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$700 Billion Bailout Signed Into Law
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat Oct 04, 2008 01:25 PM
from the how-4-pages-becomes-400 dept.
from the how-4-pages-becomes-400 dept.
Many readers reminded us of what no-one can have failed to hear: that the Congress passed and the President signed a $700B bailout bill in an attempt to avert the meltdown of the US economy. The bill allocates $700 billion to the Treasury Department for the purchase of so-called "toxic assets" that have been weighing down Wall Street balance sheets. This isn't particularly a tech story, though tech will be affected as will virtually all parts of the economy, and not just in the US. Among the $110B in so-called pork added to the bill to sway reluctant legislators are extensions of popular tax benefits for business R&D and alternative energy, relief for the growing pool of people subject to the alternative minimum tax, and a provision raising the FDIC's ceiling of guaranteed deposits to $250,000. Some limits were also imposed on executive compensation, though it's unclear whether they will be effective.
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Friday (Score:5, Interesting)
Why is it that really bad legislation always seems to pass on a Friday?
Re:Friday (Score:5, Funny)
Our attention span is to short to allow for planning
Parent
Re:Friday (Score:5, Interesting)
It has more to do with the stock market opening on Sunday night in Asia. Everything revolves around Asia now, you just haven't digested the fact. The government printed all that money so they can give it to the Chinese, because it's easier than saying "Give us back half your money, we are selling half the country in exchange for another 10 years of comfort to die in." Printing money and devaluing what exists is less work and has the same effect.
You people keep wanting to make this an aberration. It's not. It's not a matter of "The system works, but someone didn't follow the system, we just need to sort them out and things will be ok." It's not like that at all. The fact of the matter is, the things that you hold most dear, your most treasured cultural values, they are what have done this to you. It's not the lawbreakers among you that did this to you. It's the laws and the people that follow them.
That's why people don't want your "Freedom" and "Democracy" in their own nations. It's because they see what you have done to yourselves, and they don't want any part of it.
I hope it happens quickly. The sooner you all fall to pieces, the sooner we can start clearing your poisonous influence out of our nations.
Parent
Re:The four steps to making a bad idea law. (Score:5, Interesting)
He said there were actually a number of alternate measures put forth, that would have solved the problem without the massive bailout price tag to taxpayers, but, that sadly none of them were even considered. Only the big bailout check bill was to be considered.
I wish I'd have time to get the details on the other proposals, but, no time at that time to talk further.
Parent
Biggest Con Ever (Score:5, Interesting)
The DOW plummeted to 10,365 on Monday September 29th when the bailout bill failed to pass. Every proponent of the bailout screamed, "I told you so!" Then on Tuesday September 30th, even without the bailout bill the DOW rocketed up to 10,850. Then on Friday October 3rd when the bailout bill passed and was signed into law, the DOW dropped yet again to 10,325 (even lower than Monday when the bailout bill failed).
This bill will not help the credit markets, the debt markets, the equity markets or anyone reading this comment. It will help Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and the rest of the former investment banks de-leverage from 60:1 leverage down to traditional 12:1 leverage on your dime while the economy goes down the tubes.
They pulled out all the steps - even threatening martial law:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaG9d_4zij8 [youtube.com]
It happens every year (Score:5, Insightful)
Between 1 and 1.3 trillion dollars has been spent on military projects and war for the last few years, depending on how you look at old debt. The money is not clearly accounted for, against constitutional principles, and it only goes to serve large corporations.
Where is the public outcry? Where are the Republican talking heads when the budget is being discussed?
The bailout plan may be awful, but it's by no means the biggest con ever. The biggest con ever has been going on since the end of WWII, and it has cost American money and lives, and in no small number. Any of these transparently partisan personalities are just squawking for advertising dollars and votes, same as always.
Parent
Re:Biggest Con Ever (Score:5, Informative)
Not only that, this article [nytimes.com] (sorry, NYTimes reg required) details how Henry Paulson, back in 2004, asked the SEC to deregulate Goldman Sachs and other banks to allow them to take on this toxic mortgage debt in the first place.
We have just been ripped off by the most elaborate con in the history of the world. We let a banker tell us "let us break the rules so we can make more money", then when he did and the bottom fell out, we gave him even more money to keep him from going out of business.
My only hope is that the voters check for who is voting for this and get rid of them next election.
Parent
Re:Biggest Con Ever (Score:5, Insightful)
They're not dumb, they're just evil. They have learned that they can get away with anything, and we'll allow it. No interest in principles, no interest in truth. This is the product of modern political and social pragmatism - a free-for-all, every man for himself. Lie, cheat, steal, whatever it takes to maintain your grasp on the teat of the American public tax pool. The alternative is to make it on your own, using your rational mind to survive and fulfill your goals; but, reason is outdated, obsolete.
Parent
Re:Biggest Con Ever (Score:5, Informative)
I find this statement unfathomably ironic in the light that the majority of Republicans voted against it while the majority of Democrats voted for it.
