If you're talking about $700,000,000,000 - 1,000,000,000,000, you're talking nothing but politics of the most sordid type.
What do you base this on in terms of the economics? Or is it just that you don't trust the Bush Admin (or the Fed)?
They probably hoped that this would not come about until AFTER the election so they wouldn't hurt their parties chances of winning. DD
Oooh, I like this lady. <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/S27yitK32ds&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/S27yitK32ds&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
Best damn law maker up there, no pie in the sky libertarian, no free market then regulator now republican, no weak ass no guts democrat God darn Marcy, that was awesome
It's time for FINAL JEOPARDY! Answer: /Jeopardy Music plays... Question: What did the REPUBLICAN PARTY state in the 2008 Platform? http://www.gop.com/2008Platform/Economy.htm
All three. On the economics, there is now way that the best use of $700,000,000,000 or more is to use it the way this plan proposes. The Bush Admin? The fact that they're already lying about it and Cheney's trying to twist arms should be enough for any sane person to immediately offer opposition. The Fed? See above. I'm having trouble figuring out why you and Sam are so gung-ho for this travesty. It's like you both forgot what happened over the last 8 years and are blinded by the worship of Wall Street big wigs. Here's a clue... they don't give a damn about the country. From Tories supporting the British to the bankers attacking Andrew Jackson through the Robber Barons to the Hamptonites cursing FDR to the bastards sitting around the conference tables today, they're the same people and only care about themselves. Screw them. If we all have to suffer to get rid of this infection, so be it, but this plan absolutely sucks. Better nothing.
Nobody LIKES this, but some realize that, at this point in history, it is necessary. If not for this plan, the market would have lost 10 to 20% of its value over the last week. It would only continue to fall. People would lose most of their 401k retirement funds. Tens of thousands would lose their jobs. Real estate would plummet in value. This should start to sound very familiar to somebody well versed in history. Because the tide was stemmed some by the announcement of this plan, a lot of people have the delusion that the crash has not been that bad, and that only the wealthy will benefit. False. The collapse of several large financial institutions is the beginning of financial armageddon. Sure, we will all suffer some, but what we could be talking about is a hell of a lot worse than some suffering.
I agree they are all the same folks. What worries me is that economists like Dean Baker and Paul Krugman view this as such a threat to the whole economic system. I think the key is to make those suffer who brought on this disaster. We need to teach them a lesson. We need to use their fear to get concessions from the crowd that you point out.
There's no guarantee the bailout will work or Paulson and his staff has the know how necessary to do what should be done. Everyone is flying by the seat of their pants. So no, I don't think prudent caution and punitive attachments to the bill is a bad idea at all. As long as there's the promise that the bill will pass, Wall Street will do what it would've done had it been passed some-odd days earlier. Boom, crunch, rebound, whatever. Analysts and investors have already factored in this "correction". Everything will go as planned...or reported as if it were expected. Hindsight makes reporters and highly paid analysts look like geniuses.
The problem here is that Wall Street and the rest of the world are interconnected. First, the $700B is ridiculously misleading. It's $700B of assets purchased - you have to subtract out how much they will eventually be worth. Even if you don't accept the rosy "it might be profitable" scenario, the net cost is likely to be substantially lower. Let's say $350B - and that's in a pretty grim scenario. Now, consider the alternative. Don't have the bailout, and tax revenues are going to drop a whole hell of a lot more than $350B over a couple of years. You're talking about a national depression. Wiped out savings and the like. Social service costs will rise, while revenues drop. The net cost of doing nothing would be much more - and it wouldn't come from Wall Street pockets. It would come out of tax revenues. So you'd be paying just as much, while also destroying who knows how many jobs and hurting middle and lower class citizens the most. The wealthy can ride this out - it's everyone else that can't. The third piece here is that Wall Street isn't being bailed out - the rest of the country is. Those financial firms have already dropped like a rock. Several will go under. Many others are and will continue to be worth a fraction of what they were. So the owners of the irresponsible companies are already going to pay the price. The moral hazard argument doesn't hold because the vast majority of people being rescued are people that weren't involved in the stupidity in the first place. So to me, the bailout is a pretty obvious choice. It's better than the alternative in every regard. You can debate details and oversight and the like, but at the end of the day, 500 people in Congress can't all be making their own pet proposals and trying to inject their individual views into it - especially when half of them don't understand finance very well at all. Something has to get done very, very soon. In my opinion, each party should pick a Congressman and a Senator to represent them, and those 4 people should sit down with the Fed/SecTreas and hammer out a proposal and vote on it. ASAP. This idea that you can't trust Bernanke or Paulson because Bush has done bad things during his 8 years is silly to me. There's no evidence that these guys are acting outside of good faith, and they are frankly the smartest people in the room here. If you're going to trust the experts, they are a much better pair of people to trust than anyone else.
