Taxpayers FURIOUS about Bush bank bailout [Archive]

Croydon

09-21-2008, 02:48 PM

What makes me laugh about this whole thing is that American's are shocked and dismayed by the state of the economy.

When Bush was running for reelection, the writing was on the wall regarding the shake down of the banking industry, the housing market and the economy.

In his time at the White house, bush has deregulated the housing and banking industry. This is what you get when you deregulate. This is what you get when there are no checks and balances and rules to abide by. Bush's deregulation of businesses has allowed companies to do what they want and how they want. Meanwhile, CEOs are making more money than they count while regular workers struggle on the little salary they are given.

Where we are today should be of NO surprise to anyone. Now, as tax payers, we are left to fund the clean up of this mess. Where is the money coming from? I would love to know as Bush did a great job of placing us in one of the largest deficits in American history.

What amazes me the amount of voters aren't able to put two and two together and realize that Republicans have ruined us in the last 7 years. Up until last week, John McCain was all for deregulation. As voters we have to decided b/w him and Obama and some people aren't able to get a clue and realize that McCain will not be doing anything differently than Bush.

usmc1

09-21-2008, 03:44 PM

There can't be any connection between the Secretary of the Treasury having been the CEO of Goldman Sachs and his basement deals to bail out Wall Street and...huh, yeah, the entire banking system. Can there?

Looks like the dogs will be thrown a few bones. $1,000 and a loosening of the bankruptcy laws.

See there, damn it! That there trickle down deal works!

I guess I'm just prejudiced against trickle down, having had the bottom bunk under a bed-wetter at summer camp when I was 12.

Nugent

09-21-2008, 04:18 PM

When I was around 10 - 12 I had to sleep in the middle of the bed between 2 bed wetters when my family went to visit an aunt of mine.

Owen

Navigator

09-21-2008, 04:44 PM

Here's an interesting solution to the Bushy financial crises that isn't getting a lot of attention in the mainstream media yet.

It does NOT involve taxpayers paying for the speculative losses of the Bush/Paulson/Bernanke banker buddies.

http://hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc080922.htm

Qikdraw

09-21-2008, 05:35 PM

I posted these in other threads, but I'll add em here...

Bush's 700 BILLION scam (http://thinkprogress.org/2008/09/21/bush-legacy-taxpayer-funds/)

Yesterday, President Bush announced his $700 billion plan to buy out troubled financial institutions. Demanding enormous faith in his administration’s stewardship, the plan “would place no restrictions on the administration other than requiring semiannual reports to Congress, granting the Treasury secretary unprecedented power to buy and resell mortgage debt,” and to hire outside firms “to help manage its purchases.” Further, the proposal provides no oversight mechanism:

Sec. 8. Review: Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Bush is demanding unprecedented control over billions of dollars — with no oversight.

Read the link for more reasons why we should not allow Bush to get away with this.

This (http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=8374) is a good response to this. (language warning)

The ONLY way I would allow this is with massive oversight, massive changes to regulation, and every bank, insurance company or investment firm we bail out we get complete control of. In other words in taking care of its debt, we have bought the company. Then all profits go back into the government until such a time as the company is back on its feet, and then it is sold with all the profits going to pay back the loans we used to buy the company in the first place. Anything else is just saddling the American people with massive debt and letting wall street walk away from their mistakes.

This is scary (http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/9/21/9322/74248/245/602838)

BOB MOON: OK, I'm about to unload some numbers on you here, so I'll speak slowly so you can follow this.

The value of the entire U.S. Treasuries market: $4.5 trillion.

The value of the entire mortgage market: $7 trillion.

The size of the U.S. stock market: $22 trillion.

OK, you ready?

The size of the credit default swap market last year: $45 trillion.

KAI RYSSDAL: That's a lot of money, Bob.

45 TRILLION, this is why they target low income people, promising the moon, misrepresent thier policy, and outright lie. 45 TRILLION.

BinCo

09-21-2008, 08:33 PM

See, we can all agree on something :)

We need regulations, not super restrictive ones, but reasonable ones. Ones that make it safe to do business in America.

WaMu is in tough times, but they still send my Mom weekly letters about how she is prequalified for a big credit card. When will these morons get it?

Qikdraw

09-21-2008, 08:37 PM

This 700 million bailout money? Yeah its going to be used for foriegn companies too.

Paulson Justifies Bailout To Foreign Companies (http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/21/this-week-paulson-justifies-bailout-to-foreign-companies/)

STEPHANOPOULOS: The original legislation we saw said that you would be buying up the mortgage-related assets from financial institutions having headquarters in the United States. Yet last night, the fact sheet put out by the Treasury seemed to expand that. It said only that the financial institutions have to have significant operations in the U.S., and that you could waive that at your discretion.

So, will foreign financial institutions be eligible to have their assets bought?

PAULSON: Yes, and they should, because as you think about this, if a financial institution has business operations in the United States, hires people in the United States, if they are clogged with illiquid assets, they have the same impact on the American people as any other institution.

That’s a distinction without a difference to the American people. The key here is about protecting the system.[..]

But, remember, this is about protecting the American people and protecting the taxpayers. And the American people don’t care who owns the financial institution. If a financial institution in this country has problems, it’ll have the same impact…

paul1961

09-22-2008, 06:01 AM

FYI

Most of the damage is in the financial sector. The "Dow Jones Industrial Average" has very few financial stocks, hence the word Industrial.
Current list:
Alcoa - AA
American Express - AXP
AT&T - T
Boeing - BA
Caterpillar - CAT
Coca-Cola - KO
Citigroup - C
Disney - DIS
DuPont - DD
Eastman Kodak - EK
Exxon Mobil - XOM
General Electric - GE
General Motors - GM
Hewlett-Packard - HWP
Home Depot - HD
Honeywell - HON
IBM - IBM
Intel - INTC
International Paper - IP
Johnson & Johnson - JNJ
McDonald's - MCD
Merck - MRK
Microsoft - MSFT
3M - MMM
JP Morgan - JPM
Philip Morris - MO
Proctor & Gamble - PG
SBC Communications - SBC
United Tech - UTX
Wal-Mart - WMT

garbo

09-22-2008, 10:59 AM

Hey, if the bailout is approved for the financial markets, who's next?? I have an graphic arts business thats floundering, maybe I should apply for a meager couple of million myself? Anyone else need some cash?

I understand the market fallout would have far reaching effects, not just here but in foreign markets as well. I heard somewhere that AIG holds millions of 401k accounts globally and it is frightening to believe that so many may have lost their retirements. I know it goes way beyond that as well. From a humanitarian point of view, this truly makes sense. From a business perspective, it surely does not encourage accountability. From a government perspective, I wonder how the policy of "less government" can be justified??

Skinview

09-22-2008, 12:16 PM

KNude

09-22-2008, 12:35 PM

And if we had privatized Social Sercurity?!

nimrod

09-22-2008, 01:38 PM

Hey, think of the positives here. Since we the taxpayers now own AIG and whoever else the government bails out, since that is where the money is coming from, we should all get dividend checks from them, right.

Qikdraw

09-22-2008, 02:34 PM

usmc1

09-22-2008, 03:00 PM

You don't think giving Paulson $700 Billion with zero accountability counts as something dumb in a panic? :D I sure do, and I hope the democrats don't try and deal tit for tat crap. Which is what I think Pelosi is going to do. :( Yeah here is 700 billion with no accountability and we'll take these bridges over here. *sigh*

The only way I would be for allowing 700 Billion out like that is that for every company we bail out, the government ends up owning, all profits go to teh government and when the company is stable the company is sold for the full value of teh company, not just its covered debt. All that money would then go into the paying off the national debt. Not only that but adding heavy regulations so that none of this will ever happen again.

That's fine, as long as the perpetrators are tried and the guilty imprisoned in real gladiator schools, not white color country clubs. Start with our current treachery...treasury secretary.

Naturist Mark

09-22-2008, 03:57 PM

There are Republicans are yelling "socialism!" over this bailout. Some would rather see these big companies go down than have the government take over. Of course the big fear is that they would take the rest of the economy down with them. I can't say. I hope the government doesn't do something dumb in a panic.

Now they are saying that the $700 Billion may be more like $1 Trillion.

For a trillion dollars shouldn't we be able to bulldoze Wall Street, sow the soil with salt, and start over fresh?

Oh well.

There is a point to calling it "socialism", but it is that special sort of "Republican Socialism" where profits are private but losses are socialized.

So here's my take on this. If we MUST bail out the vipers who caused this mess, we certainly deserve an equity position in return. That $700 Billion to $1 Trillion is not a loan. It is not payment for us to 'buy' worthless securities. Instead we are buying Stock in every single institution that gets to dump its bad investments. That way we benefit from their improved financial position, and we get a share of the dividends.

But ... Government owning stock is SOCIALISM! Next step is Mao suits and women swimmers on steroids!

I've got the solution for that too.

That $ Trillion isn't coming from this year's tax revenue - it is being borrowed for us and our decendents two or three generations down the line to pay back. So since the money is ours to begin with, the stock should be distributed to us.

Just like the Alaskan Oil royalties that get distributed to every Alaskan citizen, every American citizen should be issued shares in a mutual fund consisting of equity positions in every financial institution we bail out. It would be a bit over $3000 dollars worth for each citizen. Each year they can pay us dividends on those shares. In 5 years or so - after the financial industry has stabilized, we can start trading those shares as we wish. It will be the largest exercise in participatory capitalism the world has ever seen.

-Mark

Skinview

09-22-2008, 05:19 PM

That's fine, as long as the perpetrators are tried and the guilty imprisoned in real gladiator schools, not white color country clubs. Start with our current treachery...treasury secretary.

This mess was not caused by crime.

Skinview

09-22-2008, 05:21 PM

BinCo

09-22-2008, 05:36 PM

This mess was not caused by crime.

Not a legal crime, but certainly a moral one. Or, are morals party specific?:sneaky:

usmc1

09-22-2008, 06:30 PM

This mess was not caused by crime.

Was too. A normative (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative) definition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definition) views crime as deviant behavior (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deviant_behavior) that violates prevailing norms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norm_%28sociology%29) – cultural (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture) standards prescribing how humans ought to behave normally.

The fact that there is a "mess" is prima facie proof of deviant behavior violating standards. Such messes are not self-generating.

But, beyond that, one can have perpetrators and guilty people without resorting to LSAT definitions of crime.

jon71

09-22-2008, 11:25 PM

The worst thing is that for the most part it sounds like a giveaway and that means the taxpayers will never get anything back. It would be nice if the loan was eventually repaid (preferably with a small amount of interest) and/or the govt. had assets to sell to recoup the money being spent. Unfortunately I don't expect that to happen.

garbo

09-23-2008, 05:33 AM

I agree, Jon. I think both presidential candidates will be debating their position on this issue with vigor. Interestingly enough, this wasn't an issue when they started campaigning, but it is now and is certainly to dominate the debate. I heard just this morning that here in Florida that the economy is the number one issue. I can only pray that a reasonable and viable solution that benefits the country as a whole will be put into play.

usuallylurk

09-23-2008, 06:22 AM

I hear the phrase "financial meltdown on Wall Street" but the Dow Jones Industrial Average only had two 400 point losses two days in a row, right? At 10,000, an 800 loss is 0.08%. That's not a "meltdown."

I need to know which people who have been paid over $50 million in salary and bonuses last year have been fired. Name names. Someone's head has to roll *BEFORE* we bail out a bunch of fat, greedy suits.

Any other industry, any other job and YOU'RE FIRED. If it's going to be business as usual, and the big execs still get to float around in their yachts, and Joe and Mary Lunchbucket still lose their house, then KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF MY PAYCHECK.

Actually, at 10,000, an 800 loss is 8.0% not .008%.

And that's rather significant.

The Dow Jones has gone from a hovering point of 13000 or so a year ago to around 11000. That's an 18 percent loss. Combine that with a 5% inflation factor, and that's a 23 percent loss. Combine that with the fact that food and fuel are rising at a faster rate than inflation in general, and it's much worse for someone who is planning to retire.

And it isn't just homeowners. What about most boomers? -- remember, most of us who were born after 1950 do not have pensions to look forward to , as our parents did, and have been on their own for their retirement.

What if you have worked your whole life -- invested -- and your life savings are in your 401k and/or IRAs? (Like, uh, mr and mrs 'lurk). And even the most conservative investments start to go bonkers?

THIS is what the bailout is trying to preserve. The alternative is far worse.

Although -- some of the provisions the Dems want to put into the bailout -- some help for homeowners, limits on executive salaries of bailed out firms, more oversight and regulation of the banking and investment system, and realistic credit and mortgage qualifications -- make perfect sense.

But so does the bail-out right now.

usmc1

09-23-2008, 07:04 AM

Actually, at 10,000, an 800 loss is 8.0% not .008%.

And that's rather significant.

The Dow Jones has gone from a hovering point of 13000 or so a year ago to around 11000. That's an 18 percent loss. Combine that with a 5% inflation factor, and that's a 23 percent loss. Combine that with the fact that food and fuel are rising at a faster rate than inflation in general, and it's much worse for someone who is planning to retire.

And it isn't just homeowners. What about most boomers? -- remember, most of us who were born after 1950 do not have pensions to look forward to , as our parents did, and have been on their own for their retirement.

What if you have worked your whole life -- invested -- and your life savings are in your 401k and/or IRAs? (Like, uh, mr and mrs 'lurk). And even the most conservative investments start to go bonkers?

THIS is what the bailout is trying to preserve. The alternative is far worse.

Although -- some of the provisions the Dems want to put into the bailout -- some help for homeowners, limits on executive salaries of bailed out firms, more oversight and regulation of the banking and investment system, and realistic credit and mortgage qualifications -- make perfect sense.

But so does the bail-out right now.

But, what if we took a different approach. Indemnify and protect the victims (all of us) by giving us the option of shifting our 401K money, and pension fund owned stocks, into treasury bills or another sort of government backed bonds, allowing the failures to fail--there will be entrepreneurs out there willing to patch together the workable pieces to rebuild. And then lien, levy, seize and sell all the assets both corporate and private belonging to the corporations and their management groups from CEO, Boards and down to Vice-President level and bring that money into the treasury as a super-fund to protect and preserve Social Security and improve Medicare as the basis of universal health care.

In short, protect the people, let the failed white-collar felons, mendicants, liars and thieves lose--restart the game with proper regulation...and if foreign markets or investors balk, remind them that they have an obligation to sort out their own problems.

But, if we go forward as planned with a bail-out wrapped in the gauze of loosening up bankruptcy restrictions on consumers, regulation-lite, and few incentive dollars thrown to the people, I do not want ever again to hear a conservative talk of the "free-market system", wonders of capitalism, or how people get ahead by taking risk, or that giving poor and disadvantaged people a hand up is socialism.

Wait, I know I'll hear it, but be warned, if you think I've been in your face before....

If you're really a conservative you should be frothing at the mouth, and if you're a liberal, your hair should be on fire, and if you're an independent right now, sorry pal, you ain't got a freeking clue!

There's a reason Paulsen is shrieking, do it now, right now. That is because the more we see of it, the more we recognize the bail-out for the fascist government take-over of the economy that it is and the more pressure we put on our representatives.

We didn't get in this shape in a week, and we don't need to craft a solution in a few days. Now is the time for citizen input, debate, discussion and bi-partisan compromise.

This is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Oh so wrong!