That was the 110 page version. The 451 page version pretty much got the whole Republican tax plan shoved into it. http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=985597&cid=25257489 [slashdot.org]
Parent
Re:Oh I get it. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sorry, I don't think we've met. Yes, I don't like Vista. But it's not a religious stance against Microsoft. In fact, I hold 4 Microsoft certifications (MCSE, MCSD VB6, MCSD C#.Net, MCDBA) and work on Microsoft products all day every day. In fact, I did a 6 month contract programming job for Microsoft themselves as a side job.
Certainly a very busy man.
Parent
Re:I'm a Vice President in IT. (Score:5, Funny)
Certainly a very busy man.
I work on programming and enhancing strategic investment platforms for both fixed income securities and equities.
So yes, you can be both a Vice President and a member of IT. I've even been a Vice President and Chief Technology Officer in the past.
Did you by chance happen to stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night?
Parent
Dec 2009 limit on the raised FDIC insurance limit (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep
I read it too.
If you're in banking, you must have noticed the fact that the increased cap of FDIC insurance from $100k to $250k will only apply until December of 2009, after which it reverts back to the limit of $100k per named account holder per financial institution.
How many people might get suckered into longer term CD's (Certificates of Deposits, not the ISO-9660 type) that might go over the boundary of the TEMPORARILY raised FDIC insurance caps and end up either inadequately covered or stuck with early-withdrawal fees?
Either way, NONE of the articles I have read make any statement about the fact that the so-called increase in the FDIC insurance from $100-thousand to $250-thousand is only going to last the length of calendar year 2009. That's a sham and a disgrace.
Kris
Parent
Re:Biggest Con Ever (Score:5, Informative)
Yep, I've heard those and one other rumour.
(Disclaimer: I work for a highly secret govt. agency with unlimited resources).
Basically, a race of aliens threatened to build a new hyperspace-expressway through our solar system unless we provided the capital to bail out the luxury planet building markets. Apparently, the galactic economy recently collapsed and most of the universe is in a pretty bad recession.
Personally, I'm not sure how much of this is true but I agree, it's probably a combination of all three.
Parent
Sweet? (Score:5, Funny)
How big of a check should I expect to get?
--
Blackshot [blackshotfps.com]
Re:Sweet? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Free market (Score:5, Insightful)
The major effect of this bill is that it is causing fiscal conservatives to blow gaskets. They can't accept the fact that the free market is what caused this mess.
It is funny to hear them complain about how people on Wall Street became "greedy." I'm not a financial expert but I think that is part of the design. Everyone on Wall Street works for their own self interest. That is how the invisible hand is supposed to work. But conservatives complaining about the essential 'feature' of the free market is sort of twisted.
Re:Free market (Score:5, Insightful)
The invisible hand of free markets probably works as long as everyone does act in their own self-interest AND everyone has the same access to reasonably accurate and complete information.
If anything, this current crisis should deeply underscore that institutions cannot be trusted to:
Of course, if we would let everything and everyone fail outright in a horrific manner, maybe just maybe everyone would learn deep lessons. Nobody would deposit anything in any bank that wasn't bending over backwards to do all of the above.
Parent
You're the weakest link, Goodbye! (Score:5, Interesting)
I seem to remember reading the BBC and noting that countries overseas wanted this bill as much as some in the US.
Ridiculous (Score:5, Interesting)
Economist: Why Bankruptcy is better than bailout [cnn.com]
The Trillion-Dollar Bank Shakedown That Bodes Ill for Cities [city-journal.org] ( written EIGHT YEARS before this crisis, predicting everything down to the dollar amount)
Now, check out the $150 Billion in pork-barrel projects that were added by the Senate to the original 100-page bailout that failed in the House, turning it into a 450-page bailout:
- "Wooden arrows designed for use by children" (Sec 503)
- Wool Research (Sec. 325)
- Film and Television Productions (Sec. 502)
- Litigants in the 1989 Exxon-Valdez oil spill (Sec. 504)
- Virgin Island and Puerto Rican Rum (Section 308)
- American Samoa (Sec. 309)
- Mine Rescue Teams (Sec. 310)
- Mine Safety Equipment (Sec. 311)
- Domestic Production Activities in Puerto Rico (Sec. 312)
- Indian Tribes (Sec. 314, 315)
- Railroads (Sec. 316)
- Auto Racing Tracks (317)
- District of Columbia (Sec. 322)
This is the bill that senators are screaming about, saying "IT MUST BE PASSED OR DOOMSDAY!" Who believes them? And yet the bill easily breezed through Congress.
Re:Ridiculous (Score:5, Interesting)
Good links, here's the deal...
The US has a mixed economy. Our currency is based on a perception of value (no more gold standard). We like for a market to be as unregulated as possible, but for any number of reasons sectors of the economy will have regulations (from health codes, to OSHA, to Sarbanes/Oxley).
Perception drives our economy just as much as facts and reality. I don't like it, but it's just a flat fact. If people *think* our economy is good, they buy things and make investments. If they *think* it's bad, they don't buy, don't invest, etc... These are the basics, I'm building to a point.
My point is, if we had a respected President, one who could come on TV and calm everyone down, this 'bailout' would be unnecessary. The market would recover. But because the general public has the *perception* that this is "the worst economic crisis since the depression" then something had to be done.
I don't like what they did, but I agree they had to do something. I would have liked for it to be better, but it's not.
