Am I the only one afraid of giving $700B to Wall Street?

You're far from alone in being upset *IF* your example were to come to fruition. Time will tell.

Nope, you aren't the only one. I'm not thrilled that we taxpayers are going to pay ... once again ... for someone else's screw up.

it went to poor people that these socialists like DODD, OBMAMA ANnd BARNABY FRANK decided should get to buy houses even though they have no business owning a 72' dodge dart let alone a friggen home financed by us people that actullay pay thier bills.

Partisan bullshit, Milhouse.

You're much beloved Republicans have raped the American people just as much as those evil Democrats. It's just too bad your ass is worn out so you can't feel it any more.

Everyone is responsible and that's the universal consensus. We privatized the profit and socialized the consequence.

thats a load of crap and you know it morganic.

excutive compensation isn't the problem here.

they should get as much as they can get. is it a lot? yup. but its not thier fault. you questioning someone elses paycheck is not right. they should negotiate as much as they can get. baseball players get paid tons and tons. thier money comes right out of your pocket. shouldnt' going to a ball game be free? baseball is a game.

I don't question if you make too much money on home accenets and whatnoteries that you sell. you should get as much as you possibly can.

you dont want the gov't legislating exec pay any more than you want them to legislate YOUR pay. oh wait barak wants to do that by taking more of it out of your paycheck already.

if they really thought they could replace louise winthorp with billy ray, and pay the guy 30k plus tips to run a bank, they certainly would.


instead of looking at exec paychecks, they should prosecute under Sarbanes/Oxley or SEC fraud regulations, the officers of any company that goes insolvent and threatens the health of the economy.

IT IS BANK FRAUD, DESIGNED BY THE LIBERAL, not a CLASS WAR PAY ISSUE....



THE REAL PROBLEM:
its loaning to people that can't pay thier bills. they all default. you get the bailout bill for the bank that goes under, and threatens the economy.

ask, who champions loans for the indigent???

"I'm from the Federal Government, and I'm here to help..."

THATS THE GUY THAT STOLE THE MONEY.

and morganic, your republican govenor of this commonwealth was among the first to implement universal healthcare in this state.

what the hell are you talking about.

FEELING GOOD BILLY RAY!!!

slave owners?

that's a bold charge to make.

if its so easy you do it. you go make the big bets and play in the big leagues.

else shut up and dont blame the risk taker that has balls enough to make bets and create jobs.

the people you hate are the engine of innovation that create jobs and technology and growth.

"the people you hate are the engine of innovation that create jobs and technology and growth. "

You mean engines of innovation like the CEOs of those failed investment banks? Or perhaps you meant engines of innovation like Carly Fiorina and those guys who were in charge of Enron?

The reality is there are no consequences for CEO failure. Once you're in da club, you can fuck up over and over again and still come out with millions of dollars in golden parachute money.

In the meantime, the people who worked for the companies that shitty CEOs screwed up, end up getting fucked over.

Yeah, I just love those "engines of innovation" who never really have to take ANY risks, because it's all upside for them.

and while YOU personally had issues with what carly did, she inherited some bagage what would you have done, since it's no risk and an easy job, how would you have dealt with all that?

Roger, are YOU a CEO? I suspect not.

i'm not a ceo.


you are though.


hello morganic YOU ARE ONE!!!

...there are still pitchforks and torches available.

And rope.

If these guys are really that smart, they'll realize that they need to start taking care of the people who did the work that earned them the obscene money that they now are hoarding. A little compassion goes a long way...

And there's no possibility of a "Golden Parachute" since there are no shareholders and no stock. How can I steal money from myself? Especially if there isn't any money to steal??

Roger, you're much too smart to take such a position. You obviously understand the difference between a self-employed small home-based business like me and a CEO of a Fortune 500 corporation, and how their manipulations have caused this financial crisis. Plain and simple, they took the money and ran, and now the shit is hitting the fan. And the conservative right doesn't want to have to pay for it, they'd rather let the "little people" lose their homes, and then swoop in and scoop them up to make a nice profit - on top of making the taxpayers (especially the middle class) let them off the hook for screwing up before.