Navigator

09-23-2008, 07:48 AM

But, what if we took a different approach. Indemnify and protect the victims (all of us) by giving us the option of shifting our 401K money, and pension fund owned stocks, into treasury bills or another sort of government backed bonds, allowing the failures to fail--there will be entrepreneurs out there willing to patch together the workable pieces to rebuild.

And then lien, levy, seize and sell all the assets both corporate and private belonging to the corporations and their management groups from CEO, Boards and down to Vice-President level and bring that money into the treasury as a super-fund to protect and preserve Social Security and improve Medicare as the basis of universal health care.

My sentiments exactly! And there's more...

The problem with this bailout is that ALL the pain is from confiscating the assets of Main Street while the Assets of Wall Street get protected and bolstered. I haven't heard any of the talking heads on TV actually start talking about confiscating the assets FIRST of bank executives and Boards, but it's a great idea.

This morning, however, Sen Shelby came close to these sentiments in his opening remarks to his committee which will be discussing all this with Paulson, Bernanke and Cox as the day goes on.

Also there is a great article out there, by a Dr. Hussman, that many people are mailing to their CongressCritters. It essentially says that ALL the pain should go to the stockholders and bondholders of the banks that got themselves into trouble with too much leverage. It also says that money should be enough to fix the problem.

Anyone who likes this idea might consider sending it to his/her CongressCritter.

http://www.hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc080922.htm

Skinview

09-23-2008, 12:01 PM

Was too. A normative (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative) definition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definition) views crime as deviant behavior (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deviant_behavior) that violates prevailing norms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norm_%28sociology%29) – cultural (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture) standards prescribing how humans ought to behave normally.

The fact that there is a "mess" is prima facie proof of deviant behavior violating standards. Such messes are not self-generating.

But, beyond that, one can have perpetrators and guilty people without resorting to LSAT definitions of crime.

Ok, so all of us here are criminals because we don't wear clothes.

LamontCranston

09-23-2008, 04:44 PM

Actually, at 10,000, an 800 loss is 8.0% not .008%.

And that's rather significant.

What if you have worked your whole life -- invested -- and your life savings are in your 401k and/or IRAs? (Like, uh, mr and mrs 'lurk). And even the most conservative investments start to go bonkers?
Thanks for catching the math error 'lurk. It is significant, but wasn't some of that recovered later last week? And it's off again this week.

My 401(k) was emptied out by my ex-wife six years ago when I was 39. She took half in the divorce settlement and I used most of my half to buy out her interest in the house. Things happen, I'll get by without a handout from Uncle Sam or by asking you to prop me up.

I understand the concepts behind buying bad debt, lifting balance sheets, selling it back over time and all that. What I don't understand is the sudden urgency.

Congress was in recess all of August, right? I worked the whole time, how 'bout you? And I didn't have a MY-GOD-THE-WORLD-WILL-END problem staring at me. Now they have to solve this in a week so they can dismiss themselves again?

Sorry, not enough time. And sorry, I don't believe this is sudden at all. We're being hoodwinked, just like TRUST US, WE NEED TO INVADE IRAQ. We can't have GIANT RICH PEOPLE LOOPHOLES in the swiss cheese of a bill they'll write.

They keep saying we're in a recession. A recession is two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. We're not in a recession. The last time we had a negative GDP growth was Oct 2007. Before that was July 2001 http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=353 Was it the end of the world as you knew it? Or did things recover and eventually roar back as they most always do?

And the Democrats have controlled Congress for two years now. The Bush Admin finger-pointing routine is a bit old. What have Dodd and Frank been doing in committee for two years? Picking noses and admiring $120 ties. They've been driving the scenic roads for too long.

Those Congress people need go on record and vote to give away $700 billion to rich executives, then come home and explain it to the voters.

"Ain't gonna happen."

Qikdraw

09-23-2008, 05:30 PM

My 401(k) was emptied out by my ex-wife six years ago when I was 39. She took half in the divorce settlement and I used most of my half to buy out her interest in the house. Things happen, I'll get by without a handout from Uncle Sam or by asking you to prop me up.

But this isn't about you specifically, its about all the others who may lose all their savings due to idiocy by the CEOs.

I understand the concepts behind buying bad debt, lifting balance sheets, selling it back over time and all that. What I don't understand is the sudden urgency.

Congress was in recess all of August, right? I worked the whole time, how 'bout you? And I didn't have a MY-GOD-THE-WORLD-WILL-END problem staring at me. Now they have to solve this in a week so they can dismiss themselves again?

This (http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/9/23/15463/3802/393/607783) is an interesting article, and makes an interesting point..

My theory? This isn't a real crisis since, as they themselves have told us, they don't want to limit this giveaway to just failing banks, but to all of Wall Street, even the "very successful banks and investment houses that have done very well".

So since the fate of the free world doesn't really reside on this bill, they can spring it at the most opportune moment. And in this case, it was in a shortened congressional session just days before final adjournment before the elections. They're so used to crying wolf and having Democrats jump at the site of men in military uniforms men in suits carrying briefcases, that they were confident they could roll the Democratic leadership with their Chicken Little act, all the while keeping their own troops in line.

Sorry, not enough time. And sorry, I don't believe this is sudden at all. We're being hoodwinked, just like TRUST US, WE NEED TO INVADE IRAQ. We can't have GIANT RICH PEOPLE LOOPHOLES in the swiss cheese of a bill they'll write.

I agree. This should not be done now at all. In fact I don't think that at the end of one presidency a sitting president should saddle the new president with 1 Trillion in debt. The new president, whoever it may be, should be the one to decide this.

And the Democrats have controlled Congress for two years now. The Bush Admin finger-pointing routine is a bit old. What have Dodd and Frank been doing in committee for two years? Picking noses and admiring $120 ties. They've been driving the scenic roads for too long.

When repubicans filibuster everything you put before them, its hard to get anything done. This is why I hope the democrats can get 60 seats in the senate and win the presidency. Right now we have politicians refusing to do anything simply because the other party is for it. This is idiotic and needs to stop.

Those Congress people need go on record and vote to give away $700 billion to rich executives, then come home and explain it to the voters.

"Ain't gonna happen."

Yeah, this bailout is idiotic as it stands, even with provisions its idiotic. I've said before that if we help these companies out, we own them. By bailing them out we buy the company, and if the company doesn't like it, they can go under. We own them, then when teh business is back on track, and with heavy regulations, we sell the company on the open market, use the money to pay down the national debt. I think that is reasonable.

Oh yeah, every CEO, VP, and board member are dismissed with no golden parachute, no stock options, nothing.

Boreas

09-23-2008, 06:12 PM

usmc1

09-23-2008, 06:23 PM

Ok, so all of us here are criminals because we don't wear clothes.

Depends on the where and when. Don't be obtuse, it is not a charming trait in an adult.

as to crimes nominative or declarative;
FBI Investigating Fraud At Fannie, Freddie, AIG, Lehman (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/23/fbi-investigating-compani_n_128759.html)

usmc1

09-23-2008, 06:27 PM

I was struck by how quickly 70 million could be spent. Where is the thought and the checks and balances?

CBC news is on right now, and they are talking about the bailout. It seems to have created quite a stir down there!
Stir? I reckon! One correspondent reports on congress developing a proto-spine and standing up to the dry-drunk sociopath in the White House who is trying the same fear tactics he used in the run up to the Iraq invasion and occupation..."consequences will be "dire" if we don't do it..now!"

Chris Dodd's got an alternative bill working along the lines of what I suggested earlier today, give the American people shares!

Tomorrow will be fun.

Naturist Mark

09-23-2008, 11:31 PM

Cenk Uygur - I can't say his name, but I like what he has to say.

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jon71

09-23-2008, 11:37 PM

Barack Obama's plan is great. A few of the highlights include that the taxpayers be paid back. I love this. Without this provision America is just getting robbed. There are other good ideas like a bipartisan committee in charge of this, no golden parachutes, and of course putting main street U.S.A. first in any plan we do. Let's hope this is what happens.

Navigator

09-24-2008, 01:32 PM

This is a very fine rant by Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, about the plundering of the American taxpayer that is being discussed in Washington and on C-Span and CNBC today.

If you agree that you refuse to be plundered to benefit wealthy banks that speculated and lost, you should call your Rep. and Sen's. and tell them you're AGAINST the bailout of Wall Street banks with taxpayer money. If you don't call, you'll be paying for it for the rest of your life as you watch your taxes increase and the value of every dollar in your savings buy less and less each month...for the rest of your life.

Please look up your Reps. on the internet and give them a call. It's fun. I've talked to the intern's answering the phone for my Reps and they tell me they're besieged with angry calls about this bailout and that 100% of the calls are AGAINST the bailout. Let your Reps know how you feel.

http://tw.youtube.com/watch?v=mbD62gNi9WE

Qikdraw

09-24-2008, 01:58 PM

Hot news.

McCain wants to cancel debates because of this crisis. He's rushing to Washington to deal with the issue.

Obama says this is the best time for debates, to show the American people how you will handle tough issues as president.

Personally I think McCain is hiding again. He doesn't want to be called on how his advisors helped put us in this mess. McCain's campaign has been hiding from the media, not answering questions from the media, this is just more of the same. McCain does not want to answer questions during a crisis, which is the most important time to ask questions.

usmc1

09-25-2008, 04:14 AM

From Drudge:

<tt><tt><tt>EXCLUSIVE: LETTERMAN MOCKS MCCAIN CANCELLATION
Wed Sep 24 2008 17:41:58 ET

David Letterman tells audience that McCain called him today to tell him he had to rush back to DC to deal with the economy.

Then in the middle of the taping Dave got word that McCain was, in fact just down the street being interviewed by Katie Couric. Dave even cut over to the live video of the interview, and said, "Hey Senator, can I give you a ride home?"

Earlier in the show, Dave kept saying, "You don't suspend your campaign. This doesn't smell right. This isn't the way a tested hero behaves." And he joked: "I think someone's putting something in his Metamucil."

"He can't run the campaign because the economy is cratering? Fine, put in your second string quarterback, Sara Palin. Where is she?"

"What are you going to do if you're elected and things get tough? Suspend being president? We've got a guy like that now!"

</tt></tt></tt>McCain's "Financial Crisis" Mode (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/24/mccains-financial-crisis_n_129118.html)

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<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/DFNifeaK2dc&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"> (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/24/mccains-financial-crisis_n_129118.html)</object></center>
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/24/mccains-financial-crisis_n_129118.html)Sunday: McCain Endorses Bailout... Tuesday: McCain Says He Hasn't Actually Read Bailout Plan... (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/24/mccains-financial-crisis_n_129118.html)Wednesday: Obama Leads In Polls, McCain "Suspends" Campaign To Focus Exclusively On Bailout... (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/24/mccain-asks-to-postpone-f_n_128968.html)Then Tapes Interview With Katie Couric... (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/24/mccains-financial-crisis_n_129118.html)Wednesday Night: Dems Say They've Already Reached Deal On Bailout (http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE48O0E620080925)

Boreas

09-25-2008, 06:33 AM

Earlier in the show, Dave kept saying, "You don't suspend your campaign. This doesn't smell right. This isn't the way a tested hero behaves." And he joked: "I think someone's putting something in his Metamucil."

Well said. I heard a sound bite of McCain today where he said he won't attend the debate unless this bailout is passed.

How very presidential of him! http://www.mysmiley.net/imgs/smile/rolleye/rolleye0001.gif (http://www.mysmiley.net/freesmiley.php?smiley=rolleye/rolleye0001.gif) (yes, I am being sarcastic here)

So, is he going to black mail the American public in order to get his way if he becomes president??

usmc1

09-25-2008, 08:21 AM

Qikdraw

09-25-2008, 11:05 AM

Well said. I heard a sound bite of McCain today where he said he won't attend the debate unless this bailout is passed.

How very presidential of him! http://www.mysmiley.net/imgs/smile/rolleye/rolleye0001.gif (http://www.mysmiley.net/freesmiley.php?smiley=rolleye/rolleye0001.gif) (yes, I am being sarcastic here)

So, is he going to black mail the American public in order to get his way if he becomes president??

Well here is the other thing... Is he going to suspend the presidency to deal with something??

Also why can't Palin continue the campaign while he goes and deals with whatever he thinks he needs to? If she can't be trusted by the McCain campaign to even run a campaign, why should we trust her to be the VP and a heartbeat away from the presidency?

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FREE SARAH PALIN!!!!

Naturist Mark

09-25-2008, 05:46 PM

Well said. I heard a sound bite of McCain today where he said he won't attend the debate unless this bailout is passed.

Newly minted US citizen Craig Ferguson loves him some democracy. McCain's "suspension" of his campaign and attempt to ditch the first debate did NOT impress him.

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-Mark

usmc1

09-25-2008, 06:34 PM

Oh, the games people play now
Every night and everyday now
Never meanin' what they say now
Never sayin' what they mean.... (http://www.joesouth.com/)

Remember this one from Joe South? Give it a quick listen, you'll recall it.

 <o>:p></o>:p>
Here’s your guide to what McCain really means when he says…La da da dah, La da da dee, Oh the games...

Says: I’m suspending my campaign

Means: I will pull my TV ads and save that money for later while posturing as the savior of the economy and getting free “earned media” coverage. Sure it’s a risk, because people might see me as a craven putz, but the conservatives will rally around me as a wise, experienced leader. And, after all, I’ll still have all my surrogates doing the interview shows. It won’t be like my campaign is really, really shut down.

And, it will distract the media and national attention from the fact that I’m taking a big-time ***-whipping in the polls and that my lobbyist campaign manager has been linked to a failing Wall-Street firm being investigated for fraud by the FBI.

Says: We need to postpone the debates, saving the economy is too important.

Means: Damn, I think I can whip Obama’s butt from here to Sunday on national security and foreign policy, but with this “economy thingee” (Palin’s influence is already showing) distracting everyone, no one will pay attention. I’ll be losing my best opportunity in the debates if we go with this topic right now. And since the dumb-*** public has no clue to how the process really works, I’ll be seen as a man of action, putting ethics before self.
.................................................. .................................................
OK, back to reality, I’m thinking that a Senator who claimed not to be all that up on economics, and who asserted a few days back that the economy is fundamentally sound, really has no damned thing to offer the negotiations. Perhaps he could get some lipstick on her and send Sarah in his place, she could at least explain the earmarks process if she could get someone to listen.

[I]No, forget that. We’d be best served by both their absences!

usmc1

09-26-2008, 05:31 AM

Boreas

09-26-2008, 12:42 PM

So, it seems that McCain has agreed to participate in the debate.

http://www.cbc.ca/world/usvotes/story/2008/09/26/us-debate.html

The comments attached to the article are interesting. I particularly like the first one: a) someone who thinks they can be the executive of the USA should be able to do more than one thing at a time.
b) someone who thinks they can be the executive of the USA should think that a medium like a national debate would help inform and calm the minds of the public that deserve to hear the ideas of their potential future leader.
c) someone who thinks they can be the executive of the USA should be able to be a "maverick" and press forward with presidential campaign and trust his party leaders to do the right thing without his interference.
d) someone who thinks they can be the executive of the USA should have nothing to hide and relish the chance to speak in front of the world; to show his leadership; and to debate the topics that are important across many topics important to Main street and Wall street.

I'm wondering what he's really thinking.

Boreas

09-26-2008, 12:49 PM

BTW those clips by Craig Ferguson and David Letterman were hysterical, and bang on the money! One thing we can say, is that McCain is giving the comedians good material. :surprised:

I also liked the Free Palin clip. She was right on with that. Palin SHOULD be treated like any other politician, and NOT hidden away like a delicate flower.