Yes, there is obviously problems in the housing market and banking system right now, but (all suffering aside) it's just the market leveling itself out. Housing prices were inflated...they were going to come down. People took on loans they couldn't pay...they were bound to get foreclosed.
In a perfect world, we could let AIG, etc. fail, give some emergecy economic help to people who lost their homes, and wait for the market to recover, but because of how *perception* plays a part in our economy, this "bailout"...though in theory the wrong move, in practice was needed...almost like a commercial for how good our economy will be...
I hate that this is how it works (and I know I'm oversimplifying), but it's true.
Parent
Unless gas prices are affected... (Score:4, Insightful)
Lower my income tax
Regulate fuel prices to a reasonable level
Give me free health care
Give me free college just like the African Americans and Latinos and Single Moms and Sudanese and pretty much everyone who isn't a white male/female with no kids
Other than that, big deal. 700 billion dollars that I basically receive no real benefit from, while people who are already rich just get richer. Yay America.
Re:Unless gas prices are affected... (Score:5, Insightful)
Regulate fuel prices to a reasonable level
How would increasing fuel prices help you? Unless it forced you to other forms of transport...
Parent
Something everyone seems to miss (Score:4, Insightful)
There is also a provision extending IRS powers extending its immunity from a variety of laws.
Read more here: http://blog.bobbarr2008.com/2008/10/03/bailout-bill-invades-your-wallet-and-your-privacy/ [bobbarr2008.com]
Paulson's speech (Score:4, Funny)
"We owe it all to the bedrock of our economy: the ordinary hard-working taxpayer [today.com]. You resisted the siren call of credit cards, lived within your means to save for a rainy day, never took out an interest-only mortgage, credit score to make Jesus cry. Without taking every penny you saved over the $100,000 guarantee, we'd never have made it. And the best bit is, we know you'll still vote Republican! God bless you all!"
By the way, your house is still worthless. [today.com]
Another Option: (Score:5, Interesting)
I have had the chance to speak with other business owners and some executives of, let's just say, large, corporations. The general feeling is that while action was necessary there was a much better approach:
- ~500 billion USD given to the Fed
- Allow the Fed to disperse the money through the discount window with loans at 1% fixed for 18 months then reset to Prime-0.5%
- All mortgages that are currently in MBS tranches have their rates reset to Prime+1 for 24 months.
- Have the US AG seek felony charges for lenders that committed fraud.
The current bill is like trying to get fuel into a car through the tailpipe instead of filling up the gas tank.
This proves how much Americans will sit and take! (Score:5, Insightful)
What I find MOST incredible about this whole bailout, is the fact that nationwide polls of the general populace indicated between 70% and 75% were AGAINST the legislation, yet the Senate passed it through with FLYING COLORS, and House of "Representatives" were swayed to voting for it in a matter of only a few days. All it really took was throwing in a few key financial incentives and bonuses to the appropriate special interests, and some empty promises by potential presidents to be.
The whole time, these "Representatives" were being flooded with demands from the American people NOT to vote for the bailout - but they turned a deaf ear to everyone, and made bold claims like "I may not be re-elected because of this, but I'm confident I did the right thing for America's future anyway." One moron said he changed his vote from NO to YES, simply because "I talked with potential president to be, Obama, and he personally assured me he would enact legislation after his election that's in alignment with what I want to see." (WHAT?!? You were VERBALLY promised some B.S. by a guy who MAY or MAY NOT become president, so that's more important to you than listening to the people who elected you and trusted you to represent their wishes?!)
When HUGE taxpayer expenditures like this are voted through and signed into law in less than a week, despite 3 out of 4 Americans being strongly against them - it's clear we no longer live in a Democracy at all! This seems like as good a reason for an overthrow of our government as what we dealt with back around 1776! Yet people will not only sit back and accept it, but probably not even vote in protest for a 3rd. party like the Libertarians. (Incidentally, Bob Barr has been speaking out against this bailout the whole time, unlike our Democratic or Republican contenders. The man gets MY vote for that reason alone. At least he's in support of the will of the PEOPLE still!)
No alternative? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then they come back and basically vote on the same bill again, but this time a few house members take the bait [wikipedia.org] and it passes. Some of the amendments being totally weird and not really having anything to do with "bailing out" Wallstreet, such as subsidizing rum, wool research and wooden arrows for children?!? I'm not making this shit up! [google.com]
Then we have McCain [youtube.com] sitting in a interview riling against the pork barreling and at the same time taking credit for convincing his Republican buddies to back this "sweetened" bailout plan.
And the really ironic thing is that we have old-school (i.e. fiscally conservative) Republicans opposing the bill as well as far left dudes like Kucinich [youtube.com]. Not to mention Paulson's conflict of interest [wikipedia.org] in this whole mess.
It's not going to work. (Score:5, Interesting)
I have real doubts about the bailout "working". The underlying problems with the financial system are more fundamental. We have a sizable chunk of the financial system based on the assumption that real interest rates (after inflation) will remain negative.
