BS: The Bailout

Subject: RE: BS: The Bailout
From: GUEST,KP
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 03:40 PM

Interesting (if slightly scary) view from the New York Times here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/business/23sorkin.html?em


KP (from Scotland, where we seem to be losing banks as well...)

Subject: RE: BS: The Bailout
From: Wesley S
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 03:37 PM

I saw Naomi Klein on Bill Mahr's show the other night. Her book "The Scock Doctrine" sounds interesting. Here's a summery from her website:

Shock Doctrine


The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America's "free market" policies have come to dominate the world-- through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.

At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq's civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country's vast oil reserves…. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the "War on Terror" to Halliburton and Blackwater…. After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts.... New Orleans's residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened…. These events are examples of "the shock doctrine": using the public's disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters -- to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy. Sometimes, when the first two shocks don't succeed in wiping out resistance, a third shock is employed: the electrode in the prison cell or the Taser gun on the streets.

Based on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones, The Shock Doctrine vividly shows how disaster capitalism – the rapid-fire corporate reengineering of societies still reeling from shock – did not begin with September 11, 2001. The book traces its origins back fifty years, to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman, which produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today. New, surprising connections are drawn between economic policy, "shock and awe" warfare and covert CIA-funded experiments in electroshock and sensory deprivation in the 1950s, research that helped write the torture manuals used today in Guantanamo Bay.

The Shock Doctrine follows the application of these ideas though our contemporary history, showing in riveting detail how well-known events of the recent past have been deliberate, active theatres for the shock doctrine, among them: Pinochet's coup in Chile in 1973, the Falklands War in 1982, the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Asian Financial crisis in 1997 and Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bailout
From: akenaton
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 03:20 PM

More regulation means less growth...You're fucked whichever way you turn!

Open your eyes, the system is rotten, the Parties are rotten, the candidates are rotten.
They all knew what was about to happen. One would have to be a complete idiot not to know.

Oh I hear you ...the dems will fix it,,,,,T'hell they will!!

Subject: RE: BS: The Bailout
From: Art Thieme
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 03:00 PM

The milatary and the police have always stood behind the money people. As capitallism implodes, who do they support?

Subject: RE: BS: The Bailout
From: Amos
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 02:32 PM

Merkel Says Washington Helped Drag Europe into the Credit Crisis


Response to Washington's multibillion-dollar Wall Street bailout has involved a lot of skeptical grumbling in Germany and the UK. German Chancellor Angela Merkel says the Bush administration has mishandled Wall Street, and that its refusal to adopt stricter rules led to the current crisis.

The United States government is campaigning around the world for support for its multibillion-dollar Wall Street rescue package. The reaction has been skeptical at best -- and in Europe the plan has been met with bareknuckled criticism.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has accused the US government of serious failures which she believes contributed to the current credit crisis. In particular she blamed Washington for resisting stricter regulation.

On Monday she also said the crisis could hurt the German economy. "The whole thing is going to set the pace for the economy in the coming months and perhaps years," Merkel said at a meeting of her party, the conservative Christian Democrats.

Over the weekend the US said it would provide $700 billion to cover bad debt on Wall Street and ensure the survival of some financial institutions. On Sunday US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson then called on foreign governments to launch similar bailouts for their own banks. "We are talking very aggressively with other countries around the world and encouraging them to do similar things and I believe a number of them will," Paulson told ABC News.

But the governments of Germany and Great Britain have shaken their heads.

While her finance minister said German banks would not need a similar bailout, Merkel said the world community should react by forging international agreements that could be voluntary rather than anchored in law. "The crisis on the international financial markets shows us that you can do some things on the national level, but the overwhelming majority must be agreed to on the international level." Instead of codifying these deals in law, Merkel suggested binding agreements between major economic players. "This is about greater transparency," she said.

