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R/E/P => R/E/P Archives => R/E/P Saloon => Topic started by: Nick Sevilla on September 19, 2008, 11:51:49 AM

Title: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: Nick Sevilla on September 19, 2008, 11:51:49 AM
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080919/ap_on_bi_ge/financial_me ltdown

Laughing

See what happens when you vote Republican?

Your Tax Dollars go down the pockets of the rich fools who made this mess to begin with.

If this does not wake some "die hard" Republicans, I really do not know what will.

Just TWO WEEKS AGO, Bush AND McCain were talking about how strong our economy is.

Really???

I'd hate to hear what their version of a "bad economy" is.

F**K Bush!!! and his Administration! Brace yourselves, we're In a bad economy...regardless of what you hear in the news.

At least, I did not invest in Wall Street, my Great Grand-dad gave us all the best advice:

"Don't EVER put your money in a Stock investment, it's always run by thieving greedy liars".

My Great Grand-dad , Don Luis Sevilla y Querejazu co-founded the Mexico City Trade Market,named "Bolsa Mexicana de Valores" back in the beginning of the 20th century.

His advise is as sound as ever. he always kept most of his money in gold bullion at the bank vault. He did not suffer through the great Depression. He actually made a profit for most of the 1930's.

Cheers
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: Jay Kadis on September 19, 2008, 12:16:08 PM
"We don't need no regulation,
We don't need no trade controls...
No dark protests in the boardroom
Hey! Congress! Leave Wall Street alone!"
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: Jessica A. Engle on September 19, 2008, 12:16:58 PM
What really baffles me is why Bush hasn't been hounded out of office.  Being lied to is one thing, I expect that.  But being lied to in so inept a fashion that even a small child can figure it out?  That just reeks of the disdain for our intelligence and our welfare (economic or otherwise).  

And the latest polls put Obama and McCain basically in a dead heat.  

The sheer will-force of people's complacency is utterly baffling to me.  I've stopped trying to figure it out because it kept giving me a headache.  Now I just watch, and marvel.

Jessica
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: MDM, on September 19, 2008, 12:38:41 PM
maybe the reason he's not out is because americans are not kicking him out, and to do so they would have to get off their couches and start behaving like political activists in great numbers..

maybe even a civil war would be needed to weed out wall-street's effects.

as long as americans THINK they are free, the bushes and company do not suffer any threat.

to study and see what the government is ACTUALLY doing to freedom of the individual takes too much effort for many people..

perhaps washington thinks that nobody is strong enough to fight them anymore, which is probably why they are being so sloppy in their political actions..
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: cerberus on September 19, 2008, 01:02:14 PM
Jessica A. Engle wrote on Fri, 19 September 2008 12:16

What really baffles me is why Bush hasn't been hounded out of office.

hi jessica;

i think you might discover the answers may be in these great books:

plato: the republic

hamilton, madison & jay : the federalist papers
(particularly no.10 by james madison)

i would have recommended the new testament
as well, but iirc you've already read it.

jeff dinces
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: Nick Sevilla on September 19, 2008, 01:10:14 PM
Jessica A. Engle wrote on Fri, 19 September 2008 09:16

What really baffles me is why Bush hasn't been hounded out of office.  Being lied to is one thing, I expect that.  But being lied to in so inept a fashion that even a small child can figure it out?  That just reeks of the disdain for our intelligence and our welfare (economic or otherwise).  

And the latest polls put Obama and McCain basically in a dead heat.  

The sheer will-force of people's complacency is utterly baffling to me.  I've stopped trying to figure it out because it kept giving me a headache.  Now I just watch, and marvel.

Jessica


There is a movement... but it is not very popular.

And, if you know how to manipulate weak minded people, like this Administration does, then you have nothing to fear from your constituents.

One word : IGNORANCE.

There's plenty of it in the middle of the country, where most of the Republican states are. As long as they are fed, have a job, and a little entertainment, they will do nothing to change the country.

Perhaps if 9/11 happened in Missouri or Georgia, things would have been a little different...
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: cerberus on September 19, 2008, 01:14:52 PM
MDM, wrote on Fri, 19 September 2008 12:38

civil war would be needed
that is really fucked up. video games don't keep you occupied?

jeff dinces
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: Jay Kadis on September 19, 2008, 01:17:43 PM
cerberus wrote on Fri, 19 September 2008 10:14

MDM, wrote on Fri, 19 September 2008 12:38

civil war would be needed
that is really fucked up. video games don't keep you occupied?

jeff dinces

Video games are covert training exercises.  Let's play Predator!
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: cerberus on September 19, 2008, 01:20:13 PM
mark, i thought your post (below) was worth reading.

jeff dinces
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: bigaudioblowhard on September 19, 2008, 01:27:18 PM
delete

Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: YZ on September 19, 2008, 01:37:06 PM
A few thoughts by this very humble and financial-market ignorant guy:

- The U.S. government's plan calls for the buying of mortgage-backed securities as part of the effort to keep the economy from a big decline;

IMVHO the buy-backs should be of the mortgages themselves directly, let the hedge funds and indirect investors have their losses/profits from the result of the mortgage buy-backs;

- Limiting short-selling: good. very good.

- Insuring and backing money-market funds: bad. unfair.  Take care of the mortgages directly and the money-market funds that were hedged in mortgages will recover, slowly but surely.

IMVHO it is the borrowers that should be "insured" and "backed"; the people who'd bet that there would be immense profits from such subprime lending should content themselves with the profits they've already reaped during the boom, and with the more modest returns after Government intervention.

Work with the people who bought houses, bring the rates back down to reasonable levels, institute a "moratorium" of a few months to allow for their recovery (along with the general economy), freeze and isolate the related securities/investment funds, then gradually start collecting payments again.

Re-evaluate the result periodically and apply changes accordingly.

Then this mess may be sorted out in a few years' time with reduced losses for the small guy who bought a house and consequentially for everyone else who invested in mortgage derivatives.

But the house-buyer should not be left hanging.

Again, IMVHO.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: MDM, on September 19, 2008, 01:51:36 PM
cerberus wrote on Fri, 19 September 2008 12:14

MDM, wrote on Fri, 19 September 2008 12:38

civil war would be needed
that is really fucked up. video games don't keep you occupied?

jeff dinces




nope, I don't play video games, I don't like violence, I don't watch TV and I don't watch hollywood movies..

what I'm saying is that the average citizen has no clue (how can they) of how much of the government is actually controlled and corrupted from the ideals of the constitution etc.

so to take the government back into the people's hands, people will have to stand up to the government.. historically corrupt gov's are overthrown by violence.


the beauty of the USA is that when it was formed, it was mostly barren land.. there was no 'old money' in the USA to undermine freedom..

now there is.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: cerberus on September 19, 2008, 01:53:11 PM
index.php/fa/9984/0/
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: Jessica A. Engle on September 19, 2008, 01:57:42 PM
Nick Sevilla wrote on Fri, 19 September 2008 12:10


One word : IGNORANCE.

There's plenty of it in the middle of the country, where most of the Republican states are. As long as they are fed, have a job, and a little entertainment, they will do nothing to change the country.

Perhaps if 9/11 happened in Missouri or Georgia, things would have been a little different...


Ignorance and complacency are not the same.

There's plenty of ignorance no matter where you go, or what "color" state you happen to live in.  

Those people you mention, who will do nothing as long as they are fed and have jobs and can go to the movies or download their porno or whatever people do for fun..... you're describing complacency, not ignorance.

People are smart enough to know where their money goes.  You don't have to watch the news to be informed, you just have to buy gasoline once in a while.  Because it's right under their nose.  It doesn't take a genius.  It just takes the ordinary sort.  

Those ordinary sorts have made their voices heard in the past.  I just don't see why that isn't happening now (despite reccomended readings on the topic).  How many more disasters is it going to take to shake people from complacency?

But as I said, I'm just content to sit back and watch at this point.  People simply do not care, and I find that highly disturbing.  And until they start to care, they're getting what they deserve.  And that disturbs me as well.

So I've stopped trying to fathom it.  Life will go on, and eventually I'll die just like I was destined to before all this Bush/Global Warming/2nd Great Depression/Etc. stuff started.  
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: Nick Sevilla on September 19, 2008, 03:22:27 PM
Jessica A. Engle wrote on Fri, 19 September 2008 10:57

Nick Sevilla wrote on Fri, 19 September 2008 12:10


One word : IGNORANCE.

There's plenty of it in the middle of the country, where most of the Republican states are. As long as they are fed, have a job, and a little entertainment, they will do nothing to change the country.

Perhaps if 9/11 happened in Missouri or Georgia, things would have been a little different...


Ignorance and complacency are not the same.

There's plenty of ignorance no matter where you go, or what "color" state you happen to live in.  

Those people you mention, who will do nothing as long as they are fed and have jobs and can go to the movies or download their porno or whatever people do for fun..... you're describing complacency, not ignorance.

People are smart enough to know where their money goes.  You don't have to watch the news to be informed, you just have to buy gasoline once in a while.  Because it's right under their nose.  It doesn't take a genius.  It just takes the ordinary sort.  

Those ordinary sorts have made their voices heard in the past.  I just don't see why that isn't happening now (despite recomended readings on the topic).  How many more disasters is it going to take to shake people from complacency?

But as I said, I'm just content to sit back and watch at this point.  People simply do not care, and I find that highly disturbing.  And until they start to care, they're getting what they deserve.  And that disturbs me as well.

So I've stopped trying to fathom it.  Life will go on, and eventually I'll die just like I was destined to before all this Bush/Global Warming/2nd Great Depression/Etc. stuff started.  


When some of these people in the middle of America are asked... they do not know where the border with Mexico is, nor why we invaded Iraq (they sometimes say it was to look for Osama...go figure), nor a bunch of basic math stuff, like basic division stuff. It is this very ignorance which allows complacency to be so high.

The only disaster I can think of is one that is right in their face, one they cannot ignore. Kinda like Katrina, but further North. That is unlikely to happen soon.

Complacency, while not like ignorance, can arise from ignorance. If you do not know what is wrong, why get up to fix it or change it?

Cheers
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: PRobb on September 19, 2008, 05:44:37 PM
Jay Kadis wrote on Fri, 19 September 2008 12:16

"We don't need no regulation,
We don't need no trade controls...
No dark protests in the boardroom
Hey! Congress! Leave Wall Street alone!"

I have to disagree with that. I think lack of regulation was a major cause of the current crisis. Too little regulation is just as dangerous as too much.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: Steve Hudson on September 19, 2008, 06:03:32 PM
PRobb wrote on Fri, 19 September 2008 16:44

Jay Kadis wrote on Fri, 19 September 2008 12:16

"We don't need no regulation,
We don't need no trade controls...
No dark protests in the boardroom
Hey! Congress! Leave Wall Street alone!"

I have to disagree with that. I think lack of regulation was a major cause of the current crisis. Too little regulation is just as dangerous as too much.


Methinks Jay was being sarcastic...
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: Hallams on September 19, 2008, 07:28:13 PM
Deregulation = Let the fox guard the chickens.index.php/fa/9985/0/
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: danickstr on September 19, 2008, 09:02:18 PM
 I think I have made it abundantly clear that I am in the liberal camp, but this one is a good save by the government.

The alternative is not knowing if the bank will have your money tomorrow.  This crisis was on par with the great depression, as far as real dollar values.

The events that lead to this collapse of financial confidence are the classic ones:

People much smarter than the regulators find a way to "exploit" the system, using decietful practices.

You cannot out-regulate these people, because they are smarter than the regulators, and infinitely creative.