Currently, US dollar inflation is around 5.4%. (9% to 11% if you use classical numbers, [shadowstats.com] computed the way inflation was calculated prior to the 1980s.) Normally, the Fed funds rate is just above inflation, LIBOR and the prime rate run around 2% above inflation, and mortgages run about 6% above it. For the past year, the Fed has been flooding the financial system with cheap money, at 2%, in a failing attempt to avoid a recession. LIBOR is 3.88%. So we're currently in a situation where key real interest rates are well below inflation. LIBOR, in real terms, is about -1.5%. This is very unusual historically.
The problem is that 1) negative real interest rates can't last for long without producing runaway inflation; the money has to come from somewhere, and 2) there are sectors of the financial system that are addicted to those low, low rates. Last week, LIBOR briefly hit 6.88%, businesses were screaming "credit crunch", and AT&T and GE were having difficulties rolling over their commercial paper. (GE Credit borrowed short and lent long, which is a bet on low interest rates.)
The mortgage portion of the economy is heavily dependent on those low interest rates. A mortgage really should cost a good borrower about 11.5% right now; 6% as the cost of the mortgage, and 5.4% for inflation. The "bailout" is all about keeping those interest rates artificially low. For a while longer.
Probably not that much longer. Expect a "credit crunch" in 2009 as financial reality reasserts itself.
There's nothing wrong with a credit crunch. It just means that businesses have to finance more with equity and less with debt. (Because interest on debt is deductible by business borrowers, there's a systemic bias towards financing with debt.) Consumer credit rates, other than for autos, are already at credit-crunch levels. (Stop in at your local "payday loan" outlet and ask them what their APR is.) And besides, we might see worthwhile interest rates on savings accounts.
What's "normal?" 3% real interest on savings accounts, 6% on loans, and the median house costs 2.5 years median income. That multiplier got up to over 4 in the US nationally, and over 10 in some markets. That was two years ago; now those numbers are lower, but not low enough.
When bubbles burst, they burst all the way. Tokyo residential real estate dropped over 90% when their bubble burst in 1989, and never went that high again.
We told you this would happen. You didn't listen. Now suffer the consequences. [downside.com]
another point of view (Score:5, Interesting)
One myth about the current financial crises is that it is the fault of ordinary Americans, who imprudently took out loans they could to afford. This is simply not true.
The current crises is not the fault of ordinary Americans.
It is true that many Americans took out loans they could not afford. I don't know why people did this - some, with credit cards maxed out on vacations, took out a home loans , and instead of paying off the credit card, took another vacation. Others were optimistic, egged on by the relentless propaganda that home ownership is good. Others were, perhaps , elderly and confused, or lost their jobs, or had medical bills. I don't know how many people acted in different ways, but i do know this: every single solitary mortgage had to be approved. Every single mortgage had to be approved by underwriters and bankers. Now, if someone, asks for a loan they cannot possibly pay, who bears more responsibility: the person asking, or the banker who approves it.
I further know that many ordinary Americans are suffering as a result of their actions, and of the actions of their neighbors.
Another myth about the current crisis is that rather then resulting from too little govt regulation, ti was the result of liberals messing with the free market, by forcing banks, with a law known as CRA, to make loans to poor or minority applicants. This question has been studied again and again by the Federal Reserve; suffice it to say, CRA loans were not the problem.
However, the question of who or why these loans were made is a red herring; it was not the approval of imprudent loans that has made the current crisis so severe. All the bankers who approved these loans are not actually the main culprits.
The people who bear direct responsibility for the current crises are people like Paulson; as CEO of Goldman Sachs, he and people like him are directly responsible for the current problems; that he is sending our tax dollars to his buddies to fix the problem is only icing on the cake of gall. Not only are people like pauslon responsible for our current problems, they acted from the basest of motives - greed. It was the desire on the part of people like Henry Paulson for larger paychecks that led to reckless behavior on the part of wall street; this reckless behavior generated large profits, justifying large salary's, but this same reckless behavior has gotten us to where we are today.
Another myth about the financial crisis is that it is incredibly complicate. While the technical details of loans may be complicated, the behavior and actions that led to this state are not at all complicated, and are similar to what we do every day.
As an example, this week, the wall street journal examined why AIG, one of the largest and most respected financial institutions in the world, suddenly collapsed. Turns out, they had a unit in london writing insurance; while it sounds complicated its just insurance - someone pays you some money, the premium, and you promise to pay back a lot more if they have a problem. And what did AIG do with the huge premiums they recieved ? they did not put any money aside for a reserve.
LET me repeat that: they spent all the money on salarys. So when the mortgage market went south, all of sudden people said, hey, AIG owes, in theory, a gazillion dollars of insurance, and they don't have any money set aside to pay it.
When people heard this, you had the famed loss of confidence, and AIG went bankrupt.
Problem: Incomprehensible unregulated derivatives (Score:5, Informative)
There was an article in last Sunday's Washington Post that described one house on the market after a foreclosure. The article was very instructive about what was really going on. The entire financial mess is a result of the gambling casino mentality of the derivatives market moving over into housing and mortgages. The mentality of the derivatives market was allowed to exist and continue as a result of financial market deregulation.
Many financial experts, most notably Warren Buffett, the Sage of Omaha, have for years warned that there are derivatives nobody understands and that they will cause trouble. Based on the article, it is clear that we now have mortgages nobody understands and derivatives on those mortgages that nobody understands, either. Derivatives in the form of "portfolio insurance" caused the stock market crash of 1987. Since then there have been several occasions (such as Long Term Capital Management) in which derivatives threatened to collapse the world financial system. Well, they've done it again.
