Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

ok, markets closed. welcome to octrober 25th 1929.

i honestly think that no one outside of my industry (finance) has a clue on how bad this is gonna get if congress doesnt act within the next week or so.

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

shit maybe -735

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

Change:-738.42 -6.63%

and still dropping...

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

-748 now, damn

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

official : as of right now, there is only one market that didnt lose 5%.. frankfurt @ 4.2%

global disaster brought to you by teh US republican and democratic parties.

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

[quote=thesightless;655704]by your location listed, combined with ur comments, im assuming you live in a hut in the yukon adn hunt food.[/quote]

der, i posted that quite awhile ago, not sure why it showed up that late in the thread. board glitch maybe...we've been watching this shit unfold all day.

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

I'm wondering if they may intervene and close the markets down early if this persists.

btw, just to state the obvious: This is not yet "the meltdown" that everyone keeps talking about. The full brunt of that - if it happens - is still to come.

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

[quote=Miroslav;655761]I'm wondering if they may intervene and close the markets down early if this persists.

btw, just to state the obvious: This is not yet "the meltdown" that everyone keeps talking about. The full brunt of that - if it happens - is still to come.[/quote]

What should we expect?

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

something i overlooked and failed to mention in the point by point thread.

point 7. after the failure, capital goods spending and large puchase spending tanks. destroying the automotive and large scale manufacturing industry. money dries up, people cannot afford home based production goods. companies like GE, stratton, samsung,sony, IBM, texas instruments, maytag, etc all lose demand and increase layoffs to stay alive due to the union labor contracts that refuse to lower pay to ensure more employment. global unemployment skyrockets, demand for manufactured goods dives.

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

they may very well suspend trading if we the people can get these morons into session tomorrow morning. like i said, someone call colin powell and the national guard, get em to DC, and FORCE the issue.

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

this is just wallstreet going down crying. everyone is selling to push the bill in.

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

everyone please read this. great explanation from a PRO, not someone who ahs sumin to say about a topic they have zero experience or schooling in.

[URL]http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/dont-call-bailout/story.aspx?guid=0A2E0398-2E89-4F7F-B8C7-4150783B1B2E&dist=SecMostRead[/URL]

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

[quote=MJDub;655762]What should we expect?[/quote]

Expect another wave of bank failings, followed by a big wave of corporate/company failings as businesses get cut off from their financing. Maybe the Dow will get whacked back to like 7-8K over the period of a few months. Then expect a downturn in production, widespread deflation, decreased wages, and much higher unemployment. Other signs to look for include: (1) your bank being run on despite FDIC protection - and then waiting for weeks to months instead of days to get your cash back from the government; (2) your credit cards being shut off; (3) school/car loans being called in, (4) clear signs of impoverishment around you on a scale you've never seen before (crumbling roads, bread lines, etc.); and (5) general upturn in crime and civil unrest.

Basically, all the fire and brimstone stuff.

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

miro, stay around, im about to head over to another office for the evening, i wanna chat.

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

Wow I have heard it all here. Miroslav laid it on thick.

Keep strong say no to the bailout!!

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

[quote=Miroslav;655773]Expect another wave of bank failings, followed by a big wave of corporate/company failings as businesses get cut off from their financing. Maybe the Dow will get whacked back to like 7-8K over the period of a few months. Then expect a downturn in production, widespread deflation, decreased wages, and much higher unemployment. Other signs to look for include: (1) your bank being run on despite FDIC protection - and then waiting for weeks to months instead of days to get your cash back from the government; (2) your credit cards being shut off; (3) school/car loans being called in, (4) clear signs of impoverishment around you on a scale you've never seen before (crumbling roads, bread lines, etc.); and (5) general upturn in crime and civil unrest.

Basically, all the fire and brimstone stuff.[/quote]

quoted for the fucking truth. i've been telling my friends and family just this. and they're all like, 'youre catastrophising'.

gonna go out and start buying ramen noodels and shit in a few minutes.

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

[quote=thesightless;655770]everyone please read this. great explanation from a PRO, not someone who ahs sumin to say about a topic they have zero experience or schooling in.

[URL]http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/dont-call-bailout/story.aspx?guid=0A2E0398-2E89-4F7F-B8C7-4150783B1B2E&dist=SecMostRead[/URL][/quote]

but isnt that saying its NOT like the 1929 situation because so many other factors are different? hes saying its not another great depression - but you are???