A day earlier, during a visit to Austria, the German chancellor had even firmer words. "I'm criticizing the self-image of the financial markets -- which have unfortunately resisted voluntary rules for too long with the support of the governments of Great Britain and the United States."


(Der Spiegel)

Subject: RE: BS: The Bailout
From: Amos
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 02:20 PM

A few comments from readers at ABC:


"Gramm, Davis and Black
(and the 23 other banking lobbyists running Mccain's campaign)

had a thousand times more to do with this mess

than ANYONE of the dem side

so stop.



Posted by: dl (the real one) | Sep 23, 2008 1:57:38 PM


1st trillion

McCain keating S&L and deregulation lobby

2nd trillion

Mccain Bush Iraq War

3rd trillion

Mccain Gramm, Davis , Black,...and the rest of the deregulation lobby (ugh again!)

how many trillions does a candidate have to be involved in losing befor ewe say he should not have the keys to the economic engine of the world.?"

Subject: RE: BS: The Bailout
From: Wesley S
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 02:04 PM

It must be the end of the world. I heard Newt Gingrinch on NPR yesterday and I agreed with his misgivings about the whole affair. Did anyone else hear him? He thinks this whole thing is being rushed through and that we should be very cautious. He said the same folks who having been saying that there isn't a problem for the last year or two are now the ones who want to fix it right away with no oversight.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bailout
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 01:54 PM

Trickleup sounds good but it is not the long-term soundness of the loan that is preventing the one useful thing that the Capitalist institutions are supposed to do.

Those institutions are supposed to recycle debt, by lending to each other, so that each borrower institution can in turn lend to others. When the money-go-round stops, no-on can borrow and all loans have to be called in.

That depends on lender confidence in institutional borrowers.

That depends on each institutional borrower being able to borrow today and tomorrow, rather than receiving payment on its consumer loans in due course.

A smaller bailout (the institutions need cash NOW or they will fold) plus federal guarantee of home loans of under $xxx (fed being subrogated to lender rights) might work, and might help prevent the creation of depression ghost towns.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bailout
From: Bobert
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 01:43 PM

Yeah, I know what we have and, like I said, "it makes me sick"...

Bunch of thieves... This is yet another money grab by the folks who have owned the Bush administration... The sad part about it is they screwed it up so bad that now they have scared everyond in the world that life, as we know it, will end and we will return to the days of 1929 if we don't go along with ****their*** plan...

Screw ****their plan****... I don't give a flying fig if Bush wants this passed and on his desk by Friday... It's time to take a deep breath and think outside the box...

Shoring up the debts of home owners will do alot more toward settling down the financial crisis, fueled by the housing crisis, then pumping more money into banks so they can make more bad loans...

If we pump the money into the homeowners it will "trickle up" to banks and in time those payments will give them the money they need to make more loans.... Actually, with a homeowners assistence program, just bringing up the arrearages will pump billions and billions into the banks and ****stop the forclouseures*** at the same time...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: The Bailout
From: Goose Gander
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 01:33 PM

Bobert, really, this is America - we have socialism for the rich, not the blue-collar slobs or the desparate middle class.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bailout
From: Bobert
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 01:30 PM

This entire situation makes me sick because it reminds me of Iraq with the Bush administartion presenting yet another my-way-ot-the-highway policy proposal... Why does it have to be their way??? How much is Paulson worth??? $600M, that's how much...

If you want to fix this crap do it from bottom up... If you bad loans then restructure them with programs, that while assisting the homeowners with taxpayer "loans" to head off forclousers, also adds an element of trickle-up economics... Yeah, let the banks get it back in small doses... I'd rather see US spend $700B by helping people stay in their homes than giving the thugs who made the bad loans...

But then again, I'm a commie...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: The Bailout
From: Amos
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 01:11 PM

A few comments from NYT Readers:

"I'm sorry, but I don't trust Paulson and I certainly don't trust Bush. What if it were Goldman Sachs that went under instead of Bear, Lehman or Merrill Lynch? Do we want to hand this much money to the same guys (Paulson) who are responsible for this crisis? And the last time we trusted Bush with this kind of responsibility, we wound up in a war everyone knew was coming but we were somehow unprepared for.