The article
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/27/AR2008092702587.html [washingtonpost.com]
describes how the homeowner was solicited to refinance her home and took the bait. The interest rate was a teaser. Over a year into the
mortgage she discovered that it was a "negative amortization loan" where the principal increases every month. The transaction probably came nowhere near compliance with Truth in Lending laws. It is shocking that such a piece of financial garbage exists. However, Wall Street wanted mortgages to feed the highly profitable derivatives market and there was a lot of pressure to produce the mortgages, no matter how.
The article doesn't cover what happened next, but the mortgage was likely bundled into a collateralized mortgage obligation that likely had
credit default swaps written on it. Here are some relevant Wikipedia links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateralized_mortgage_obligation [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_default_swap [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_(finance) [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_amortization [wikipedia.org]
It turns out that many of the derivatives are really side bets on prices of financial securities, and that the total outstanding value of the derivatives often exceeds by huge factors the total outstanding value of the securities. Furthermore, the derivatives are highly leveraged.
According to a recent program on NPR's This American Life there are about 4 Trillion in bonds and about 60 Trillion in derivatives betting on whether the bonds will pay off.
In the absence of strict regulation, the "free market" becomes the Fraud Market. This mess can be laid squarely at the feet of financial deregulation and Fraud Market Conservatism. Adam Smith's "unseen hand" doesn't work. The financial markets are much more in keeping with Charles MacKay's book "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds". This has been proven over and over, and is now being proven once again.
One part of the eventual cleanup will need to be a shutdown of the derivatives casino. Some of these financial instruments are valuable to
producers and users of real commodities, but most of them need to be eliminated. Whatever remain need to be understandable and should not be
side bets. Eventually, the tails will stop wagging the dogs.
I know you're scared, but please think. (Score:5, Insightful)
You know it's an amazing coincidence. You're saying the exact same thing that Henry Paulson and his cronies say. I'm sure that it is just that - a coincidence - and that you independently came up with the identical position completely on your own.
I also suppose that if Henry Paulson said you needed to come to his house and blow him or the economy would go under you'd think, "No time to think!" and head right over to do it. If that's not the case, then why did you fall for his, "Sure, I'll give you a life preserver - throw me your wallet first!" scheme? There is time to think. Henry Paulson has said he has no plans to spend any of the $700B for FOUR WEEKS. Why the rush to pass it into within days?
Parent
Re:bailout / rescue (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:bailout / rescue (Score:5, Insightful)
There is plenty of blame to go around. Yes, the CEOs, but everyone else too.
First, all the people that thought houses were investments whose price could never go down. Wrong.
Second, all those people bought houses they couldn't afford at ludicrous interest rates, based on the idea that a bank would never give them a loan they couldn't afford. Wrong.
Third, the banks that gave these ludicrous loans in the first place. Stupid.
Fourth, the unscrupulous assholes who raced to find people to give these loans so they could sell the loans as investments.
Fifth, the federal reserve for keeping the interest rates so low that the global pool of money had to find themselves an investment other than government bonds.
Sixth, the global pool of money for investing in these loans without carefully looking at what they were buying.
Seventh, all the wall street banks that also invested in all these things heavily and not seeing that they weren't worth their price, and their CEOs.
Eighth, the government for not seeing this happening earlier and stopping it before it was too late.
Ninth, the previous government (Clinton, sorry) for trying to let every American own a home. Heart was in the right place, should have asked an economist first though.
How many times did you hear in the last ten years that property was a great investment that couldn't fail and that everyone should buy some as soon as possible? That was bad advice, every one of those people were wrong.
Basically we all did this for not looking more skeptically at what we were investing in, and living beyond our means. But the economy is not the financial industry, the financial industry is just the fiendishly complicated mechanism that loans the rest of the economy money so it can function. Letting the entire economy fail to teach Wall Street a lesson sounds stupid to me.
I lived within my means, I don't have any debt, and I'm pissed at everyone for screwing this all up so badly. But I want the economy keep going so that the means which I am capable of living within can continue coming, and here we are. Put me down for my share of the bailout, and do me a favor, keep wall street on a tighter leash. I lost a lot of faith in the free market over the last year, it was the market's mindless lemming me-too-ism that completely screwed the pooch here.
Parent
Re:bailout / rescue (Score:5, Interesting)
You need some serious perspective change.
Let me ask you this:
If you were to ask for, let's say a $10,000 loan with no plan on how to use it, would you expect to get the loan?
These people stated in no uncertain terms that they had no plan in dealing with the problem. The "problem" has been discussed and investigated for months... even years if you want to go back that far. "Experts" have been claiming everything is fine. And now these same "experts" want control of $700 billion and put the US tax payers on the hook for it. And they have NO PLAN on how to go about making things right and no plan on how to prevent it from happening again. NO PLAN.
Which should come first? The money or the plan?