LamontCranston

09-27-2008, 06:45 AM

But this isn't about you specifically, its about all the others who may lose all their savings due to idiocy by the CEOs. But that's the point I hope all those Congress people and Senators take home with them. It is about me specifically when I'm standing in the voting booth and they want me to fill in the oval next to their name.

Anyone who votes for a bailout like this will never get my vote again. Chris Dodd, are you listening?

Maybe it's a good idea, maybe it'll work, maybe it won't. But no one can write the detail required to account for $700 billion in a week. I've got real problems shifting control of that much money from the legislative branch to the executive branch.

And where will the money come from? They argue all the time about this program and that program and how do we pay for it and now they've got $700 billion or whatever they need to buy the paper on hand? Today? Which fund is being raided? Social Security?

And still there's no one being held accountable. Never mind limiting executive salary and bonuses. They'll find a way around that with some fancy options or something. I'm not fooled. Any executive that needs government assistance because he/she failed to manage risk must resign. Get out or the company or bank can go down. I can't compromise on that.

It's all bull**** and they best realize it. If they vote on such a bill and five weeks later the economy is still in the soup it'll be carnage on election day. That's not a fair measure, it'll take more than five weeks to turn around, but I'm not that patient when they sign up to spend that much money in a week and neither are my fellow voters.

Can't wait for the video of federal marshals evicting people because Lehman Brothers speculated on the mortgage paper. There's more to it than that but no one will care about the details.

Government takes over your liberty with the Homeland Security Laws and now they want control of large swaths of residential and commercial real estate.

We should be afraid.

Naturist Mark

09-27-2008, 08:22 AM

NudeAl

09-27-2008, 08:48 AM

LamontCranston

09-27-2008, 09:34 AM

On the subject of all these sub-prime loans. I have a simple solution. Make the banks who signed the deals on those loans change the terms of the loans so that the home owners can afford to stay in there homes. ... This is less profitable for the banks but guess what? The homeowners stay in their homes, less homes go into foreclosure and while the banks make less profit they can afford to stay in business. Hey these guys wanted the deregulation so this is what you get! I do not support a bail out of these poorly managed financial institutions. Spot on Al. It's called renegotiating a contract. Why aren't they doing simple business practices like this one?

And Mark... that video ought to run on prime-time TV during the election run-up followed by a scroll list showing who voted Yay or Nay on the Bill.

$700 billion. That's 3.5 million $200,000 foreclosed abandoned non-performing properties... Really? Does that sound right to anyone? I don't believe them. Simple as that.

In this credit-tightening crises about to bring down western civilization... anyone else still getting credit card offers in the mail? We got them from Washington Mutual, Bank of America and Chase this week. The beat goes on....

Naturist Mark

09-27-2008, 09:35 AM

They need to be held accountable. McCain made a big deal about accountability well shut up and put up! These jerks ran their companies into the ground then got millions in the form of these golden parachute deals. I am quite sure when they signed these deals no where in the contract did it say oh by the way I am going to run this company into the ground. They need to be held responsible. I would love to have a few of them publicly executed but maybe that is going a bit to far. Our politicians that voted to repeal the Glass Steagall act need to be held responsible as well. Not to mention the administration who shut down the State efforts (led by Eliot Spitzer) to re-regulate the financial industry to head off this meltdown.
I think we should get a list of the ones who voted in favor of this posted on the internet and have a little accountability for them as well.

On the subject of all these sub-prime loans. I have a simple solution. Make the banks who signed the deals on those loans change the terms of the loans so that the home owners can afford to stay in there homes. One of the changes that some of those negotiating the bailout bill want to include is a provision that allows bankruptcy judges to change the terms of loans (which they are currently prohibited from doing - yet another act on the part of this administration to increase financial industry profits that has come back to bite us in the butt). But Al has a good idea here - don't make distressed homeowners go all the way to bankruptcy to achieve this - lets make the changes that prevent bankruptcies and turn those mortgages into valuable assets again.
The president needs to put a stop to this. Simply force the banks to keep those loans and fix the rates at the level the home owners can afford to pay. Then instead of a 30 year term run it out to whatever length of time needed to ensure the bank gets a full repayment. I think it is quite common in Scandinavian countries to have 70 year fixed loans. This is less profitable for the banks but guess what? The homeowners stay in their homes, less homes go into foreclosure and while the banks make less profit they can afford to stay in business. Hey these guys wanted the deregulation so this is what you get! I do not support a bail out of these poorly managed financial institutions. Not unless we get to throw the CEO's in jail and confiscate all their financial assets. That is still not as severe a punishment as I feel they deserve.

Unfortunately I think a bailout is necessary. I'm not sure for how much, apparently the number $700 Billion was just made up with no particular justification other than that it is huge enough to panic Congress. I want to see the people who set this all up - who profited obscenely from the road up to this fiasco (the top four companies being bailed out gave over 30 billion dollars in bonuses to their top executives last year) to be held financially accountable. How about we make them turn over all their houses, planes, and cars to the US treasury, and force them all to live cheek to jowl in McCain's 6 extra houses. Seriously - I want to see confiscation of the ill gotten gains of the irresponsible parties, not just the forfeiture of their golden parachutes. I want to see the multi thousand dollars per loan bonuses paid to loan officers who steered minority home buyers who qualified for prime interest mortgages into getting sub-prime loans instead (apparently this happened to OVER 80 PERCENT of minority home buyers) confiscated as illegal kickbacks.

Yeah, we have no choice but to save capitalism from the capitalists once again. But the time is passed for letting them get away with it. So go ahead and pass a short term bill to get the process started, under CONSTANT surveillance and with plenty of strings attached, and come January 21st, we'll revisit the issue, see what we've learned, and figure out how many of those FEMA detention centers Bush had KBR build all around the country we need to activate.

-Mark

Bob S.

09-27-2008, 02:41 PM

usmc1

09-27-2008, 03:13 PM

Bill Clinton blasts Democrats for the mess.

An exchange during an interview on ABC by Chris Cuomo:

CHRIS CUOMO, ABC NEWS: A little surprising for you to hear the Democrats saying, "This came out of nowhere, this is all about the Republicans. We had nothing to do with this." Nancy Pelosi saying it. She signed the '99 Gramm Bill. She knew what was going on with the SEC. They're all sophisticated people. Is that playing politics in this situation?
BILL CLINTON: Well, maybe everybody does that a little bit. I think the responsibility the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was President to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

So with all of the "blame the Republicans" going around, the beloved (although not so much any more with some liberals) former Democrat President blames his own party for lack of standards on the bill that is blamed for the current crisis.

Bob S.

Nah, you're confused. It's all Clinton's fault. Despite what he says. Everything is Clinton's fault. Iraq, deadly pet food, bank failures, cost of gas at the pump, McCain's crabbiness, Obama's affability, Nacktman's banning, high utility bills, they're all traced back to Clinton.

Can't get lucky after a Friday night dinner and movie date...it's Clinton's fault.

Your sciatica bother's you. It's Clinton's fault.

Deregulation and the attempt to deconstruct the New Deal, with its regulations and guarantees for working America was the holy mantra of the Reagan Revolution. Any democrats with full bellies and short memories who bought into or supported that are quislings.

What is ludicrous is that those who berated Clinton as a liar, and parser of meaning back in the day, are now so eager to cite him when it seems convenient.

Make no mistake about it, deregulation belongs to the Republicans through Reagan and Gingrich and their lick spit fellow-travelers, the Bushistas and K-street medndicants and felons.

I will grant you this, their were and are some gutless people, with full-bellies and short memories, calling themselves democrat, who if not gone in this cycle, will be gone in 2010.

Bob S.

09-28-2008, 02:12 PM

usmc1

09-28-2008, 02:56 PM

usmc: "What is ludicrous is that those who berated Clinton as a liar, and parser of meaning back in the day, are now so eager to cite him when it seems convenient."

And those who praised Clinton as a great man who saved this country are now eager to say that he is lying now that it is convenient. I'm just curious what the Democrats here in this forum think of his words. I take it you disagree with him at best and at worst, are suggesting his is lying or trying to protect his legacy. But if the latter, why blame the Dems?

Bob S.

I think Clinton was president 8-years ago and presided over one of the greatest economic periods of the twentieth century. Probably only bested by the early to mid-60s.

I'd prefer that he now shut up and recognize that it is a new century, with new problems and issues, and that he and the rest of the country-club democrats he hangs with are history.

He sufficed at the time, but really was more of a Chamber of Commerce Republican than a progressive democrat. Our job this cycle is to take back teh White House and both houses. Next cycle is to replace COC democrats with progressives.

Whatever Clinton contributes that is fine, as far as the rest of it, old news...we're taking the party back.

Boreas

09-29-2008, 02:50 PM

U.S. House votes down $700B bailout deal

Markets plummet in U.S., Canada as financial rescue fails

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/09/29/us-bailout.html

I guess now we wait for the next chapter.

Navigator

09-29-2008, 03:16 PM

Here's a portion of NY-House Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand's explanation for her "No" vote.

"We need to help firms recapitalize, and this should be done without solely using taxpayer money. The federal government should work with firms to accurately write down the values of these assets in order to restore confidence in the system and allow investors to begin buying and selling again. Firms should be required to raise their capital standards, and if the federal government needs to intervene, then they should receive a fair equity stake in the company in order to protect the taxpayer. If taxpayer funds are invested, then we would need much stricter executive compensation limits, so that Wall Street executives are not financially rewarded for the crisis they have created. To calm fears, we should raise the FDIC insured limits. Furthermore, we need to put in place regulatory measures that will prevent this type of economic meltdown in the future, so that the middle class' savings will not be threatened again because of Wall Street mismanagement and greed."

Way to go Kirsten...and I never thought I'd say this but...also a big thank you to House Republicans for your NO votes on the "No Wealthy Banker Left Behind" bailout, with taxpayer money, of bankers that speculated and lost.

Boreas

09-29-2008, 03:51 PM

It is nice to see there is some wisdom in Washington! I like Ms. Gillibrand's reasoning!

I too was glad that the no vote was fairly evenly made up of Reps and Dems. Hopefully there will be less blaming as a result.

LamontCranston

09-29-2008, 04:09 PM

Bush says this will re-open the credit markets. Yesterday we were out and about and the parking lot was full at the mall and the store was busy. The clerk's all ask if we want to open a charge card for our purchase. We're still getting credit card offers in the mail. My daughter had no trouble securing a student loan this summer. My spouse got a car loan by using another paid up car as collateral. Work says there's 5 more years on our contract and projects in the pipeline. We live in a house suitable for us but not huge. We make regular mortgage payments and save for the oil delivery.

Things seem fine over on this end.

I don't believe them. TOO BIG TOO FAST. In a free market economy one is free to profit and free to fail. So fail. In a Business 101 class one is taught to evaluate risk and reward. Too much risk, no reward. So fail.

After ExxonMobil posts record profits several years in a row how would we all feel about bailing them out now that gas prices are dropping?

"No *******' way" in four part harmony. :D

LamontCranston

09-29-2008, 04:16 PM

It is nice to see there is some wisdom in Washington! I like Ms. Gillibrand's reasoning! One of the Reps from Indiana was asking in his remarks how much of the bad mortgage debt was in China. Anyone want to bail out speculators in China who take jobs away with their cheap labor and flood our market with junk?

"No *******' way" in four part harmony.

Both Presidential Candidates were far away from Washington and New York today. They clearly didn't want to get any slop on their shiny shoes.

If this is still a problem in January, the new administration and congress can debate it. Until then, hold on to your hats congresspeople, if you voted yes, you're about to be voted out.

Boreas

09-29-2008, 04:27 PM

Both Presidential Candidates were far away from Washington and New York today. They clearly didn't want to get any slop on their shiny shoes.

If this is still a problem in January, the new administration and congress can debate it. Until then, hold on to your hats congresspeople, if you voted yes, you're about to be voted out.

Do I detect some cynicism Mr Cranston?? ;)

I totally agree with you! Does that make me a cynic too? :sneaky:

LamontCranston

09-29-2008, 04:50 PM

Do I detect some cynicism Mr Cranston?? ;)
Nope. I'm not cynical at all. Those people in elected office can't do nothing for years, then suddenly pull a rabbit out of a hat. I'm not a youngster watching Mr. Rogers shake flakes over his fish tank over here. I don't believe them.

$700 billion is too much power and it will control too much real estate.

Plus, anytime anyone on this long-meandering presidential trail makes a mention of health care, the other side jumps on him/her over how they're going to pay for it. Well.... $700 billion is a lot of insurance premiums and would float quite a few emergency trauma centers. Where's it coming from? Exactly?

From 1992 - 1996 I was working as a salaried engineer for a defense contractor. Times were tough they said. We're in a recession they said. Our abilty to compete is at stake they said. So no pay raises they said. They even sent around an economics professor to all the plants with charts and slides. OK we said. Just don't lay us off boss we said.

After three years of flat wages the company bought another company for $1 billion in CASH. Not a stock swap or options or equity sharing. CASH.

So sorry, I've seen this rubber worm before and I'm not biting. There's a barbed hook in there. :p

brainyguy9999

09-29-2008, 06:53 PM

I posted this on a financial blog this evening. Thought I would share it here...

******************************

It’s great news that Congress did something right for a change. Government should stay out of the free market and let it work. Let the guys who gambled and lost walk away with their tails between their legs. They deserve to lose everything. Now they can face their former employees in court and explain to them why they gambled away their employment as well.

Just watch all of the fiscally responsible companies step up to the plate and snatch up what’s left of the house of cards. America will be a stronger country once all the dust settles and the men and women at the top of the corporate ladder realize that their greed was the cause of the mess. They caused the hyper-valuation of all of these worthless “assets” and they had no where to go but down once people came out of their greed frenzy haze that pushed the “values” through the roof.

Let the free market work, I say. Yes, Americans on the street will suffer some because of all of these failures, but the biggest losers will be the rich money shufflers on Wall Street and in Washington. Those are the people that have been screaming bloody murder. Why is that? Because THEY are going to lose a ton of money. They don’t care what happens to the average American. They care that they are facing personal economic collapse. That’s where the financial Armageddon is occurring, and they are whining like crybabies about it. No one bailed me out when I lost money in the market. I’m not willing to bail them out either. Buck up and write it off on your taxes as a loss just like everyday citizens do.

Thank goodness for the fiscally conservative Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate. THAT is leadership that we need to keep around up there. The ones that aren’t willing to steal from the taxpayers to bail out their buddies.

Mark in Kansas, where people go to work for a living every day.

************************************************** ***

Stay nude (it's cheaper) ;)

bg

Boreas

09-29-2008, 07:07 PM

So sorry, I've seen this rubber worm before and I'm not biting. There's a barbed hook in there. :p

I too have seen this rubber worm before. I worked in hospitals for 20 years and we got the same song and dance. The spin is that this type of healthcare costs so much yada yada. We had to take a 15% cut, so the bigwigs could get a 35% increase in wages. There seems to be a concerted effort to ruin what is good in our healthcare system in order to sell us a private system. It has not gone over well with most Canadians.

Just watch all of the fiscally responsible companies step up to the plate and snatch up what’s left of the house of cards. America will be a stronger country once all the dust settles and the men and women at the top of the corporate ladder realize that their greed was the cause of the mess. They caused the hyper-valuation of all of these worthless “assets” and they had no where to go but down once people came out of their greed frenzy haze that pushed the “values” through the roof.