— Posted by Frunobulax
7.September 23rd,
2008
10:17 am My opinion of the Wall Street bailout is for the US government to seize of freeze all the assets of the big wig Wall Street people who made Billions of Dollars getting us in to this mess.

Leave them with their primary residence and two automobiles and their 401K money. Everything else goes to the Federal Reserve to help bailout the companies they reaped their huge profits from.

The US taxpayer should not be burdened with the bailout.

— Posted by Fred
8.September 23rd,
2008
10:17 am Double metaphor of the day: HE WHO TAKES THE RISK MUST PAY THE PIPER.

The mortgagor loses his house and the mortgagee gets bailed out. What is wrong with that picture.

Regards, Ben

— Posted by ben schwartz
9.September 23rd,
2008
10:17 am For all 'The Sky is Falling, The Sky is Falling' comments from Bernanke and Paulson, its now been 3 days since the meltdown and as far as I can tell the sky hasn't fallen. In any negotiation, and as we've seen throughout the Bush Administrations time in office, everything is an emergency and requires extreme actions without consideration, usually right before a recess for an election.

To our representatives, I implore you please for all of our sakes slow down and start again, not from this administrations framing of problem and solution. They got us into this situation,they are not qualified to get us out.

Even more disturbing are Sen. Obama's remarks that he may not be able to pursue his agenda once in office as a result of the bailout. This is the entire point of the bailout, to tie the hands of the next administration and to ensure that a progressive agenda which pro-actively seeks to improve the American project can never be implemented.

— Posted by Rob
10.September 23rd,
2008
10:21 am Absolutely outrageous. Here is what blows me away and gives the lie to the urgent necessity of this stunning taxpayer bailout of private companies and their scoundrel executives in the first place.
Paulson is objecting to the provision placing limits on executive compensation, the "golden parachite" rule. His reason for that objection is his concern that such limits would discourage companies from participating in the plan.
Well. I can only conclude they don't REALLY need our help. End of story. They want OUR charity, my money, to pay for their imcompetence and recklessness, and they want it on their terms, with the right to take sweet deals, or they will just walk away. Don't do us any favors, pal.
Let them die a slow death, then. The only solution is to buy the companies, void the compensation packages, and throw the bums out on their ears.
Paulson's plan is criminal and un-American.

— Posted by joe
11.September 23rd,
2008
10:26 am I would feel a lot better about this "bailout" if the bankers were crying at the begging table, not gleefully lining up! And having their lobbyists line up to sniff the rears of Congressman, 2 months before an election is probably criminal and certainly in bad taste! The token sacrifice of Lehman is not enough to satify a decade or more of greed and self-serving Ponzi scheme actibities, not enough atonement for the gloating Billion dollar bonuses! When I see shanty towns in near suburbs of NYC and for sale and foreclosure signs on the McMansions of Greed…then I might relent! Why do we need Wall Street and its bastions of sleaze? I'm not sure we would not be much better off if the whole mess was flushed! I remember when my money was in the local bank and we knew the banker! What do you think??

— Posted by Chaotician
12.September 23rd,
2008
10:29 am I have absolutely no, repeat NO, none, zilch faith that Bush and Friends is telling us the truth. I recall the last time Bushie used this "let's do this now without further debate" attitude — and we went to war with Iraq on distorted WMD evidence, deceitful statements and erroneous information. As a by-product, Secretary of State Colin Powell's career was irreparably damaged because he bought the Bushie li(e)ne.

And why shouldn't these bankers feel some financial pain? Thousands of citizens who pay their fair-share of taxes have seen their stock values plummet — so methinks it's only fair that these same execs who are clamoring for our/my money to bail them out should be de-compensated as well.