What you have to do is punish them as much as possible, which is what Bernanke did, to a degree.  He picked three, Lehman Brothers, AIG and Merrill, and handed them their asses in varying degrees.

That is all he can do without risking your and my banks failing on a domino scale.

Then you clean up the mess and curse the smart people for dicking with us.

And you wait for them to do it again.

It is kind of like ants.

You try to keep ants out of your house, and eventually they find a way in.

That is how the minds of these slick-haired 25-65 year-old money masters are always working the system.  Looking for that new way to outsmart the government employee-created rules.

They succeed and they make 50 million dollar bonuses.  Their scheme succeeds for them and the rest of us fail, and they may lose their jobs, and destroy millions of people's investments, but they don't care.

Blame them.  Not Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson.

Not even GW Bush,  Those guys are not smart enough to stop these money speed freaks.

Not even close.


Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: tom eaton on September 19, 2008, 10:01:35 PM
All this... but healthcare for everyone, why that'd be socialism!!

It hurts my head to think that we're all essentially paying for the salaries, perks and bonuses of the VERY wealthy.

A democracy might have some room for morality, but capitalism certainly does not.

McCain will not have to sell one of his houses, and that's the way it will always be.

Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: RSettee on September 20, 2008, 03:43:20 PM
Here's my two cents and this is the best advice that you'll hear regarding this: people are way overextended on credit and that's caused this. Ever wonder how so and so can possibly afford what they're driving or living in? It's because they're nowhere near paying it off. Factor in credit for deadbeats/ bankrupcies--which are high interest loans--and they're finding out that they're not paying off hardly any principal. And bingo bango, that's why people are walking away from credit and loans and mortgages in record numbers.....because they've got nothing to lose, anyways. They have no collateral, no equity, and the banks and credit institutions are finding out how fun it is when you realize that your debts are worth more than your possessions, when you drive your car off the lot, and trying to sell used furniture and TV's and things like that.

Businesses like GM are hurting, because they banked on hiring and manufacturing like there was no tomorrow. Guess what? Tomorrow came. And they're seeing what is happening when they were banking on someone taking out their third car, when they can barely afford the first or second. I see people in the neighbourhood with a new car every year and I say, "my fucking god are you hung up on vanity. NONE of us in this neighborhood is anything past working class people".

Who gets squeezed? Us. The middle class, which is quickly disappearing. You only win if you're at the top or the bottom. If you're on social welfare, you never had anything to lose, because you were never putting anything into the economy anyways. If you're at the top, you're getting a corporate bailout. Even mid level businesses are feeling the sting....those that are worried about only taking out what they can pay off, they're finding out that they don't like the numbers anyways, so they're just walking away from it. The rest of us have to work hard days for our hard earned things, while we pay taxes and subsidize everyone that's going under that took a gamble or were overextended. For every working class Joe that only spends what they need to get by, there's someone flaunting the fact that they can take out extreme amounts of credit, and pretending to live better than they actually could. They're just one firing, one paycheque away from being out on the street. If you realized how many people are living just this close to the edge, you'd have realized just how truly screwed this economy was meant to be in the first place.

RRSP's took a tumble with high risk returns. I wouldn't be surprised if everyone pulled their investments out of banks, just like in the 1930's, to risk not losing all their money.

I blame the government, credit, and the average pretender, that needed huge fancy things they couldn't pay for, that helped to create the illusion that there was really that economy in the first place. In the old days, you had layaway--you slowly paid it off, then you got it. Nowadays, you have it right away, and then you're not happy with it because it's not 2008's car or whatever lame ass excuse for taking out more credit. I hope very much that the credit companies have a severe crackdown on people that can't and haven't paid off their credit, and take a good hard analysis of who they think WON'T be able to pay in the future. And all that overextended credit has left people without the ability to pay for hardly anything else, creating a nosedive in the rest of the sub economy.

That's not the end of it--mass automation and technological advances have put good citizens out of jobs. Quality decreased for quantity, and once that happened, people have their MP3's and cheap Asian imported sweatshop labour items and wonder where, something somehow, went wrong.

And then the government thinks dropping 8 bill into the LHC is a great idea or a non existent war. Excuse me? Have you fucking seen the homeless in your own streets? Have you seen the recession that is going on these days? Fix what you have before you start looking at vanity shit. Hell, no wonder the average person is so hung up on vanity, it's because the government that's created Nero's biggest fiddle to fuck around while Rome is burning.

It's with this sort of information and insight that I think I could do a hell of a lot better than most in office. But I don't care about the power, only about fixing the current problems and have no interest in politics. To me, you've gotta stop promising more jobs, because most of those jobs are lower paying, minimum wage ones. Be realistic. People are getting laid off left and right (I got laid off last year, even). This whole economy has to take a 360 degree turn and it's going to take a long time to reverse and it's not going to be a pretty sight. It's going to be to the point where people will have to find their own way and be self sustenant and where the term "survival of the fittest" will come in, because I speculate that with the (necessary) crackdown on credit, and the realization that alot of companies will have to lay off more and more people, that there will be a "do or die" mentality, by default. There just won't be the monetary resources for people looking "to make it" or live overly extravagantly without creating their own way, instead of being maxed out to the hilt on credit.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: danickstr on September 20, 2008, 06:54:19 PM
that;s true Ryan.  Most people do overextend on credit cards, and they were happy to take the shady bank loan with no down on their house.  I had applied for a loan about a year and a half ago, and I was shocked to find out how sloppy the whole thing was.

I felt like I was in the skit with Eddie Murphy, where he poses as "Mr. White"  and the bank just opens the drawer and starts handing over bundles of hundreds, saying, "don't worry, just pay it back when you can".


Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: jonathan jetter on September 20, 2008, 07:03:43 PM
this is robbery writ large.  communism under the guise of protection and security.

it boggles my mind that people are not out in the streets reclaiming their liberty by force.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: RSettee on September 20, 2008, 08:41:29 PM
jonathan jetter wrote on Sat, 20 September 2008 18:03

this is robbery writ large.  communism under the guise of protection and security.

it boggles my mind that people are not out in the streets reclaiming their liberty by force.


Great point--ultimately, this sort of protection has more in common with Communism and Socialism. It's nice if you need it....but when a big majority of your biggest companies are losing money and need that sort of protection, you have to wonder what type of system the Capitalist society really runs. Really, it's Communism for the Capitalists that are in trouble....and if you think of it, if those companies go under, they can't pay back their loans anyways, and then there's many more jobs axed, as well.

Now THAT's what you call truly fucked.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: MDM, on September 20, 2008, 09:21:54 PM
lack of regulation???

damn right there is!

it's called NOT enforcing the law and the constitution..

but you don't need a government building full of people to figure that out.. any ordinary person who's studied law and the constitution should do..
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: jonathan jetter on September 20, 2008, 09:49:14 PM
RSettee wrote on Sat, 20 September 2008 20:41

jonathan jetter wrote on Sat, 20 September 2008 18:03

this is robbery writ large.  communism under the guise of protection and security.

it boggles my mind that people are not out in the streets reclaiming their liberty by force.


Great point--ultimately, this sort of protection has more in common with Communism and Socialism. It's nice if you need it....but when a big majority of your biggest companies are losing money and need that sort of protection, you have to wonder what type of system the Capitalist society really runs. Really, it's Communism for the Capitalists that are in trouble....and if you think of it, if those companies go under, they can't pay back their loans anyways, and then there's many more jobs axed, as well.

Now THAT's what you call truly fucked.


yeah.  

i think it's important for everyone to realize that this bailout package is an extremely socialistic solution-  collective, public responsibility for the failures of private corporations.  that is an extremely dangerous road to go down.  it has NOTHING to do with principles of liberty, freedom, or capitalism.  

the scope of the problem is as huge as it is because of the LACK of competition, the public-private hybrid companies Fannie and Freddie, a market where some companies are coddled and favored while others are left to fend for themselves in a "free" market.  the problems we're seeing are born out of socialist origins.

things got as severe as they did because in 2004 the SEC exempted 5 firms from the normally required limits on debt-to-capital ratios, allowing these firms to leverage at much greater amounts than normally possible.

those 5 firms:  Bear Stearns, Lehman, Merrill, Goldman, and Morgan.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: Hank Alrich on September 21, 2008, 12:16:39 AM
danickstr wrote on Fri, 19 September 2008 18:02

 I think I have made it abundantly clear that I am in the liberal camp, but this one is a good save by the government.

The alternative is not knowing if the bank will have your money tomorrow.  This crisis was on par with the great depression, as far as real dollar values.

The events that lead to this collapse of financial confidence are the classic ones:

People much smarter than the regulators find a way to "exploit" the system, using decietful practices.

You cannot out-regulate these people, because they are smarter than the regulators, and infinitely creative.

What you have to do is punish them as much as possible, which is what Bernanke did, to a degree.  He picked three, Lehman Brothers, AIG and Merrill, and handed them their asses in varying degrees.

That is all he can do without risking your and my banks failing on a domino scale.

Then you clean up the mess and curse the smart people for dicking with us.

And you wait for them to do it again.

It is kind of like ants.

You try to keep ants out of your house, and eventually they find a way in.

That is how the minds of these slick-haired 25-65 year-old money masters are always working the system.  Looking for that new way to outsmart the government employee-created rules.

They succeed and they make 50 million dollar bonuses.  Their scheme succeeds for them and the rest of us fail, and they may lose their jobs, and destroy millions of people's investments, but they don't care.

Blame them.  Not Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson.

Not even GW Bush,  Those guys are not smart enough to stop these money speed freaks.

Not even close.





Oh,yeah? Much of this mess is directly attributable to Fed Reserve manipulation of the money supply to put way too much of it in circulation, to keep the good times a' rollin'. Paulson was an aide to Erlichman in the Nixon admin. I'm not willing to think he's grown a lot on integrity since then.

This isn't about saving your money in the bank. It's about saving the asses of the fat cats. And in the long run, the gov coughing up a trillion-plus bucks to "save the world economy" is going to devalue your money plenty. Further, there is nothing in this "rescue" that addresses the sickness of greed and deceit that has run us rampantly into this morass of "investments" at the monster banks and the rest of their Wallstreet hog buddies.

You might want to check out a little something that's up with this rescue bill...

http://blog.kirchhof.com/?p=119
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: grantis on September 21, 2008, 12:28:14 AM
Quote:

things got as severe as they did because in 2004 the SEC exempted 5 firms from the normally required limits on debt-to-capital ratios, allowing these firms to leverage at much greater amounts than normally possible.

those 5 firms: Bear Stearns, Lehman, Merrill, Goldman, and Morgan.


After reading up on this quite a bit (I'm a financial market noob), this has struck me in a good way, and I'll tell you why...

If those are the only firms that were granted exemption, then we've neared rock bottom right?  It can only get better from here.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: cerberus on September 21, 2008, 01:04:29 AM
grant richard wrote on Sun, 21 September 2008 00:28

we've neared rock bottom right? It can only get better from here.
where did you say you were from? remember:
when you siphon gasoline, don't swallow.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/09/19/nashville.gas/index.html

jeff dinces
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: cerberus on September 21, 2008, 01:10:40 AM
"the house of cards was much bigger, and it started to stretch beyond just wall street
in the sense of the effects of failure. So when one card started to go,
we were worried about the whole deck coming down."    bush

what a bum note. oops, my elbow.

