Cynical Nation

Nah, the U.S. Congress will put on a good donkey show for the idiots who keep them in power (us), then once that's out of the way, they'll do as their true masters demand. I'm betting later today. But hey, I could be wrong. This being such a pivotal moment in our country's history, maybe some of 'em grew a pair and want to leave their mark by actually representing their constituents. HaHaHaHa I crack myself up!

I think there is a game going on by the Bush administration and McCain to entrap the democrats and Obama. But it is not working.

Anyway, I dont like the bailout plan and its variations. In my opinion, what the government should do is nationalize them. Yes, nationalize them. Like they would do in France, and most of europe in a case like that.

Of course, the Bush administration would never do that. They are one of the most corrupt administrations in the history of this country and they are just blackmailing the American people (and the democrats) to give money to their corrupt partners. McCain is part of the game (good cop, bad cop).

Oh and Barry,
Regarding your comment on the other post that McCain's gimmick is working (citing incorrectly the Gallup poll), just take a look in the polls today:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/9/26/92721/3433/81/611130

Obama is widening the gap. Also FL and MO are now tied/back into play:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/latestpolls/index.html

I think McCain's instincts to return to Washington were correct. As far as what he does after he gets there? That depends on what the hell he does and how it's perceived.

"As far as what he does after he gets there? That depends on what the hell he does and how it's perceived. "

LOL. Sorry but you sound like Sarah Palin on that comment above :-)

Did you watch her interview with Katie Curic?

"Anyway, I dont like the bailout plan and its variations. In my opinion, what the government should do is nationalize them. Yes, nationalize them. Like they would do in France, and most of europe in a case like that." (BW)


NOT on the table and the fact is that YOU don't even understand what "nationalization" is.

The biggest problem, in my view, is that Bill O'Reilly called the "credit socialism" advanced by Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, an ideology based on the inane and unworkable view that "Poor people shouldn't be denied access to the principle route to wealth creation (credit and capital markets) merely because thay are poor and seen as "higher risk" by banks and other financial institutions."

THAT is NOT a "noble idea," it is an extremely ignoble and unworkable idea.

BOTH wealth creation and poverty are caused by human behaviors and BOTH are deliberately created. Wealth is created via self-discipline, a blinding ambition that allows one to ruthlessly take advantage of opportunities and the ability to delay gratification, and poverty is caused by recklessness, irresponsibility, sloth and the inability to delay gratification today in hopes of something better tomorrow.

In so much as government action CANNOT control the free actions of free individuals, government is powerless to help poor and self-destructive people make better choices, any more than it can help others who possess more valuable skills and overarching ambitions from accruing disproportionate amounts of wealth.

The current finanical crisis is a failure of social engineering via "credit socialism." It is a crisis caused by the policies advocated by Barney Frank and Chris Dodd and implemented through Fannie mae and Freddie Mac.

MISSED a phrase;

...The biggest problem, in my view, is that Bill O'Reilly called the "credit socialism" advanced by Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, an ideology based on the inane and unworkable view that "Poor people shouldn't be denied access to the principle route to wealth creation (credit and capital markets) merely because thay are poor and seen as "higher risk" by banks and other financial institutions," a "NOBLE IDEA."....

So which plan is worse? I think it's all academic at this point, since Nancy Pelosi has already made it clear that she doesn't intend to bring a damn thing up for a vote unless she can be sure that a solid majority of Republicans will go along for the ride. That's leadership for ya.

see, *this* is what makes me sick. The Dems claimed they were going to fix the US and all they have spent time on are show trials against the Bush admin. They never worked on SCHIP, Iraq, or the housing mess under Fannie and Freddie, even if Bernake was ignoring it. How can the Dems reconcile us now?

And last week, Reid et al admitted that they don't know what to do and they don't care. That's why they used McCain as a scapegoat. When they got caught with the ACORN amendment, notice how they claimed that the Reps were stopping the bailout to make Mc look good when they were freakin' begging him to be there in the first place

I swear, if I later learned that Paulsen had pulled the plan out of his ass? That would explain a lot.

Rachel,
How could the dems fix the economy with someone like Bush in the presidency? Sorry but you dont get it. Wait until January when Obama will be president and the senate/house will be democratic. You will see then.

Hope spring eternal, right Rachel? ;-)

Unlike our friend Blue here, I'd actually expect an Obama Administration to be fairly conservative in its governance.