Quoted for truth. The notion that this is a bailout to Wall Street is far from the truth - ask any shareholder of any financial institution if they feel like they are getting bailed out....ask the employees who have lost there jobs and are likely to lose their jobs regardless of this plan... When you see people pulling out billions from money market accounts and short term treasury yields at practically zero, you have to figure there is a ton of panic out there right now. If we don't see some sort of comprehensive plan, its going to be as catastrophic as any economic shock to date. It is naive for folks to say talk about this being a problem confined to "Wall Street" and think they will be fine since they've practiced financial discipline. The reality is, when things are really bad nationwide, you won't be immune. Good luck selling your house, getting a loan to expand your business. Want to buy a car? Forget about small down payments. Your customers, your suppliers, your neighborhood will all be affected. The longer this plan takes to finalize, the clearer it is that this has become such a divisive country that we're willing to cut off our noses to spite our face.
I understand that. I am not against any plan, but I am definitely against this one. Bull. The only way for this to work is if we buy the crap for quarters on the dollar when they wouldn't pull pennies right now... and there is no way the prices can recover without hyper-inflation... there's no way housing prices are going anywhere close to where they were and there's too much really bad debt and somebody has to eat it. I don't want to eat the lion's share. Add to this the lobbying effort to get foreign banks and credit card companies a place at the trough and we'll be lucky to keep it under $1,000,000,000,000. But this plan is not the only alternative... and think about what a $1,000,000,000,000 hole in the budget does for anything that Obama wants to do... Repubs get the cash and they hamstring a Dem president in one fell swoop... the destruction of the New Deal is dessert. (Bastards.) That my friend, will end up costing a bunch more and certainly drive this country to place it hasn't been before. You can't possibly look at the terms the administration wants and really believe this. You can't possibly look at the history of those who are going to be rescued and think that their pimping of CDOs weren't involved in the stupidity... and now that I write it, I take issue with the term "stupidity." This was greed run amok with the knowledge that if things did go to hell, they could foist it on the American people. Jeez. How freaking unAmerican can you get? Democracy is damn messy my friend. I don't want any cabal, particularly one that has a member from this administration, making decisions in secret about the future of my country and the world my kids will live in. I would rather become a dirt farmer then have that happen. Live free or die. On the contrary, Paulson clearly lied today about the oversight provision. They have been hemming and hawing about what kind of value will be assigned to the junk paper. If they can't be totally honest at a time like this, why trust them at all, particularly given the record of this administration. I'm all for having smart people in the room, but if there's only two of them agreeing with each other and no oversight or discussion of alternatives or open communications, then that's a problem. Again, it looks like you're worshiping the Masters of the Universe a bit too much.
Nobody's talking about it being confined to Wall Street. The discussion is whether the administration's plan is the absolute best way to spend a huge amount of money.
I'm with you on this Rim. It does seem the emperor has no clothes. But the bailout isn't a partisan issue. The Dem controlled congress, and the Dem spokesmen seem A-OK with basic gist of the deal too. Some spin bits and pieces for political gain (on both sides of the aisle) but very few have said not to do it. Rhester must be still recovering from Ike -- because he'd be all over this thing.