I'm confused. and gassy.

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

[quote=runningman;655769]this is just wallstreet going down crying. everyone is selling to push the bill in.[/quote]

What you still don't understand is that if Wall Street really goes down crying, then you will too.

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

the good news is oil went down.. so far so good

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

FAO members of Congress that voted against this:

no one is happy about this bail out, but this bill was the result of legitimately bipartisan negotiations. The whole point of the negotiations was to have something that we could all (begrudgingly) agree upon so we could pass something and restore some confidence in the American economy, and instead, the opposite has happened. If you had such serious misgivings about this bill, they should have been raised and hashed out before it was brought to the floor.

@ Boehner, Clyburn & Blunt: Do you fucking jobs, and get your parties in line. Also, if you don't have the votes yet, let Pelosi know so she doesn't bring it to the floor prematurely. Bringing it to the floor only to have it fail is far worse than not bringing it today at all.

@ Speaker Pelosi: If the bill isn't ready to be passed, don't fucking bring it to the floor. This helps no one. Also, tone down the rhetoric, which also helps no one right now. There will be plenty of time for finger pointing later.

@ House Republicans that said they'd vote "yes" but voted "no" after hearing Pelosi's speech: Grow a set, or resign your position. "Your feelings being hurt" is not an acceptable reason for me to lose thousands of dollars. This is politics, and people are occasionally going to say things about you that you don't like. Get over yourself.

What a bunch of jackasses...

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

this just goes to show that people should be in jail for this and everyone of the wallstreet bonuses confiscated.

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

[quote=thesightless;655780]miro, stay around, im about to head over to another office for the evening, i wanna chat.[/quote] sure...pm me or find me on here. I'm stuck in the office doing month-end close desk work for most of the afternoon.

[quote=runningman;655781]Wow I have heard it all here. Miroslav laid it on thick.

Keep strong say no to the bailout!![/quote] I gave the worst-case scenario. I'm not saying that it is a certainty that it will play out this way, and I'm not saying that civilization will simply cease to exist tomorrow; there is no need to grab the shotgun and run for the hills just yet (even during the Great Depression, a good 3/4ths of the population was still employed in some form or another). But we should acknowledge that such an outcome is feasible. Think I'm alone in thinking that? Look at the markets; they're clearly voting with their feet. If you've studied your history, you'll know that such things have happened before. And what would give you confidence that such economic difficulties [I]won't[/I] happen? So far, all the people who have been saying "oh, don't worry guys...this is just a flash in the pan...just a small bump...we can bail out Bear Stearns and it's over" have been dead wrong.

As Mariner88 aptly put it, what we've been deliberating is the difference between a high-speed crash and a low-speed crash. Looks like we've opted for the high-speed crash, which means that more of us passengers likely will die and be injured in the process. But this bus is broken and has to crash one way or another; the basic principles of economics will see to that.

/metaphor

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

what is the point of Obama and McCain speaking after this? its obvious they dont know jack shit about economics... such a waste of time.

i am just getting so sick and tired of politics lately.

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

[quote=Miroslav;655804]sure...pm me or find me on here. I'm stuck in the office doing month-end close desk work for most of the afternoon.

I gave the worst-case scenario. And it's a real possibility. If you've studied your history, you'll know that such things have happened before. It's not necessarily the case that we'll see all of that happen quite so drastically, although it is likely, in my opinion, that this mess will still get worse before getting better. We should all pray that it doesn't get that bad.[/quote]

so long as it doesn't get to (3) i think we'll be fine....

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

Thank you.. now I don't know my history and finance..

Miro let me tell you no matter what the government does it's going to bad.. If they bail them out it will get bad in 8 months because of Hyperinflation.. if they don't it will get bad in 1 month. I say lets get this over with already. A correction needs to be made and sometimes corrections are tough. Now you don't change the system because of some idiots. You hold the idiots accountable. Well at least you used to hold them accountable. But it just goes to show how corrupt the US system really is.

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

[QUOTE=Miroslav;655804]I gave the worst-case scenario. And it's a real possibility. If you've studied your history, you'll know that such things have happened before. It's not necessarily the case that we'll see all of that happen quite so drastically, although it is likely, in my opinion, that this mess will still get worse before getting better. We should all pray that it doesn't get that bad.[/QUOTE]

yep, that you did.

the best-case scenario is a recession that lasts 1-2 years.

either way, we are screwed for the foreseeable future....

