Dirty secret of the bailout

[Cuchulain]

'A critical - and radical - component of the bailout package proposed by the Bush administration has thus far failed to garner the serious attention of anyone in the press. Section 8 (which ironically reminds one of the popular name of the portion of the 1937 Housing Act that paved the way for subsidized affordable housing ) of this legislation is just a single sentence of thirty-two words, but it represents a significant consolidation of power and an abdication of oversight authority that's so flat-out astounding that it ought to set one's hair on fire. It reads, in its entirety:

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
In short, the so-called "mother of all bailouts," which will transfer $700 billion taxpayer dollars to purchase the distressed assets of several failed financial institutions, will be conducted in a manner unchallengeable by courts and ungovernable by the People's duly sworn representatives. All decision-making power will be consolidated into the Executive Branch - who, we remind you, will have the incentive to act upon this privilege as quickly as possible, before they leave office. The measure will run up the budget deficit by a significant amount, with no guarantee of recouping the outlay, and no fundamental means of holding those who fail to do so accountable.' http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/0..._n_128294.html

[hippifried]

Jason Linkins is full of shit, along with everybody else who keeps trying to make the case that this bailout has anything to do with mortgages. These guys have already dumped their bad real estate paper on Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac, who are now holding over 80% of the mortgage paper in America. The take-back of Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac (which has yet to be approved by Congress BTW) is entirely separate from this latest bailout scheme. This is about buying up the bad debts floating around between the banks, brokerages, speculators, & everybody else who's been artificially driving up the various financial markets on a borrowed dime for the last 25 years or more. The whole industry has been trying to borrow its way out of debt. Sound familiar? The mortgage crisis, coupled with the oil fiasco, just shone a bright light on the speculators & short sellers along with their underwriters. Oops! The roaches had no place to scurry off to & now they're getting stepped on. It's just a big ponzi scheme.

[PapaGrande]

"failed to garner the serious attention of anyone in the press"

ahhhh, this has been all over the media, where have you been?

The whole thing is bullshit, Bush's plan and the Democrats plan. The only right option is to let these companies fail.

[NYBURBS]

The whole thing is bullshit, Bush's plan and the Democrats plan. The only right option is to let these companies fail.

Amen bro, I'm not looking to pay more taxes or see us go into bigger debt. Let them fail and then others will come along to buy their holdings and start fresh. Oh and of course it will send the message not to engage in bad business practices.

[Cuchulain]

Whether or not Linkins is full of shit, the idea of giving any one man that kind of power with no oversight should be a red flag. They're going to pass some kind of bailout. That language needs to be removed.

[Cuchulain]

Rachel Maddow's candy analogy and Robert Reich on those 32 little words in Paulson's 3 page plan: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540...44712#26844712

[hippifried]

The whole thing is bullshit, Bush's plan and the Democrats plan. The only right option is to let these companies fail.

I agree with the sentiment, but pragmatism needs to trump sentiment.

What we have happening is a cascade of failures that could topple the federal reserve. Again, my sentiment says "So what?". I have my money in a credit union that's not tied directly to the fed & is solvent. I think. I hope.

Irrespective of anyone's opinion of whether the federal reserve should exist in the first place, if it falls, the entire US economy & maybe that of the world goes with it. The crash of '29 was bad, but the markets are a whole lot bigger now & tangled together globally. Solvent or insolvent won't matter. The only people who are independent from the financial markets are the destitute. If the banks all fail, & they will unless they're selling short & making things worse, so does industry & trade. There's no way to defeat the interlock.

I don't care about the mucky-mucks of the industry. As far as I'm concerned, they've been perpetrating a fraud & should have their personal assets siezed & be playing "pick up the soap" with Bubba. That includes Paulson & Bernanke. I'd like to see Alan Greenspan impaled & hanging 10 feet above the floor of the NYSE. Wishful sentiment. On the pragmatic side: I don't care about taxes. I can deal with them. Inflation has been a fact of life for almost my entire adult life. I've learned to cope, & not dwell on or let petty things like taxes & living costs rule my life. I've been in the situation where I didn't know where my next meal was coming from or where I was going to sleep that night. I don't ever want to go back to that. I don't want to end up in the soup line because of the incompetence of the thieves & gamblers on Wall Street. So, yeah. Something needs to be done to stop the hemorrhage & slow down the cascade of failures long enough to let everyone cool down & figure out all the details of how this situation came about. Speculation is all fine & dandy, but without knowing what's actually going on, there's no way to get a handle on it. I think it's pretty obvious by now that the market isn't going to straighten this out.

[NYBURBS]

Look if the market and economy crash that badly then there will be a revolt, and to be quite straight forward it's time for ppl to get kicked in the balls and wake up to what is taking place. The whole federal reserve system is insane to begin with, and it's not that I want to suffer myself or see others suffer, but this charade has gone on long enough and needs to end. If a catastrophic collapse is necessary for that to happen then so be it. As for the global issue, the rest of the world isn't going to raise their income taxes or increase their debt to help pay this 700 billion dollar bailout off, so these arguments about how they need us to bail out the market should fall on deaf ears.

