Bailout!

[Joseph Burkeson, CMI]

Boo, friggin' hoo!

=================================

The Rage of the Previously Rich

A Lehman trader copes with the sudden onset of income shrinkage.
By Gabriel Sherman, Published Sep 21, 2008

The ’97 Barbaresco was not supposed to be opened for this. Stashed under a desk on the third floor of Lehman Brothers’ Seventh Avenue headquarters, the bottle awaited an appropriate victory. Like food, wine pairs well with vast sums of money.

But on Friday, September 12, as Lehman’s stock flatlined at $3.65 per share, the Trader knew it was time to uncork the Santo Stefano. He was in his late thirties, at the prime of his earning potential, a standout in one of Lehman’s profitable trading divisions. When the stock price had fallen below $20 a share in July, the Trader knew things were bad but took solace in the prospect of one more bonus cycle. Things are bad; things will be bad for a while. We’ll hunker down and survive, he had thought then.

But the fact that the Trader’s desk met its targets in August meant nothing at Lehman, where cascading losses from a few epic bets on commercial real estate triggered a firmwide meltdown. As one recently laid-off Lehman staffer said, in characteristic Wall Street vernacular, “These assholes on another floor completely dropped our pants.”


Read the whole tawdry article here: http://nymag.com/news/businessfinance/50523/

[William J. Decker]

You can sum up much of 20th century history by saying that in the 1930s Americans decided that markets didn't work and government did, and that in the 1970s Americans decided that government didn't work and markets did.
The protracted and painful experiences of those decades changed basic public attitudes on the balance between government and markets, between regulation and enterprise, between government aid programs and self-reliance. The breadlines and depression of the 1930s moved Americans in one direction; the gas lines and stagflation of the 1970s moved them in the other.
Which raises the question of whether the financial ructions of 2007-08 (09?) will move them back again. One reason to believe this is possible is the passage of time. Americans in the 1980s and 1990s were ready to accept deregulation and tax cuts and welfare reform because so few of them had personal memories of the 1930s.
In 1992, Bill Clinton ran as a different kind of Democrat because so many voters then had personal memories of the 1970s. Today, fewer do. Half the voters did not reach adulthood until the 1980s. They never sat behind the steering wheel in a gas line or paid monthly bills as inflation was skyrocketing. It's plausible that they may be more open to big government programs than their elders.
Barack Obama and other Democrats have used the financial crisis to spin a narrative. The problem, they say, is deregulation and greed. This is not strictly speaking accurate. Obama and the Democrats opposed tighter regulation of the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and John McCain supported it. Unregulated firms like hedge funds have done well, while heavily regulated banks have had troubles.
But the narrative will be advanced by the Obama-loving media ... and by the passage of a giant financial bailout -- er, rescue package. The likelihood, as this is written, is that Obama will be elected president and the Democrats will expand their congressional majorities. Possibly even to the 60 votes they need to effectively control the Senate.
In that case, Democrats might be able to move toward nationalized health care finance. Their card-check bill will promote unionization and do to much of the private sector what union contracts have done to the Detroit Three automakers. Higher taxes and overregulation could reduce economic vitality and creativity. Comparable worth laws could have bureaucrats setting private sector salaries. America could move some distance to becoming another France.
Those seeking that outcome would do well to study some history. Some New Deal-Great Society programs have mostly worked well over the long term: bank deposit insurance, securities market regulation. Some worked well for many years but are on the road to something like financial collapse: Social Security, Medicare. But some had adverse economic effects and proved unpopular: high taxes on high earners, industrial unionization.
The economy in the 1930s suffered from what Amity Shlaes in "The Forgotten Man" calls a "capital strike," with unemployment stuck over 10 percent. Take a look at the polls in the 1940 election. If voters had decided on domestic issues, the Democrats probably would have lost. Franklin Roosevelt won because Adolf Hitler, with his then-ally Joseph Stalin, had conquered most of Europe and was threatening Britain and the United States. Roosevelt's experience and his steady hand on foreign policy won him his third term.
The war that followed produced huge economic growth and sharp increases in income equality -- the biggest such movement in American history. But the war policies -- government taking up nearly half of gross domestic product, the mobilization of the equivalent of 37 million in the military -- are not replicable under any circumstances foreseeable today.
Postwar America continued to grow, with help from the John Kennedy tax cuts, declining unionization and (I would argue) the civil rights acts. But eventually, in the 1970s, regulation designed to freeze a static economy in place and macroeconomic policies complacent about the danger of inflation (the big problem in the 1930s was deflation) produced the gas lines and stagflation voters rebelled against. Policies inspired by the inflection point of the 1930s led to a different inflection point in the 1970s.
Are we looking at another inflection point today? Maybe so. Reviewing the long course of history, I think it's obvious that market capitalism, together with the rule of law, hard currency and regulations that ensure transparency and accountability, has produced bounteous growth and the resources to address problems that require government action, like defending the nation and protecting the environment. But voters tend to consider only the history they know. They might do well to look back a little further.