I feel any bank who participates in this program should have a max compensation of whatever the President makes for any executive. And no loopholes, either.

This rush to judgment doesn't give me a warm and fuzzy feeling. I'm no longer buying my government's line that they know best (at least until Senator Obama and HIS team gets elected). The present administration has demonstrated repeatedly it's ignorant and can only provide cardboard statements and platitudes.

Where is the "truth" in lending these days?

Seth J Hersh
NYC
"

Subject: RE: BS: The Bailout
From: Bill D
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 01:09 PM

Yep, SINSULL...we need no more pennies...many folks refuse to carry them around anyway.I have been asserting for YEARS that we need to get rid of the $1 bill and make the $1 coin the only choice...make a $2 bill. It would save many millions.

The ONLY objection is tradition & nostalgia...and a small amount of superstition about $2 bills being unlucky.

Since almost no one uses half-dollar coins, NOTHING would have to change in cash registers...

Subject: RE: BS: The Bailout
From: SINSULL
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 12:49 PM

While the economy collapses around us, the Treasury Dept rolls out both a bail out pland and...wait for it


A NEW PENNY!

Just weeks after an artcle appeared about the cost ofr making a penny being higher than the value of the coin itself, the Treasury Dept rolls out not 1 but 4 new pennies. SIGH. How much did that cost us?

Subject: RE: BS: The Bailout
From: SINSULL
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 12:38 PM

Been there; done that. But no one is mentioning the names of the companies involved.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bailout
From: Amos
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 12:37 PM

I just had the opportunity to phone in to a D.C. NPR program in which Rep Mario Diaz Bellart, a Republican from Florida who sits on the national Budget Committee, was fielding questions about national security versus economic security. I asked him what kind of hard data he had to understand the situation and, essentially, how he knew Congress wasn't just being stampeded by companies unwilling to inherit the harvest of their own bad management.

He tapdanced around like mad and essentially said there was no set of hard data, that they had to rely on the analysis by experts. He also did not answer the question, and he left me with the impression that he rerally did NOT know whether this was a curveball stampede act or a genuine national emergency.


A

Subject: RE: BS: The Bailout
From: Bill D
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 12:20 PM

see here

Subject: RE: BS: The Bailout
From: Bill D
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 12:16 PM

at the moment, Treas. Sec. Paulson is pushing for a quick approval to let HIM decide all the details, with a provision that the setup be immune fron question by any court or individual....(28 words, I believe)
   needless to say, some have reservations about this, suspecting that 'certain' people & companies will get preferential treatment...etc.

There is much debate going on as we type as to exactly how fast/soon something has to be decided and whether input from congress is necessary.
Obviously, "the devil IS in the details" in this one! If you go to MSNBC.com (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/)and read transcripts and listen to replays of yesterdays programs (Olbermann, Maddow...etc..) you can see some of the issues involved...no doubt there will be much more today.

Subject: RE: BS: The Bailout
From: Riginslinger
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 12:09 PM

If we'd known the taxpayers were going to bail out the stock market, it would have been just fine to privatize Social Security.

                You have to wonder if they knew this is where things were headed then, which would explain why they made such a concentrated effort to make the privatization thing happen.

Subject: BS: The Bailout
From: SINSULL
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 12:03 PM

$700 BILLION
"The plan would allow the Treasury to buy up troubled assets from U.S.-based companies and foreign firms with big U.S. operations. The aim is for the government to buy the securities at a discount, hold onto them and then sell them for a profit."

I am so confused and I suspect our Senators and Congressmen are too.
Has anyone given us a list of the companies involved? Who decides? What are the criteria? Will baby bush's buddies once again walk away with my tax dollars? Wh do they think the US government will make on a profit on crap securities that no one else will buy? Why do some think that the CEOs and executives of these companies are entitled to huge bonuses?

I am not looking for political tirades. If someone has some answers I will be grateful and promise to read them carefully.