Radiohead - House Of Cards (Live at 93 Feet East)

jeff dinces
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: John Ivan on September 21, 2008, 01:38:07 AM
Hank raises a very important point about the opening of the discount window at the Fed. Read the link he has supplied. It is a frightening thing that so few people will have such control over the whole market..Any efforts at all to keep the average citizen in mind will be labeled as "Liberals playing politics with a serious issue facing our country"..

I don't like this deal one bit. Obama has been somewhat quiet about his specific ideas on this for a reason. He and his advisor's are working up serious policy as we speak. It will be interesting to hear what he has to say about all this as it develops.

Another thing that has only gotten worse in my opinion is the lack of quality in the individuals who end up in management and the position of CEO in so many of these companies.

Between the "who the hell are these clowns" problem, the Fed dumping huge sums of money in, and what amounts to really NO RULES in the market, it's a wonder this didn't all collapse long ago.

If things don't change on a very deep cultural level, it will collapse. Completely. IMHO.

Ivan....................
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: John Ivan on September 21, 2008, 02:13:53 AM
For what it's worth, I've been reading this guy a lot. He raises a point that others have as well.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/20/no-deal/

Ivan.................
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: jonathan jetter on September 21, 2008, 03:38:59 AM
grant richard wrote on Sun, 21 September 2008 00:28

Quote:

things got as severe as they did because in 2004 the SEC exempted 5 firms from the normally required limits on debt-to-capital ratios, allowing these firms to leverage at much greater amounts than normally possible.

those 5 firms: Bear Stearns, Lehman, Merrill, Goldman, and Morgan.


After reading up on this quite a bit (I'm a financial market noob), this has struck me in a good way, and I'll tell you why...

If those are the only firms that were granted exemption, then we've neared rock bottom right?  It can only get better from here.


well no.  because the normal debt-to-capital ratio is about 12-to-1.  which can still screw you pretty good if a lot of your loan recipients start defaulting.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: Bill_Urick on September 21, 2008, 08:52:31 AM
Steve Hudson wrote on Fri, 19 September 2008 18:03

PRobb wrote on Fri, 19 September 2008 16:44

Jay Kadis wrote on Fri, 19 September 2008 12:16

"We don't need no regulation,
We don't need no trade controls...
No dark protests in the boardroom
Hey! Congress! Leave Wall Street alone!"

I have to disagree with that. I think lack of regulation was a major cause of the current crisis. Too little regulation is just as dangerous as too much.


Methinks Jay was being sarcastic...


Also very funny....
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: RSettee on September 21, 2008, 11:08:13 AM
jonathan jetter wrote on Sat, 20 September 2008 20:49

RSettee wrote on Sat, 20 September 2008 20:41

jonathan jetter wrote on Sat, 20 September 2008 18:03

this is robbery writ large.  communism under the guise of protection and security.

it boggles my mind that people are not out in the streets reclaiming their liberty by force.


Great point--ultimately, this sort of protection has more in common with Communism and Socialism. It's nice if you need it....but when a big majority of your biggest companies are losing money and need that sort of protection, you have to wonder what type of system the Capitalist society really runs. Really, it's Communism for the Capitalists that are in trouble....and if you think of it, if those companies go under, they can't pay back their loans anyways, and then there's many more jobs axed, as well.

Now THAT's what you call truly fucked.


yeah.  

i think it's important for everyone to realize that this bailout package is an extremely socialistic solution-  collective, public responsibility for the failures of private corporations.  that is an extremely dangerous road to go down.  it has NOTHING to do with principles of liberty, freedom, or capitalism.  

the scope of the problem is as huge as it is because of the LACK of competition, the public-private hybrid companies Fannie and Freddie, a market where some companies are coddled and favored while others are left to fend for themselves in a "free" market.  the problems we're seeing are born out of socialist origins.


Exactly. And you're right about the "coddling"....some companies will inevitably receive favourable treatment. I'm not sure at which ones--it could be the big 5 that you mention--but it may be extended much past that.

The interesting thing is that these bailouts are provided to the same people that will--had they made LOTS of money--it just would have went back into their own enterprises and private dividends. In other words, had they capitalized, it would have gone into a capitalistic, private scheme, instead of a communistic social public scheme. There's no rewards for the public if these private enterprises succeed. But that risk is what we are all paying for in taxes.

THAT is my biggest problem with this. At some point, if people have run their businesses improperly and are losing money, the capitalistic way is to let them go under and let someone else create a new enterprise to succeed from their failure (fire sales, auction, market share, etc).

Some of the capital--if businesses succeed-- may go to employees in the form of raises or some sort of trickle down effect, but let's face it--if a company does well, it pockets most of the money. If it's doing badly, then somehow it's someone else's jurisdiction and responsibility to save them.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: danickstr on September 21, 2008, 01:14:24 PM
If you think you have figured out the financial system and how it is corrupt, then run for office.   Fix it for all of us and be the world's greatest hero.

I will take the viewpoint that the "fat cats" will continue to find ways to outsmart whatever regulations you put in their way.  I am not advocating that we do not even try.  Of course we should limit the leveraging based on what we know now.

But isn't it easier to just sit and blame the "corrupt government"  rather than to look at what actually happened and plan for it to happen again, in a new set of clothes?

If you look at the positive impact of what the RTC will do. (resolution trust corp) then this is a great save.  Letting big financial firms fail will HURT you more, whether you like it or not.

Letting them get this far ahead of the game is just politics as usual, when there are a bunch of smart wall-street guys and less smart government guys.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: cerberus on September 21, 2008, 01:18:42 PM
henry paulson on his knees.
oh please, stick it in
his bentelys.

danickstr wrote on Sun, 21 September 2008 13:14

resolution trust corp


congress is scheduled to recess in a week.  
who is feeling panicky? and why?

i feel more shadenfreuden.
(not every american is
leveraged x12 or
more).

the do nothing congress might
be best doing nothing.

jeff dinces
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: danickstr on September 21, 2008, 01:55:14 PM
Jeff I agree that time would be nice, but the markets, believe it or not, were on the verge of collapse.  Too much bad debt leveraged to the point where every mutual fund was about to run for the exits, i.e. gold or treasuries.

Current money markets hold over 3 trillion dollars, managed by people who lose their job if they lose too much money.  They may have completely pulled out of all financial stocks, leaving us with about 2/3 of the banks that could open on the next morning.

 Deposits insured by the FDIC would have had to have been paid immediately to keep people from bouncing checks.  It would have cost more to the economy (and probably the govt) to let that happen.

This would have had catastrophic effects on our banking and credit system, not to mention it would have pissed off our biggest creditors, Japan & China.  They hold several trillion dollars of US debt, if you account for private and govt. debt.

We need them to continue extending us credit by buying our treasuries, whether we like it or not.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: cerberus on September 21, 2008, 01:57:18 PM
how about -> 700b into the fdic.
full stop. let it drop.

?

jeff dinces
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: neilio on September 21, 2008, 02:15:35 PM
Steve Hudson wrote on Fri, 19 September 2008 17:03

PRobb wrote on Fri, 19 September 2008 16:44

Jay Kadis wrote on Fri, 19 September 2008 12:16

"We don't need no regulation,
We don't need no trade controls...
No dark protests in the boardroom
Hey! Congress! Leave Wall Street alone!"

I have to disagree with that. I think lack of regulation was a major cause of the current crisis. Too little regulation is just as dangerous as too much.


Methinks Jay was being sarcastic...


ummm, sung to the tune of another brick in the wall by pink floyd....

we are fucking dense these days, myself included.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: neilio on September 21, 2008, 02:28:55 PM
Hank Alrich wrote on Sat, 20 September 2008 23:16

danickstr wrote on Fri, 19 September 2008 18:02

 I think I have made it abundantly clear that I am in the liberal camp, but this one is a good save by the government.

The alternative is not knowing if the bank will have your money tomorrow.  This crisis was on par with the great depression, as far as real dollar values.

The events that lead to this collapse of financial confidence are the classic ones:

People much smarter than the regulators find a way to "exploit" the system, using decietful practices.

You cannot out-regulate these people, because they are smarter than the regulators, and infinitely creative.

What you have to do is punish them as much as possible, which is what Bernanke did, to a degree.  He picked three, Lehman Brothers, AIG and Merrill, and handed them their asses in varying degrees.

That is all he can do without risking your and my banks failing on a domino scale.

Then you clean up the mess and curse the smart people for dicking with us.

And you wait for them to do it again.

It is kind of like ants.

You try to keep ants out of your house, and eventually they find a way in.

That is how the minds of these slick-haired 25-65 year-old money masters are always working the system.  Looking for that new way to outsmart the government employee-created rules.

They succeed and they make 50 million dollar bonuses.  Their scheme succeeds for them and the rest of us fail, and they may lose their jobs, and destroy millions of people's investments, but they don't care.

Blame them.  Not Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson.

Not even GW Bush,  Those guys are not smart enough to stop these money speed freaks.

Not even close.





Oh,yeah? Much of this mess is directly attributable to Fed Reserve manipulation of the money supply to put way too much of it in circulation, to keep the good times a' rollin'. Paulson was an aide to Erlichman in the Nixon admin. I'm not willing to think he's grown a lot on integrity since then.

This isn't about saving your money in the bank. It's about saving the asses of the fat cats. And in the long run, the gov coughing up a trillion-plus bucks to "save the world economy" is going to devalue your money plenty. Further, there is nothing in this "rescue" that addresses the sickness of greed and deceit that has run us rampantly into this morass of "investments" at the monster banks and the rest of their Wallstreet hog buddies.

You might want to check out a little something that's up with this rescue bill...

http://blog.kirchhof.com/?p=119


you are both right...i think.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: cerberus on September 21, 2008, 02:39:56 PM
danickstr wrote on Sun, 21 September 2008 13:55

They hold several trillion dollars of US debt, if you account for private and govt. debt.

We need them to continue extending us credit by buying our treasuries, whether we like it or not.

i am not sure why we need to live way beyond our
means. that part was never explained to me.

jeff dinces
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: jonathan jetter on September 21, 2008, 03:01:02 PM
danickstr wrote on Sun, 21 September 2008 13:14

If you think you have figured out the financial system and how it is corrupt, then run for office.   Fix it for all of us and be the world's greatest hero.

But isn't it easier to just sit and blame the "corrupt government"  rather than to look at what actually happened and plan for it to happen again, in a new set of clothes?

If you look at the positive impact of what the RTC will do. (resolution trust corp) then this is a great save.  Letting big financial firms fail will HURT you more, whether you like it or not.

Letting them get this far ahead of the game is just politics as usual, when there are a bunch of smart wall-street guys and less smart government guys.



the way to keep this from happening again is to let these companies go broke.  that's the only real consequence that will have a lasting impact in the market.

and yeah, the initial bankruptcy of these firms would hurt probably more than the immediate cost from the bailouts.  in the same way that amputating your arm hurts more than the immediate effects of gangrene on your fingers.  

we DID see this happen before.  remember the S+L scandal from 20 years back?  we had the same solution then.  bail out criminal enterprise with taxpayer money.  how well did that stop the same situation from happening again?

if we don't hold people accountable for running what is essentially a massive ponzi scheme, then they're going to do it again.

if that fucks up wall street then maybe this country can't afford a wall street.

if that fucks up our standard of living then maybe we need to get used to not having SUV's, 60'' plasma televisions, and $12 martinis 4 times a week.

by refusing to deal with the problem now, you are condemning future generations to the increased strain from a massive national debt, and you'll be holding your children responsible for a gordian knot of an economic mess that is simply not their fault.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: cerberus on September 21, 2008, 03:30:50 PM
bill moyers journal
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: YZ on September 21, 2008, 03:58:37 PM
cerberus wrote on Sun, 21 September 2008 16:30

bill moyers journal


Why is it that such news only reach the media when it is already too late?

Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: danickstr on September 21, 2008, 04:01:08 PM
Letting Wall Street "go broke" would have a much more detrimental effect on our children's future.  

There are several ways the GDP is measured, but two of them have to do with commercial paper, which is made up of corporate/business debt.  It is called M2 I think. If there is no Wall Street, then we have no current means to sell loans.  

Business liquidity would freeze.  It would be a bizarre scenario where all types of businesses would begin to fail, due to a lack of credit, starting with a bunch of banks and brokerage houses, where the majority of our wealth is kept.  

Among the many real-life effects, would be long drives across town to buy groceries at the one grocery store still open, since the others have closed due to a lack of liquid money, and there would be illegal cash hoarding, which would freeze our ability to conduct business, and these are just a few fun things that have happened in other countries when major financial changes due to failure impact day to day life.  


Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: Hank Alrich on September 21, 2008, 04:47:24 PM
danickstr wrote on Sun, 21 September 2008 10:14

If you think you have figured out the financial system and how it is corrupt, then run for office.   Fix it for all of us and be the world's greatest hero.

I will take the viewpoint that the "fat cats" will continue to find ways to outsmart whatever regulations you put in their way.  I am not advocating that we do not even try.  Of course we should limit the leveraging based on what we know now.

But isn't it easier to just sit and blame the "corrupt government"  rather than to look at what actually happened and plan for it to happen again, in a new set of clothes?

If you look at the positive impact of what the RTC will do. (resolution trust corp) then this is a great save.  Letting big financial firms fail will HURT you more, whether you like it or not.

Letting them get this far ahead of the game is just politics as usual, when there are a bunch of smart wall-street guys and less smart government guys.



This rescue does not follow the dissolution of the savings & loan mess. It is a handout from the taxpayers to cover the butts of the fat cats, with no public-interest oversight whatsoever. Explain how that will serve the interest of the citizens of the US, please.

There is nothing in this so far that deals with the processes that allowed this to occur in the first place. Absent such, there is absolutely no assurance that this will even work to achieve its alleged goals.

A sensible set of conditions is postulated here:

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/09/21/what_wall_st reet_should_do_to/index.php
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: Hank Alrich on September 21, 2008, 05:11:53 PM
danickstr wrote on Sun, 21 September 2008 13:01

Letting Wall Street "go broke" would have a much more detrimental effect on our children's future.  

There are several ways the GDP is measured, but two of them have to do with commercial paper, which is made up of corporate/business debt.  It is called M2 I think. If there is no Wall Street, then we have no current means to sell loans.  

Business liquidity would freeze.  It would be a bizarre scenario where all types of businesses would begin to fail, due to a lack of credit, starting with a bunch of banks and brokerage houses, where the majority of our wealth is kept.  

Among the many real-life effects, would be long drives across town to buy groceries at the one grocery store still open, since the others have closed due to a lack of liquid money, and there would be illegal cash hoarding, which would freeze our ability to conduct business, and these are just a few fun things that have happened in other countries when major financial changes due to failure impact day to day life.  





A huge portion of our so-called wealth is in the form of debt obligations to powerful foreign nations who have been financing the federal deficit so that our government can continue to talk that tax breaks for the wealthy are good for the economy. Then the Fed Reserve keeps pumping "liquidity" into the economy so that we think it's all working out fine. But it's a fradulent method of "financing" and like all such, will result in collapse.

Here's how much we owe, including figures for your share.

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

Here's to whom we owe how much, as of Tuesday:

http://www.ustreas.gov/tic/mfh.txt

Meanwhile, inflation hs been outstripping wages by at least 2%, which amounts to a flat tax of 2% on every US citizen, and falls far more heavily on those of lesser means than upon the wealthy.

The United States has proper provisions to deal with this kind of situation: bankruptcy. If it's good enough for you and me it ought to be good enough for Wallstreet. It makes little sense and will do no good in the long run for us to pay them to skirt the penalties you and I would face if we run our finances into the ground.

Further, this does nothing to help our children. We are living on their future. As long as we continue this madness we compromise their quality of life. As a friend of mine said, "We will be known as the generation that ate the seed corn".

We must begin to clean up our own shit in our own time, instead of bravely foisting it upon our descendants, while making pretend that we act in their best interest.

We act out of selfishness. It is well past time for us to deal, now, not later, when things will have become even worse. There is no satisfactory future to be discovered by maintaining the present course, proclaiming it's the only way to weather the storm. We either plug the holes in the vessel, or it sinks. This "rescue" merely adds to that vessel's cargo load, and leaves the holes. This is not the way things work out well, for anybody, but especially for the average American and the children thereof.

The real fear in Washington is that if they don't break out the bandages the ripple effect in other economies will leave foreign governments without the resources to keep financing the federal spending spree. Superficial treatment of symptoms does not a ensure a healthy patient.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: MDM, on September 21, 2008, 05:41:31 PM
this is a sick system which is being pushed to the limit, and it will implode eventually if it continues.

what the FED and the government are doing is 100% illegal mafia action..

the whole system of events means that people will be economically enslaved more and more as time goes by..

the more bullshit they sorround the issue with, the less people are pushed to the point of actually gettin upset enough to act..

do you realize that in the last little while the fed has inflated the money supply MORE than the whole sum of it's history since 1913????

that means that the dollar is going to implode eventually and people will latch onto any line which the government will throw at them, as being the lesser of two evils...

perhaps that will be the amero, perhaps something else..

or perhaps americans will wake-up and elect the third party... just to eliminate the two-party mafia..



OT: if the third party were to be lawfully elected by some stroke of good sense, I wonder if the government would do the usual 51/49% trick on voting machines... hmm..
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: jimlongo on September 21, 2008, 05:56:17 PM
While I agree that there should be no bailout for the "fatcats" and corporations that have largely created and abetted this mess, there would be dire consequences if nothing is done.

If the stock market and money markets start to collapse, next would come availability of credit, quickly followed by banks and your retirement savings.

Add in the end of foreign lenders buying Treasury bonds and you would start a true global collapse that could make the Great Depression seem like a walk in the park.

But I also don't agree with the blank cheque that the current administration is asking for.  There needs to be accountability and regulation.  There needs to be penalties, not rewards to corporations that have caused this mess, and there can be no bonuses paid to executives.  The naked authority the Paulsen is asking for is absurd, and he won't get it.

Regardless, there will be enough pain to go around for the rest of us.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: danickstr on September 21, 2008, 06:44:07 PM
The good news is that the RTC WILL OWN the collateral of the CDO's.  

This means that the abandoned building downtown main street will be owned by you and I, the taxpayer, and can be sold later to offset the cost of the bailout at higher real estate values.  

So don't think the money is entirely flushed down the toilet when we save these greed mongers.  The RTC will sell the collateral as it sees fit. A lot of the money will come back, fortunately.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: mgod on September 21, 2008, 11:26:54 PM
From late July:

index.php/fa/9992/0/
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: jonathan jetter on September 22, 2008, 12:02:10 AM
danickstr wrote on Sun, 21 September 2008 18:44

The RTC will sell the collateral as it sees fit. A lot of the money will come back, fortunately.


at which point the balance sheet of the RTC is reset to somewhere close to 0, at which point it can lend out its $700 billion all over again.

at the sole discretion of the SecTreas.

with no review from courts or other agencies.

this "legislation" in my opinion constitutes treason and should carry the death penalty.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: David Ballenger on September 22, 2008, 01:41:10 AM
mgod wrote on Sun, 21 September 2008 22:26

From late July:

index.php/fa/9992/0/



I wonder if the left hand knows what the right hand is doing?
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: MDM, on September 22, 2008, 10:59:44 AM
another thing to consider: who gets bailed out?

if every banking entity is on the verge of being bankrupt, and only some of the bigger institutions like goldman sax etc. get 'help' will that just mean that small banks are going to be gobbled up by the bigger credit entities?

what I mean is, if you help EVERY bank which has suffered, it's bad enough.. if you only help the most powerful you basically eliminate competition for them...
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: jimlongo on September 22, 2008, 11:05:55 AM
Especially when GS and MS have now been given Fed approval to become real banks, it opens the door for them to gobble up weaker deposit rich banks using taxpayer advanced funds.  
First this administration was instructed to go to war by the oil companies, now they're following the investment banking industries lead to screw the taxpayers out of an equal amount of money.  This whole thing stinks.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: PookyNMR on September 22, 2008, 12:22:38 PM
While I hate to admit this publicly, I agree with some of Max's points.  

I believe that all of what we are seeing are symptoms of the unconstitutional reserve banking system that the founding fathers of America were opposed.

I does not matter who is in office.  At best that may slow down the effects of reserve banking.  

Who ever is in control of the money supply (the Fed) calls the shots.


Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: RSettee on September 22, 2008, 08:49:51 PM
danickstr wrote on Sun, 21 September 2008 12:14

If you think you have figured out the financial system and how it is corrupt, then run for office.   Fix it for all of us and be the world's greatest hero.

I will take the viewpoint that the "fat cats" will continue to find ways to outsmart whatever regulations you put in their way.  I am not advocating that we do not even try.  Of course we should limit the leveraging based on what we know now.

But isn't it easier to just sit and blame the "corrupt government"  rather than to look at what actually happened and plan for it to happen again, in a new set of clothes?

If you look at the positive impact of what the RTC will do. (resolution trust corp) then this is a great save.  Letting big financial firms fail will HURT you more, whether you like it or not.

Letting them get this far ahead of the game is just politics as usual, when there are a bunch of smart wall-street guys and less smart government guys.



Indeed, the faces will change but the circumstances will stay the same. We're at a point now where it's almost impossible to reverse our reliance on automation and technology that has proliferated low paying jobs, and now it's just a matter of how happy people are in working at those jobs until we ride the crest all the way into hell. And we ARE riding a crest into hell, it just depends on how we mitigate the impending disaster.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: cerberus on September 22, 2008, 10:43:33 PM
YZ wrote on Sun, 21 September 2008 15:58

cerberus wrote on Sun, 21 September 2008 16:30

bill moyers journal


Why is it that such news only reach the media when it is already too late?

it hasn't been the actual house that ruth built
since it was completely rebuilt ca. 1976.

jeff dinces
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: mgod on September 23, 2008, 11:09:13 AM
RSettee wrote on Sat, 20 September 2008 12:43

Here's my two cents and this is the best advice that you'll hear regarding this: people are way overextended on credit and that's caused this.

No its not, and no it hasn't.

OK, let's talk about the elephant in the room, and I do mean elephant.

This is not about money, this not about socialism, this is not about saving wall street or you. Smokescreens. Study the Weimar Republic, and what came after, and how it got there, and look at Paulson's proposal. This is the Shock doctrine, precisely as articulated by Naomi Klein, finally being put into effect.
http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine
         http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2008093821/shock-doctrin e-will-we-get-fleeced-crisis

Why the rush? Because its taken this long for the coup to work and time's running out.

Folks, the word is fascism. Total control control of everything. The Bush family's long-term partners have a family member who created the first shock, the first reason to give up our rights to fear. Here's the second.

http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/t/25044/16474/
   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/22/dirty-secret-of-the -bailo_n_128294.html

With my money and with no one having any say in the matter, Dick Cheney's company has already been building concentration camps for the current scapegoats, immigrants.("They took our jobs!") Auschwitz 1 was not built originally to exterminate people. It was a Polish army barracks modified to hold undesirables. Undesirables. And when people were frightened enough, the list of undesirables expanded.