That is a very good way to look at things. I am inclined to agree. I heard a commentary on CBC (Canada Broadcasting Corp) today that said a variation of the same. The man suggested that give it six months to a year and the financial world will be much stronger because there will be regulations, and the crooks will be gone. Of course I am paraphrasing big time.

brainyguy9999

09-29-2008, 07:10 PM

But I REALLY want to hear what Sarah Palin has to say about this. I'm SURE she has a plan. ;)

I think she saw a financial rescue plan from her window once....

Stay nude!!

bg

Qikdraw

09-29-2008, 09:38 PM

Link (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a9MTZEgukPLY&refer=home)

Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve will pump an additional $630 billion into the global financial system, flooding banks with cash to alleviate the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression.

The Fed increased its existing currency swaps with foreign central banks by $330 billion to $620 billion to make more dollars available worldwide. The Term Auction Facility, the Fed's emergency loan program, will expand by $300 billion to $450 billion. The European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan are among the participating authorities.

The Fed's expansion of liquidity, the biggest since credit markets seized up last year, came hours before the U.S. House of Representatives rejected a $700 billion bailout for the financial industry. The crisis is reverberating through the global economy, causing stocks to plunge and forcing European governments to rescue four banks over the past two days alone.

``Today's blast of term liquidity will settle the funding markets down, and allow trust to slowly be restored between borrowers and lenders,'' said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. in New York. On the other hand, ``the Fed's balance sheet is about to explode.''

The MSCI World Index of stocks in 23 developed markets sank 6 percent, the most since its creation in 1970. Credit markets deteriorated further as authorities tried to save more financial institutions from collapse.

European Rescue

European governments have rescued four banks in two days and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said today it helped Citigroup Inc. buy the banking operations of Wachovia Corp. after its shares collapsed. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index fell 3.8 percent and the cost of borrowing dollars for three months rose to the highest since January. The rate for euros hit a record.

``If people think the authorities may give in to fears, they are wrong,'' Financial Stability Forum Chairman Mario Draghi said today in Amsterdam, where the international group of regulators and finance officials is meeting. ``There is willingness and determination on winning the battle to restore confidence and stability.''

Banks and brokers have slowed lending as they struggle to restore their capital after $586 billion in credit losses and writedowns since the mortgage crisis began a year ago. The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. also sparked fears among banks they wouldn't be repaid by counterparties, driving up the cost of short-term loans between banks.

Funding Risk

``By committing to provide a very large quantity of term funding, the Federal Reserve actions should reassure financial market participants that financing will be available against good collateral, lessening concerns about funding and rollover risk,'' the central bank said.

The Bank of England and the ECB will each double the size of their dollar swap facilities with the Fed to as much as $80 billion and $240 billion, respectively. The Swiss National Bank and the Bank of Japan will also double their dollar swap lines, while the central banks in Australia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Canada tripled theirs.

All the banks extended their facilities until the end of April 2009.

The Fed is also increasing the size of its three 84-day TAF sales to $75 billion apiece, from $25 billion. That means the Fed will make a total of $225 billion available in 84-day loans. The central bank will keep the sales of 28-day credit at $75 billion.

Special Sales

In addition, the Fed will hold two special TAF sales in November totaling $150 billion so banks can have funding available for one or two weeks over year-end. The exact timing and terms will be determined later, the Fed said. The TAF program began in December, totaling $40 billion.

The bank-rescue plan being debated by Congress today would give the Fed more power over short-term interest rates by providing authority as of Oct. 1 to pay interest on reserves held at the central bank by financial institutions. That would make it easier for the Fed to pump funds into the banking system.

Paying interest on reserves puts a ``floor'' under the traded overnight rate, which would allow a central bank ``to provide liquidity during times of stress'' without affecting the rate, New York Fed economists said in a paper last month.

Isn't this lovely??

Navigator

09-29-2008, 09:40 PM

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/9/29/81959/5135/178/614084

ki4kxq

09-29-2008, 09:56 PM

Glad the bailout vote got a big fat NO!! The market needs to work and it will work this thing out on it's own. Will there be pain? Of course there will. There will be pain anytime you do stupid in spades as the lessons are learned.

Called our representatives last week to tell them to vote no on this bailout plan. Will call again tomorrow to keep the pressure on them. We do not want any part of this socialistic plan. The hysteria is almost comical, even from Bush who says that consumer and small business credit is frozen. No, credit to broke people who can't afford to pay the loan back is frozen and that's a good thing. Credit done stupidly is frozen, that is a good thing. Are things going to get tough, yep, but that's ok. A natural fix is always much better than something the misfits in DC can concoct.

usmc1

09-30-2008, 04:34 AM

But I REALLY want to hear what Sarah Palin has to say about this. I'm SURE she has a plan. ;)

I think she saw a financial rescue plan from her window once....

Stay nude!!

bg
She's too busy attending "Debate Camp" to bother other than to tell Katie that...oh well nevermind, everyone's seen that idiocy by now.

Boreas

09-30-2008, 07:53 AM

Called our representatives last week to tell them to vote no on this bailout plan. Will call again tomorrow to keep the pressure on them. We do not want any part of this socialistic plan. The hysteria is almost comical, even from Bush who says that consumer and small business credit is frozen. No, credit to broke people who can't afford to pay the loan back is frozen and that's a good thing. Credit done stupidly is frozen, that is a good thing. Are things going to get tough, yep, but that's ok. A natural fix is always much better than something the misfits in DC can concoct.

This is GWB's plan. Does that make him a socialist???

Frankly, I do not believe this is about the little guy at all. It is about saving the arses who are incompetent on Wall Street.

Qikdraw

09-30-2008, 11:20 AM

Frankly, I do not believe this is about the little guy at all. It is about saving the arses who are incompetent on Wall Street.

I was of two minds about the bailout. I thought it was good if regulations were put in, I thought it was good if it helped avoid a complete meltdown and saved people's pensions, I thought it was good if a revision of terms for some of these mortgages were done. However, I thought it was bad because this was caused by wall street, I thought it was bad if the vast majority of the money just went to wall street, and did little to change regulation and was just a hand out.

I had also heard that there was plenty of money inside the industry to help the companies, but none of it was being used because they wanted the bailout money. I don't know how valid that claim is, but I suppose we'll see in the coming weeks.

Sneaking in under the radar was a 25 Billion 'loan' to American car companies. Again this is something I have problems with. I would have added a few provisions like all CEO and board member salaries, all VP salaries are now reduced to 50k a year until such a time that the company makes money, that the company opens up more plants inside the US and closes them in foriegn countries (give them tax insentives to doing so), and that the companies start making cars that do more than 30 mpg. They brought this on themselves by bad business practices. The only reason I am for a 'loan' to them is keeping more jobs going. We don't need thousands more out of work.

Oh and John McCain at his finest...

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Navigator

09-30-2008, 11:53 AM

People all around America are phoning and faxing and emailing their Senators and Congressmen TODAY to tell them to vote NO on using taxpayer money to bail out wealthy bankers who have recklessly speculated and lost using their banks money.

Please help defeat this bailout bill...it simply will not work. As house prices decline and job losses continue into 2009, any economic help from this $700 Billion of taxpayer money...your money...will just go down a black hole as bankers use the money to bail themselves out and taxpayers get nothing. Please don't believe that taxpayers will make money on toxic mortgage-backed securities purchased from money-losing banks with this money - they won't.

Congressional email boxes and fax machines are full in many cases and the huge volume of these fax's and emails are not read in other cases...or they're skimmed by a 22 year old intern who just fills out a "For or Against" form.

CNBC Market News has stated on air today that they have not gotten even one email in favor of this bailout in the last 48 hours despite a record volume of emails.

So...Please PHONE both of your state Senator's offices and the Washington office of the House Representative for your Congressional District. Tell them to vote NO on this giveaway or you'll vote NO on their reelection.

Click on your state here for Congressional phone numbers: http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/

Thanks...

ki4kxq

09-30-2008, 12:47 PM

This is GWB's plan. Does that make him a socialist???

Frankly, I do not believe this is about the little guy at all. It is about saving the arses who are incompetent on Wall Street.

Boreas, I am a fiscal and social conservative. That ideology puts me with the republican party far more than the democratic party. However, just because someone has an R after their name doesn't give them a free pass as far as I'm concerned. Yes this is GW's plan along with Henry Paulson. Is this plan socialistic? Yes. Does that make GW a socialist? Not necessarily, but because I don't normally view him as a socialist doesn't mean that in his state of panic he is not pushing something that is socialistic and a quick fix or bandaid.

One of the reasons for this mess was government meddling in the mortgage industry in the first place. Pushing risky loans so that everybody could buy a house. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac wanted in on the action of these hight fee, high interest loans, so they too took risks with federally backed loans to broke people. Giving the government a bigger stake in private industry is not the answer. The mess has got to be fixed by better regulation yes, but bailout, no. This does mean pain to companies, people, and the economy. But again, the pain will be far less without government intrusion.

Qikdraw

09-30-2008, 12:51 PM

Ok, so the original 700 Billion bailout failed, but they are still trying to work somethng out. Why? Hasn't the government already bailed them out (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a9MTZEgukPLY&refer=home)??

Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve will pump an additional $630 billion into the global financial system, flooding banks with cash to alleviate the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression.

For thse that better understand financial stuff, doesn't this mean a bailout has already happened? If so why are they discussing a bailout still? To me it looks like Bush went behind everybody's back and just gave the banks a load of money, with the American people gaining nothing.

Naturist Mark

09-30-2008, 03:41 PM

Ok, so the original 700 Billion bailout failed, but they are still trying to work somethng out. Why? Hasn't the government already bailed them out (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a9MTZEgukPLY&refer=home)??

For thse that better understand financial stuff, doesn't this mean a bailout has already happened? If so why are they discussing a bailout still? To me it looks like Bush went behind everybody's back and just gave the banks a load of money, with the American people gaining nothing.

What the Fed is doing is making additional interbank loans available to financial institutions in order to increase liquidity... what the bailout aims to do is to BUY, at a premium price, all the bad loans owned by US and FOREIGN banks, so that they will only be left with cash from the US Government for their liabilities, and they'll keep all their good high quality assets. Then the US treasury will attempt to get what money it can from the bad or suspect loans it acquires - meaning the US government will be foreclosing on a lot of homes, but not until the next president takes office to take the blame.

It is hoped that a lot of the subprime loans the govt buys will turn out to be good, and in a few years can be resold at a profit once the panic has passed. The problem is ... why would the banks sell sub-prime loans that look like they are good debt to the govt? No ... they'll separate the wheat from the chaff and only unload the crap.

Wouldn't you LOVE to be in a business where you can SELL your liabilities for cash and keep all your assets? That is why we need to receive equity in the banks along with their bad loans - the immediate improvement in their balance sheets will add value to the shares the govt holds - offsetting the probable losses from liquidating or converting the bad loans. And since that equity adds value to the bad debt, we can afford to convert the sub-prime loans to normal loans with low enough payments that they are much more likely to be fully paid off - and thus more valuable when the govt resells them.

And this is really important - every step taken must be under the oversight of the GAO - by far the most trustworthy govt agency.

Or we can just skip the public purchase altogether and just allow consumers to apply to a bankruptcy judge to have their debt terms adjusted - if necessary along with some govt assistance - cheaper in the short and long term - and the benefits would 'trickle up' to the banks.

Plus I also want whatever new bill is passed to include requiring the bankers to stand in stocks in the public square.

Yeah ... I'm petty.

-Mark

LamontCranston

09-30-2008, 04:11 PM

Qikdraw

09-30-2008, 04:43 PM

No. This is printing more money. It is one of the roles of the Fed to control the money supply. It's also how they came up with the Economic Stimulus checks. It lowers the value of the dollar and increases inflation. THe idea is that folks overseas will buy a cheaper dollar (or goods and services made with it) thereby sending their capital over here.

The bailout is about assuming debt from companies so their balance sheet looks better. If I didn't have credit card debt or a mortgage, my paycheck would go much farther. I'd buy more goods and services and prop up the businesses in the area.

The problem is.... no one is lining up to take my mortgage and credit debt from me. It's my problem, I signed for it, and I'm working it down.

These companies should too.

Do you think if I incorporate that I can apply for a piece of the bailout? :D

Thanks Mark & Lamont for clearing it up a bit more. :)

09-30-2008, 07:59 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU6fuFrdCJY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RZVw3no2A4&feature=iv&annotation_id=event_597487

<HR>

Note the date this was published. September 30, 1999 - during the Clinton Administration! Ten Years ago!

New York Times Sept 30,1999

Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending

By STEVEN A. HOLMES

Published: September 30, 1999

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates -- anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.

''Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990's by reducing down payment requirements,'' said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer. ''Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called sub prime market.''

Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the sub prime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market.

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.

''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''
Under Fannie Mae's pilot program, consumers who qualify can secure a mortgage with an interest rate one percentage point above that of a conventional, 30-year fixed rate mortgage of less than $240,000 -- a rate that currently averages about 7.76 per cent. If the borrower makes his or her monthly payments on time for two years, the one percentage point premium is dropped.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, does not lend money directly to consumers. Instead, it purchases loans that banks make on what is called the secondary market. By expanding the type of loans that it will buy, Fannie Mae is hoping to spur banks to make more loans to people with less-than-stellar credit ratings.

Fannie Mae officials stress that the new mortgages will be extended to all potential borrowers who can qualify for a mortgage. But they add that the move is intended in part to increase the number of minority and low income home owners who tend to have worse credit ratings than non-Hispanic whites.

Home ownership has, in fact, exploded among minorities during the economic boom of the 1990's. The number of mortgages extended to Hispanic applicants jumped by 87.2 per cent from 1993 to 1998, according to Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. During that same period the number of African Americans who got mortgages to buy a home increased by 71.9 per cent and the number of Asian Americans by 46.3 per cent.

NOW YOU KNOW THE REST OF THE STORY

1999 - 2008

<HR style="WIDTH: 100%; HEIGHT: 2px"><HR style="WIDTH: 100%; HEIGHT: 2px"><HR style="WIDTH: 100%; HEIGHT: 2px">

New York Times - Five Years Ago
I thought all of you may be interested in the following article reported in the New York Times five years ago. You won't hear this from the liberal media ! It seems that the Bush administration proposed increased oversight and regulation of Fannie and Freddie, but Democrats fought it.
Here's the article:
"The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago. Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.
The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios."
Democrats pushed back. "Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing".
"These two entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not facing any kind of financial crisis", said Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. "The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."
Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed. "I don't see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing," Mr. Watt said.

jon71

10-01-2008, 12:23 AM

I'm actually relieved that it failed. I think it was too much for Wall Street and too little for everyone else. I would rather politicians take their time and get it done right rather than get it done quickly. Honestly not having any bailout at all is an option. Whether we do or not we desperately need more regulation.

brazhunter

10-01-2008, 05:10 AM

She's too busy attending "Debate Camp" ....

Are you suggesting that uh... Obama uh... and Biden DO NOT go to debate camp as every other pres and VP candidate has done for the last few decades?

usmc1

10-01-2008, 05:36 AM

Are you suggesting that uh... Obama uh... and Biden DO NOT go to debate camp as every other pres and VP candidate has done for the last few decades?

Yes! The operative modifiers are: "as every other pres and VP candidate has".