Oh, so you are a really risk averse, low growth, 0-job creation business.

You've created 0 jobs, so yeah, its also likely you will screw 0 people over, and lay off nobody.

why does that make you a saint? it doesn't
Allow me to get biblical on your ass: Matthew 25:14-30
The parable of the Talents.

you are the 3rd servant.

"For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.
And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."


Still, that makes you a CEO. your parrots probably think you're an asshole for eating limburger on pumpernickle when all you feed them them is stale seed and make them say human things when people come to visit. ;)

Wayne, I don't see this as right vs. left issue. A lot of things had to happen for this mess to occur. And a lot of people, left and right and indifferent had and still have their hand in our pockets.

i thought we were having a polite intersting conversation morganic!!!

the point is - the ceo's of the banks are complicit, but anyone that takes out a loan for a home and can't pay it off when the rates change and home values shift - they are the culprits here.

living beyond thier means on OUR Dime.

So Lucent was a "speedbump" on the way to success for Fiorina's failure at HP. Can I have whatever you're smoking?

I really would like to live in the simplistic black and white world you live in, Milhouse. It's got to be easier than living in the infinite shades of grey world the rest of us live in.

This thread has gone off topic, unless you want to ask who are the guys who profited from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Those must be the guys that Morganic wants to pay back the money.

Tell him who they are milhouse.

If these guys were Republicans, the press would be going wild with the latest "Republican Scandal" regarding these sub-prime lenders. But it's a Democrat Scandal, so it's not reported as a scandal at all, it's reported as "mistakes being made on both sides..." etc. etc. etc.

These "companies" were designed to give homes to people who couldn't pay for them, does that really sound like a Republican idea to you?!?!?!

I dont care what CEOs get paid - that is not the problem.

if you think CEO pay is the problem, you are quite frankly missing it completly.

apparenly the FBI is now onto it.

these bailouts are required because FRAUD was perptrated.

If the CEO ran a business that failed, so be it. if he negotiated sweet deals for himself good for him.

IF HE BROKE THE LAW, AND STUCK ME WITH THE BILL, THROW HIS ASS IN PRISON (A LA ENRON).

nypost.com/seven/09242008/new...

and, before you throw carly under the bus, tell me about the wild success that Palmer and Olsen had???

Those to combined to turn the massachusetts mircale in to a pile of shit.

sad thing about it is
there is not a fucking thing you can do about it

"...grasping at straws for ways to discredit Democrats during election season."

'Scranton Joe' is doing a bang up job of that all by himself.

The "real reach" here, CM, is the idea that those evil Democrats did this all on their own and that the saintly Republicans are complete innocents in all of this. It's partisan spin.

Typical. Republican. Politics.

And Milhouse, please get a clue before you start talking about Palmer and Olsen. Palmer's job was to do things to make DEC attactive for buyout. And WTF is your problem with Ken Olsen. He did a good job, but he didn't change with the times. DEC was largely successful under Olsen's leadership. Wildly successful, in fact. In any case, Fiorina was a BAD CEO. Not just bad at HP, but bad at Lucent too. Bad is bad. There's no defense for that kind of bad.

But what of 'Scranton Joe'..? What of hiiiiiiiiiim!?!?!?!?

BTW...
David Wetherell is/was the best CEO eva.

"Heck, the CEO of Polaroid has bodyguards (and threats on his life to justify hiring them) because of the despicable things that company did to its employees."

He was just doing a good job. Just ask Milhouse.

Yup, there are an awful lot of 20-somethings living in 4000sq.ft. McMansions who can't afford to heat and/or furnish half the house. I've never seen so many forclosures in the real estate listings.

politicians are skunks
all you skunks out there take no offense

I think Artek is right to point the finger at the mortgage brokers and the people that took the loans they couldnt pay back are dead on in the middle of this.

you sign your name on a pieice of paper there has to be some personal accountability.