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

[quote=runningman;655808]Thank you.. now I don't know my history and finance..

Miro let me tell you no matter what the government does it's going to bad.. If they bail them out it will get bad in 8 months because of Hyperinflation.. if they don't it will get bad in 1 month. I say lets get this over with already. A correction needs to be made and sometimes corrections are tough. Now you don't change the system because of some idiots. You hold the idiots accountable. Well at least you used to hold them accountable. But it just goes to show how corrupt the US system really is.[/quote] I didn't say whether you do or don't know your history and finance. All I said was that if you do, then you know about what happened in the 1930s.

And I don't disagree with you that it's going to get bad either way. As I said, the bus is broken and has to crash either way. And the idiots should be held accountable to whatever extent we can hold them so. I would only offer the viewpoint one last time that more of us "good guys" suffer when you crash at higher speed rather than at lower speed. Much of this mess is pschologically driven; there is such a complexity of feedback effects in markets that a snowball effect can be created - and then it's like a runaway train where we end up with worse economic results than we otherwise would have, because whatever little leverage we have over the situation is that much less effective.

In other words, if you apply your one working brake at 100mph, it's a lot less effective than at 50mph. And even though the bus will crash, it doesn't have to be totalled - it's one thing to go through a severe recession; it's another to have the world-wide financial markets simply collapse entirely. The former is highly preferable to the latter.

There. I'm sorry if I'm repeating myself over and over; I'll stop now.

But boy, this bus crash analogy sure works great for this situation...

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

good article here: [url]http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/29/miron.bailout/index.html[/url]

makes some good points against the bailout.

[QUOTE]Editor's note: Jeffrey A. Miron is senior lecturer in economics at Harvard University. A Libertarian, he was one of 166 academic economists who signed a letter to congressional leaders last week opposing the government bailout plan.

Economist Jeffrey Miron says the bailout plan presented to Congress was the wrong solution to the crisis

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (CNN) -- Congress has balked at the Bush administration's proposed $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. Under this plan, the Treasury would have bought the "troubled assets" of financial institutions in an attempt to avoid economic meltdown.

This bailout was a terrible idea. Here's why.

The current mess would never have occurred in the absence of ill-conceived federal policies. The federal government chartered Fannie Mae in 1938 and Freddie Mac in 1970; these two mortgage lending institutions are at the center of the crisis. The government implicitly promised these institutions that it would make good on their debts, so Fannie and Freddie took on huge amounts of excessive risk.

Worse, beginning in 1977 and even more in the 1990s and the early part of this century, Congress pushed mortgage lenders and Fannie/Freddie to expand subprime lending. The industry was happy to oblige, given the implicit promise of federal backing, and subprime lending soared.

This subprime lending was more than a minor relaxation of existing credit guidelines. This lending was a wholesale abandonment of reasonable lending practices in which borrowers with poor credit characteristics got mortgages they were ill-equipped to handle.

Once housing prices declined and economic conditions worsened, defaults and delinquencies soared, leaving the industry holding large amounts of severely depreciated mortgage assets.

The fact that government bears such a huge responsibility for the current mess means any response should eliminate the conditions that created this situation in the first place, not attempt to fix bad government with more government.

The obvious alternative to a bailout is letting troubled financial institutions declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy means that shareholders typically get wiped out and the creditors own the company.

Bankruptcy does not mean the company disappears; it is just owned by someone new (as has occurred with several airlines). Bankruptcy punishes those who took excessive risks while preserving those aspects of a businesses that remain profitable.

In contrast, a bailout transfers enormous wealth from taxpayers to those who knowingly engaged in risky subprime lending. Thus, the bailout encourages companies to take large, imprudent risks and count on getting bailed out by government. This "moral hazard" generates enormous distortions in an economy's allocation of its financial resources.

Thoughtful advocates of the bailout might concede this perspective, but they argue that a bailout is necessary to prevent economic collapse. According to this view, lenders are not making loans, even for worthy projects, because they cannot get capital. This view has a grain of truth; if the bailout does not occur, more bankruptcies are possible and credit conditions may worsen for a time.

Talk of Armageddon, however, is ridiculous scare-mongering. If financial institutions cannot make productive loans, a profit opportunity exists for someone else. This might not happen instantly, but it will happen.

Further, the current credit freeze is likely due to Wall Street's hope of a bailout; bankers will not sell their lousy assets for 20 cents on the dollar if the government might pay 30, 50, or 80 cents.