The "panic" is unjustified. Banks have failed. We call that Darwinism. Let it be. Other institutions are restricting their lending practices... adding a little more sanity to their risk calculations. That is a good thing and what they should have been doing all this time! People seem to think this is a sign of the apocalypse. It's not. We should expect some trouble before things turn around again.
But if one thing can be clearly said about this is that these "experts" have caused this problem. These same "experts" claim they need $700 billion to fix it and they don't have a plan.
If this sounds eerily like the story of an addicted gambler, you'd be right to see it that way.
Parent
Re:bailout / rescue (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, I hate this kind of argument by analogy, although the analogy happens in this case to point in the right direction.
Secondly, not all "carping" is bad. We should be skeptical. This isn't the first time we've heard "wolf" called by this administration.
What is going on is that credit markets are breaking down. Credit hasn't "dried up". It doesn't work that way. Credit can't disappear, any more than the world can run out of oil. What happens to these commodities is that they become too expensive to be useful. That's what is happening now to credit, and upshot is that the Fed is losing control of the money supply, and that is very, very bad because controlling the money supply is the main way we have avoided having economic downturns spiral out of control ever since the Great Depression.
It is a very serious situation, and we need to start fixing it fast, but in any case the fix doesn't have to be accomplished overnight. It can't be. We have a situation that grows graver every day, but not say grave that at bad move today is better than a mediocre one tomorrow. It's all about balancing less than perfect action against diminishing returns.
I think there are better ideas out there than this bill, but getting enough support to put them into action runs up against diminishing returns. On the other hand, the bill sent to us last week was dangerous.
"Carping" improved the TARP component of the bill considerably, putting in place a mechanism by which distressed assets are secured by stock warrants to control taxpayer risk, aligning taxpayer and shareholder interests. I originally though the CEO payout provisions were Democratic red meat, but in this context it is good for shareholders too because it keeps CEOs from stabbing the shareholders and taxpayers alike in the back.
So "carping" got us a much better bill than we had a week ago last Friday. The pork incentives to get those last dozen votes, frankly, sucks, but as Barney Frank pointed out: if you don't want politics in this process, you shouldn't hand it over to 535 politicians.
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Re:its not a BAILOUT !!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Then let private firms buy it up and make that money... why the panic?
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Re:its not a BAILOUT !!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Then let private firms buy it up and make that money... why the panic?
Because private firms are under pressure to make money NOW, and always turn a profit. No private enterprise would ever go for this type of long term investment with zero profits in the foreseeable future. Government, however, can wait. It really doesn't matter if it takes ten years for the money to return.
It is in the general interest of the public to resolve these type of situations as fast as possible, because in the end, it's (as usual) Joe Sixpack that's going to suffer if a larger chunk of Wall Street goes belly up.
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Re:its not a BAILOUT !!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Seriously it is quite an achievement (Score:5, Insightful)
Bush and collegues came into office promising to implement Grover Norquists ideas for contracting govenrment. The graphic phrase most often used was they would have to "strangle it in the bathtub" which was Norquist's shorthand for meaning that to reduce spending they had to basically remove govenement agencies and kill off revenue.
Fast forward we have years of the biggest govenement expansion ever. Some bandy the word "socialist" over the bailout. But actually that misses the big picture.
Suppose your goal was to move the governement more towards a corporatist outlook and to really strangle spending how could you do this.
You do it with debt. This 700 billion will be paralytic both in crippling elective goverment spending as well as it's ability to raise future debt. Oddly It does not actually go on the books as debt even but it is a liability.
And even if some day the loans and options they are buying pay off, it's accomplished the tow key goals.
1) strangling it in the bathtub. There cannot be any socialist expansion during Obama because there simply is no way to finance it either with direct revenue or borrowing.
2) a movement towards corporatism. The Government will rise and fall with the value of the companies it holds options in. What's good for the US really is what's good for AIG and JPmorgan, and the rest. Even the people admisistering the hen house in both the SEC and Treasury came from Goldmann Sachs.
The 1930's was when Corporatism was invented and the country practicing it, italy, was consider a miracle. the rest of the world was reeling in the depression. Senators and congressmen hailed the Moussilini miracle and went on fact finding missions to figure out how to import this here. Adolf Hitler was swept into power in part by nationalism that awoke in the aftermath of WWI but also because he too offered the fascist miracle for germany.
THe trains did run on time. THe auobahns emerged. It was spring time for hitler and germany too.
SO we now have an odd time in the US. We are backing our way into fascism. We have all the ingredient. Cheney and his patriot acts have created police powers that are unprecendented in our history of civil liberties. Even our allies like britain have gone to a surveliance society and now ponder 2 days detenciton with charges.
THe second fork of facism is corporatism where the state manages for the good of the corporations and vica versa. (the reason corproatism was such a miracle was precisely because of the vica versa. The people were really better off in the rising economy of italy).
So while hitler managed to once and for all kill the term "facism" at one time, it's potential for being an ecomomic engine was admired.
I note I'm not triggering Godwins law here because I'm not comparing my oponent to Hitler. Instead I'm saying that we are indeed backing into something that is facism in everything but name only, both the good and the bad.
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Re:Seriously it is quite an achievement (Score:5, Interesting)
What if the government starts to print lots of money to fund that stuff, creating a large invisible tax on everyone through inflation?