She's a hapless nitwit, who was not even permitted to respond to McCain's debate.

brazhunter

10-01-2008, 07:18 AM

Yes! The operative modifiers are: "as every other pres and VP candidate has".

Wow, that's um.. um... remarkable. Even the Clintons sequestered themselves to practice for debates yet the Chosen One and his foot-in-mouth sidekick can just wing it.

Next thing some hollywood types will get together some child actors to sing a rousing rendition of Dear Leader and make a video.

Qikdraw

10-01-2008, 10:53 AM

For those blaming minorities for the mortgage failure... You know who you are... I have a question.

How is it the CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) was able to work effectively, and without any massive meltdown since 1977, yet its only now that a mortage meltodown hit?

jon71

10-01-2008, 12:05 PM

brazhunter

10-01-2008, 03:15 PM

She's gone from "bold move" to "huge liability" very fast.
Only in the mind of dems. Like most of their leftist rhetoric, they think if they keep saying it long enough, it must be true.

Qikdraw

10-01-2008, 03:38 PM

Only in the mind of dems. Like most of their leftist rhetoric, they think if they keep saying it long enough, it must be true.

Only in the mind of right wing fantasy is she not. She dropped 17 points since the announcment of her as VP choice. Even conservatives are saying she should drop out.

LamontCranston

10-01-2008, 05:46 PM

Candidates take a day or two off to prep for a debate. Palin's been missing a week and we get the sense she'll only show up at safe venues between now and election day. She's gone from "bold move" to "huge liability" very fast. Speaking of being missing for a week, what's Senator Clinton, D-NY (where Wall Street is) been doing for the last week or so? Or Sen. Biden? Have we seen or heard any wisdom or debate from him on this bail-out bill? 35 years in the Senate and look what he didn't see coming...

I think it would be cool if Sen. Obama and McCain both vote for this bailout bill tonight and the economy slips further. Or even better, the bonuses and salaries of the bailed-out trickle out while in the other corner pink slips are folded into paychecks during the election run-up. Or the FBI determines fraud and starts to subpeona the bail-out suits.

Implode. None of those suits in Washington, Rep or Dem, are safe on this one. They all looked the other way or helped while the fat got fatter. I bet there's plenty of heated arguments behind the scenes about having to commit a vote on such a bill. Either way or doing nothing could be a BIG LOSER. I'm glad they're squirming.

Meanwhile, the Governor of Alaska is about as far away from that mess as one can be.

Where's the 3rd Party candidate when you need him/her?

jon71

10-01-2008, 10:42 PM

Both Clinton's and Sen. Biden are campaigning steadily. Biden will take a day, maybe two to prep for the debate and then it's right back to the campaign trail. I know he's been in Penn. a lot and it shows. Obama's lead there is approaching double digits and McCain has to be wondering if he concedes Penn. where can he make it up. On the other hand he has to worry about pouring time and resources into a state he has little chance of winning. I know Sen.s Clinton and Biden haven't been found as fascinating by the press but there still there working to elect Sen. Obama. As for Palin's appeal McCain is now doing WORSE among female voters than before choosing Palin as his running mate. Can anybody say "backfire".

usmc1

10-02-2008, 04:53 AM

Wow, that's um.. um... remarkable. Even the Clintons sequestered themselves to practice for debates yet the Chosen One and his foot-in-mouth sidekick can just wing it.

Next thing some hollywood types will get together some child actors to sing a rousing rendition of Dear Leader and make a video.

I hate having to dumb down to explain things. What I meant when I said the important modifier was "as had other candidates" was that she was requiring extreme drilling far bweyond that required by any previous candidate--who said they didn't learn from Quayle. Yes, one preps and prepares, no kidding Sherlock! But, first Palin took a week of preparation and then was taken into complete seclusion for another four days so McCain could personally program her responses.

That is not how other candidates have had to do it Got that part now?

Biden spent two days, maybe part of a third, prepping while also keeping up an appearance schedule and interactions with the pres.

Except for her disastrous taping with Couric your gal has been cloistered tighter than the Little Sisters of the Creeping Miseries.

10-02-2008, 11:06 AM

I am Shocked !!!! :eek: Just look at this. :rolleyes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usvG-s_Ssb0

usmc1

10-02-2008, 02:51 PM

Alright, I'm going to confess myself right up front as an effete, elitist, and whatever the other pejorative du jour for liberals happens to be right now. I had a pedicure on Tuesday, after visiting my dentist for a new bridge on Monday, and on my lunch hour today, I got a facial. Hardly conservative activities, unless you're a Senator or Congressional Representative well out of sight of the folks back home, then you might even be going in for a belly, back and chest waxing.

Hell, I'm betting that those folks leave the piney woods of their districts and acquire the taste for silken pajamas and sipping pink daiquiris no matter the level of their conservative outrage at liberal doings when they're back home.

Now, bear with me here, because all this has something to do with something. And that something, is conservative phony outrage.

Here's some recent examples of what I'm taking about. Their latest uproar is that Gwen Iffil, an accomplished, distinguished and award winning journalist who has written an unreleased book whose theme seems to be about how African-American political expectations have changed and come to fruition leading to Barack Obama standing for the presidency. This, has been common knowledge for some time, and certainly should be no surprise for anyone--but, the Republicans are claiming they've been blindsided and Palin will not get a fair shake from Iffil as the debate moderator. Seems, I predicted this several days ago.

Here's another example of their phony outrage, if there are "too many" foreign policy questions in tonight's debate, it will be proof of the media's and Iffil's bias against Palin. Or if she is pressed for specifics, then the "blood thirsty" media is being sexist.

Meanwhile, they, along with a coven of gutless Democrats, are cranking the carcass of our mostly-dead economy through a meat-grinder, rendering up a pork-laden, bailout sausage that promises to do little more than allow some failed banks to operate a little longer and special interests to get their piece of the action.

If one were a conservative, one ought to be frothing at the mouth, and if one were a liberal, one's hair should be on fire over this deal. It is a stark monument to politicians corrupted by lobbyists and owned lock, stock, and pink silk pajamas by their corporate contributors. They natter about "Main Street", and I ask when was the last time you saw any of yours strolling down "Main Street", unless they were trolling for votes or money? Main Street? Don't kid me, like they could find it, without a GPS system?

OK, I'll grant you it's not enough just to gripe, one ought to offer up a solution. OK, here's mine:

First, we need affordable housing that that does not create the need for extreme, unaffordable mortgages and high-risk credit.

Two, we need jobs creation with wages that enable working people, single-moms, seniors, and low-income families to earn enough to buy decent affordable homes without strapping on outrageous mortgages.

Three, here's the how. We loan to those institutions and entities needing the bailout the money they need to get their business straight. But, we take a mortgage on all their assets, not just the bad debt. Every damned thing they've got, including club memberships, corporate jets, cars, villas, vacation homes, real-estate, buildings, bonuses, stock holdings, and the silverware in the executive dining rooms. This will include all but one home and one car of the executives down to vice-president. Every asset of the company, and it's top executive, will be collateral for the loans. Everything! They default, and it is all ours, and we sell it to the highest domestic bidder.

We make the loan to them at cost plus 10% interest. This means, if we have to borrow to make the loan, they pay us the principal, plus the interest we had to pay to get them the damned loan, plus any administrative and legal costs associated with the loan, and 10% on top of that. We will set them up on quarterly payments; a day late, and they're in default, and it is all ours and on the auction block.

During the loan period no executive can earn more than $300,000 a year, and will have to buy their own car and home, and receive no bonuses or "Golden Parachute" exit packages.

We will need the GAO to supervise and audit their operations until their loans are paid, so we will have to add staff in order to accomplish this. No problem, we'll add a surcharge to their quarterly loan payments to offset our added costs.

Our earnings from the interest, and default auctions will be put in a lock-box Superfund to protect Social Security, improve Medicare, create jobs in rebuilding infrastructure and building fair-priced (cost plus-rather than market driven) affordable homes.

Now, since I've solved this financial mess, excuse me while I go get my eyebrows darkened. I just hope I don't run across any Republican politician while I'm there--I might yank his pink daiquiri out of his manicured hands and douse my hair--because right now it is on fire!

Now, that is real outrage!

Naturist Mark

10-02-2008, 07:54 PM

From Unconfirmed Sources: (http://www.unconfirmedsources.com/index.php?itemid=3686)

Senate passes bill to <strike>bailout</strike> rescue Las Vegas gamblers (http://www.unconfirmedsources.com/index.php?itemid=3686)

-Mark

Naturist Mark

10-03-2008, 08:24 AM

I am Shocked !!!! :eek: Just look at this. :rolleyes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usvG-s_Ssb0

Are you aware that Freddie and Fannie do not actually make loans?

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did not cause this. Desperate conservatives are trying to blame the sub-prime crisis on the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 that ended redlining and made home loans available to *credit worthy* minorities. The crisis was not caused by the CRA, which the Republicans have been trying to kill for two decades, but by the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 and the Bush Administration refusal to enforce securities laws. Read more (http://tinyurl.com/56cabu)

-Mark

ki4kxq

10-03-2008, 08:53 AM

Are you aware that Freddie and Fannie do not actually make loans?

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did not cause this. Desperate conservatives are trying to blame the sub-prime crisis on the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 that ended redlining and made home loans available to *credit worthy* minorities. The crisis was not caused by the CRA, which the Republicans have been trying to kill for two decades, but by the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 and the Bush Administration refusal to enforce securities laws. Read more (http://tinyurl.com/56cabu)

-Mark

You are right. Freddie and Fannie do not actually make loans. Nope, the government, in it's wisdom, were doing something far more stupid than that through Fannie and Freddie. They were backing the loans. If the loans made money, great for the lenders. If the mortgages failed, the government picked up the tab. And they thought this was a good idea.

Also hate to burst your bubble on the lending to "credit worthy minorities". Banks will loan to anybody who is truly credit worthy. What they wouldn't do is loan money to broke people of any color until the government stepped in and wanted to make getting a mortgage "fair". This is what started the sub prime loan fiasco. Fannie and Freddie saw the huge interest rates and fees made by the big mortgage players and decided they wanted a piece of the action. Well, they got a piece alright. Trouble is, these kinds of practices will only make money for so long before the bottom falls out. (Remember, the money was made loaning money to broke people who were not in a position to pay the loan back).

The bailout does not need to go through. I have already called my congressman once and will do so again. He voted no btw. USMC-1 seems to think that conservatives are not outraged. I am an outraged conservative. Government is not there to make things fair. They need to do some regulation, but trying to rig the market to make things "affordable" is not the governments job. The mess we are in now is exactly what you get when government tries to make things fair. Enough is enough already!!!

usmc1

10-03-2008, 10:01 AM

You are right. Freddie and Fannie do not actually make loans... And so forth, and so forth. ...Enough is enough already!!!

So, what is the solution you offer?

LamontCranston

10-03-2008, 10:34 AM

So, what is the solution you offer? If you cannot make mortgage payments when the adjustible rate rises: earn more money, refinance the note, stop making payments and submit yourself to foreclosure, or declare bankruptcy and reorganize your debt.

All those things are your business, not mine. Keep your hands out of my pocket. I didn't sign the contract and I don't live in the house.

If you are a business with too much debt on the books: sell it at a discount and someone else can collect on it, keep it and work it down yourself when the real estate market improves, or go out of business.

If you are a business that needs credit to buy raw materials or make payroll: Pay the interest (which sometimes rises), lower expenses, make more sales to cover your expenses, or realize that you are insolvent and close your doors.

If you're 55 years old and have your 401(k) invested in aggressive growth oriented funds and now it's tanking: reread the prospectus section about risk, move your money to safer instruments, and stop whining.

None of that is my business either. Keep your hands off my money. You took too much risk, now you're in trouble and it's not up to me and my fellow taxpayers to bail you out. That's business. Grow up and face it.

Meanwhile, I expect Congress and the Executive branch to enforce regulations, and investigate and prosecute fraud. I also expect shareholders and boards of directors to fire people who are incompetent. And I expect journalists to report and expose these matters when they aren't happening.

usmc1

10-03-2008, 11:11 AM

If you cannot make mortgage payments when the adjustible rate rises: earn more money, refinance the note, stop making payments and submit yourself to foreclosure, or declare bankruptcy and reorganize your debt.

All those things are your business, not mine. Keep your hands out of my pocket. I didn't sign the contract and I don't live in the house.

If you are a business with too much debt on the books: sell it at a discount and someone else can collect on it, keep it and work it down yourself when the real estate market improves, or go out of business.

If you are a business that needs credit to buy raw materials or make payroll: Pay the interest (which sometimes rises), lower expenses, make more sales to cover your expenses, or realize that you are insolvent and close your doors.

If you're 55 years old and have your 401(k) invested in aggressive growth oriented funds and now it's tanking: reread the prospectus section about risk, move your money to safer instruments, and stop whining.

None of that is my business either. Keep your hands off my money. You took too much risk, now you're in trouble and it's not up to me and my fellow taxpayers to bail you out. That's business. Grow up and face it.

Meanwhile, I expect Congress and the Executive branch to enforce regulations, and investigate and prosecute fraud. I also expect shareholders and boards of directors to fire people who are incompetent. And I expect journalists to report and expose these matters when they aren't happening.
And side from making you feel better this solves what and how. And, I'd like to point out that in order for regulations to be enforced, there must first be enforceable regulations.

Navigator

10-03-2008, 11:17 AM

The mess we are in now is exactly what you get when government tries to make things fair. Enough is enough already!!!

What?!:eek: There's a mess? But...but...Just two weeks ago you told us:

"The Bush Depression? What? We are still in a growing economy. I know the news media and the Obama camp want to really stretch the truth on this one in their bid for the White House, but you really need to stop listening to what they say and look at the numbers yourself....

...All of you who are thinking of selling now, you are nuts. This market will recover, like it always does. As for us, we will still make money and invest. Stocks are on sale now!!! The rest of you can go ahead and put the colander on your heads and run around screaming like Chicken Little. The news media will help you. Just remember, the media has predicted 31 of the last 2 recessions, which is almost as good as their hurricane prediction record!
Seems like not much fun to me so I don't think I'll participate in this recession/depression."

LamontCranston

10-03-2008, 01:07 PM

And side from making you feel better this solves what and how. And, I'd like to point out that in order for regulations to be enforced, there must first be enforceable regulations. It's what all the parties on all sides of the problem ought to be doing on a continuing basis. No one is willing to assume responsibility for decisions made out of greed to the point that it's grown into a $700 billion problem. No one is being held accountable.

You can't own a house you're unable or unwilling to pay for.

You can't run a business without enough cash flow to cover expenses.

You can't buy things if you can't pay for them.

Assets tied to a market go up and they go down.

The Federal Gov't and all us taxpayers shouldn't be picking up the tab for the side effects of years of greed, inflated sales figures, and phony income and asset accounting.

Everyone's credit card is full. Too bad.

Throwing money at a problem doesn't work. All they've done is painted the house and put in new windows. The termites are still feasting on the foundation.

Qikdraw

10-03-2008, 01:42 PM

From what I understand this is not a 700 billion dollar bailout, but a 850 billion dollar handout as 150 billion in tax cuts had to be added for republicans to sign onto the deal.

Were in financial ruin and the thing that is most important to some people is tax cuts. Good grief!

I am not happy with the bailout at all. It should have been full of very strict regulations so this will never happen again, it should have contained very specific numbers instead of 'a very big number' created out of thin air. I was for sometype of bailout to help keep peaople pensions and jobs, but not the sort that was passed.

usmc1

10-03-2008, 02:25 PM

It's what all the parties on all sides of the problem ought to be doing on a continuing basis. No one is willing to assume responsibility for decisions made out of greed to the point that it's grown into a $700 billion problem. No one is being held accountable.