In fact, if it weren't for own personal sense of loyalty to McCain (probably misplaced anyway) and my distaste for one-party rule I'd consider voting for him myself. :-)

Of course Blue still hasn't explained why Pelosi won't even bring the damn bill to a vote if she thinks it's as important as she claims to. Oh well....

Barry,
You got it wrong with me. I do agree with you that the Obama administration will be mainstream/fairly conservative. It will be something like the Clinton administration in the 90s. But that would be great for the country. However, in order to restore the massive structural damage caused by the Bush disaster, it will require majority in the congress along with the presidency.

Personally, I wish Obama was more to the left. But I realize he is centrist and his administration will be fairly conservative. But as I wrote before, this election is not about ideology. It is about competence and restoring the damage caused after 8 years of Bush/McCain policies.

How could the dems fix the economy with someone like Bush in the presidency? Sorry but you dont get it.

Sorry, but the Dems know they have enough votes, and W is their b***h now, willing to sign anything. They don't want to have the blood solely on their hands if it doesn't work. But now with European banks beginning to fail (with our banks possibly next) the Dems could be saviors. At least could claim it for November

The Democrats have controlled Congress for nearly 2 years!

Congress sets tax policy, sets the budget, controls spending. Congress controls the government's wallet!

The economy hasn't improved since January 2007...it's gotten markedly worse.

In fact, Pelosi-Reid promised to get gasoline prices lowered....they've gone UP! Aren't Liberals going to hold them accountable for that?

Bush and McCain sought to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2003 and AGAIN in 2005 and Barney Frank and Chris Dodd led the charge (BOTH times) to stop it.

Will the bailout even work?

No one seems to know.

Was it caused by "greedy Wall Street?"

NO, not at ALL! It was caused by scumbags like Frank and Dodd who, in Frank's own words, "Bravely fought for banking regulations that would force banks to make loans to millions of poor and low-income Americans."

For me, THAT'S the "money quote."

And just for expressing that kind of hate and revulsion for our cherished banking system, one of the cornerstones of our market-based economy, Barney Frank is someone I'd like to see hanging from a tree before Christmas.

Oh, and did I mention this guy (Frank) forced a "sex-slave" to run a bordello out of the basement of a property he owned.

I'm not kidding!

"In 1990, the House voted to reprimand Rep Frank when it was revealed that Steve Gobie, a male escort whom Frank had befriended (forced into sexual servitude) after hiring him through a personal advertisement, claimed to have conducted an escort service from Frank's apartment...when he was not at home (wink/wink).

Hmmmmm...."escort service"....is that what they're calling it these days?

Um, JMK, you Repugs have absolute control and the ability to do anything, and supply side economics failed and created a new Great Depression, just like last time.

The Dems have faced a veto that they couldn't override. Apples and oranges, you moron.

Supply side and the Reagan legacy of running a huge deficit and spending more than any liberal who ever lived has failed again.

We're in a Depression, Barely?!

If that's true, then sign me up for socialism.

Since I figure I'd immediately become "the smartest socialist on the planet" (lemme explain, that's no brag, just fact - I am perhaps one of the few, if ONLY workingmen, who came to earn as much from individual investments each year as from his labors...and I'm self-taught in investing) that should make me the odds on favorite to run that crew.

I mean if "the future of the world is at stake," then we should all agree that it's too important to play politics with.

But WAIT!

America's economy is 3X the size of the world's second largest economy! With a gap of more than $9.4 TRILLION per year and widening every year!

The U.S. economy exceeds the world's 3rd largest economy by more than 4X!

Ironically enough, today's 2nd and 3rd largest economies in the world come from nations that the U.S. defeated in WW II (Japan and Germany respectively) and those countries were rebuilt on American principles.

If there was some reason to believe that the current financial disaster was brought about by deregulation or "not enough government oversight and regulation," I'd certainly acknowledge that and get on board, but the facts say that it was due entirely to TO MUCH regulation and TOXIC government regulation, along with what appears to be malfeasance at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

SEE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5tZc8oH--o

Or check out the video posted by Barry yesterday.

Oh yeah, TOO MUCH regulation caused Enron! Too much regulation caused the unfettered theft on Wall Street! Oops, now it's time for the taxpayers to bail out those Wall Street Journal financial wizards, who are all Supply Siders who believe in no regulations, yep, free markets!!!