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Re:Seriously it is quite an achievement (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with this is it drives up interest rates. A bunch. If I'm losing 12% a year due to inflation, and I want 3% interest for my risk and profit, I will not loan out money for less than 15%, as it's a losing proposition.
We are in defect spending right now, and cutting services is political suicide. Here's the options:
1) Continue deficit spending. Eventually, that compound interest catches up, and we default. At that point, the US can't get debt as easily, and spending is cut to meet income. What a novel concept.
2) Inflation. Do it too much, and it gets too expensive for us to borrow. If we can't borrow, we're in the same boat as #1. This is effectively a tax on people with money.
3) Cut spending. This is a good thing. Running a house with a vicious cycle of debt never works. Why would it work for a government?
4) Taxes. Lots and lots of taxes. This leads to tax evasion, businesses (and people) leaving the country, etc. Excessive taxation is horrible for business, and places an unnecessary burden on small businesses and the poor (no matter how "progressive" it is.)
Sadly, it looks like #4 is the way we're largely going to go. With all the liabilities we have, we're in for some real pain [youtube.com] in the not-so-distant future. This will not work as they think, either.
Here's a quick example:
I run a software company. We are a US corporation, hiring US workers, with US taxes. All of our sales are done in-person, or over the internet. Corporate income tax can be avoided to a large extent through business expenses, leading to an effective tax rate not too much more than the income tax. Company pays employees, employees pay taxes, done. It works out to something like 40%, all said and done.
Now, suppose the tax climate gets really nasty. A company like mine doesn't have to be located in the United States - most of our customers aren't anyway.
So, it is possible to:
1) Set up shop in Panama (who doesn't tax corporations on income derived outside the country).
2) Move to another country (for example, Japan). Japan doesn't tax foreign-derived income for people who aren't "permanent residents". The US exempts the first $80,000 [businesstaxrecovery.com]. So, the first $80,000 are tax-free.
3) If you can live off $80,000 for a while, you can get paid in options [efmoody.com]. Provided you meet the criteria, this can end up capital gains. So, your taxes on this ends up at 15%.
So, for a hypothetical person making $150,000 - the taxes would be approx $10,500, or a 7% tax rate.
Large companies can do similar things, like "license" a bunch of technology from a company they own, located in a jurisdiction that doesn't tax them (like Ireland [finfacts.com]). This lets them reduce their taxable income and funnel the profits to something taxed at a much lower rate. Invest in Irish corp, license _from_ Irish corp, pay 15% taxes.
Yes, closing the capital gains "loophole" would even things out a bit; however, it has a lot of collateral damage; including people renouncing citizenship, reduced investment, etc. Given the credit crunch we're having, it really doesn't make a lot of sense.
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Re:Seriously it is quite an achievement (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Seriously it is quite an achievement (Score:5, Interesting)
It's starting to look more and more like all those ideals were just a relatively short-lived fluke as we barter away our true freedoms for freedom from responsibility.
Both the bill that was shot down and the bill that passed were disapproved by the majority of the citizenry. The People had no say so in the matter, the whole thing was rammed twice through the House in three days. If the House had shot it down again, the fucking bill with ever increasing pork and tax breaks would probably have been rammed three, four, five times in the course of the next week.
Why did the bill return to the House just after being rejected? And considering that the Fed quietly pumped around $600 billion into the casino known as Wall Street on Tuesday, even as the House was voting "nay" on the bill, are there any doubts that The People have absolutely no say so in the matter?
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Re:Seriously it is quite an achievement (Score:5, Insightful)
I saw a lot of people saying no to this bill. A lot of people against it. But no one have come forward with any plans that, after analysis, would be any better.
This bill is far from a good thing. However, it was a stopgag measure to refrain thing from getting worst. No serious analyst ever say this would make thing all right.
Coming from a country that spends trillions on military, I actually see this bill as something positive. Yes, it was far from being a good thing, but it was a necessary thing. I'm pretty sure all those thousands that lost their jobs on September wish this bill was passed earlier. Not to mention all the people that lost a good part of their life savings.
Trying to separate Wall Street from the rest of USA, a country where something like 40% to 50% of the people have money invested in stocks (directly or indirectly) is just plain stupid.
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Re:Seriously it is quite an achievement (Score:5, Insightful)
There were plenty of alternatives proposed that were less intrusive, safer, and better targeted to unfreeze liquidity to buy us time to fix the real problem of reckless, unregulated trading in fraudulently valued housing derivatives.
All were all rounded rejected by Paulson and taken off the table without further debate. If you doubt this, do some research. The rush to pass this via fear-mongering is typical administration bullying at its worst.
The Paulson plan is a naked power grab. Stop trying to sugar-coat it. It's a last ditch effort to save investment bank cronies from getting crushed from the upcoming recession by buying their junk at prices way above market value.
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Re:Seriously it is quite an achievement (Score:5, Interesting)
Reposted: originally by Greyfox:
Early on in this administration they changed the bankruptcy rules to make it harder to declare bankruptcy, stating that individual Americans need to be more responsible with their borrowing. At the same time they've driven this country into historic levels of debt and are now debating a bail out package for their friends on wall street with $700+ billion of taxpayer dollars. Time and again they vote to support their friends in big business, but if you're an individual facing possible homelessness they'll treat you to some weasel words and turn their back on you.