You can't own a house you're unable or unwilling to pay for.

You can't run a business without enough cash flow to cover expenses.

You can't buy things if you can't pay for them.

Assets tied to a market go up and they go down.

The Federal Gov't and all us taxpayers shouldn't be picking up the tab for the side effects of years of greed, inflated sales figures, and phony income and asset accounting.

Everyone's credit card is full. Too bad.

Throwing money at a problem doesn't work. All they've done is painted the house and put in new windows. The termites are still feasting on the foundation.

Mike, where I'm trying to get your thoughts is here...

Twenty years ago I was a young manager in my first executive position in marketing. I went to my VP and outlined for him every problem the company had. I was really proud of myself.

His response was a level look and a reply along these lines, "Usmc1, anyone can tell me what the problems are, I hired you to tell me what the solutions are..." That was a transcendent moment for me and my career. The dime dropped so to speak. I grew up, and took some responsibility!

So, what I'm asking you, and actually others, is if you don't like what's happening, and can see where the problems are, what solutions do you propose? Merely saying something is bad, or a problem, is not a solution.

How do we get ourselves out of this mess without triggering a deep recession or handing our treasury over to the croupiers of Wall Street. Several posts ago, I proposed some solutions. Do any of those resonate?

Qikdraw

10-03-2008, 04:45 PM

Naturist Mark

10-03-2008, 08:32 PM

From what I understand this is not a 700 billion dollar bailout, but a 850 billion dollar handout as 150 billion in tax cuts had to be added for republicans to sign onto the deal.

To be fair, those 150 billion dollars in tax cuts and pork aren't really part of the bailout, they are just the sweetener.

So let's not count them. But we SHOULD count the 500 Billion dollars the Fed and Treasury spent earlier this year in bailouts, plus the 650 Billion line of credit the Fed issued just this past week. That adds up to almost $2 Trillion dollars in ... eight months.

Gee, I hope someone keeps really close track of all that money.

-Mark

jon71

10-04-2008, 01:56 AM

O'Reilly is a dumb joke.

usmc1

10-04-2008, 05:08 AM

O'Reilly is a dumb joke.
Or as Barney Frank said to him, "Bill, you're stupid!"

Fitz1980

10-04-2008, 07:24 AM

I've heard of this website before but never really read it until now. It's called Factcheck.org and I've got to say that I like them. They are a non-partisan website devoted to presenting non-biased factual information. Here's their take on who and what was to blame for the current crisis.

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/who_caused_the_economic_crisis.html

So who is to blame? There's plenty of blame to go around, and it doesn't fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or didn't do. As The Economist magazine noted recently, the problem is one of "layered irresponsibility ... with hard-working homeowners and billionaire villains each playing a role." Here's a partial list of those alleged to be at fault:

* The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.

* Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.

* Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.

* Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.

* The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.

* Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.

* Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.

* Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.

* The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.

* An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.

* Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.

ki4kxq

10-04-2008, 08:14 AM

What?!:eek: There's a mess? But...but...Just two weeks ago you told us:

"The Bush Depression? What? We are still in a growing economy. I know the news media and the Obama camp want to really stretch the truth on this one in their bid for the White House, but you really need to stop listening to what they say and look at the numbers yourself....

...All of you who are thinking of selling now, you are nuts. This market will recover, like it always does. As for us, we will still make money and invest. Stocks are on sale now!!! The rest of you can go ahead and put the colander on your heads and run around screaming like Chicken Little. The news media will help you. Just remember, the media has predicted 31 of the last 2 recessions, which is almost as good as their hurricane prediction record!
Seems like not much fun to me so I don't think I'll participate in this recession/depression."

And guess what, we still are not in a recession, unless of course you want to operate on emotion and not facts.

Truth is, only a very small number of homes are financed with sub-prime mortgages and are in trouble. Gas prices are down once again. The stock market is throwing a hissy fit, but that well right itself in time.

The mess is the government bailout which is a complete over reaction to some companies getting into financial trouble because they took too much risk. Without a bailout would there be some pain? Yep, but a little pain is what is needed right now for everyone to get the message that you can't keep spending like a drunken sailor without having some negative consequences. Obama still hasn't gotten that message, he still wants to raise taxes and spend, spend, spend. What an idiot!!!

ki4kxq

10-04-2008, 08:19 AM

If you cannot make mortgage payments when the adjustible rate rises: earn more money, refinance the note, stop making payments and submit yourself to foreclosure, or declare bankruptcy and reorganize your debt.

All those things are your business, not mine. Keep your hands out of my pocket. I didn't sign the contract and I don't live in the house.

If you are a business with too much debt on the books: sell it at a discount and someone else can collect on it, keep it and work it down yourself when the real estate market improves, or go out of business.

If you are a business that needs credit to buy raw materials or make payroll: Pay the interest (which sometimes rises), lower expenses, make more sales to cover your expenses, or realize that you are insolvent and close your doors.

If you're 55 years old and have your 401(k) invested in aggressive growth oriented funds and now it's tanking: reread the prospectus section about risk, move your money to safer instruments, and stop whining.

None of that is my business either. Keep your hands off my money. You took too much risk, now you're in trouble and it's not up to me and my fellow taxpayers to bail you out. That's business. Grow up and face it.

Meanwhile, I expect Congress and the Executive branch to enforce regulations, and investigate and prosecute fraud. I also expect shareholders and boards of directors to fire people who are incompetent. And I expect journalists to report and expose these matters when they aren't happening.

Couldn't have said it better myself. The solution USMC-1 offers is more of what got us into this mess. Some jobs will not support buying a house. It is not the role of government to see that every wage earner can buy a house. It is up to the wage earner to do that. Government's role is not to be your Daddy. We need to do some budget slashing, not add more BS to the mix.

ki4kxq

10-04-2008, 08:29 AM

Can any of you Obama supporters help me out? I am looking for a table or graph of some sort on Obama's website that will help me figure out how big my check will be if he gets elected.

He says he will cut taxes for 95% of American wage earners. Hmm, that's a pretty tall task when the bottom 40% pay no income taxes at all. Anyway, he also says he is going to raise taxes on those that make $250k or more. I notice he never refers to US as working families, I guess he thinks our money grows on a tree in the backyard. We have decided that instead of paying more than we do now in taxes, we are gonna quit working, (since Obama doesn't think we work anyway), and sit back on some nude beach and collect a check. I just want to know how much to expect. We have some pretty expensive hobbies like scuba diving and sailing that must be supported.

With the current bailout mentality and mania, along with Obama wanting to give everyone a check for every little thing, we should make out pretty good. We don't have any debt now, but I guess we need to go buy us a big house or something that we can't pay for and let the government take care of the pesky details of paying for the thing.

Yep, if someone would be kind enough to let me know where to look, I would be grateful.

LamontCranston

10-04-2008, 08:49 AM

I grew up, and took some responsibility!

So, what I'm asking you, and actually others, is if you don't like what's happening, and can see where the problems are, what solutions do you propose? Merely saying something is bad, or a problem, is not a solution.

How do we get ourselves out of this mess without triggering a deep recession or handing our treasury over to the croupiers of Wall Street. Several posts ago, I proposed some solutions. Do any of those resonate? This is my point. Taking responsibility for your own debt. Deal with it without passing it up the financial chain. Endure the recession.

And a recession is not inherently bad. I've lived through two in my adult life and we're fine. Things correct, companies go out of business who should, people change jobs, life goes on. Yes, they're tough. But life is not always a string of sunny warm days. Recessions are part of the financial cycle. Without a down, there's no up to measure.

Another solution is to get the economy off the credit feed bag. For years now, they've been dancing in the streets about how great the economy has been running. Well, we now know the truth. It was all done on borrowed money. The borrowing has to stop (or be pared way way down) at every level of this financial system.

Here in New England we shifted from mills to manufacturing to insurance to service businesses. Time for another change. Embrace it and you'll do well. Fight it and it'll still change.

Folks need to realize that too much debt ties your hands and limits what you can do and how you can respond in a crisis. The US Government is strapped, now more so, and will slip from it's *superpower* status.

The Empire is crumbling.

I don't like the Democrats or the Republicans. Neither party has served the American people well in decades.

Boreas

10-04-2008, 08:54 AM

Here in New England we shifted from mills to manufacturing to insurance to service businesses. Time for another change. Embrace it and you'll do well. Fight it and it'll still change.

Folks need to realize that too much debt ties your hands and limits what you can do and how you can respond in a crisis. The US Government is strapped, now more so, and will slip from it's *superpower* status.

The Empire is crumbling.

I don't like the Democrats or the Republicans. Neither party has served the American people well in decades.

Well said.

We have been discussing our election in Canada as well. The two major parties have not been serving Canada well either. The third party has some potential, but I think we need some major changes.

The old ways need to make way for new and more effective ways.

jon71

10-04-2008, 08:55 AM

ki4kiq, the chart you're looking for is right beside McCain's explanation as to why less that 10% of the public gets a tax cut if he were President.

ki4kxq

10-04-2008, 09:04 AM

ki4kiq, the chart you're looking for is right beside McCain's explanation as to why less that 10% of the public gets a tax cut if he were President.

Does it hurt your head to be wrong so much of the time. McCain has said that he would keep the Bush tax cuts. Those tax cuts affected every tax bracket and actually eliminated the lowest bracket. That was a tax cut for everybody!

The cry of "tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans" just doesn't cut it when you understand that all taxpayers got a tax cut and some were dropped from the rolls completely. How long are you guys going to perpetuate that lie?

Navigator

10-04-2008, 09:08 AM

And guess what, we still are not in a recession, unless of course you want to operate on emotion and not facts.

Truth is, only a very small number of homes are financed with sub-prime mortgages and are in trouble. Gas prices are down once again. The stock market is throwing a hissy fit, but that well right itself in time.

It's just my humble opinion, but I think your definition of a recession as two or more quarters of negative GDP is as outmoded as your 1960's investment philosophy...especially in an era when the Bush administration skews most government economic numbers to give the appearance, but not the reality, of a vibrant economy.

You might be interested in this article. The internet is full of factual stuff like this if you look for it instead of believing what you hear from the various drug addicts, comedians, propangandists and haters on right-wing AM talk radio.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Economy/Story?id=4544872&page=1

BTW...now that you've discovered there IS a financial crises...which wasn't apparent in your posts two weeks ago...thanks for calling your Reps and telling them to vote NO on the Bush/Paulson "No Wealthy Banker Left Behind" act. At least we agree on something.

Naturist Mark

10-04-2008, 09:14 AM

He says he will cut taxes for 95% of American wage earners. Hmm, that's a pretty tall task when the bottom 40% pay no income taxes at all.

LOL!

Not quite true.

When you average Federal Income taxes (but no other Federal taxes) and deduct the direct transfer payments some taxpayers receive in return (such as the Earned Income Tax Credit) the average Federal tax burden is negative for the 1st quintile and just about breaks even for the second. But that doesn't mean ALL earners in the lower 20% pay no taxes, far from it.

When you include all federal taxes minus transfer payments - which is the proper way to do it, since transfers are not specifically "negative income tax" - the lowest quintile pays an effective tax rate of 4.3% and the second quintile pays an effective rate of 9.9% CBO (http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8885/EffectiveTaxRates.shtml#1011537)
Can any of you Obama supporters help me out? I am looking for a table or graph of some sort on Obama's website that will help me figure out how big my check will be if he gets elected.
Here are a couple of pretty good graphs that compare the McCain and Obama tax plans, you should be able to estimate where you fall within them:

<center>http://chartjunk.karmanaut.com/wp-content/images/wapo.gif
http://chartjunk.karmanaut.com/wp-content/images/taxplans.gif</center>

Bottom line - if you make about $100,000 per year or more - or 3 times the median individual income, you are probably better off under McCain's plan, otherwise you fair better under Obama's.

Other considerations - Obama's plan is designed to be revenue neutral (under the analysis above it is nearly so), McCain's is not and will increase deficits.

-Mark

ki4kxq

10-04-2008, 09:22 AM

Again, Obama is always spouting being fair. Why then do not ALL tax payers get a break? Are they any less American? It is BS! Cut taxes for ALL taxpayers, not just some.

Naturist Mark

10-04-2008, 09:37 AM

Again, Obama is always spouting being fair. Why then do not ALL tax payers get a break? Are they any less American? It is BS! Cut taxes for ALL taxpayers, not just some.

Hmmm ... so it is fair for wealthy taxpayers to benefit more from the Bush and proposed McCain tax cuts, but the reverse is not fair? Hmmmmm ... sounds like "class warfare" to me.

-Mark

ki4kxq

10-04-2008, 09:48 AM

Hmmm ... so it is fair for wealthy taxpayers to benefit more from the Bush and proposed McCain tax cuts, but the reverse is not fair? Hmmmmm ... sounds like "class warfare" to me.

-Mark

Class warfare is giving a benefit to some and not to others. Will upper income tax payers reduce their taxes by a higher dollar amount. Of course they will. But they will still PAY way more in taxes than the folks at the lower end of the scale.

The most fair way is a flat tax, pick a percentage and everyone pays it. However, libs don't like that idea because they think it is too big a burden on the poor. Well, you like the progressive tax when it comes to paying in, it's only fair that tax cuts then yield more also to those that pay more dollars into the system.

usmc1

10-04-2008, 10:03 AM

This is my point. Taking responsibility for your own debt. Deal with it without passing it up the financial chain. Endure the recession. Your solution is to do nothing, merely endure the recession? Do you have any idea of what a recession does to people? The problems joblessness create? Aphorisms and platitudes are not plans.

And a recession is not inherently bad. I've lived through two in my adult life and we're fine. Things correct, companies go out of business who should, people change jobs, life goes on. Yes, they're tough. But life is not always a string of sunny warm days. Recessions are part of the financial cycle. Without a down, there's no up to measure. Downturns might be part of normal economic cycles, recessions and depressions are not. They are abnormal events which is why there is such scrambling when they appear.

And, I assure you, there is no qualified economist, sociologist, management or union person who would join with you in characterizing any recession as not being so bad.

Using your analogy, one could assert that mom's untimely death from an axe murderer was not all bad; we wound up with one less mouth to feed and got an axe murderer off the street.

Another solution is to get the economy off the credit feed bag. For years now, they've been dancing in the streets about how great the economy has been running. Well, we now know the truth. It was all done on borrowed money. The borrowing has to stop (or be pared way way down) at every level of this financial system.

Fine, what's your plan to do that? How does one buy a $150K house, a $15K car without borrowing, when one has a $50K salary? How does that person's employer invest in a $5.5 million Goss printer in order to stay competitive and add a shift of workers without borrowing the money?

How does a senior on a fixed income pay for an emergency extraction and four-unit bridge without a bank loan to come up with the $5K the dentist charges?

Here in New England we shifted from mills to manufacturing to insurance to service businesses. Time for another change. Embrace it and you'll do well. Fight it and it'll still change. And, I'll hazard that those skill changes had to be taught..people already already out of work and barely getting by need support or loans to acquire the education and skills to adapt to change.

Folks need to realize that too much debt ties your hands and limits what you can do and how you can respond in a crisis. The US Government is strapped, now more so, and will slip from it's *superpower* status.

The Empire is crumbling.