The costs of the bailout, moreover, are almost certainly being understated. The administration's claim is that many mortgage assets are merely illiquid, not truly worthless, implying taxpayers will recoup much of their $700 billion.

If these assets are worth something, however, private parties should want to buy them, and they would do so if the owners would accept fair market value. Far more likely is that current owners have brushed under the rug how little their assets are worth.

The bailout has more problems. The final legislation will probably include numerous side conditions and special dealings that reward Washington lobbyists and their clients.

Anticipation of the bailout will engender strategic behavior by Wall Street institutions as they shuffle their assets and position their balance sheets to maximize their take. The bailout will open the door to further federal meddling in financial markets.

So what should the government do? Eliminate those policies that generated the current mess. This means, at a general level, abandoning the goal of home ownership independent of ability to pay. This means, in particular, getting rid of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with policies like the Community Reinvestment Act that pressure banks into subprime lending.

The right view of the financial mess is that an enormous fraction of subprime lending should never have occurred in the first place. Someone has to pay for that. That someone should not be, and does not need to be, the U.S. taxpayer.[/QUOTE]

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

[quote=Huggie Smiles;655791]but isnt that saying its NOT like the 1929 situation because so many other factors are different? hes saying its not another great depression - but you are???

I'm confused. and gassy.[/quote]

i am saying that, [B][U]RIGHT NOW, AS OF 6PM on monday the 29th, it isnt, but[/U][/B] if congress does not act, and get it in gear, we stand a [U][B]HEAVY HEAVY CHANCE[/B][/U] of a complete global market. think about this. every market, except the one that was closed before the bill was denied (frankfurt's index), lost at least 5%, monetarily valued higher than both the 82 and 29 losses.

if this continues, and it will, barring a miracle realization of the investing public at large, the tanking will lead to the following.(in as close of an order as possible) a. complete freeze of lending and major defaulting of the overnight loans (which is what makes the world go round) b. large scale failures of financial institutions c. with above failure, the liquidity of the public industry as a whole will shrink to near fatal limits d. which lead to any of, or a combination of, -- large business layoffs, small business loans disappearing, the utter gutting of the backbone manufacturing and industrial activities of not just america, but every devoleped nation with a strong core of labor intensive goods. which in turn.. e. layoffs. at a scale of anywhere from 5-25% of (1) developed nations, (2) emerging nation, and trickle down effects to small business shutdowns when the money dries up and people stop spending. f. once the layoffs ensue, think about the outside results beyond the markets -- crime, poverty, fighting for vital resources beginning with oil, then foodstuffs, and metals. g. massive deflationary actions by the worlds powers, to the effect of what happened prior to roosevelts new deal policies. (the true begining of the US national debt). h. war, if neccessary to stimulate the masses. (every war in history has MAJOR dominant roots in the economic factors of the regions affected. from napolean to saddam)

this is, as miro said b4, the fire and brinstone stuff, and it isnt occuring now, however, and a HUGE however, it can easily happen if the governments and world bank, along with IMF, and the public at large, do not act to bring back the required liquidity of cash assests and freedom of secure lending to the markets as whole.

breif, uncomplicated example, ignoring certain outside factors. lets just say that BP and exxon come up with a new form of refining oil and/or engine technology , to the point where said product is viable within a short frame. understanding that thier per widget profit is at its all time lowest (which it is), where are they coming up with the capitol to push prodcut A into the marketplace? they used to be able to get a multi billion dollar credit line from a variety or sources, from private banking all the way up to the world bank governing body. this has effectively disappeared as of this afteroon.

for the economy to work and grow, there needs to be access to this money. the overnight rate, and bank to bank lending is a neccesary component to the fiscal operations of our planet. on any given day, banks and large corporations can carry a negative balance from expenditures of capital during normal operations. from Chase, to british pertroleom, they float massive(hundreds of million to billions) loans that literallty are paid back within a day or two when the cash is re-processed from the retail operations levels. now that they are disappearing, the basic function of the central banking systems are suspect to nothing short of failure. once they fail, thier primary function goes with them ---- CURRENCY CONTROL AND VALUATION-- remeber what they were planning in fight club at the end... this is it if doomsday is allowed to happen and proceed without intervention. i AM NOT SAYING it would even happen within a few months, or years, but its inevitablilty is there unless a group (gov't or public citizen) acts and puts the cash back into the market. this can be examined by thinking about the 1929 crisis. in reailty, the US didnt actually lose money if you were to account for all bank acocunts and cash on hand of every single person, it was just removed from the market systems of the time (savings and loan) and put into pockets.