Welcome to Bushworld, where C-student white resentment of a changing world creates a large class of support for extreme measures and its called God's Plan. Where an uppity multi-ethnic elite threatens to make all men equal.

You guys make fun of Max at your peril. He's got eyes. We better get them.

If they've made any mistake, its that most of the National Guard is overseas so there's insufficient forces to put down a serious protest, say, on Wall Street.

And the Pentagon might not go along with them, but the Pentagon's resources are also half-a-world away, chasing one man who can't be found. (One man whose family's members were whisked secretly out of this country by the Bush administration on September 12, 2001.) Curioser and curioser.

DS

PS -

  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/the-battle-plan-ii- sarah_b_128393.html

 http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/army_homeland_090708w/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08 /23/AR2008082300816.html
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: danickstr on September 23, 2008, 12:48:01 PM
I don't see a conspiracy here.  I see a lot of people wanting to take free money, and the rest of us getting to hold the bag.  The gov't will auction off these sour assets and we will hopefully recoup a portion of our costs.

Let's just hope that congress has the sense to assume this debt until the economy recovers to the point that they can resell these assets.

But I am glad that there are people who watchdog the potential of conspiracies, and there could be something here that I am missing.  

I cannot see the boys of "god's plan" picking up rifles and lining up to die, though.  They are too addicted to Xbox 360.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: mgod on September 23, 2008, 12:53:05 PM
As Bill Clinton said, its not a conspiracy if its right out in the open. Handing over total control of the government's ability to spend to the administration? Not conspiracy, fascism.

DS
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: danickstr on September 23, 2008, 12:59:03 PM
Can't they only buy real estate to hold until it is prudent to sell it?   It will take place at an auction and then the proceeds go back to the congressional coffers.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: Nick Sevilla on September 23, 2008, 01:44:17 PM
Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression    Tue, 23 September 2008 08:09
mgod

+1

It's not a conspiracy anymore.

The Government (notice I do not say "our" government) is now being handed over a 700 Billion dollar check, for the Administration to spend as it sees fit.

If this was your significant other with your check card... you'd all be whining already about it, and would put a stop to it ASAP.

Unfortunately, the way they have set it up, if we don't hand over our tax money, we all suffer. And they have egregiously allowed this mess to spil over to the rest of the globe, so we feel we do not have a "choice".

We never had a choice to begin with. Democracy is a farce.

Now, lets all put our nose to the grindstone, work our butts off, and still get nothing at the end.

"You can't take it with you when you die"

Cheers
Cheers
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: Devin Knutson on September 23, 2008, 01:51:41 PM
"If you want a vision of the future, Winston, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever."
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: danickstr on September 23, 2008, 02:49:03 PM
Devin Knutson wrote on Tue, 23 September 2008 13:51

"If you want a vision of the future, Winston, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever."


A little sunshine for us to ponder.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: mgod on September 23, 2008, 04:32:44 PM
index.php/fa/10003/0/
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: RSettee on September 23, 2008, 09:03:36 PM
mgod wrote on Tue, 23 September 2008 10:09

RSettee wrote on Sat, 20 September 2008 12:43

Here's my two cents and this is the best advice that you'll hear regarding this: people are way overextended on credit and that's caused this.

No its not, and no it hasn't.

OK, let's talk about the elephant in the room, and I do mean elephant.

This is not about money, this not about socialism, this is not about saving wall street or you. Smokescreens. Study the Weimar Republic, and what came after, and how it got there, and look at Paulson's proposal. This is the Shock doctrine, precisely as articulated by Naomi Klein, finally being put into effect.
http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine
                  http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2008093821/shock-doctrin e-will-we-get-fleeced-crisis

Why the rush? Because its taken this long for the coup to work and time's running out.

Folks, the word is fascism. Total control control of everything. The Bush family's long-term partners have a family member who created the first shock, the first reason to give up our rights to fear. Here's the second.

http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/t/25044/16474/
            http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/22/dirty-secret-of-the -bailo_n_128294.html

With my money and with no one having any say in the matter, Dick Cheney's company has already been building concentration camps for the current scapegoats, immigrants.("They took our jobs!") Auschwitz 1 was not built originally to exterminate people. It was a Polish army barracks modified to hold undesirables. Undesirables. And when people were frightened enough, the list of undesirables expanded.

Welcome to Bushworld, where C-student white resentment of a changing world creates a large class of support for extreme measures and its called God's Plan. Where an uppity multi-ethnic elite threatens to make all men equal.

You guys make fun of Max at your peril. He's got eyes. We better get them.

If they've made any mistake, its that most of the National Guard is overseas so there's insufficient forces to put down a serious protest, say, on Wall Street.

And the Pentagon might not go along with them, but the Pentagon's resources are also half-a-world away, chasing one man who can't be found. (One man whose family's members were whisked secretly out of this country by the Bush administration on September 12, 2001.) Curioser and curioser.

DS

PS -

           http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/the-battle-plan-ii- sarah_b_128393.html

          http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/army_homeland_090708w/

         http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08 /23/AR2008082300816.html


Some good words, Dan. I don't disagree.

I should state that when I say that people are overextended on credit, that it's not the only factor. But it is a big factor.

Whatever the specific circumstances, the general motives stay the same--opportunity for the elite, the illusion of prosperity for the non-elite. Massive overextentions into credit would still signify that major touchstone--people took out more credit, thinking that they'd get higher raises, better commissions, better salaries. They thought wrong.

Everyone PLEASE read "The Growth Illusion". It outlines with dead precision point accuracy of what caused all this and why we're in a spiral into hell. It didn't specify this instance, specifically, but it foresaw it, in a general sense of where we're headed. Why have trades, skills, decades/ generations old family companies gone down the shitter, replaced by minimum wage jobs and proliferated cheap products? Why has customer service going down the tubes? It's because the machine facilitated a bunch of quantity over quality aspects, and we're now seeing this damage. People can't even fucking afford to have families anymore, because everything's eaten up by inflation. That all goes into a black hole abyss of where almost no one wins, because everyone's paying the same inflated prices, therefore offsetting costs.

It doesn't matter who's in office, the whole information that's laid out in "The Growth Illusion" makes it nearly impossible for anyone to step into today's economy and reverse it. That might be overly pessimistic, but i'd rather say "look, this is a huge problem and it's nearly irreversible" than to still promote prosperity for the non-elite and have them think that there's greener grasses. The greener grasses may be there for some, but for the majority, nope. Gone. Done. Replaced with your cheap sweatshop Asian products, because the machine didn't see a need to pay for quality work in their own economy. As a result, we've sunk more money into economies in Asia (specifically Thailand, Taiwan, China, Japan), and we've made THEM stronger. Why the hell is China and Japan seen as such a threat now? Because we've sunk the money into THEIR economy, instead of saying, "gee Bob, you're right. You do a great job. You deserve that raise". Tons of workers have had to go on strike and/ or move on, just to stand up for a small fraction of what they deserve. Forget fighting for what they deserve....they're just trying to say, "hey, I don't live extremely extravagantly, but I need some form of reward for working hard".

A two career/ job family that works beyond the 40 hour work week isn't cutting it. Financially, socially, or emotionally. They're tapped out.

But when your elite are losing huge amounts of money that's second only to the Great Depression, something isn't just wrong. When you have to resort to communistic approaches to save your capitalistic economy, that, folks, is what I call.....

.... MONUMENTALLY fucked.

I'd like to see a politician with these sorts of insights into how exactly this economy has got to this condition. If they're thinking they're inheriting anything but a huge sinking ship, there's the propagation of your problem right there. When your town is going to hell, sometimes you need to hire Wyatt Earp. You don't usually get too much done by being nice about things....people usually need to be kicked up the ass, and there's so many asses and so many delusionists' asses that you need to kick right now that it's unbelievable.

The only problem is that when you have someone in there with these sorts of ideas, generally, they're a radicalist and--politically speaking--then you start being Stalin and/ or Hitler. And not many people want to be a radicalist, and--outside of a board like this just to make the information available in the hopes that there's a few people that read it and say, "yeah, you know, that guy has done his homework" and maybe open a few eyes--I usually shut up about it because I shrug my shoulders and say "eh, what good does it do, anyways?". I certainly wouldn't think that this sort of platform would do any good anyways, because the "PC" thing to do is to "yadda yadda taxes, yadda yadda healthcare". Well that's all fucking fine and nice, but if something isn't done about the quantity over quality aspect with inadvertently axing jobs by getting automation to do it or outsourcing for cheap sweatshop labour, you won't HAVE taxes or Healthcare, anyways.

There's not a helluva lot of good that you can do by being a shepherd if the flock wants to stray. But there's also not a helluva lot you can do if there's an iceberg in front of the ship and the captain refuses to believe that they're sailing into impending doom, without grabbing the wheel and steering it yourself in spite of sure failure by someone else's lead.

All I have to say is that sometimes you've gotta let some people fuck up on their own....but then trying to get them to admit that it was their fault is the true difficulty. When one's successful, it's pretty easy to accept claim to it....when it's not successful, well then, everyone seems to have an "equal share".

It's funny how the communistic approach factors into capitalistic failure, in that regard. Blaming the community for failure is pretty much the epitome of communism....the "commune". Or, at least, expecting them to pick up the tab sure is communistic.

I'd also go further and say that i'd like to see massive Welfare cuts. Because this economy simply has no money left for laziness. Many people who can be out there working, sit on their ass and expect a handout for their booze and smokes and gambling. Well, in my Utopia, that's gone. If you're handicapped, mentally handicapped, unable to work, that's a different story. But if you're able to work and you don't, well, tough.

Do YOU like paying for someone to sit on their ass, while you work to help pay for their booze and smokes and gambling? I sure don't. That's another communistic approach. And also another leech on today's economy. Think of how much money the economy loses by able bodied workers intentionally NOT working, because "they don't feel like it".
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: cerberus on September 23, 2008, 10:10:12 PM
thanks for the recommended reading ryan. but you are panicked!
so maybe what i am reading tells me more important things.

i was talking to someone very close to me who is a surgeon...
"i guess this will be ok for you, people
always need health care."

"i get paid twenty cents on the dollar, a patient pays the hospital
a dollar, for my work, the government takes eighty cents.
then i pay for it all again with income and sales taxes."

"yes, those are regressive taxes... what about the luxury tax you paid
on your car?""i don't drive a bmw, some doctors do."
"the new 9-5 looks hideous"."yeah, i won't buy
another..." "lipstick on a pig.""hahahah"

"are you in favor of socialized medicine then?" "yes, then they would
give us what we need, new equipment, for example, which we
buy with that twenty cents on the dollar. it's not
twenty cents of profit, no! it's twenty cents!
for everything. the government
gives us nothing back."

"that's more or less taxation without
representation, isn't it?"

"yes, exactly..."

----

ok, so there is so much shit going on at once that
money is actually everywhere, affordable
healthcare for everyone is very
possible, etc. good news!

communism? making a "red scare"
is like a mccarthyist kinda tactic
we need a kind of...  theodore
roosevelt: "the trust-buster"
turned more industrialists
into bill gates's than
earp shot varmints!

remember, it was already done with
bill gates. see what a great
guy he turned out to be...

put them all into a star-bellied sneetch
machine, and they'll come out
as philanthropists.

jeff dinces
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: RSettee on September 23, 2008, 10:15:39 PM
Another thing that i've been thinking about and I never really thought of it this way until I dove into my "pothead philosopher while sober" thing is this:

Think of how nearly everything is open on Sundays. 24 hours. 24 hour Wal-Marts, whatever, doesn't matter, just anything open. Now, i'm old enough to remember that Sundays were a day of where you had Church (if you went), 7-11 was open, a few other places, and that was it. Sunday was a relatively boring day. Not much shopping. Made you have to get inventive.