I don't like the Democrats or the Republicans. Neither party has served the American people well in decades.

Maybe we don't need to be a super power or empire to live decently. And our political parties are merely reflections of us...if we set on our butts and do not get involved at the precinct level, then there are interests out there who will and do and get elected the sort of politicians who will do their bidding.

But, truthfully, I don't see where you've offered a plan...just some kvetching and platitudes.

Naturist Mark

10-04-2008, 10:11 AM

Class warfare is giving a benefit to some and not to others. Will upper income tax payers reduce their taxes by a higher dollar amount. Of course they will. But they will still PAY way more in taxes than the folks at the lower end of the scale.

The most fair way is a flat tax, pick a percentage and everyone pays it. However, libs don't like that idea because they think it is too big a burden on the poor. Well, you like the progressive tax when it comes to paying in, it's only fair that tax cuts then yield more also to those that pay more dollars into the system.

The basic premise of progressive taxation is that the base necessities of life should not carry the added burden of taxation. Indeed even the first US income taxes enacted during the Civil War only taxed so called "excess income" of those who made several times the average income. And those who have benefited most under our system in turn have the obligation to return the most - and are most able to do so without making critical sacrifices.

However, I've been consistent in saying that I'll support a truly flat tax - but only if it includes ALL taxation, at every level of government, not just the conversion of the very few progressive taxes (which account for less than half of total taxation) while leaving all the regressive taxes in place. That is the problem even with pseudo "progressive" flat tax schemes like the "Fair Tax" - the net result is still a shift of total tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class.

If you can come up with a reasonable tax proposal that really replaces all taxation with a simple flat tax, I'll sign on. But make sure it doesn't dodge capital gains, dividends, corporate, transjuridictional, or any other sort of sheltered income.

-Mark

LamontCranston

10-04-2008, 12:06 PM

(A) Your solution is to do nothing, merely endure the recession?

(B) And, I assure you, there is no qualified economist, sociologist, management or union person who would join with you in characterizing any recession as not being so bad.

(C) Fine, what's your plan to do that? How does one buy a $150K house, a $15K car without borrowing, when one has a $50K salary? (D) How does that person's employer invest in a $5.5 million Goss printer in order to stay competitive and (E) add a shift of workers without borrowing the money?

(F) How does a senior on a fixed income pay for an emergency extraction and four-unit bridge without a bank loan to come up with the $5K the dentist charges?
(A) We're not in a recession. The economy grew again last quarter.
(B) 400 economists, including 3 Nobel lauriates sent a letter to Congress saying this bail-out was a bad idea. How will it fix the economy? Magic?
(C) Buy the house with 3% down and an FHA insured mortgage. Or rent until you can afford home-ownership. I haven't ever paid over $10k for a vehicle. I buy used with a trade-in. I don't see a need for a large sport utility vehicle or extended cab heavy duty pickup truck to commute to work and run down to the grocery store.
(D) $5.5 million Goss printer? Don't know what that is, but a business needs sales or cash reserves to cover capital expenses. Is there a marketing plan and auditable sales figures to support it? If so, they can seek investors or swing a loan. I'm not paying taxes to bail out a company that needs the latest toys.
(E) If you've got sales and orders and accounts receivable and equipment to justify the 3rd shift, then you can offer some of that as collateral. The more collateral, the better the terms for you.
(F) Medicare. Medicaid.

Not everything in this world needs Uncle Sam to step in and fix it. We are free. Free to succeed and free to fail.

Now of course the propoganda machine is churning away. They say it'll take a month or more for this new Bill to have an effect on the market. Convenient target date. They might as well say, "day after the election."

So if it still tanks over the next few weeks, they can all say "Hey don't blame us. We did something historic." Bull****. I do blame them and no incumbant will be getting my vote.

BTW - Palin's pick as VP put me from undecided back into McCain's camp. McCain's vote on the Bailout Bill, especially after they added pork/bribes in there, puts me back undecided.

usmc1

10-04-2008, 01:42 PM

(A) We're not in a recession. The economy grew again last quarter.
(B) 400 economists, including 3 Nobel lauriates sent a letter to Congress saying this bail-out was a bad idea. How will it fix the economy? Magic?
(C) Buy the house with 3% down and an FHA insured mortgage. Or rent until you can afford home-ownership. I haven't ever paid over $10k for a vehicle. I buy used with a trade-in. I don't see a need for a large sport utility vehicle or extended cab heavy duty pickup truck to commute to work and run down to the grocery store.
(D) $5.5 million Goss printer? Don't know what that is, but a business needs sales or cash reserves to cover capital expenses. Is there a marketing plan and auditable sales figures to support it? If so, they can seek investors or swing a loan. I'm not paying taxes to bail out a company that needs the latest toys.
(E) If you've got sales and orders and accounts receivable and equipment to justify the 3rd shift, then you can offer some of that as collateral. The more collateral, the better the terms for you.
(F) Medicare. Medicaid.

Not everything in this world needs Uncle Sam to step in and fix it. We are free. Free to succeed and free to fail.

Now of course the propoganda machine is churning away. They say it'll take a month or more for this new Bill to have an effect on the market. Convenient target date. They might as well say, "day after the election."

So if it still tanks over the next few weeks, they can all say "Hey don't blame us. We did something historic." Bull****. I do blame them and no incumbant will be getting my vote.

BTW - Palin's pick as VP put me from undecided back into McCain's camp. McCain's vote on the Bailout Bill, especially after they added pork/bribes in there, puts me back undecided.
Sorry Mike, this thing is disintegrating. You are ridiculously uninformed and merely raging against the bail-out. Had you have read my alternative plan, you would know that I was not in favor of it.

But, in hopes of raising your awareness so that in future you will not be afflicted with such a dearth of knowledge.

Your 400 economists and 3 Nobel Laureates would not agree with you that recessions aren't always bad things. That was your earlier assertion, I said nothing about whether or not the bail out was supported or unsupported by economists.

You contradict yourself. You railed against credit, but merely suggest an alternative form of credit in the case of acquiring a mortgage. It suggests to me you agree that maybe the use of credit is a necessity.

You contradict yourself again. A company borrowing to buy expensive equipment in order to expand and create more jobs is merely using credit as means to grow and adding to the economy---eliminate that credit and you eliminate growth. You were lambasting credit use, but now have refined that to merely fine-tuning the terms of the loan. Hardly eliminating credit and suggests you actually do see the need for credit and your earlier outburst came before you gave the matter serious thought..

And finally, Medicare does not cover extractions and bridgework.

And don't lump Medicaid into Medicare, they are not the same.

As to your vote, do as you see fit--but, I would really like to see you put forth a plan, rather than just railing against the situation as it is.

Qikdraw

10-04-2008, 01:42 PM

Here in New England we shifted from mills to manufacturing to insurance to service businesses. Time for another change. Embrace it and you'll do well. Fight it and it'll still change.

Yes the high paying service industry. Isn't that a great shift for the American economy. Working in the service industry guarentees you'll pile up debt to just afford to live. Its ok if you're single and young, but trying to raise a family and the only jobs available are the service industry? Yeah right.

Bob S.

10-04-2008, 02:34 PM

House members: No, we don't want this $700 billion bailout bill.
Senate members: Here, we will add $150 billion in tax cuts, spending, and other fun stuff to that bill you hate.
House members: Yeah! Thanks.

Big disappointment. Dangle money in front of Congress and they will change their minds. The only provision I have heard about in this fiasco bill that I actually agree with is increasing the FDIC limit to insuring the first $250,000 in an account.

This will do nothing.

Bob S.

Navigator

10-04-2008, 03:12 PM

Now of course the propoganda machine is churning away. They say it'll take a month or more for this new Bill to have an effect on the market. Convenient target date. They might as well say, "day after the election."

http://www.cnbc.com/id/27021790

Here's a quote from the article:

"Even after working feverishly over the last two weeks, the Treasury will not buy its first distressed asset from a bank for roughly six weeks, and almost certainly not until after the Nov. 4 elections."

Qikdraw

10-04-2008, 03:41 PM

To follow up my Frank vs O'Reilly video, here is another gem...

<object width="464" height="392"><param name="movie" value="http://embed.break.com/NTgxMjk0"></param><embed src="http://embed.break.com/NTgxMjk0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="464" height="392"></embed></object><br><font size=1><a href="http://view.break.com/581294">http://view.break.com/581294</a> - Watch more <a href="http://www.break.com/">free videos</a></font>

LamontCranston

10-04-2008, 04:34 PM

You contradict yourself. You railed against credit, but merely suggest an alternative form of credit in the case of acquiring a mortgage. It suggests to me you agree that maybe the use of credit is a necessity.

You contradict yourself again. A company borrowing to buy expensive equipment in order to expand and create more jobs is merely using credit as means to grow and adding to the economy---eliminate that credit and you eliminate growth. You were lambasting credit use, but now have refined that to merely fine-tuning the terms of the loan. Hardly eliminating credit and suggests you actually do see the need for credit and your earlier outburst came before you gave the matter serious thought..

And finally, Medicare does not cover extractions and bridgework.

And don't lump Medicaid into Medicare, they are not the same.

As to your vote, do as you see fit--but, I would really like to see you put forth a plan, rather than just railing against the situation as it is. It's not borrowing that I have a problem with. It is unsecured borrowing and risky lending that's the problem at the root here.

You cannot qualify someone for a 30-year adjustable rate mortgage at a below-market interest rate. You need to qualify them based on a projected adjusted rate two - five years out. It's outrageous to think the bankers and mortgage lenders didn't do that and now want their balance sheets cleaned up at our expense. Outrageous.

You cannot float a business with revolving credit and a limit that keeps rising. That business is insolvent and you're pushing the problem forward. Pointing at a business like that and saying the economy is growing is also outrageous.

Are there any provisions in this new Bailout Bill to prevent either of these practices from continuing? Never mind illegal aliens crossing the border... how much foreign debt are we now saddled with. Don't tell me the US Congress suckered for the Trojan Horse tactic.

Lending institutions that did this must be held accountable, fined, reorganized, or allowed to go out of business. I personally like Naturist Mark's idea with stocks in the public square.

And none of this is my problem to solve or even to propose solutions. That's why there's a HUGE BLOATED state and federal government I fund. They created the environment, looked the other way, enabled the problem and weren't paying attention. More of them isn't the answer. Senate banking committee chairman Dodd was touring Iowa for two years instead of doing his job. How is his and Rep. Frank's failure to oversee this problem and steer it before it hit the shoals worse than anything Nixon or Clinton did to earn impeachment? They both should resign. Idiots.

And I certainly can lump Medicaid and Medicare together. They are both publicly funded health care plans. So provide health care, not excuses. Medicaid funds abortions, why not bridge work? "They're different" is a bull**** answer. That's someone making the rules saying, "Nope, can't do that. It's against the rules and my hands are tied." More bull****.

usmc1

10-05-2008, 05:31 AM

And I certainly can lump Medicaid and Medicare together. They are both publicly funded health care plans. So provide health care, not excuses. Medicaid funds abortions, why not bridge work? "They're different" is a bull**** answer. That's someone making the rules saying, "Nope, can't do that. It's against the rules and my hands are tied." More bull****.

As I wrote, it is disintegrating. Instead of presenting a plan you accuse, curse, misconstrue and rant. Quite a bit as do your candidates McCain/Palin.

And anyone who has followed your posts here over the past few years never had a doubt as to who you would vote for.

I think you are representative of many of the people calling themselves conservative. You have no depth of knowledge, no alternative plans, and certainly lack the ability to put forth any alternative solution...you prefer to criticize and accuse and engage in self-contradiction.

You espouse deregulation on one hand and then propose restrictions and limitations on borrowing--Doh! Those would be regulations. You can't have it both ways.

And no you may not lump Medicare and medicaid together--they are not the same, anymore than the VA and Tricare are the same. Oh, I guess you can try it, but it really labels you as very, very uninformed!

florida-david

10-05-2008, 06:45 AM

someone said " You cannot float a business with revolving credit and a limit that keeps rising. That business is insolvent and you're pushing the problem forward. Pointing at a business like that and saying the economy is growing is also outrageous. "

ummm, isn't this what our government does? Increased debt every year, while not mentioning maybe trying to find ways to bring federal spending under control. McCain thinks he can trick us into believing he will reduce federal spending, but McCain's hatchet approach with closing the government except for the pet projects he likes is not the way to do it. I don't trust him to hack off projects as he is supported by the same lobbyists that got us into this mess in the first place. He will be another Reagan, hacking social programs which benefit the non-rich while expanding our military more...

nakedstudent

10-05-2008, 07:18 AM

Navigator

10-05-2008, 08:11 AM

Nakedstudent...here's what factcheck says about your views:

The following is directly from Factcheck.org...

****

So who is to blame? There's plenty of blame to go
around, and it doesn't fasten only on one party or
even mainly on what Washington did or didn't do. As
The Economist magazine noted recently, the problem is
one of "layered irresponsibility ... with hard-working
homeowners and billionaire villains each playing a
role." Here's a partial list of those alleged to be at
fault:

*The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates
after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.

*Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid
up the prices of homes excessively.

*Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax
deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy
more expensive houses.

*Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers
rather than the buyers and who earned higher
commissions from selling more expensive homes.

*The Clinton administration, which pushed for less
stringent credit and downpayment requirements for
working- and middle-class families.

*Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home
buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low
initial payments, but exploding interest rates.

*Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who
in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble,
encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate
mortgages.

*Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to
the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into
Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds
using those securities as collateral.

*The Bush administration, which failed to provide
needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey
mortgage-backed securities market.

*An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market,
which can have the paradoxical result of making assets
be worth less on paper than they are in reality during
times of panic.

*Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all
parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no
matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.

The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing
it up takes a great deal of cooperation. Claiming that
a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or
could have averted) is just political grandstanding.
We have no advice to offer on how best to solve the
financial crisis. But these sorts of partisan
caricatures can only make the task more difficult.

http://factcheck.org/elections-2008/who_caused_the_economic_crisis.html

Naturist Mark

10-05-2008, 08:13 AM

Reasons why we're in the mess we're in:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act#Original_Act

http://www.thekidalog.com/seejanemom/2008/09/c1992-bill-clin.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Raines

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_A._Johnson_(businessman)

I've been talking about this for a while now. The cons have settled on a strategy to reframe the sub-prime triggered crisis (caused by the deregulation of financial instruments after the repeal of Glass-Steagall and the deflation of the housing bubble) as the result of the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act which outlawed "redlining" by mortgage companies and racial discrimination in loans by making mortgages available to credit worthy minorities. The cons hate the CRA and have tried many times over the years to kill or defang it.

This reframing appeals to the cons desire to inject racism into the crisis to distract the public from the facts, but it isn't going to work. They've gone to that well too many times, and this is just too obvious a ploy.

<center>Did Liberals Cause the Sub-Prime Crisis? (http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=did_liberals_cause_the_subprime_c risis):
Conservatives blame the housing crisis on a 1977 law that helps-low income
people get mortgages. It's a useful story for them, but it isn't true.</center>

<blockquote>Most analysts see the sub-prime crisis as a market failure. Believing the bubble would never pop, lenders approved risky adjustable-rate mortgages, often without considering whether borrowers could afford them; families took on those loans; investors bought them in securitized form; and, all the while, regulators sat on their hands.

The revisionists say the problem wasn't too little regulation; but too much, via CRA. The law was enacted in response to both intentional redlining and structural barriers to credit for low-income communities. CRA applies only to banks and thrifts that are federally insured; it's conceived as a quid pro quo for that privilege, among others. This means the law doesn't apply to independent mortgage companies (or payday lenders, check-cashers, etc.)