> They forced private companies into giving out those loans.
...
> Republicans do NOT go out of their way to give poor
> people mortgages. Can't we agree on that?

If you mean Republican politicians/policymakers, I'll agree with you. If you mean mortgage and real estate brokers who happen to be Republicans, sorry, greed trumps political affiliation every time with those folks.

I did say "might" and "distant third" when talking about the Bush administration blame. I admit I don't know jack about what the laws actually say and even who wrote them. Maybe you're talking about these "Enterprise Zones" where they rebuilt inner city areas and rewarded people for developing areas in poorer neighborhoods? (I vaguely remember that as a democrat-sponsored idea.)

However, I think the avalanche of bad loans cannot be solely attributed to that phenomenon. If the talking heads I've been hearing on TV are to be believed (and that is certainly no given), it sounds like we had credit being extended based on "assets" that were in fact really just junk-bond like, variable rate mortgages that often were approved with little, no, or falsified documentation. You know, fraud. They didn't care. They got their commission, and by the time the consumer defaulted or wanted to sell, they were long gone.

My first mortgage (back before the first real estate price drop in the late 80's) was completely wrong in terms of what the estimated escrow payments were supposed to be. My suspicion is that if the real numbers had been put in, the loan wouldn't have gone through. I'm betting that many of these loans that people are defaulting on were shoved through in similar fashion.

"This really IS a Democrat caused thing. They forced private companies into giving out those loans."

Ok. Please point me to an UNBIASED source for the allegation that the Democrats FORCED lenders to give out bad loans.

dems is facts jack.

21 out of 25 recipients of bribes by the organizations chartered with this corrupt program are DEMOCRATS.


un biased fact.

IN CASE YOU DIDN'T KNOW WHAT FANNIE MAE's CHARTER IS:

Fannie Mae operates under a federal charter called the Federal National Mortgage Association Charter Act, which confers certain rights and responsibilities on the company. The charter requires that the company increase liquidity in the residential mortgage finance market, promote access to mortgage credit throughout the country and provide assistance to the secondary market for residential mortgages.

Fannie Mae has a special responsibility to facilitate housing for low- and moderate-income families and housing in underserved areas. Fannie Mae's status as a federally-chartered institution also confers certain benefits that help the company fulfill its mission. These benefits include:

exclusion from the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) registration requirements*


exemption from state and local income taxes


the availability of our debt as collateral for public deposits


the eligibility of our securities for Federal Reserve open market purchases; and the ability of the U.S. Treasury Department to purchase up to $2.25 billion of our debt

In other words, you have no unbiased sources that support your assertions.

Got it.

got it.

One word GREED !!
I feel bad for the little guy or gal who wanted a piece of the American dream and were swindled..I have no mercy for the poeple who needed that 500,000 dollar home or the second one on a lake, or the I gotta have gluttons........
I only hope things work out and my children can even afford a 2 bedroom house somewhere !

this was funny last night...

youtube.com/watch?v=tco5h_zpr...

Dog man relax CM has always been shitting on the Democrats..That is just what he does! Don't let what he or anyone else say "rent Space in your head" What do they know?
Al I think you have the best approach...LMAO !!

and yes... I'm ASKING... not making any claims.

Dog..I just do nto want to see you get upset over this.....I was a Democrat until Obama won the nomination....I have always liked McCain...He gets my vote and I agree with you...
"holding some people's feet to the fire to support their assertions. "

you hate me so much, you've been telling us the night is sunny and the day is dark.

sky is red.

jackass.

BTW, nice personal attacks. Exactly the sort of thing the rabid right wingers resort to when you start feeling butt hurt.

You're full of fail, Milhouse. Epic fail.

Oh, and ***SWOOSH***

copyright 2004 Kennium

YIKEs !! One comment about the "little guy" There are plenty of "little guys" who are just as greedy and underhanded as the big guys. Don't feel too sorry for them.

Clearly, Ronin, you are an Obama supporter if you believe that "they all have their hands bloody".

At least according to right wing political thinking. And left wing political thinking too, I'd guess.

And I could not agree with you more.