Then Sunday shopping became the craze and 24 hour restaurants and lots of places that were open nearly all the time.

Now this is a really fucking weird mix of communism and capitalism. On one hand, you have the capitalists that are saying "well, let's be open MORE to get MORE money!!", and then you have the communistic approach to it, in where you have the stores open for the people, to service their needs, and luxuries. Anyone that didn't have to work on Sunday was most likely embracing the fact that they were/ are luckier than whoever is working that time to serve them.

The only problem with this is that someone, somewhere, forgot that someone had to be working the graveyard shift, or on Sunday. Even if one's Utopia is sitting on a beach somewhere, someone has to be serving it! So the whole myth of providing MORE services for LONGER is a total crock. Because it only benefits those that don't have to work that duration of time, and who in their right mind says, "well gee, I really like getting up and working on Sunday"? Sure WalMart provides more jobs with more hours for Sunday work, but that's all minimum wage stuff or it may as well be.

You don't get ahead by working a Sunday at WalMart. And the people that needed that stuff on Sunday, is it a true need? Or just something that could have waited until Monday, but impatience got in the way?

When places were open on Remembrance Day, I just kept on thinking, "man is that SAD". I mean, they embrace capitalism at any cost. There's no respect. Just money and the shell of broken dreams and could'a beens and has beens.

Sure this all benefitted the companies and workers that initially did it. For workers that wanted to work, it was alot of pay, because they got paid time and a half. Again, Remembrance Day, to a certain point, EVERYTHING was closed. Then you had a couple of businesses wanting to take the risk to be dinged for paying workers time and a half for labour, realizing that they had the market cornered. Then everyone started to compete, and then everyone had to work.

Now you have people working Sundays and 24 hours and the economy is the shits? The Growth Illusion is right, man. It's not quantity, it's quality. You could work 16 billion hours a week, that doesn't mean that you're helping to enrich the basic lives of people.

Standard of living is NOT the same as quality of life. Repeat that about ten billion times for yourself. It doesn't matter how you draw your own comparisons, the fact remains that the two have NOTHING to do with each other.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: RSettee on September 23, 2008, 10:26:24 PM
cerberus wrote on Tue, 23 September 2008 21:10

thanks for the recommended reading ryan. but you are panicked!
so maybe what i am reading tells me more important things.

i was talking to someone very close to me who is a surgeon...
"i guess this will be ok for you, people
always need health care."

"i get paid twenty cents on the dollar, a patient pays the hospital
a dollar, for my work, the government takes eighty cents.
then i pay for it all again with income and sales taxes."

"yes, those are regressive taxes... what about the luxury tax you paid
on your car?""i don't drive a bmw, some doctors do."
"the new 9-5 looks hideous"."yeah, i won't buy
another..." "lipstick on a pig.""hahahah"

"are you in favor of socialized medicine then?" "yes, then they would
give us what we need, new equipment, for example, which we
buy with that twenty cents on the dollar. it's not
twenty cents of profit, no! it's twenty cents!
for everything. the government
gives us nothing back."

"that's more or less taxation without
representation, isn't it?"

"yes, exactly..."

jeff dinces


Healthcare doesn't mean much when the whole economy is tumbling down. Here in Canada (Winnipeg), we're renowned for our Healthcare, but you know what? There's tons of patients waiting in the hallways. I've always considered myself pretty lucky when going to the hospital, because i've been served pretty well a number of times.....but some people have died in the halls, alot of our nurses and doctors go south to where there's bigger money.

Now, when there's a shortage of doctors, who ultimately pays the price? It's got to the point where doctors are saying "no new patients!", because they're swamped. Trying to find a family doctor is getting to be very, very difficult. I know many people who have had a problem with that. The problem is convincing those doctors that there's enough prosperity for them here.....when someone else guarantees them more, of course they're gonna probably go there. Every time that we lose someone due to the "greener grass" theory, that's still someone lost. You're not guaranteed to ever get them back or find someone to replace them. If the US is the "greener grass" with their massive bailouts, fuck the greener grasses and gimme the brown. At least i'll know what i'm in for.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: cerberus on September 23, 2008, 10:30:22 PM
ryan; are there any other stores in your locale besides wal-mart?
wal-mart is already outlawed in my town, and many towns.
but no wonder you feel panicked. if wal-mart closes?
main street would have to open again. the horror!

jeff dinces
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: cerberus on September 23, 2008, 10:41:00 PM
RSettee wrote on Tue, 23 September 2008 22:26

Healthcare doesn't mean much when the whole economy is tumbling down. Here in Canada (Winnipeg), we're renowned for our Healthcare, but you know what? There's tons of patients waiting in the hallways. I've always considered myself pretty lucky when going to the hospital, because i've been served pretty well a number of times.....but some people have died in the halls, alot of our nurses and doctors go south to where there's bigger money.

Now, when there's a shortage of doctors, who ultimately pays the price? It's got to the point where doctors are saying "no new patients!", because they're swamped. Trying to find a family doctor is getting to be very, very difficult. I know many people who have had a problem with that.
i'll let her know that there is plenty of work in winnepeg. it is also a problem
for doctors to pay off their medical school loans, and that means not a lot
of students feel comfortable making an investment they may never
pay off. so it could be your government's fault for
mismanaging your system. i don't hear any
complaints from scandanavia, ever.

and when i was in cali during the 90s, people
said i should move there, "you'll get
medi-cal"... now i hear that is
not managed correctly
either. doesn't mean
it can't work. it has.

---

but because i am in favor of socialized
medicine has nothing to do with
socialized banking. i am in no
way supportive of paulson's
coup plan. but a loan to
general motors would
be ok with me.
(chrysler paid
theirs back.)

jeff dinces
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: RSettee on September 23, 2008, 10:41:11 PM
cerberus wrote on Tue, 23 September 2008 21:30

ryan; are there any other stores in your locale besides wal-mart?
wal-mart is already outlawed in my town, and many towns.
but no wonder you feel panicked. if wal-mart closes?
main street would have to open again. the horror!

jeff dinces


Many. But I remember that even Woolco (whom WalMart bought out and replaced, as many a Canuck may remember) was NOT open on Sundays. It was about 1993 or so, before WalMart instituted "open on Sundays", and then tons of people lost their day off because they were obligated to work or felt that the low paying wages would somehow get them ahead. And now nearly every business is open on Sunday. The major ones, especially. They all see it as lost $$$, not as putting workers out.

Did you not see the documentaries on WalMart, when it moved into towns and killed off mom and pop stores? Lowered prices bought in discount and bulk (funded on the backs of many laid off American workers due to offshore buying and importing), and then sometimes even WalMart went under, because it mis-estimated the market. Then all there was were ghost towns. Sure alot of those prices were high in mom and pop stores, but they were independent enterprise. Independent enterprise, IMHO, has been killed off greatly, in favour of the major conglomerates. I'm honestly afraid that at one point, there will be only a few companies controlling EVERYTHING. The large auto makers (who are in MASSIVE debt) are doing this, I mean, who doesn't GM/ Chrysler/ Ford own these days? Coke does it. Pepsi does it. Even Gibson/ Fender does it. If that doesn't scare the shit out of everyone, what will?

My contention isn't with big business. It can be done greatly. Look at Microsoft. But for every Microsoft, well, you have the others that have got rich without any care for the sub-economy. And the sub-economy has given out, because there's simply nothing left over, after people pay rent and afford a babysitter for their kids and maybe a mortgage and a used car or whatever. They never invested in their own workers' futures, and, IMHO, that's the biggest crime.

Those workers' futures ARE that company.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: cerberus on September 23, 2008, 10:48:32 PM
your government allows wal-mart to abuse canadiens? sorry to learn this.

i'd guess that google scares the crap out of neocons.
they have a business model which creates real
wealth. i bet we won't see google
crying for a handout.

they are trying to convince you that capitalism
is broken, and you need to help them. but
they are broken. capitalism does work.

jeff dinces
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: RSettee on September 23, 2008, 11:00:10 PM
cerberus wrote on Tue, 23 September 2008 21:48

i'd guess that google scares the crap out of neocons.
another business model that creates real wealth.
i bet we won't see google crying for a handout.

jeff dinces


I've always wondered:

How much does Google pay--per click, for the things that people surf for that drives THEIR prosperity-- versus how much money that the movie studios, record labels, record producers (points), photographers, information providers, writers, journalists, programmers all make these days from that similar deal? Without information, photos, music, movies, porn, entertainment, Google would be absolutely nowhere. That's all just a wasteland of free things that people think they're entitled to, yet another example of how technology ended up trying to privlege the small, but funded the elite. Now you have tons of people struggling, all the while, they try to figure out where that money is going. It's going into Google's advertisement fees that they reap exponential dividends off of.

But I bought into that. We all did. We should know better--the only thing separating your average hard working Joe from your mega businessman, is the illusion. And also, it's not how hard you work, it's how smart you work. Smoke and mirrors. I've gotta hand it to businesses like Google, because they really hoodwinked everyone. PT Barnum told us all, I guess few of us believed him.

In alot of ways, it's pretty hard to have that much disdain for the people or organizations that are that much smarter than us. Who am I really to complain about Google or any of their contemporaries? I mean, I should be like, "ha ha ha, you really pulled that over on all of us, so shame on us, and let you ride this massive monetary crest wave into the elite, while most of all of the rest of us are on the descent to hell".
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: cerberus on September 23, 2008, 11:04:35 PM
hoodwinked?   by the flying google monster?!  
well, i prefer the weed from bc.

jeff dinces
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: RSettee on September 23, 2008, 11:07:12 PM
cerberus wrote on Tue, 23 September 2008 21:48

 capitalism does work.


When this comes up, we have to revert all discussions back to the "funding for failed capitalist ventures is communism and social welfare for the rich" scenario. Back to square one, in other words.

Quote:

now google is evil?!


When you look at the hit that movie studios and record companies and programmers and the whole entertainment biz has taken, yeah, they're evil. They're hardly any better than the ISP's that have turned a blind eye while using their product to help hold the door open during the theft. Hell, if ISP's are person holding the door open, Google is the greeter at WalMart that waves at you as you're loading up on the way in or the way out, or maybe telling you what aisle the toasters are in so you can load up on a brand new toaster.

I never really saw the Google connection until now, as I drew this out. I don't even think that anyone else necessarily saw it until now, or maybe to the point where they said, "hey, the entertainment industry is in deep shit, but yet Google is doing great". The scary thing is that once the smoke all clears, we'll have a new set of mega conglomerates that will take over the world. Does anyone not see a "Google/ Coke/ GM" sponsored world?

By all means, let's just continue to do it the way that it's currently being done and see exactly what it gets us.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: Jon Hodgson on September 24, 2008, 07:55:19 AM
People keep saying this is about saving the "elite"s money.

Do you actually think these guys are playing with their own money? The people at the top could watch their banks go bust and their lifestyle would not change ONE BIT, they're not liable for the bank's debts, they probably don't even have notable deposits in their banks.

If a bank goes down the people who suffer the least are probably the ones right at the top, they've had their multi-million dollar payouts already, they're set for life, some of the poorer ones might not be able to afford that fourth house this year, but they're really not going to sweat it.

