8 comments

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  bacalove

  9 months ago

  "In 2007, Wall Street's five biggest firms-- Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley - paid a record $39 billion in bonuses to themselves." ABC's Political Punch -- I say no Bail Out!
  AND
  Sen. John McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, was paid more than $30,000 a month for five years as president of an advocacy group set up by the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against stricter regulations!
  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/us/politics/2...
  
  More McCain Hypocrisy! - And for those who think we will not have another Bush/Cheney Whitehouse if McCain gets elected, please be advised that McCain has 10 former Bush strategists and operatives working and advising him now. They are: Steve Schmitt, Tucker Eskew, Tracey Schmitt, Nicole Wallace, Mark Wallace, Stephen E. Biegun, W. Taylor Griffin, Matthew Scully, Greg Jenkins and Matt McDonald, which spells McCain-Bush all over again!
  
  McCain who has been Chairman of the Commerce Committee for years says he knows very little about the economy, the one truth he has been honest about, because it has always been about Corporations first, only and last! It is our turn now and no more corporate bail outs who are in fear of losing their luxurious way of life.
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  NEVERMIND

  9 months ago

  Obama enough is enough your words - bail out people not wall street. We were screwed twice once on mortgage fraud and then on gas manipulation.
  
  You want my vote - take a stand
  
  OHIO
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  Mike Nicksic

  9 months ago

  After reading "trillion Dollar Meltdown" (TDM) and attending your lecture in Tucson, I'm wondering if Mr Paulson knows exactly what it is he's proposing to purchase and how to calculate a value. Unfortunately the complexity of the portfolios at risk is little understood in the Press or Congress.
  
  Chapter 4 of TDM makes an excellent explanation of the opacity of the situation, describing the shadowy realm of "Synthetic" securities and how they are mixed with real asset-backed instruments.
  
  What portion of the putative "bad assets" Mr Paulson proposes to purchase might consist of these "synthetic " CDO/CLO/CLS?
  
  How would the Treasury unwind the CDO/CLO/CDS it buys to determine the true underlying assets, or would it not even bother to try?
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  Renfro

  9 months ago

  You are exactly right about a sovereign wealth fund or similar agency or even one already existing like the already bailed out Fed and Fan being the proper way to reconstitute the bad mortage loans. I would even suggest that the money and oversight of this then be deployed to State Housing Agencies who would be easier to oversee and are more experienced in their own markets. "If ' it is going to be done at all , and frankly I am opposed to it.
  There are other companies who will eventually step in and there is enough investor money looking for a place to go that will be injected to loosen up lending and credit.
  
  I noticed in the Dodd plan that he wanted to foist off any 'leftover' property that Paulson's plan couldn't sell onto the states, where we the taxpayer would have to once agan pony up for the states to purchase these properties and then try to resell them.....getting it off the fed plan and throwing it onto the states..double dipping.
  
  While I am not an economist my family has been in banking and commerical real estate and commerical construction for 140 years so I have a birds eye view of exactly what has gone on.
  
  With this bailout we are also propping up the 'bubble' in financials and real estate that the Fed allowed to happen with easy and cheap money in order to stave off the deflation they were afraid of in the late 90's.
  
  This is a WS and 'bubble bailout and will not work, it's is a scam, a stopgap....and when it doesn't work the second fall will the be last and that will be everyone's real nightmare.
  
  I don't know what else to say to warn people of this move.....except to consider that as congress plans to hand over 700 billion of our money to Paulson who wants to keep on the CEO's who created this mess to "help us solve it", the FBI is investigating both AIG and Lehman and their CEOs for financial fraud and so informed congress over 2 weeks ago....and still congress is even considering buying the bad assets of these two institutions and Paulson wants the CEO's to be rewarded and brought on board the bailout??
  
  How to put this in a common sense way? ... we taxpayers are giving a bankrupt insurer the money to pay off the value of a house the owner himself burned down and building him a new house and getting the ashes of the burned down house as payment.
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  wenyenk

  9 months ago

  good one. this is in line with the swedish model so any upside will be pocketed with tax payers. love your book on trillion dollar meltdown, sent to our FSC chairman as gifts. they love it.
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  P.Knight

  9 months ago

  Is anyone in Washington, DC for the people or are we just a wallet to them..? These crooks got themselves into this mess let them get themselves OUT OF IT..!!
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  Leigh

  9 months ago

  1. "Treasury can just create a $700-billion, U.S. government-owned “sovereign wealth fund” to invest in troubled banks at market prices"
  Q: How would this act differently from $700 billion of capital (and more) that's already out there?
  
  2. "A sophisticated board of ex-bankers and accountants could oversee the pricing of individual deals."
  Q: How would these be different from the "Wall Street’s suits [who] smell a goldmine and are clamoring for position to get the hundreds of millions in fees at stake." If they're willing to work for a government salary instead of a Wall St bonus, why? Will they actually be smart enough to outsmart the Wall St. guys?
  
  3. Q: What does Mr. Morris think of William Isaac's proposal to suspend mark-to-market accounting, based on the argument that the current "market price" is not realistic (what with being in panicked freefall)?
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  G Watts

  9 months ago

  Imagine a country without credit!!! Things would have to be affordable. Joe Biden was saying what horror it would be if we couldn't finance a washing machine. Lately, people have been finacing their weekly fuel because of gas prices. We're tapped out, politicians! We can't afford to finance half of what we need, so no credit is the medicine we need.
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