One of the few times P78 and I will agree.

Greed. Not political affiliation.

When you knowingly lend money to those who can't afford it on the idea that WHEN (not if) they lose the property, it will be worth more... that's nothing more than gambling on a huge scale.

Now the bail out will cost billions, it comes out of our pockets and that money will never get paid back... and taxpayers will never reap in the profit (if there is any) when all those junk mortgages are invested in again. On top of that, foreign companies will be the ones to do the reinvesting, so more of this country will be owned by other countries.

God help us all.

"Obama supporters would not see this issue clearly and blame it all on the evil Republicans led by Bush and Cheney."

Yeah, I agree. I didn't really say it too clearly the first time.

I think the term "Uncle Sugar" actually fits this mess to a tee.

WOO HOO!
thechimp.net/store/survivor%2...

Whoops!!!

Forget about the politics. Here's an interesting example of the kinds of companies we're talking about bailing out:

cnn.com/2008/living/personal/...

It's a different slant on the credit crunch (personal credit cards and lines of credit, not mortgages), but the pathology of greed looks the same to me.

This bears repeating too:

BTW, nice personal attacks. Exactly the sort of thing the rabid right wingers resort to when you start feeling butt hurt.

You're full of fail, Milhouse. Epic fail.

Any other excuses, tap dances or deflection you'd like to post?

Dog, here's where we can go no further.

You don't believe the facts we show you are facts. No matter what we post, you'll say it's biased.

I could work my ass off, get you all the names of the guys in charge, show you their political affiliation, point out where the Republicans tried to stop them, copy and paste the predictions made by Right wingers, and then make a graph showing when they came true etc. etc. and you'd still say it was biased and spin. A lot of the stuff I just mentioned HAS been posted here, on other threads etc.

I trust the sources, you won't, no matter what I say.

So I give up.

But to anyone reading who is on the fence on this issue, ask yourself, would the Republicans go out of their way to form pseudo private companies that are really government run agencies in order to give sub-prime loans, mostly to minorities, with the full knowledge that they couldn't afford to pay them back?

By the way, as more and more of this info creeps out, it appears that many of those bad loans were given to illegal aliens who never had to show proof of citizenship, or even a legal address.

This is a Democrat Scandal.

More deflection from Failhouse.

Ronin, feel free to insert "left wingers" as needed.

"I have great, great confidence in our capital markets and in our financial institutions. Our financial institutions, banks and investment banks, are strong. Our capital markets are resilient. They're efficient. They're flexible."

-- Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, March 16, 2008

"Our policy in this administration -- laws shouldn't bail out lenders, laws shouldn't help speculators."

-- President Bush, May 19, 2008

"Our economy has continued growing, consumers are spending, business are investing, exports continue increasing and American productivity remains strong. We can have confidence in the long-term foundation of our economy...I think the system basically is sound. I truly do."

-- President Bush, July 15, 2008

But are they going to get the money? It looks like they will, even though I saw some article this morning stating that only 7 percent of those polled thought they should.

And as for whose fault this is, it looks like both sides are going to try to spin it as the "October surprise" of this election.

" **SWOOSHING*** "

is a registered trademark of the Kennium for President Campaign.
copyright 2004 Kennium Enterprises

Dear Friends:

The financial meltdown the economists of the Austrian School predicted has arrived.

We are in this crisis because of an excess of artificially created credit at the hands of the Federal Reserve System. The solution being proposed? More artificial credit by the Federal Reserve. No liquidation of bad debt and malinvestment is to be allowed. By doing more of the same, we will only continue and intensify the distortions in our economy - all the capital misallocation, all the malinvestment - and prevent the market's attempt to re-establish rational pricing of houses and other assets.

Last night the president addressed the nation about the financial crisis. There is no point in going through his remarks line by line, since I'd only be repeating what I've been saying over and over - not just for the past several days, but for years and even decades.

Still, at least a few observations are necessary.

The president assures us that his administration "is working with Congress to address the root cause behind much of the instability in our markets." Care to take a guess at whether the Federal Reserve and its money creation spree were even mentioned?