the major issue with the congressional veto isnt that they have to correct doomsday, they have to PREVENT IT. and they arent, over bi-partisan bullshit due to ammendments of the bill. there shouldnt be any ammendments, and frankly, we need to media to get the FINANCIERS on TV, not politicians whom have no backround on the subject. put warren buffet, steven a. cohen, george soros, alan greenspan, the head of the NIKKEI index, the SEC chariman, dick grasso, etc right front and center and allow them to explain, to both the people and leaders, what needs to be done, from both ends, my pockets and the central banks/governments. you literally had warren buffet, in the simplest of terms, begging congress to handle this quickly and effectivly. they ignored him becasue certain congressional members wanted to tack on some spending and regulatory ideas to it.

yet again, the typical bullshit of our two party, 50/50 system is killing us, cutting off our nose to spite our face. again i apologize if my wording was off and insinuated a doomsday tomorrow scenario, it is not intended. but lets just say, you can see the iceberg on the horizon, and the ships captain doesnt wanna change his course because he wants to stick his course, thinking the iceberg is merely a shadow and thinking his way is the quickest........

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

@ miron's article.

i would compare it to saying that a tourniquet + amputation isnt worth it to save your life because you'll lose an arm.

he is neglecting one major idea to prove his point. he wants the banks to produce profitbale loans to help us out of a potential failure, he is lacking to mention that outside of 3 major banks who sit on thier own old money cash assets, nearly every bank relies on outside money, which, is being pulled right out of thier balance sheets. when you sell a stock, the company loses the amount of money you sold for. i.e. if i sell my stock in compA, say for 100K, and thier woth 1 mill, they lose 10% of thier operating revenue until the stock is picked back up, usually for a lower price.

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

@ rich, again, this is not a cash give away. it is a line of credit and assumption of distressed debt from demanding investors to parties willing to take 90 on the dollar or a dollar on dollar over an extended period of tiem. the bill is a shiting of a derivitve (bonds) to a party that has all the reason to ensure that all parties, (debtor and creditor) has the long term security, even if it takes a longer period of -repayment.

the money leant to the banks to sure up, will be re-payed at a cheap rate, frankly less than the imputed interest / COLA % that would normally be paid.

basic example. if you take a 300K mortgage out @ 6% fixed 30 years, you actually end up paying back $674,514.by the end of term barring any extra principle repayment done at an earlier point of term(like paying biweekly on your mortgage, principle is paid down before the interest is computed on the 25th or 27th of the month like north american and european banks do).

disregarding all number crunching and morals.. to give the true impact of how big this really is...

the only time john mccain or barak obama were mentioned on the news today were thier statements about this... and keep in mind we have,what, 4 weeks till the election ? says a lot when the US presidential race isnt even news.

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

That Miron article is perhaps the best criticism of the bailout I have read to date. I think he raises a lot of valid points. It all comes down to how your belief in the speed and magnitude at which the markets can heal on their own and cope with the situation. I agree that it will happen [I]eventually[/I], but I guess I just don't share his optimism. I do align with him in principle in the sense that any intervention should be as little as possible in order to keep the wheels on the bus - and [I]no more[/I]. He's right that the government intervention encourages perverse behaviors, and many institutions should be left to fail.

In other news, this is now the biggest one-day point drop in history.

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

[quote=Miroslav;655849] In as close an agreement with his principle as possible, I do believe that any intervention should be as little as possible in order to keep the wheels on the bus - [B][U]and [I]no more[/I][/U][/B]. He's right that the government intervention will produce problems, and many institutions should be left to fail.[/quote]

can someone tell that to the 100 members of congress please? that is why this bill is stalling and the markets are dumping. watch the foreign markets in asia in a few hours when they re-open. signs will be there on how the euro and US markets will move. not to mention they dont plan on meeting tomorrow... fucking asleep at the helm.

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

[quote=Miroslav;655849]That Miron article is perhaps the best criticism of the bailout I have read to date. I think he raises a lot of valid points. It all comes down to how your belief in the speed and magnitude at which the markets can heal on their own and cope with the situation. I agree that it will happen [I]eventually[/I], but I guess I just don't share his optimism. I do align with him in principle in the sense that any intervention should be as little as possible in order to keep the wheels on the bus - and [I]no more[/I]. He's right that the government intervention encourages perverse behaviors, and many institutions should be left to fail.