Everyone below that level suffers though, from all the people working for the bank, through those who lost money directly, going on to indirect losses. Economies have a life of their own, they have momentum and inertia, a bank failure has a disproportionate effect on this, and remember, if a company has to close tomorrow as a result and somebody loses their job doing whatever, there's a high probability that the job will go to China or India before your industry has time to pick itself up.

To be honest I don't know what the best solution is, but I do think that putting money into it mindlessly is only a temporary fix, the current situation results from a whole chain of people being greedy and dishonest or naive, from the people who lied on their mortgage applications through the brokers who encouraged them to do it, all the way up to the people in total charge who let this happen on their watch (and will walk away with millions), any solution has to include provisions to prevent this sort of thing from happening again, either through stronger regulation or greater accountability.

Perhaps what I understand of Alan Greenspan's opinion of it is the best solution, he suggested that the government should be able to take over the ailing institutions and close them down as gracefully as possible to reduce the shockwave that results... save the economy, not the bank.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: cerberus on September 24, 2008, 08:36:30 AM
Jon Hodgson wrote on Wed, 24 September 2008 07:55

Everyone below that level suffers though, from all the people working for the bank, through those who lost money directly, going on to indirect losses.
jon; everyone below that is protected by the fdic.
if fdic were to need help, then nobody doubts
that congress would find the money needed.

jeff dinces
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: Jon Hodgson on September 24, 2008, 09:07:05 AM
cerberus wrote on Wed, 24 September 2008 13:36

jon; everyone below that is protected by the fdic. so that is not a worry.


I don't know what the rules are in the states, here only 15k of deposits with one bank are insured by the government.

But the big deal isn't the direct losses, our whole economic system is based on moving money around from where it isn't needed to where it is. You put ten bucks in the bank, it doesn't stay in the bank, it gets loaned to some company to buy raw materials to make something, sell it, and pay back the loan to the bank with interest. They take a cut of that and you also get a cut, that's why your account is interest bearing.

Now to you it seems that the money never goes anywhere because you can withdraw it at any time, but that's because the bank relies on the fact that the day that you want all your money out, they'll have enough deposits from other people to cover it, the day everyone asks for their money at once, you get a run on the bank.

When the money stops flowing around, things grind to a halt, and it can be very hard to start them up again. You saw this during the great depression.

There are two aspects to the present crisis, one is inescapable, the other emotional. The inescapable aspect is that there isn't as much money out there as people thought, because they were basing a lot of it on promises that couldn't be fulfilled... when you take out a mortgage on a house you are making a promise that over the next thirty years you will create X dollars of value through your own work which you will pay to the bank.

The emotional problem is that people don't know how big the problem is, so they get over-cautious or even panic, and the problem gets worse. Banks that would normally lend out any spare cash they have (often on very short term loans, such as 24 hours) thus allowing other banks who need cash that day to function hold onto their money just in case, so then other banks have problems, people get more cautious, it gets worse and worse.

Now loans become ever more espensive, so companies may not be able to afford to stay in business as a result, so people lose their jobs. You may not think that someone else losing their job will affect you, but don't forget that some of the money floating around is based on them having a job and turning their time into money (by working and producing something) and paying their mortgage... damn we're back at the start of that loop again.

And don't think it's just the shitty jobs that will go to India and China (or Eastern Europe), there are  people there who are intelligent, educated and motivated, they're quite capable of programming, high quality manufacture and rocket science.

And yes, these guys are skimmers, but what they're skimming off is the service that moves money from where it isn't needed to where it can be used to create more wealth (though unfortunately the system gains a life of its own and much happens that is outside of this fundamental requirement).
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: MDM, on September 24, 2008, 09:33:33 AM
ONE thing people can do right now is push the 'wrong' button and vote for the third party.

...yes, you MAY risk that god-awful feeling of NOT being on the 'winning team' when the political superbowl is at an end..

...yes the third party is not perfect, but the two traditional parties aren't either.. they only excel in promoting their empire.. at your expense...

.. if ENOUGH people vote for what they TRULY BELIEVE IN instead of voting for who they think is more likely to win, then you are ALTERING the equilibrium which makes it almost impossible for anyone who is not part of the empire to participate in politics.

'not wasting their vote on an unelectable candidate' is IRRATIONAL democratic thinking, if you analize it in depth.

the democrating voting process is not a football game where people bet their money on the 'winner' of their choice..

you must vote for the people who represent an ideal: freedom, respect of the constitution etc..

even if the third party does not win, the high number of votes to a non-empire party will be a PUBLIC statement to all the voters of America for the future.. a statement which says that americans are not going to tolerate organized treason anymore.

Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: cerberus on September 24, 2008, 09:55:36 AM
jon; some of that money is in dubai, where halliburton is now incorporated. i would
support going to the ends of the earth to take back what is rightfully ours.

max; the congress has already made a statement. if they
do not act in good faith, then a third party candidate
who can achieve the critical mass you are talking
about could emerge. however, at the moment
your scenario is not likely. thus a vote for
cynthia mckinney will be a wasted vote.

jeff dinces
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: Jon Hodgson on September 24, 2008, 10:33:34 AM
MDM, wrote on Wed, 24 September 2008 14:33

 'not wasting their vote on an unelectable candidate' is IRRATIONAL democratic thinking, if you analize it in depth.


Only if the voter believes as you do, that there is zero difference between the two parties.

Otherwise the voter must weigh the strength of any statement made by voting for a third party against the possibility that their vote could have been the difference between a really bad party getting in and a slightly less bad party getting in.

Unless enough people were to vote for a third party that one of the main parties gets to thinking "hey, if I can get these guys on my side I'll win next time" then the only statement you are making is that not enough people believe in the third party to be worth bothering with, and in the meantime you have four years worse off.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: RSettee on September 24, 2008, 11:07:58 AM
Jon Hodgson wrote on Wed, 24 September 2008 06:55

People keep saying this is about saving the "elite"s money.

Do you actually think these guys are playing with their own money? The people at the top could watch their banks go bust and their lifestyle would not change ONE BIT, they're not liable for the bank's debts, they probably don't even have notable deposits in their banks.

If a bank goes down the people who suffer the least are probably the ones right at the top, they've had their multi-million dollar payouts already, they're set for life, some of the poorer ones might not be able to afford that fourth house this year, but they're really not going to sweat it.

Everyone below that level suffers though, from all the people working for the bank, through those who lost money directly, going on to indirect losses. Economies have a life of their own, they have momentum and inertia, a bank failure has a disproportionate effect on this, and remember, if a company has to close tomorrow as a result and somebody loses their job doing whatever, there's a high probability that the job will go to China or India before your industry has time to pick itself up.

To be honest I don't know what the best solution is, but I do think that putting money into it mindlessly is only a temporary fix, the current situation results from a whole chain of people being greedy and dishonest or naive, from the people who lied on their mortgage applications through the brokers who encouraged them to do it, all the way up to the people in total charge who let this happen on their watch (and will walk away with millions), any solution has to include provisions to prevent this sort of thing from happening again, either through stronger regulation or greater accountability.

Perhaps what I understand of Alan Greenspan's opinion of it is the best solution, he suggested that the government should be able to take over the ailing institutions and close them down as gracefully as possible to reduce the shockwave that results... save the economy, not the bank.


Agreed, totally. The only ones that win are the elite of the elite (ironically) and the ones at the bottom that never were a part of the economy, anyways (ie: social welfare). Everyone else has to work for 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week to fund this. By "the elite of the elite", I mean those that are weeks, months, years away from being destitute--not living paycheque to paycheque. Anyone that's a paycheque or two away from losing what they have isn't really in the mega elite. Well off maybe, but not the true elite. They have to work harder and harder to ensure that they're not out on the streets or don't lose what they've worked hard to earn. Even a mortgage becomes a crisis for most people, if they lose their jobs.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: mgod on September 24, 2008, 11:36:00 AM
Jon Hodgson wrote on Wed, 24 September 2008 07:33


Only if the voter believes as you do, that there is zero difference between the two parties.

They are not the same - but they conspire together to control the conversation and the rewards, to keep 3rd parties out. Don't believe me? See "an Unreasonable Man".

I'll vote for Obama, but I just donated to Nader. He was on top of this crisis decades ago and tried to help us before we knew that we needed help. He knew.

DS
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: mgod on September 24, 2008, 01:03:03 PM
From a friend:



I'm against the $85,000,000,000.00 bailout of AIG.

Instead, I'm in favor of giving $85,000,000,000 to America
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: jimlongo on September 24, 2008, 01:43:30 PM
Great idea until you do the math.
I think 85b/200m is only 425 per person.  
But it was a good party while it lasted.   Laughing
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: maxim on September 24, 2008, 07:19:04 PM
425 dollars today will be worth 425,000 tomorrow...
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: mgod on September 24, 2008, 11:03:15 PM
maxim wrote on Wed, 24 September 2008 16:19

425 dollars today will be worth 425,000 tomorrow...

And about 3 Euros.

DS
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: RSettee on September 24, 2008, 11:17:31 PM
mgod wrote on Wed, 24 September 2008 12:03

From a friend:



I'm against the $85,000,000,000.00 bailout of AIG.

Instead, I'm in favor of giving $85,000,000,000 to America in a " We Deserve It" Dividend.
 
To make the math simple, lets assume there are  200,000,000  bonafide U.S. Citizens 18+.
 
Our population is about 301,000,000 +/- counting every man, woman  and child. So 200,000,000 might be a fair stab at adults 18 and up.

So divide 200 million adults 18+  into $85 billion that equals $425,000.00.

My plan is to give $425,000 to every person 18+ as a   We Deserve It Dividend.

Of course, it would NOT be tax free. So lets assume a tax rate of 30%.

Every individual 18+ has to pay $127,500.00 in taxes.

That sends $25,500,000,000 right back to Uncle Sam.

But it means that every adult 18+ has $297,500.00 in their pocket.

A husband and wife have $595,000.00.

What would you do with $297,500.00 to $595,000.00 in your family?

Pay off your mortgage  housing crisis solved.

Repay college loans  what a great boost to new grads

Put away money for college  it'll be there.

Save in a bank  create money to loan to entrepreneurs.

Buy a new car  create jobs

Invest in the market  capital drives growth

Pay for your parents medical insurance  health care improves

Enable Deadbeat Dads to come clean  or else

Remember this is for every adult U S Citizen 18+ including the folks who lost their jobs at Lehmann Brothers and every other company that is cutting back. And of course, for those serving in our Armed Forces.

If were going to re-distribute wealth lets really do it...instead of trickling out  a puny

$1000.00 ( vote buy) economic incentive that is being proposed by one of our candidates for President.

If were going to do an $85 billion bailout, lets bail out every adult U S Citizen 18+!

As for AIG  liquidate it.

Sell off its parts.

Let American General go back to being American General.

Sell off the real estate.

Let the private sector bargain hunters cut it up and clean it up.

Here's my rationale. We deserve it and AIG doesn't.

Sure its a crazy idea that can never work.

But can you imagine the Coast-To-Coast Block Party!  How do you spell Economic Boom?!

I trust my fellow adult Americans to know how to use the $85 Billion  We Deserve It Dividend more than the geniuses at AIG or in Washington DC.

And remember, The Birk plan only really costs $59.5 Billion because $25.5 Billion is returned instantly in taxes to Uncle Sam.

Ahhh...I feel so much better getting that off my chest.

T. J. Birkenmeier, A Creative Guy & Citizen of the Republic                              
                                             
PS:  Feel free to pass this along to your pals as its either good for a laugh or a tear or a very sobering thought on how to best use $85 Billion!!