Tell me dunce, why isn't the Wall Street Journal calling to let these finanacial institutions simply fail, as they have.

That is a free market.

Oh, but socialism is good when it goes to the obscenely filthy rich! Welfare is good when taxpayer money goes to big corporations!

Free market my ass. Suppy side is as failed as Communism.

The experiment is over.

Again I NEVER extolled this "free market."

You haven't either because you don't understand the difference between free markets (privately-run), socialism (government-run) and corporatism (government-regulated) economies.

Not your fault, really.

At any rate, we haven't had a "free market" in the USA since around 1910.

J P Morgan and Bernard Baruch (two GREAT men, i"ve extolled THEM many times) helped set up the modern Corporatist (government regulated economy) and thank God they did.

It's brought a lot more security and stability to our economy at the cost of "some innovation and perhaps some more prosperity, though without the cyclical booms and busts of the completely free market.

There are some Libertarians who espouse the completely FREE market.

Few, if ANY Conservatives do that.

At any rate, the current financial disaster seems ENTIRELY due to both over-regulation and TOXIC regulation by the likes of Braney Frank and Chris Dodd.

They helped retool the CRA back in 1994 in a way that mandated more loans to poorer/high-risk Americans.

Barack Obama helped Calvin Roberson sue Citibank back in 1994 for "not giving out enough subprime mortgages to minorities."

What the curent mess shows is that government, peopled as it is, by, at best, average intellects, is completely unfit to regulate enterprises such people cannot possibly understand - like mortgage lending parameters, stock exchanges, etc.

The basic problem that "we the people" face, through our proxys in government is that "the BEST and BRIGHTEST" always seem to be working for the other side.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't regulate.

Not at all.

J P Morgan and Bernard Baruch were indeed RIGHT!

But we should regulate cautiously and gently and not allow do-gooders like Frank and Dodd (if indeed they really are well-intentioned, "do-gooders") impose risks that capital markets can't bear.

Wow, all of those poor, weak little bankers were BULLIED by big bad gayboy Barney Frank and his intimidating lisp! Barney Frank scared them into stealing hundreds of millions of dollars annually as a reward for bankrupting the U.S. financial system!

You are nothing short of a god damned idiot, Tard. It was WILD SPECULATION with holdings, it was GREED that caused the banks to overreach, and now they want ME to pay for it with my children's futures so they can keep their seven houses and three yachts.

You are all for this, because you are either retarded, or a traitor.

I hope all of your money is in the stock market.

I hope all of your money is in the stock market. (Mouse)


Well, I DO have a rather large exposure in the stock market, in fact I bought heavily Monday afternoon and did GREAT yesterday. I anticipate a strong rebound over the coming few months.

I also have a limited exposure in the commodities market, which is far more risky than the stock market with its average annual 11% return (overall) over the past half century.

I’ve been cautiously optimistic lately, despite the current administration’s flirtations with Keynesianism (the prescription drug boondoggle, the NCLB Act, the misnamed “Stimulus Package” and the current entirely taxpayer funded bailout of our credit markets)

I care about you Mouse (you seem to be troubled) and because I care, I want you to do well, in fact, I want everyone to do well.

That’s why I take some of my precious time to challenge silly Liberal ideas whenever they’re raised.

The current financial crisis is NOT a “Wall Street bailout,” it’s a “short-term credit market bailout.”

The crisis itself is NOT a banking crisis it’s a credit crisis that was brought on when the housing bubble burst, and that bubble was brought on by abuses of the CRA, which were exacerbated by the GSEs (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) which both issued tons of bad/high-risk loans, bought up more (much of that mandated by the abuses of the CRA) and then fraudulently re-packaged that bad debt as “government-backed mortgage securities” and sold them to various Capital Markets around the world, including, of course, by far the largest such market – Wall Street.

The exposure of our financial institutions (from banks to insurers to brokerage houses) to those toxic loans, spurred some savvy investors (including lots of Hedge Fund portfolio managers) to short-sell those financial stocks, which in turn kept those companies, many, like Merril and AIG, with limited exposure to the “subprime debacle” from getting the short-term credit (loans) they needed to operate, as no one would lend to companies as their stock prices fell due to the “feeding frenzy” of short-selling that surrounded their stocks.

