Mother Jones - Comments for "How's That Bailout Going?"

Treasury Secretary Henry

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson convinced Congress that the sky would fall without a $700 billion cushion. The Fed has initiated a loan program for troubled financial firms, spending trillions of dollars to bail out any company that ever overleveraged anything, and it has chopped interest rates in concert with its global central bank brethren.

What I am most concerned about is when does this all end?We all need worse cause we all have yet to really care about each other's welfare,right?It's only in times of disasters that humans start noticing one another.Then maybe as a nation we will prosper again!!

It's obvious this guy is a crook. How does one get a personal fortune of over a billion on a bureaucrat's salary? America, stop buying these tinny monster gas guzzling cars, look what the Indians are doing for a people's car, soon to take over the small car needs of the world....

Some believe we are all now on the “Edge of Political Darkness”. They believe that the election of an articulate president will lead to “a little intellectual elite” that “can’t control the economy without controlling the people” (Ronald Reagan). They fear for us all, and their words may well make some of us think this fear comes from a mistrust of intelligent people.
But intelligent people have always led this country, either through intelligent presidents, or through intelligent elites manipulating dumb presidents. And a sharp intellect is like a sharp knife. Each can be used to prepare a meal for someone or to hurt someone - all depends on how these tools are used. The real problem, then, is not intelligence.
Personally, I believe the real problem in this world, now as in the 1920’s, is greed. Will a dumb president allow a greedy elite to enrich themselves by conning working families? Or will an intelligent president protect the American people from the economic crises brought on by the very greedy? To me, those are the real questions. And the real answers cannot come from simply trusting in elite beliefs (like, for instance, the blind belief in trickle-down economics). The only real test of any belief system is in the results of that belief system when put into practice. We’ve seen what trickle-down deregulation hath wrought. From trickle-down deregulation came the “Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act” (which gutted the “Glass-Steagall Act”, which had kept the American banking system solvent since the end of the Great Depression). From trickle-down deregulation came Phil Gramm’s “Commodities Futures Modernization Act” (which created the Enron Loophole, deregulating credit default swaps). From trickle-down deregulation came the 2003 “American Dream Downpayment Act” (which pushed banks and Fannie and Freddie to make loans to people they knew could not afford them). From trickle-down deregulation came the 2004 SEC “Rule Change” (deregulating bank-required 12:1 debt-to-capital ratios, allowing banks to risk 30 times what they held in reserve, putting the entire banking system at risk of default). The systematic dismantling of the economic safeguards that have supported the American economy since the New Deal is the result of trickle-down deregulation.
To the extent the greedy have controlled enough American voters through talk radio and attack ads, they have controlled our economy these past 8 years. Make no mistake - the very greedy are making out very well these days. While our jobs and our pension plans disappear, they’re buying up America for pennies on the dollar and selling her to China. Former CEO elites, with their hands now on the government till, have hundreds of billions of tax dollars for their partners at Halliburton and Goldman-Sachs and other bastions of greed, but job cuts and broken pension promises for honest working folks. That’s the legacy of trickle-down economics.
Jesus said, “Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.” [Matt 7:20] The fruits of the greedy elite these last 8 years have become increasingly bitter.
Now comes the promise of a new, intelligent president. I believe, with this new president, we may now be stepping back from the edge of political darkness. Whether we move to safety depends upon him, and upon us. We don’t know if he will be strong enough and intelligent enough to outwit and outlast the greedy forces aligned against him. He will certainly need our support, and our prayers. If he fails to do what’s right, and caves to the forces of greed, I will be the first to vote against him, as I did his predecessor. But I will not be among those who would prejudge our new, intelligent president, because I believe as Jesus believed - the proof is in the fruit.
Gary AndrewS, author of "No Gods Before Me"

Seems simple to me... the banks only wanted to offload their mortgage securities under the threat that FDIC would write down the terms of loans entrenched IN these mortgage backed securites... Now that the fix is in, and consumers will NOT get any term relief, the banks want to hold onto the securites and milk it for all it's worth... they only wanted to offload the securities if they were going to be written down.

typical democrats. Let's throw money at the problem. The correct policy should be to let the free market decide this issue. This whole issue only began when the country became frightened about a democrat win at the polls. Once that happened, the whole economy went into a tail spin because of the marcsist fascist policies that dems have. If Americans were allowed to drive the vehicles that they want to drive, and the big 3 are wise enough to realize this without government interference, they would not be in this kind of trouble either.