This November we should all vote with one voice, Democrat and Republican, against the current corrupt congress. We should vote across the board, not Democrat or Republican but against anyone sitting in office. We should kick every single one of those bastards out, and we should keep kicking them out after just one term until they once more represent the people and not the businesses that contribute millions of dollars a year to their campaign funds. We should keep kicking them out until they spend more time doing the jobs we elected them to do instead of gallivanting around and campaigning for most of their terms. We should keep kicking them out until we find some people who actually take the responsibility to fix the major problems in thus country.
It is time to put aside our petty differences and root out this corruption that infects our very core, before it destroys this country.
I know at least 20 people including myself that are planning to do just this. I wonder how many others are going to vote against the incumbent?
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Re:Seriously it is quite an achievement (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the real concerns is, how successful would a Fascist state be if it carefully avoided scapegoating whole races or ethnicities? What happens if the government bends over backwards to avoid specifically profiling Muslems as terrorists, but still keeps people constantly worried about those unspecified but presumably swarthy terrorists still lurking out there in some not too carefully specified cells. Does Fascism have to simplify everything into racial or ethnic lines, or can it survive by creating more nuanced pools of enemies.
At this late date, most people have lost sight of the fact that the Nazis didn't really start putting Jews in the camps, in large numbers, until late 1941 or early 42. Before that, the camps programs had focused on minor criminals and mental defectives with the claim that they would be rehabilitated and not simply destroyed.
Smaller religious groups had already been classed as enemies of the state, i.e. most of the estimated 45,000 Seventh Day Adventists in Germany were rounded up or forced to leave for refusing to swear loyalty oaths before 41, but people didn't react to such numbers. A lot of Romany and Jews entered the programs at this time (with a lot being tens or hundreds of thousands respectively by 1941, not the millions later), but most of the Romany were the ones classed as petty criminals, and most of the Jews as Bolsheviks, Wobblies, or other political problems, not for their race, per se. It was after that time that they were reclassified as just part of the larger Jewish problem.
If something similar happened in America, it would probably involve (as just one example) a transition where the black population currently in prison for mostly drug offenses became just part of a larger 'Black problem', and was used to justify mass interments there. So long as the government can argue that they aren't targeting blacks, just treating crack cocaine as a special crisis that's worse than the other kind of cocaine sold to white neighborhoods, and similar claims, they can get the effect without appearing, to many, overtly racist at all.
Another possibility is to fictionalize and fractionalize problem groups in a way any opposition party would tolerate, and allow some opposition - i.e. a government saying "we have nothing against gays, just those bad, promiscuous gays who are spreading HIV by refusing to give up their promiscuity. We have to inter them, for public safety, but it's not like we are targeting all those other gays." Then the government doesn't accuse the political thorns in its side of being homosexuals, but of being secret members of the bad subtype of homosexual, when it rounds them up.
Or create a new term. Everyone's tired of the red scare era, and won't believe a government who sees commies under every bed, So call them "Unmutualists", like in The Prisoner TV show. Want to lock up those commies, or union organizers, or anyone who gets in the way of profits? Just insist that the way they sound, they are obviously secret unmutualists, using special code words that reveal their conspiracy, and not just typical protestors or unionizers or whatever. Change the new out group every few months, before a real oposition can get organized under that name, and you have a Fascism that can target problem individuals without ever having to pick on a natural group.
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Re:Seriously it is quite an achievement (Score:5, Informative)
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You realize, of course, that you've left a lot out (Score:5, Interesting)
You realize, of course, that you've left a lot out?
You realize, of course, that the CRA did not force banks to make loans to individuals who couldn't afford them? What it did do was say that you could not refuse credit based on location or area (redlining) and instead had to base your loan evaluation on the INDIVIDUAL, and upon the individual's ability to pay. (Try reading the bill and not the Wiki.)
You realize, of course, that the vast majority of the subprime loans that are going belly-up were made by financial institutions like CountryWide... which are not banks, and as such, WERE NOT COVERED BY THE CRA IN THE FIRST PLACE.
You realize, of course, that in early 2005, the Office of Thrift Supervision (under GW Bush) implemented new rules that substantially weakened the CRA, and as such, its impact on credit markets?
You realize, of course, that a good portion of our current crisis [wikipedia.org] is caused by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, introduced by Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX), which in 1999 repealed part of the Glass-Steagall Act, opening up "competition" among banks, securities companies and insurance companies. Which in turn lead to our current set of mega-institutions that are so large and intertwined they can't be allowed to fail?
The same Phil Gramm, BTW, that was John McCain's presidential campaign co-chair and his most senior economic adviser. The same Gramm that in July explained the nation was not in a recession, stating, "We have sort of become a nation of whiners."
I could continue, but suffice to say that there's a lot of information that your oh-so-insightful post left out.
Do you work for the Republican campaign? I only ask because such blatant cherry-picking of the facts to suit your own position is a party trademark.
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Re:first post (Score:5, Insightful)
No, free market capitalism is when private companies reap all the benefits and ordinary tax payers take all the risks.
Atleast that is what always seem to happen.
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