The law imposes on the covered depositories an affirmative duty to lend throughout the areas from which they take deposits, including poor neighborhoods. The law has teeth because regulators' ratings of banks' CRA performance become public and inform important decisions, notably merger approvals. Studies by the Federal Reserve and Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies, among others, have shown that CRA increased lending and homeownership in poor communities without undermining banks' profitability.

But CRA has always had critics, and they now suggest that the law went too far in encouraging banks to lend in struggling communities. Rhetoric aside, the argument turns on a simple question: In the current mortgage meltdown, did lenders approve bad loans to comply with CRA, or to make money?

The evidence strongly suggests the latter. First, consider timing. CRA was enacted in 1977. The sub-prime lending at the heart of the current crisis exploded a full quarter century later. In the mid-1990s, new CRA regulations and a wave of mergers led to a flurry of CRA activity, but, as noted by the New America Foundation's Ellen Seidman (and by Harvard's Joint Center), that activity "largely came to an end by 2001." In late 2004, the Bush administration announced plans to sharply weaken CRA regulations, pulling small and mid-sized banks out from under the law's toughest standards. Yet sub-prime lending continued, and even intensified -- at the very time when activity under CRA had slowed and the law had weakened.

Second, it is hard to blame CRA for the mortgage meltdown when CRA doesn't even apply to most of the loans that are behind it. As the University of Michigan's Michael Barr points out, half of sub-prime loans came from those mortgage companies beyond the reach of CRA. A further 25 to 30 percent came from bank subsidiaries and affiliates, which come under CRA to varying degrees but not as fully as banks themselves. (With affiliates, banks can choose whether to count the loans.) Perhaps one in four sub-prime loans were made by the institutions fully governed by CRA.

Most important, the lenders subject to CRA have engaged in less, not more, of the most dangerous lending. Janet Yellen, president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve, offers the killer statistic: Independent mortgage companies, which are not covered by CRA, made high-priced loans at more than twice the rate of the banks and thrifts. With this in mind, Yellen specifically rejects the "tendency to conflate the current problems in the sub-prime market with CRA-motivated lending.? CRA, Yellen says, "has increased the volume of responsible lending to low- and moderate-income households."

Yellen is hardly alone in concluding that the real problems came from the institutions beyond the reach of CRA. One of the only regulators who long ago saw the current crisis coming was the late Ned Gramlich, a former Fed governor. While Alan Greenspan was cheering the sub-prime boom, Gramlich warned of its risks and unsuccessfully pushed for greater supervision of bank affiliates. But Gramlich praised CRA, saying last year, "banks have made many low- and moderate-income mortgages to fulfill their CRA obligations, they have found default rates pleasantly low, and they generally charge low mortgages rates. Thirty years later, CRA has become very good business."

It's telling that, amid all the recent recriminations, even lenders have not fingered CRA. That's because CRA didn't bring about the reckless lending at the heart of the crisis. Just as sub-prime lending was exploding, CRA was losing force and relevance. And the worst offenders, the independent mortgage companies, were never subject to CRA -- or any federal regulator. Law didn't make them lend. The profit motive did. </blockquote>

-Mark

Naturist Mark

10-07-2008, 03:32 PM

Martial Law was Threatened if Bailout Didn't Happen

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Could this be the real reason so many Republicans voted against the bailout ... martial law would mean a delayed or canceled election .. and why so many Democrats held their noses and voted yes ...

-Mark

Qikdraw

10-09-2008, 01:41 AM

LamontCranston

10-09-2008, 04:02 PM

Have you heard that AIG is being given another 38 billion above the original 85 billion its already been given? Apparently its already burned through 61 billion.

Does anyone remember the movie Brewster's Millions? Why do I have the feeling that these companies are going to burn through money and at the end of it they will have nothing to show for it? I wish I had the link for you all but yesterday I read a story on MSNBC.com that had AIG executives taking a $440,000 sabbatical to a spa in southern California... AFTER the bailout. Bush's press secretary called it 'dispicable'.

I saw some of the Tuesday questioning of the last two CEO's of AIG last night. They were re-running it on C-SPAN. Those guys and the execs under them were brazen in the face of losses. One actually said a bonus of $9 million in 2007 followed by a bonus of $2 million last year was a pay cut. Sure it's less, but that bonus was still on top of a salary and in addition to something called a partners incentive plan.

The problem is that while they were roundly skewered by all the congress people at the hearing, there was no sense of punishment or consequences. I got the impression that they just had to endure the pressure, get through it, and ride off on the wave of severance pay.

Rep. Sarbanes was great though. "So you lost 5.4 billion in the 4th quarter, then followed up with a $7 billion loss in the next quarter. Tell me how the conversations went around letting the same executive keep running the division." It turns out that same executive is still on staff as a consultant with a fee of $1 million *per month*.

It would be quite different if it had the atmosphere of the Nuremburg trials where they need to convince the congressmen they were doing the right thing or go back in the holding cells and await a verdict.

In other news, they interviewed the president of a local bank here in CT who said they have *zero* forclosures on their books and are still lending to people and businesses with down payments, good credit and cash flow.

It's not all bad, and it's more Wall Street than Main Street.

Hang in there people. :)

usmc1

10-14-2008, 03:29 PM

http://www.theonion.com/content/files/images/bailout_stat.jpg

Naturist Mark

10-21-2008, 06:28 PM

Whenever a Hollywood celeb makes a political endorsement or advocates for a public issue they are derided as pinheads or empty headed celebrities who are too full of themselves to realize they have no standing to try to influence anyone who has graduated from 3rd grade. Too often there is some justification for that view, but some celebrity activists have done their homework and deserve a listen, when Leonardo DiCaprio talks about the environment, he speaks with a level of knowledge and authority that far exceeds his Junior High School appearance. Bono has a record of achievement in promoting humane AIDS policy that equals that of any politico.

Now Natalie Portman and Rashida Jones make their mark in the struggle to deal effectively with the world's financial crisis:

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-Mark

10-27-2008, 09:05 AM

From: The following is a condensation of a series from the Investor's Business Daily explaining "What Caused the Loan Crisis":

1977: Pres. Jimmy Carter signs into Law the Community Reinvestment Act the foundation and cornerstone for the impending disaster.. The law pressured financial institutions to extend home loans to those who would otherwise not qualify.

The publicized premise: Home ownership would improve poor and crime-ridden communities and neighborhoods in terms of crime, investment, jobs, etc.

The Results: Statistics bear out that it did not help.

How did the government get so deeply involved in the housing market?

Answer: Bill Clinton wanted it that way.

1992: Republican representative Jim Leach (IO) warned of the danger that Fannie and Freddie were changing from being agencies of the public at large to money machines for the principals and the stock-holding few.

1993: Clinton extensively rewrote Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's rules turning the quasi-private mortgage-funding firms into semi-nationalized monopolies dispensing cash and loans to large Democratic voting blocks and handing favors, jobs and contributions to political allies. This potent mix led inevitably to corruption and now the collapse of Freddie and Fannie.

1994: Despite warnings, Clinton unveiled his National Home-Ownership Strategy, which broadened the CRA in ways congress never intended.

1995: Congress, about to change from a Democrat majority to Republican. Clinton orders Robert Rubin's Treasury Dept to rewrite the rules. Robt. Rubin's Treasury reworked rules, forcing banks to satisfy quotas for sub-prime and minority loans to get a satisfactory CRA rating. The rating was key to expansion or mergers for banks. Loans began to be made on the basis of race and little else.

1997 - 1999: Clinton, bypassing Republicans in Congress, enlisted Andrew Cuomo, then Secretary of Housing and Urban Dev elopement, allowing Freddie and Fannie to get into the sub-prime market in a BIG way. Led by Rep. Barney Frank and Sen. Chris Dodd, congress doubled down on the risk by easing capital limits and allowing them to hold just 2.5% of capital to back their investments vs. 10% for banks. Since they could borrow at lower rates than banks their enterprises boomed.

With incentives in place, banks poured billions in loans into poor communities, often "no doc", "no income", requiring no money down and no verification of income. Worse still was the cronyism: Fannie and Freddie became home to out-of work-politicians, mostly Clinton Democrats. 384 politicians got big campaign donations from Fannie and Freddie. Over $200 million had been spent on lobbying and political activities. During the 1990's Fannie and Freddie enjoyed a subsidy of as musch as$182 Billion, most of it going to principals and shareholders, not poor borrowers as claimed.

Did it work? Minorities made up 49% of the 12.5 million new homeowners but many of those loans have gone bad and the minority homeownership rates are shrinking fast.

1999: New Treasury Secretary, Lawrence Summers, became alarmed at Fannie and Freddie's excesses. Congress held hearings the ensuing year but nothing was done because Fannie and Freddie had donated millions to key congressmen and radical groups, ensuring no meaningful changes would take place. "We manage our political risk with the same intensity that we manage our credit and interest rate risks," Fannie CEO Franklin Raines, a former Clinton official and current Barack Obama advisor, bragged to investors in 1999.

2000: Secretary Summers sent Undersecretary Gary Gensler to Congress seeking an end to the "special status". Democrats raised a ruckus as did Fannie and Freddie, headed by politically connected CEO's who knew how to reward and punish. "We think that the statements evidence a contempt for the nation's housing and mortgage markets" Freddie spokesperson Sharon McHale said. It was the last chance during the Clinton era for reform.

2001: Republicans try repeatedly to bring fiscal sanity to Fannie and Freddie but Democrats blocked any attempt at reform; especially Rep. Barney Frank and Sen.Chris Dodd who now run key banking committees and were huge beneficiaries of campaign contributions from the mortgage giants.

2003: Bush proposes what the NY Times called "the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago". Even after discovering a scheme by Fannie and Freddie to overstate earnings by $10.6 billion to boost their bonuses, the Democrats killed reform.

2005: Then Fed chairman Alan Greenspan warns Congress: "We are placing the total financial system at substantial risk". Sen. McCain, with two others, sponsored a Fannie/Freddie reform bill and said, "If congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system and the economy as a whole". Sen. Harry Reid accused the GOP ;of trying to "cripple the ability of Fannie and Freddie to carry out their mission of expanding homeownership" The bill went nowhere.

2007: By now Fannie and Freddie own or guarantee over HALF of the $12 trillion US mortgage market. The mortgage giants, whose executive suites were top-heavy with former Democratic officials, had been working with Wall St. to repackage the bad loans and sell them to investors. As the housing market fell in '07, subprime mortgage portfolios suffered major losses. The crisis was on, though it was 15 years in the making.

2008: McCain has repeatedly called for reforming the behemoths, Bush urged reform 17 times. Still the media have repeated Democrats' talking points about this being a "Republican" disaster. A few Republicans are complicit but Fannie and Freddie were created by Democrats, regulated by Democrats, largely run by Democrats and protected by Democrats. That's why taxpayers are now being asked for $700 billion!!

If you doubt any of this, just click the links below and listen to your lawmakers' own words. They are condemning!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68D9XrqyrWo&feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68D9XrqyrWo&feature=related)#

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIgqfM5C8lY (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIgqfM5C8lY)#

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9juJr8CSY4&feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9juJr8CSY4&feature=related)#

Postscript: ACORN is one of the principlal beneficiaries of Fannie/ Freddie's slush funds. They are currently under indictment or investigation in many states. Barack Obama served as their legal counsel, defending their activities for several years.

usmc1

10-27-2008, 10:37 AM

There are strong indications here that the financial crises, while helping Obama considerably, is not the only factor driving the electorate right now. None of the Republican sliming is sticking, people are getting to know him and respect his "cool under fire" approach to crises.

The contract is out on the table and America is reaching for the pen in order to seal the deal.

Obama Maintains a Strong Lead in the Electoral College

http://electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Pres/ec_graph-2008-solid.png
This graph shows the electoral college score over time counting only those states where one candidate has a lead of at least 5%. The states where it is very close don't count here. With one exceptional period, it is possible to draw a pretty clear straight line through the middle of the blue line from mid-April until now. The exceptional period occurred in the last two weeks of September, when McCain got a small bounce from Palin's incendiary convention speech, which really fired up the base. However, when the bounce faded, as all convention bounces do, Obama continued on his upwards trajectory. If you compare 2008 to 2004 (on the Electoral coll. page) you see that this year looks completely different from that one. Other than a two-day blip on June 24-25, 2004, when Kerry briefly touched 300 EVs, neither candidate ever was even close to 270 EVs in the solid states although Kerry was above 270 counting the "barely states" until his Swift Boat was torpedoed.

So what's with the nearly straight line upwards for Obama? Charlie Cook and many other nonpartisan experts have said that with 80% of the population saying the country is on the wrong track, this was going to be an election about Barack Obama. People clearly want change, but they were not yet sure if Obama was up to the job. After 18 months of campaigning and countless primary and general election debates, people are getting to know Obama and are beginning to feel he is a good man in a storm. His calm behavior during the bailout bill period--and McCain's erratic behavior--helped Obama a lot (see graph). Slowly but surely people are coming to believe he can do the job, and that's all he needed.

Navigator

11-10-2008, 04:47 PM

Naturist Mark

11-10-2008, 07:19 PM

This article by Naomi Klein will be out in Rolling Stone shortly. It's a must read for anyone following the Bush/Paulson looting of the U.S. Treasury.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/24012700/the_new_trough

I'm beginning to suspect that this looting is the price the neocons demanded in order to allow a constitutional change of government. Seriously. They had the legal and material tools all lined up to declare a national emergency and to continue to rule by decree with no elections, no change of government 'for the duration' - indeed it could still happen. Letting them take the money and run may have been the price to prevent civil war.

God, I so wish I was joking.

-Mark

Naturist Mark

11-10-2008, 07:37 PM

Treasury sneaks rule change, just noticed a month later, that gives banks a $140 Billion windfall:
A Quiet Windfall For U.S. Banks (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/09/AR2008110902155_pf.html)

Completely separate from the $700 (or $800) Billion bailout, the Fed makes over $2 Trillion in emergency loans backed by only troubled assets, or no collateral at all, and refuses to disclose the recipients:
Fed Defies Transparency Aim in Refusal to Disclose (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aatlky_cH.tY&refer=worldwide)

-Mark

Qikdraw

11-10-2008, 08:25 PM

Navigator

11-11-2008, 09:28 AM

I'm beginning to suspect that this looting is the price the neocons demanded in order to allow a constitutional change of government. Seriously. They had the legal and material tools all lined up to declare a national emergency and to continue to rule by decree with no elections, no change of government 'for the duration' - indeed it could still happen. Letting them take the money and run may have been the price to prevent civil war.

God, I so wish I was joking.

-Mark

I guess you're talking about the news that was out, between the first rejection of the bailout and the second vote that passed it, saying there was a threat of "Marshall Law" if it wasn't passed...right? I'm well aware of the tools they gave themselves to do this.

You could be right. At the time I sort of dismissed those stories because the term "Marshall Law" is also used in the House of Rep's to mean a short-term prohibition and lockdown of leaks and press interviews from House members. I just thought the MSM misunderstood the way the term was being used in the House so they wrote some needlessly alarming stories about it.

I'm usually pretty skeptical of the junk the U.S. MSM puts out even if it's from a news source that's not connected with the Bush administration. I usually trust British, Canadian and Aussie news a little more than U.S. news. But even then....