast that its capabilities outstrip the U.S. Patriot missile system.
The S-300 is an improvement over the Tor-M1 air defense missile system. Russia delivered 29 Tor-M1s to Iran this year under a $700 million contract signed in December 2005.
"The S-300 air defense system will be delivered to Iran on the basis of a contract signed with Russia in the past," Iranian Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said, according to state television.
Mr. Najjar didn't say when or how many of the S-300 anti-aircraft missile defense systems would be shipped to Iran, and Russian officials declined to comment.
The Tor-M1 is capable of hitting aerial targets flying at up to 20,000 feet.
"While Tor-M1 missiles can hit targets at low altitude, S-300 missile have an extraordinary performance against targets at high altitude," Mr. Najjar said.
Russian officials wouldn't comment on the Iranian statement. Russian officials have consistently denied they were selling the S-300 to Iran. Iranian media reports have claimed the S-300 missile systems could inflict significant damage to the U.S. or Israeli forces, were they to attack Iran.
The U.S. had said in the past that it would not rule out military action as a way to halt Iran's nuclear enrichment, claiming it was using it as cover for weapons development. But earlier this month, Washington reversed course, concluding in an intelligence assessment that Iran stopped direct work on creating nuclear arms in 2003 and that the program remained frozen through at least the middle of this year.
Israel says Iran remains a strong threat, but most analysts think any Israeli military operation is unlikely at this point.
Teams led by Mikhail Dmitriyev, head of the Russian Federal Service for Military and Technical Cooperation, and Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi, regarded as the father of Iran's missile program, held talks in Tehran this week on ways to step up defense cooperation.
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A military expert speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject said that the Russian team included experts who had installed the Tor-M1 in Iran.
Dmitriyev told the Russian Itar-Tass news agency Wednesday said air defense and radar systems were priorities in Russian-Iranian defense discussions.
Russia has provided Iran with Kilo-Class submarines, MIG and Sukhoi military planes and bombers in recent decades.
Iran-Russia ties increased after a visit here by Russian President Vladimir Putin in October.
A KEY GAUGE of U.S. home prices shows they are falling sharply across most of the nation, as a deepening slump in the housing market threatens to damp consumer spending.
Export-driven economies across Asia are keeping a close eye on U.S. spending trends as they brace for a possible slowdown.
Home prices in 10 major U.S. metropolitan areas in October were down 6.7% from a year earlier, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller home-price indexes, released Wednesday by credit-rating firm Standard & Poor's. That exceeded the previous record year-to-year decline of 6.3% in April 1991, when the economy was emerging from a recession.
New statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, meanwhile, indicate a slowdown in the number of Americans moving to states that led the housing boom, including Nevada, Florida and Arizona.
The silver lining behind the latest home-price data is that they signal the market is making what most economists see as a necessary adjustment, dragging home prices back into closer alignment with Americans' ability to pay. The market is working its way "back to reality," says David Seiders, chief economist of the National Association of Home Builders. He thinks U.S. house prices will bottom out by early 2009.
Some other economists say that might not happen before 2010. "The housing shock is only about halfway over, and housing prices will continue to fall well into 2009," says Lehman Brothers economist Michelle Meyer.
During the housing boom in the first half of this decade, fast-rising home prices made it easy for homeowners to take out home-equity loans or refinance their primary mortgages to extract some cash. That helped sustain consumer spending, which accounts for about 70% of U.S. economic activity.
Economists now worry that falling home prices will prompt U.S. consumers to pull back on spending enough to slow growth or even tip the economy into recession. "Eventually what's happening in the housing market is going to catch up with us," says Patrick Newport, an economist at research-firm Global Insight Inc.
Fears of a sharp drop in consumption were assuaged somewhat last week with a report that U.S. consumer spending in November grew at the fastest pace in 31⁄2 years. And though holiday sales fell short of retailers' expectations, consumers, spurred by discounts, spent heavily in the final days before Christmas. Economists say that even if overall spending slows in December, the strength seen in October and November would be enough to keep the U.S. economy afloat in the near term.
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"The most important determinant of [spending] is always income," says Harm Bandholz, an economist at UniCredit in New York. He said that Americans' disposable income has risen a "solid" 2.5% over last year. He and others say that as long as the job market holds up and incomes keep growing, Americans will continue to spend.
The S&P/Case-Shiller index showed that some of the fastest declines in home prices are in metropolitan areas that were among the hottest during the housing boom. Prices were down 12.4% from a year earlier in Miami, 11.1% in San Diego, 10.7% in Las Vegas and 10.6% in Phoenix.
Home prices are still up from a year ago in some U.S. cities, such as Seattle and Charlotte, N.C. And people who bought their homes several years ago still are sitting on sizable gains in most of the country.
The boom more than doubled prices in many populous areas near the coasts of the U.S. The run-up was fueled in part by unusually low interest rates, which slashed the cost of monthly mortgage payments. In addition, in the wake of the technology-stock bubble, many Americans viewed real estate as a safer investment than stocks, and so poured increasing sums into second homes and rental properties.
U.S. home sales began to slow in mid-2005. Prices leveled off and then started declining in 2006. Over the past year, mortgage defaults have soared, leading to rapid growth in foreclosures.
As the market adjusts, single-family housing starts have fallen 55% from their January 2006 peak to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 829,000. In recent months, lenders and investors have begun owning up to billions of dollars of losses on mortgages and related securities, clearing the decks for an eventual revival in lending.
But the recovery of the housing market is likely to be a gradual process. That's partly because the boom left prices so far out of whack with incomes. As measured by the S&P/Case-Shiller national index, home prices jumped 74% in the six years through 2006. During the same period, U.S. median household income rose 15%. (Neither figure is adjusted for inflation.) That made housing unaffordable for many Americans.
For a few years, lax lending standards -- some loans required no down payments and offered low introductory interest rates -- meant U.S. borrowers could buy more expensive houses than they could really afford. But lenders have been burned by a surge in defaults that started in 2006, and such mortgages generally are no longer available. That means house prices will have to fall to a level potential buyers can afford.
Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Economy.com, a research firm in West Chester, Pennsylvania, predicts that on average U.S. house prices will decline about 12% by the second quarter of 2009 from their peak in the second quarter of 2006. He expects household income to rise by about the same amount over that period.
Prices of new homes are likely to start recovering in the first half of 2008 because builders are aggressively chopping prices to clear inventories, says Edward Leamer, an economics professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
On average, prices of previously occupied homes, as measured by the S&P/Case-Shiller indexes, are likely to drop another 7% in 2008 before flattening out in 2009, says Thomas Lawler, a housing economist in Vienna, Virginia.
Inventories of unsold homes remain very high and may increase in the new year as lenders dump more foreclosed houses on the U.S. market. The number of detached single-family homes listed for sale in October was enough to last 101⁄2 months at the current sales rate, according to the National Association of Realtors.
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The mortgage market also needs to adjust further. Most of the funding for home loans comes from investors who buy securities backed by bundles of mortgages. Since August, many of those investors have shunned the market amid fears of rising defaults.
The current scarcity of funds available for mortgage lending creates a chicken-and-egg situation, says Prof. Leamer. Investors who provide funding for home loans don't want to commit more money until they believe the housing market is getting better. But it is hard for the housing market to rebound as long as mortgage credit is tight. Lower prices eventually will break this impasse, by luring buyers back into the market, he says.
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