"If long cherished ideals and time honored institutions, if certain social assumptions and religious formulae have ceased to promote the welfare of the generality of mankind, if they no longer minister to the needs of a continually evolving humanity, then let them be swept away and relegated to the limbo of obsolesent and forgotten doctrines. Why should these in a world of subject to the immutable law of change and decay be exempt from the deterioration that must needs sooner or later overtake every human institution? For legal standards, political and economic theories are solely designed to safeguard the interests of humanity as a whole, and not humanity to be crucified for the preservation of the integrity of any particular law or doctrine." S. Effendi

Boy are these Democrats who rule Congress, to dumb to figure out if the bailout package was the right way to go? Remember, it was also Congress that was to dumb to figure out that Iraq War was wrong. Democrat-Republican Congress, all to dumb to ad 2 plus 2. Change, right, now the dumb Congress will approve some of Obama's appointees who were knee deep in the causes of this financial mess.

Sure. Auto "bailout": They may NOT make ANY trucks, van, SUV's, crossoevers, just cars that get at LEAST 35 MPG city for the next 5 years. No corp jets, no pay over 50 k per year.

How exactly is it greed to buy a house with a loan you know you can't pay back when there are bailouts being handed out? Obama promised that he would help people keep their houses if he was elected.

it's not greed to want a house. it is greed to "buy" it with borrowed money you know you can't pay back unless you find some sucker to buy the house for way more than you paid. If your deal looks like that--and I'd say maybe half or two-thirds of the deals in my neck of the woods from 2004 through 2007 looked like that--then one who makes it is either stupid or greedy or, most probably, both. Renting is a good deal when housing prices are way higher than rent rates. If you don't know what that sentence means, then you better ask someone.

right. call the casino out, declare all bets are off, and make sure it never happens again. But I'd say we should jail some or most (or all) of the people who took these bets they couldn't afford to lose, not the people on the winning side.

How exactly is it greed to want a house, whether you can afford one or not? Should only people with lots of money be able to buy houses while the rest of us are doomed to rent forever?

Solving the Derivative Crisis - The Nuclear Option:

As the DOW gives back about half of its recent record rally, as of this writing, it's worth considering that we haven't even tackled the Big Stuff - yes, despite the trillions spent on various financial rescues, the real mammoth in the room is the derivative market.

The president must assume FDR-like powers. The first thing he should do is to declare all derivatives placed outside of legally regulated markets null and void. These bets - worth $180 trillion according the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in America alone, and over half a Quadrillion dollars worldwide - could not have been made in traditionally regulated markets, because the players did not have sufficient collateral.

Because for every buyer there is a seller, the amounts lost would zero out and no one would gain an advantage. We would just get to reset the clock. This is as fair as things can be made given where we are. Right now, this enormous sum is only good for driving companies into bankruptcy and tying up the courts for years while the winners of these bets squabble over the crumbs of the bankrupt companies. This is already happening with creditors fighting over the last crumbs of Lehman Brothers. This is a pointless and destructive squabble and the administration – or the next one, if we can wait that long - must act to prevent years more of these.

If the parties object to the elimination of their derivative bets, they should be reminded of the penalty for fraud.

What's causing the panic in the markets right now is the realization that the losers have insufficient money to pay the winners. The domino effect of multiple collapses cannot be stemmed by any government, even by running the printing press overtime. The only solution is to wipe them off the books and ensure these bets are never made again by sending those who make them in the future to jail.

One of the issues of Rolling Stone
magazine ran an article on the fact.
THE PEOPLE THE BROKE THE SYSTEM GET
TO FIX IT!!! It is a very interesting
article.

Mother Jones - Comments for "How&#039;s That Bailout Going?"

Treasury Secretary Henry

Mother Jones - Comments for "How's That Bailout Going?"