We are told that "low interest rates" led to excessive borrowing, but we are not told how these low interest rates came about. They were a deliberate policy of the Federal Reserve. As always, artificially low interest rates distort the market. Entrepreneurs engage in malinvestments - investments that do not make sense in light of current resource availability, that occur in more temporally remote stages of the capital structure than the pattern of consumer demand can support, and that would not have been made at all if the interest rate had been permitted to tell the truth instead of being toyed with by the Fed.

Not a word about any of that, of course, because Americans might then discover how the great wise men in Washington caused this great debacle. Better to keep scapegoating the mortgage industry or "wildcat capitalism" (as if we actually have a pure free market!).

Speaking about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the president said: "Because these companies were chartered by Congress, many believed they were guaranteed by the federal government. This allowed them to borrow enormous sums of money, fuel the market for questionable investments, and put our financial system at risk."

Doesn't that prove the foolishness of chartering Fannie and Freddie in the first place? Doesn't that suggest that maybe, just maybe, government may have contributed to this mess? And of course, by bailing out Fannie and Freddie, hasn't the federal government shown that the "many" who "believed they were guaranteed by the federal government" were in fact correct?

Then come the scare tactics. If we don't give dictatorial powers to the Treasury Secretary "the stock market would drop even more, which would reduce the value of your retirement account. The value of your home could plummet." Left unsaid, naturally, is that with the bailout and all the money and credit that must be produced out of thin air to fund it, the value of your retirement account will drop anyway, because the value of the dollar will suffer a precipitous decline. As for home prices, they are obviously much too high, and supply and demand cannot equilibrate if government insists on propping them up.

It's the same destructive strategy that government tried during the Great Depression: prop up prices at all costs. The Depression went on for over a decade. On the other hand, when liquidation was allowed to occur in the equally devastating downturn of 1921, the economy recovered within less than a year.

The president also tells us that Senators McCain and Obama will join him at the White House today in order to figure out how to get the bipartisan bailout passed. The two senators would do their country much more good if they stayed on the campaign trail debating who the bigger celebrity is, or whatever it is that occupies their attention these days.

F.A. Hayek won the Nobel Prize for showing how central banks' manipulation of interest rates creates the boom-bust cycle with which we are sadly familiar. In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, he described the foolish policies being pursued in his day - and which are being proposed, just as destructively, in our own:

Instead of furthering the inevitable liquidation of the maladjustments brought about by the boom during the last three years, all conceivable means have been used to prevent that readjustment from taking place; and one of these means, which has been repeatedly tried though without success, from the earliest to the most recent stages of depression, has been this deliberate policy of credit expansion.

To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about; because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection - a procedure that can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end... It is probably to this experiment, together with the attempts to prevent liquidation once the crisis had come, that we owe the exceptional severity and duration of the depression.

The only thing we learn from history, I am afraid, is that we do not learn from history.

The very people who have spent the past several years assuring us that the economy is fundamentally sound, and who themselves foolishly cheered the extension of all these novel kinds of mortgages, are the ones who now claim to be the experts who will restore prosperity! Just how spectacularly wrong, how utterly without a clue, does someone have to be before his expert status is called into question?

Oh, and did you notice that the bailout is now being called a "rescue plan"? I guess "bailout" wasn't sitting too well with the American people.

The very people who with somber faces tell us of their deep concern for the spread of democracy around the world are the ones most insistent on forcing a bill through Congress that the American people overwhelmingly oppose. The very fact that some of you seem to think you're supposed to have a voice in all this actually seems to annoy them.

I continue to urge you to contact your representatives and give them a piece of your mind. I myself am doing everything I can to promote the correct point of view on the crisis. Be sure also to educate yourselves on these subjects - the Campaign for Liberty blog is an excellent place to start. Read the posts, ask questions in the comment section, and learn.

H.G. Wells once said that civilization was in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.

In liberty,




Ron Paul

Vote Bigsby.

Clayton Bigsby.

metacafe.com/watch/291638/cla...