I'm against the $85,000,000,000.00 bailout of AIG.

"I try to be a warrior like my heroes and writing is just one blade on my Swiss Army Samurai Sword!" Ken Kesey




Totally. That's why I say let those places rot in hell, because they're going under, anyways. They don't have any solutions, either--that's my biggest worry. That 700 billion is going to the hopes and dreams of big corporations that have pissed away their own prosperity to begin with.

I'd be more an advocate of giving that 700 billion bailout to the average taxpayer who is PAYING THAT ANYWAYS. If we're all, just to play devil's advocate, let's say we all get ten bucks out of the deal. Imagine that ten bucks multiplying....it would replenish the economy a helluva lot faster with everyone spending it, than by giving it to corporations who don't have answers and are probably just as likely to need 1400 billion 5 years from now.

Because if they don't stop their reliance on cheap outsourcing and enabling more jobs but at minimum wage (also, thereby reducing the need for people to make their own way if low paying but plentiful jobs are in existence), they'll be in even deeper shit, I guarantee you it.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: maxim on September 25, 2008, 01:37:10 AM
socialist capitalism

hmmm

bush seems redder than china right now...
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: Edvaard on September 25, 2008, 03:39:52 AM
It never fails.

As soon as someone points out that a knife thrust or pulling a trigger both cause death, sure enough, someone will come along and say "just because you don't see any difference in the two ... ".

The -reading- part is OK, but that -comprehension- part is quite sticky for some.


As for our lame-assed media, if they ever got past their tea-and-cakes approach to covering mass slaughter by their/our government and government-backed mass theft on an unprecedented scale (not the "government" in fact, but rogue elements within), then I doubt seriously if Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney would bother to run for president.

And yes, so many different levels of investment banks, underwriters, bond issuers, and the insurers for all that, etc. who quite knowingly and purposely indulged in the great profits obtained from d-rated issues, and then the government ex post facto effectively making them aa-rated with tax payer money IS outright theft.

I will vote for Obama, because the rest of the world deserves whatever effort I can make to reduce needless death of both US and non-US citizens around the world.

But whoever is elected, the media will still play it up in the usual by-the-numbers simpletonian R/L coloring book, rather than the real terms of how many deaths caused or lives saved.

Quit complaining about McKinney or Nader, or even Fox news for that matter.

Just tell CNN to hire back the reporter and producer that they fired for reporting on the covert Agent Orange attacks on our own troops in Vietmam, e.g.

Chickens*** media, all the way.

Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: rnicklaus on September 25, 2008, 03:41:43 AM
Here is my question.

The feds already gave away 315 billion to AIG, Fannie and Freddy and Bear Stearns.

All of a sudden, Bush is asking Congress and going to the country asking for more?

Why didn't he ask for/about the first 315 Billion and that didn't seem to fix anything?

We have no way of knowing if the next 700 Billion of giveaways will do anything to help at all.

Next up?  Credit card failures, auto loan failures.

George Bush -  8 years of fail.

Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: Edvaard on September 25, 2008, 03:47:06 AM
rnicklaus wrote on Thu, 25 September 2008 03:41



George Bush -  8 years of fail.





Driving the country into both financial and moral default.







Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: Jay Kadis on September 25, 2008, 10:45:02 AM
During the 2003 protest march in San Francisco, I saw the most prescient sign ever:

"Drunken fratboy drives country into ditch"

Someone call AAA for a tow.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: RSettee on September 25, 2008, 12:05:38 PM
rnicklaus wrote on Thu, 25 September 2008 02:41

Here is my question.

The feds already gave away 315 billion to AIG, Fannie and Freddy and Bear Stearns.

All of a sudden, Bush is asking Congress and going to the country asking for more?

Why didn't he ask for/about the first 315 Billion and that didn't seem to fix anything?

We have no way of knowing if the next 700 Billion of giveaways will do anything to help at all.

Next up?  Credit card failures, auto loan failures.

George Bush -  8 years of fail.




+1000. Especially the "no way of knowing the next 700 billion of giveaways will do anything to help at all". I still say that's best left in the pockets of taxpayers....at least everyone would have a few dollars each, maybe more. All that sunk back into the economy would do much more good than giving a chance to the big companies. If they do well, the average taxpayer won't see their money back and if they do bad, they still won't see the money.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: Tom L on September 25, 2008, 12:08:10 PM
"I have great, great confidence in our capital markets and in our financial institutions. Our financial institutions, banks and investment banks, are strong. Our capital markets are resilient. They're efficient. They're flexible."
-- Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, March 16, 2008

"Our policy in this administration -- laws shouldn't bail out lenders, laws shouldn't help speculators."
-- President Bush, May 19, 2008

"Our economy has continued growing, consumers are spending, business are investing, exports continue increasing and American productivity remains strong. We can have confidence in the long-term foundation of our economy...I think the system basically is sound. I truly do."
-- President Bush, July 15, 2008

(from a CNN article)
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: danickstr on September 25, 2008, 04:10:59 PM
Actually these monies did do something, which was to stave off impending collapse of the financial market for that month.  The plan on the table now will at least get the financial wheels greased so that the system con motor it's own way out of the muck we find it in at this time.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: rnicklaus on September 25, 2008, 04:27:14 PM
danickstr wrote on Thu, 25 September 2008 13:10

Actually these monies did do something, which was to stave off impending collapse of the financial market for that month.  The plan on the table now will at least get the financial wheels greased so that the system con motor it's own way out of the muck we find it in at this time.


So it's 315 Billion for just one month but 700 Billion for the full fix?

Maybe my math skills have slipped.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: RSettee on September 25, 2008, 05:25:17 PM
danickstr wrote on Thu, 25 September 2008 15:10

Actually these monies did do something, which was to stave off impending collapse of the financial market for that month.  The plan on the table now will at least get the financial wheels greased so that the system con motor it's own way out of the muck we find it in at this time.


Let 'em rot. And then axe the social welfare too, because that's where people will end up. The only problem is that we're this ensconced into people expecting the safety net for failure or laziness, that we'll all end up sinking huge amounts of money into social welfare and bailouts for either the extremely rich or extremely poor. When you take a big gamble as the extremely rich, sometimes the bets are so high that you stand to lose much more than the average person. You know that going in, don't expect a goddamned handout. If I sink 100 grand into a VLT gambling machine and lose, would you guys be charmed by a sob story? No, it's my fault, I wouldn't expect anyone to bail me out. Because you could be damned sure that you wouldn't see much of that 100 grand's payoffs if I won.

We all know that when people gamble for big dividends, that they end up going right back into their pockets. This is a band aid that I see no point to prolong--let it happen, let things fall. There will always still be people in the rubble that will do well. The others will have to do the same thing as when there was a massive fire or flood or storm that blew down their hut in 500 BC--rebuild, get stronger, get smarter. 700 billion is weakening the economy that can't stand on it's own--it's enabling those to promote and push the growth illusion when it was never there.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: jimlongo on September 25, 2008, 07:52:44 PM
This whole drama going on in Washington is truly the most absurd and bizarre piece of political theater i have ever seen.

Republican administration offers a bailout plan.
Democratic lawmakers work to pass bill.
Republicans don't want to pass bill.
President pleads with country to have bill passed.
John McCain (who hasn't read it yet) decides "Call off the election" he must go to Washington to save the country.
Deal is already worked out between Treasury and congress.
Republicans who are holding up bill look to John McCain.
Hank Paulson warns Democrats not to scuttle bill.
White House dog and pony show.

Of course the funniest part is that Democrats are convinced they have worked out a deal
Republicans are convinced that they are the ones who will work out a deal (with Mighty Mouse saving the day)

This is from a guy who would rather . . .  what is it . . .  lose an election than hurt the country.

Like Bernstein said, the McCain that used to be, no longer exists.  This guy would do absolutely anything to get elected.  
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: RSettee on September 25, 2008, 08:16:12 PM
jimlongo wrote on Thu, 25 September 2008 18:52



Like Bernstein said, the McCain that used to be, no longer exists.  This guy would do absolutely anything to get elected.  


I don't trust any politicians. You're more likely to get intelligent debate and the search for answers on here than you are out of those that are greedy for power. Bush is actually more likely to create this JUST in time for the new election. Seeing as that there's been rumblings of "postponed election", I see this: Bush saying that he needs more time to solve the current woes. Bet on it.


Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: jimlongo on September 25, 2008, 09:18:43 PM
jimlongo wrote on Thu, 25 September 2008 19:52

This whole drama going on in Washington is truly the most absurd and bizarre piece of political theater i have ever seen.

Republican administration offers a bailout plan.
Democratic lawmakers work to pass bill.
Republicans don't want to pass bill.
President pleads with country to have bill passed.
John McCain (who hasn't read it yet) decides "Call off the election" he must go to Washington to save the country.
Deal is already worked out between Treasury and congress.
Republicans who are holding up bill look to John McCain.
Hank Paulson warns Democrats not to scuttle bill.
White House dog and pony show.

Of course the funniest part is that Democrats are convinced they have worked out a deal
Republicans are convinced that they are the ones who will work out a deal (with Mighty Mouse saving the day)

This is from a guy who would rather . . .  what is it . . .  lose an election than hurt the country.

Like Bernstein said, the McCain that used to be, no longer exists.  This guy would do absolutely anything to get elected.  



Read the timeline
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0908/Obama_camp_McCai ns_stunt.html
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: cerberus on September 25, 2008, 10:11:51 PM
speaking of timelines, here's a timeline of the mortgage crisis:

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/07/where-credit -is-due-timeline.html

jeff dinces
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: rnicklaus on September 25, 2008, 11:59:29 PM
A little thrift called WaMu (Washing Mutual) failed today.

The biggest bank failure to date in terms of $$$$.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: RSettee on September 27, 2008, 01:37:11 PM
rnicklaus wrote on Thu, 25 September 2008 22:59

A little thrift called WaMu (Washing Mutual) failed today.

The biggest bank failure to date in terms of $$$$.


Yup, let 'em rot. The more money you sink into the Titanic trying to stay afloat, the less you're spending on the life rafts.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: PookyNMR on September 27, 2008, 02:07:06 PM
And they were ordered sold to J P Morgan.  Check out the history of J P Morgan.  This is suspicious to me.  The history of the Morgans gaining control of the banking sector has not been a pretty one...
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: stevieeastend on September 27, 2008, 03:37:15 PM
mgod wrote on Wed, 24 September 2008 18:03

From a friend:



I'm against the $85,000,000,000.00 bailout of AIG.

Instead, I'm in favor of giving $85,000,000,000 to America
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: Hank Alrich on September 28, 2008, 01:51:01 PM
Jay Kadis wrote on Thu, 25 September 2008 07:45

During the 2003 protest march in San Francisco, I saw the most prescient sign ever:

"Drunken fratboy drives country into ditch"

Someone call AAA for a tow.


I think his daddy called AA for a tow, but the vehicle was already too damaged to ever perform well again.
Title: Re: the biggest proposed government intervention in financial markets since the Great Depression
Post by: jimlongo on September 29, 2008, 12:56:32 PM
Hank Alrich wrote on Sun, 28 September 2008 13:51

Jay Kadis wrote on Thu, 25 September 2008 07:45

During the 2003 protest march in San Francisco, I saw the most prescient sign ever:

"Drunken fratboy drives country into ditch"

Someone call AAA for a tow.


I think his daddy called AA for a tow, but the vehicle was already too damaged to ever perform well again.


Sounds like the trailers for the new movie "W".