Hope this helps;

[Joseph Burkeson, CMI]

Originally Posted by wdecker

Hope this helps;

Sorry but no, paragraphs are our friends, embrace them.

[Joseph Burkeson, CMI]

Among the key bull**** segments of the bill:

EXECUTIVE PAY. Restrictions would be imposed on the compensation received by executives whose companies sell some of their bad assets through the government's purchase program. There would be tax restrictions on executive pay over $500,000 and limits on so-called "golden parachutes" for executives who leave the companies getting government bailouts.

OVERSIGHT. The Treasury will be required to provide details of its purchases of bad assets within two days of the transaction. Oversight boards would be created including one with members selected by Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate and one that will include top government officials.

TAXPAYER PROTECTION. Taxpayers would be given ownership stakes in companies whose bad assets are purchased and after five years if the government is facing a loss in the program then the president will be required to submit a plan on how to recoup a portion of the losses from the companies that participated in the program.

We're so far past screwed that the light from screwed isn't going to get here for a million years.

[Christopher Currins]

It's not so bad they dropped it to 700 billion.


$700 Billion: 'Nobody Believes That's Going to Be the Final Cost'

[Joseph Burkeson, CMI]

BAILOUT - Michael Burgess House Representative Speaks on Martial Law

[William J. Decker]

Originally Posted by jburkeson1

BAILOUT - Michael Burgess House Representative Speaks on Martial Law

FYI.

The "Martial Law" that the Rep was speaking about was an unfortunate exageration. What he meant was that, under the house rules, the Speaker has required (with the House Sargent-in-Arms enforcing) that all members stay the whole weekend to work on this bill.

As to the bill, it isn't good, but it is better than the alternative. And, now, the Repubs have had some input.

[Joseph Burkeson, CMI]

Originally Posted by wdecker

As to the bill, it isn't good, but it is better than the alternative. And, now, the Repubs have had some input.

I am hoping that my party (Republican) has the balls to do the right thing for the American people but I doubt it. The political backlash will be very grave for anyone who votes in favor of this bailout for the wall street fatcats & international banking whores.

This is a banker’s coup cooked up and facilitated by the deep-money guys who operate stealthily behind the political sideshow. The only time they emerge from their stinkholes is when they’re flushed out by a crisis that threatens their continued dominance.

The financial system is blowing up. Don’t listen to the experts; just look at the numbers. Last week, according to Reuters, “U.S. banks borrowed a record amount from the Federal Reserve nearly $188 billion a day on average, showing the central bank went to extremes to keep the banking system afloat amid the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression.”

The Fed opened the various “auction facilities” to create the appearance that insolvent banks were thriving businesses, but they are not. They’re dead; their liabilities exceed their assets. Now the Fed is desperate because the hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) in the banks vaults have bankrupt the entire system and the Fed’s balance sheet is ballooning by the day.

The market for MBS will not bounce back in the foreseeable future and the banks are unable to roll-over their short term debt. Game over. The Federal Reserve itself is in danger. So, it’s on to Plan B; which is to dump all the toxic sludge on the taxpayer before he realizes that the whole system is cratering and his life is about to change forever. It’s called the Paulson Plan, a $700 billion boondoggle which has already been disparaged by every economist of merit in the country.

[Michael Larson]

Is your name Mike Whitney?

Trouble in Banktopia: Stop the "Banksters!"
Mike Whitney
Infowars
September 27, 2008

Or Here