Between these knuckle heads invading countries all over the world and rigging the economy via the fed, we have all been royally fucked. Perhaps from a pragmatic viewpoint there needs to be an intervention but placing generations to come in even bigger debt is not acceptable. We are printing money that is not backed by anything, we have long been on a course toward disaster and 700 billion dollars is not going to fix that.

[hippifried]

Look if the market and economy crash that badly then there will be a revolt, and to be quite straight forward it's time for ppl to get kicked in the balls and wake up to what is taking place. The whole federal reserve system is insane to begin with, and it's not that I want to suffer myself or see others suffer, but this charade has gone on long enough and needs to end. If a catastrophic collapse is necessary for that to happen then so be it.

No there won't. Why would there be? Nobody can agree on who the enemy is in actual war. What makes you think there'd be enough agreement on who to revolt against for people to aim their weapons at the same people? War requires organization & there just isn't any outside of the government you think we should revolt against. Nope. Just soup lines. If that lasts for a few decades, then maybe, but I doubt it.

As for the global issue, the rest of the world isn't going to raise their income taxes or increase their debt to help pay this 700 billion dollar bailout off, so these arguments about how they need us to bail out the market should fall on deaf ears.

True enough. That's why none of them can be a consideration in anything we do. Unless, of course, they want to cooperate. This really is a global problem & reigning it in on that scale would go a long way toward getting everything back on an even keel & toning down all this global animosity.

Between these knuckle heads invading countries all over the world and rigging the economy via the fed, we have all been royally fucked. Perhaps from a pragmatic viewpoint there needs to be an intervention but placing generations to come in even bigger debt is not acceptable. We are printing money that is not backed by anything, we have long been on a course toward disaster and 700 billion dollars is not going to fix that.

Again, I agree with the sentiment. I just think there's a major misconception about what's happening. We're already deep in debt from the stupidity of trying to solve problems with guns. At least buying assets, debts, has a potential of revenue neutrality if the debts get paid in the end. We're not talking mortages here, but it might be better if we were. 97% of consumers pay their mortgages & credit payments on time, or pretty close. What this really is, is loans that "financial institutions" took out to pay other debts that they already had. Over & over again, the marketeers have been trying to borrow their way out of debt. Kind of like running a tab at a casino hoping to hit the right number on the roulette wheel. Over 35 bets & you lose no matter what the little ball does. Everybody's tapped out.

I don't think it's necessary or desirable to try & "fix the economy". What's needed is a change in our mindset to rethink all these economic theories that we take for granted. As we go along, it's becoming more obvious that these theories don't work out as planned in practice. Economists are just philosophers. If economic mechanisms are so cut & dry, why do we need all of these guys? If economics is self-evident, why do we need it constantly sold to us?

This whole idea that we're "printing too much money" is also a misconception. What's too much? Is there a glut of cash circulating? Where is it? It's hogwash. Part of the sales pitch. You have to keep printing money because cash is perishable. If you added up every unit of tangible currency in the world, it wouldn't come close to the total of just US dollars that are entered on the various ledgers around just the US. Truth is that money isn't really a commodity & therefore isn't subject to the same rules of supply & demand that are supposed to control commodities. Money is the exchange medium that allows us to skip the intermediate steps in bartering what we have for what we want. That's all it is, & it only works if it's in circulation & accepted as tender. It can't continue to work if it's traded as a commodity because there's no exchange medium when you do that. Buying & selling money? With what? Currency trading is a fraud. It's all short selling. The only way to make a profit is to inflate the numbers, & you do that by devaluing the currencies one at a time. Stop this practice & inflation goes away or at least slows to manageable crawl because the downward pressure is allieved.

"That ain't workin'
That's the way you do it
Get your money for nothin'
& your chicks for free"

[NYBURBS]

No there won't. Why would there be? Nobody can agree on who the enemy is in actual war. What makes you think there'd be enough agreement on who to revolt against for people to aim their weapons at the same people? War requires organization & there just isn't any outside of the government you think we should revolt against. Nope. Just soup lines. If that lasts for a few decades, then maybe, but I doubt it.

First of all revolt does not necessarily mean armed revolt. There are many forms of it, and I most certainly do think there would be some form of it.

This whole idea that we're "printing too much money" is also a misconception. What's too much? Is there a glut of cash circulating? Where is it? It's hogwash.

It has to do with what can be backed up and what can not. What is it connected to or grounded in. Essentially the guarantees we make. You're right that the printing phrase is crude, but you seem like a bright guy that is aware of the actual issue here. It's these artificial gimmicks I have a problem with, they're designed to put lipstick on the pig and to keep the high valued assets in the hands of few.