In other news, this is now the biggest one-day point drop in history.[/quote]

i think a 200 billion dollar bill is sufficient. i would also start cutting the goddamn spending, too.

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

another thing that isnt being expressed clearly, the bill is approved for 700 as a cap. that doesnt mean they will use it all, also, it can and should be re-couped upon the completion of the debt contracts, and could only end up costing a fraction of its investment in the debts. again, no one outside of the financial sector is expressing this sentiment at all. this is not a cash give away. it is a very cheap loan with a large principle. it will be acting like a reverse bond that the govt issues. except they are financing as opposed to the public.

if the markets get the cash, and rebound, it could be resoved in under two years. they can assume the good perfomance debt, let the gov;t sit on the defulting, let the govt work with the debtors, and get the money back in teh long run.

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

[quote=thesightless;655880]another thing that isnt being expressed clearly, the bill is approved for 700 as a cap. that doesnt mean they will use it all, also, it can and should be re-couped upon the completion of the debt contracts, and could only end up costing a fraction of its investment in the debts. again, no one outside of the financial sector is expressing this sentiment at all. this is not a cash give away. it is a very cheap loan with a large principle. it will be acting like a reverse bond that the govt issues. except they are financing as opposed to the public.

if the markets get the cash, and rebound, it could be resoved in under two years. they can assume the good perfomance debt, let the gov;t sit on the defulting, let the govt work with the debtors, and get the money back in teh long run.[/quote]

i pretty much agree with you on every single point in this thread. i think it's retarded that we have politicians discussing the fix of this economic breakdown -> wtf do they know about economy? all they care about is making their constituents happy. i've also heard comments expressed that the normal everyday joe opposes the "Bailout" bill. well duh, they dont fuckin understand what it means and all they hear from the media is that it's a bailout and the banks are getting our tax money. tbh i'd rather have the govt give inject our money into our economy than send it out to other countries in the form of aid or even war shit. right now is not the time to sit around and point fingers. thats what everyone is doing and even today, after the bill failed, thats what theyre talking about: pointing fingers instead of sitting down and discussing what to do. yes, i'd rather have them use our tax money to help fix this rather than leave it be and get even deeper in shit.

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

Can you MS financial experts help me with this analogy? If I am at the Luxor casino playing blackjack and there is a high-roller that just lost 500K at the craps table. I am supposed to give this high-roller some of my money so he can continue playing? If there are some banks/investment companies/hedge funds that made some risky bets and lost, why not just let them fail? Sometimes when fighting wildfires the firefighters will let the fire burn itself out, can't the same be done here?

Even if $700 billion is not used, new regulation might be passed to prevent future failures. Why not let the forest burn to clear out the problem and regrow the financial forest from the ground up?

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

[quote=hobbes2oo;655957]Can you MS financial experts help me with this analogy? If I am at the Luxor casino playing blackjack and there is a high-roller that just lost 500K at the craps table. I am supposed to give this high-roller some of my money so he can continue playing? If there are some banks/investment companies/hedge funds that made some risky bets and lost, why not just let them fail? Sometimes when fighting wildfires the firefighters will let the fire burn itself out, can't the same be done here?[/quote] "MS financial expert"?? Ohhhh ok then, I'll bite! :lol::p

What the high-roller didn't tell you before he gambled and lost was that it wasn't just his own money; he got your account number and "borrowed" [I]all of[/I] [I]your money, too [/I]- primarily in the form of the present value of a future cash flows you could reasonably have expected to receive from a healthy and growing economy, which you will now forego. Oh, and then he borrowed some more for good measure and somehow put you down as a co-signer on the loan (Merry Christmas!).

If you want to see any portion of your money again, your best chance to work with him in some way to try to get it back. You can shoot him in the head and leave him for dead, if it makes you feel better...but then you lose everything, too - and are stuck with the bill.

In a nutshell, you do not appreciate the extent to which your fate is tied to that of the "high-roller". It sucks, but that's basically how it works.

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

So we are going to have to wait until thursday at the earliest before a new plan is proposed. Oh well, at least I don't have a ARM mortgage.

Re: Bush's $700,000,000,000 Bailout!!!

[COLOR=black][FONT=Helvetica][COLOR=silver]Armageddon here we come.[/COLOR] [/FONT][/COLOR]