What BOTH Conservative Democrats and Republicans have supported, in defeating the original Paulson plan, is limiting taxpayer exposure to all this bad debt. While Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac probably shouldn’t have existed, in fact, Barney Frank is certainly right about the fact that “If it were up to Republicans (actually Conservatives, in general) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac probably wouldn’t have survived,” AIG is a very different story.

AIG didn’t really have all that much exposure to the bad debt, but they had some and they got caught up in the short-selling feeding frenzy. The government has no plan to run AIG and seeks to divest itself of its current 70% share of that company.

Do we need to fix the short-term credit markets?

Absolutely.

Do we have to do it by foisting reems of bad debt onto the taxpayer’s backs?

It doesn’t seem likely. Reducing the Capital Gains tax and a proposal for a one-year reduction in the taxes on foreign profits, a plan that supporters say would help the economy by bringing a flood of investment back into the United States are both seem like better alternatives than a straight taxpayer funded bailout.

You have to understand the current crisis in order to see the opportunities that will come from it.

The current credit-market crisis is the direct result of the “subprime debacle” and the “housing bubble,” which were BOTH directly caused by abuses of the CRA and by what appears to be outright malfeasance at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The current administration along with, ironically enough, John McCain sought to rein in Fannie and Freddie back in 2003 and AGAIN in 2005

SEE: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E3D6123BF932A2575AC0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print

AND: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/record.xpd?id=109-s20060525-16&bill=s109-190#sMonofilemx003Ammx002Fmmx002Fmmx002Fmhomemx002Fmgovtrackmx002Fmdatamx002Fmusmx002Fm109mx002Fmcrmx002Fms20060525-16.xmlElementm0m0m0m

Those reforms were scuttled by Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s lobbying efforts, on which both Chris Dodd and Barney Frank were the point-men.

The reason that’s important, that this be understood as a “Failure of Liberal fiscal policies,” is that without understanding that, it won’t be properly fixed.

What the current crisis really is, is “Enron Comes to Washington,” with Barney Frank as Jeff Skillings and Chris Dodd as Ken Lay.

The bankers WERE indeed bullied....BUT by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.....and once the CRA was re-tooled the government (the courts, the Treasury, etc.) FORCED every bank to abide by it (and rightly so, BAD LAW or NOT) - and the banks were then, in effect, FORCED to offer MORE high risk ("subprime") mortgages.

The cunundrum that both banks and Fannie & Freddie faced was "HOW to get poorer, low-income people to take out these higher rate mortgages?"

The answer was to front-end them with teaser rates.

The payoff for the banks was Freddie Mac BUYING UP more of those bad loans, in effect GUARANTEEING those bad loans.

The primary GREED here was on the part of two GSE's (Fannie & Freddie).

Look, all those subprime mortgages (and “subprime loans” refers to the borrower being “SUBPRIME” or NOT “creditworthy” under traditional lending criteria, NOT the instrument/loan itself) were ultimately HIGH-interest rate mortgages, despite whatever “teaser rates” were front-loaded onto them.

Arguing that such buyers were “hoodwinked” or “didn’t know what they were getting into,” (they were the ones who bought into "this house will appreciate so much in value over the next few years, you'll be able to get a much better rate by then") is as absurd, at least in my view, as arguing that bankers & investors “COULDN’T HELP THEMSELVES from taking advantage and recklessly abusing deregulated markets because EVERYONE’S DOING IT.”

The American people seem to have little sympathy or patience with nimrod “subprime borrowers” who now claim they were “taken advantage of,” just as surely they have none for bankers/investors who “couldn’t help but take advantage” – they don’t see those folks as “victims.”

Like myself, it would seem that many, if not most Americans see those folks as predators, or “VICTIMIZERS” of the rest of us, who played by the rules.

The lack of sympathy comes from this whole thing smacking of, “Hey suckers! I screwed all of you, and now I’m busted and broke. How about bailing me out, whaddaya say?”

P.S. And YES, I have the majority of my money IN the stock market right now, with a smaller portion in the even riskeir, but potentially more lucrative commodities market.

I BOUGHT heavilly (for me) on Monday afternoon when the market was in free fall and a little Tuesday morning...none yesterday (Wed) and slightly more today.

Right now, I'm expecting at least a short term rebound....I'm not AS optimistic about 2009, and IF tax rates go up, I'll be less so.

Then you want to have MORE exposure to commodities - things like oil, corn, gold and other precious metals have a good cahnce of rising precipitously.