For the record, NOBODY has paid for the bailouts yet

[theboss]

If you are arguing about who has paid for the bailouts or who should pay for the bailouts...the answer as of right now is no one.

This is why the budget deficit is approaching $1 Trillion.

So, if you are talking about current tax rates or shifting the burdern or whatever. Remember, a large large large bill is still sitting in the middle of the dinner table and NO ONE has reached for their wallets yet.

[JuniperLea]

1. Where was all your angst...

When BushCo was breaking the world? And where is your MBA from? Which broker/dealer holds your securities licenses? How would you propose we try to fix this fubar economy left behind by BushCo?

:eyes:

[theboss]

3. I've been bitching about everything since at least '96

About the tech bubble.
About the housing bubble.
About cutting taxes during wartime.
About unregulated financial markets.
About the stagnation of real wages during alleged prosperity.
About Health Care costs.

Nobody listens to me.

Also, for the record. English Degree- Ivy League School/Law Degree - Non Ivy League School. Field of Expertise - Health Care.

Also, knowing things does not make me smart. Considering I own two homes at the moment and am underwater on both.

[JuniperLea]

5. That still doesn't explain...

What you think should be done about the economic crisis. How do you think the hemorrhaging should have been stopped? It is slowing, you know.

[theboss]

8. To stop it now? Move to Cuba to the UAE for ten years and hope for the best?

I don't exactly have a plan.

The issue that is killing the economy is the lack of credit. And despite the trillions spent, the credit markets are still largely clogged.

I think there is fault in the current plan in that it is pumping money into firms that still have poisonous assets on their books. I'm not sure why the government didn't just create an agency to buy those assets and somehow try to get 10 cents on the dollar for them. I'm not sure what the total figures would be, but that would seem to be step one before just throwing cash for operations around.

Or, honestly, if you want to be bold. Nationalize the banks under some 6 month reorganization plan. Clearly, politically, you would have to deregulate them quickly or face huge huge electoral problems.

Turning the US Treasury into a venture capitalist firm for dying business strikes me as the wrong plan. But we will see.

[JuniperLea]

12. I think the "lack of credit" meme is wrong...

There are lack of takers... lack of people who can honestly qualify to borrow. Lack of jobs and lack of spending... it's trickling up.

[JackRiddler]

10. No it's not better - the "bailouts" (robbery by banks) make everything worse.

Terms like "hemorrhaging" create the pretense this was anything other than an engineered plunder of billions of people by an exceedingly small class of pirates known as "Wall Street" (a problematic term since I hate blaming New York per se). The crisis was an inevitable, foreseeable result of at least 10 years of economic policy dating back to the last time pirate Larry Summers was in a position of authority. The "bailout" is the final swag that can be grabbed off the Titanic as the rats go looking for their hidey-holes. (Sorry about the mixed metaphor.)

[JuniperLea]

11. I've heard that meme for a very long time...

And I've yet to hear one alternative plan.

I think your play on the word hemorrhaging is wrong. Yes, this was a long-planned event. There's no disputing that at all. Can you offer up another word to describe the flow of money out of all the coffers? Can you offer something better than letting the entire world's economic system to collapse?

[JackRiddler]

14. I don't do "memes," I do descriptions and ideas

First of all, the world economic system has collapsed, for good reason, and is already the biggest disaster in human history. Just because everyone's not bankrupt or unemployed yet doesn't mean it hasn't failed. We burned the planet. We don't need to imagine additional scare scenarios so that the banks can extort more from the taxpayers. It's already bad enough: We burned the planet. Let's hope we can figure out how most of us can still survive that and restore the natural wealth.

It needs to be replaced from the bottom up.

Take the trillions being given to the banks back. Let them fail: clean out the parasites. Only deposits should be insured. Before TARP, only deposits were insured, and that's how it should be. Everything else: tough.

Use this capital that you have now rescued from the bankster thieves to open up new national banks, unburdened by debt and derivatives bets. There can be a National Recovery Bank specializing in capital for the new energy and new transport sectors, for organic farming initiatives. Each state can start its own state bank.

Instead of giving capital to AIG which gives it to Goldman which then makes it go poof into some billionaire's accounts offshore -- which is harming the honest competitors who aren't taking TARP or other bailouts -- you can help expand the credit unions instead. They're not having a crisis, because they didn't engage in usury or insane speculation.

The failed system of private banking by usury and speculation must be replaced -- not propped up so that it can do what is natural for it and set up the next, bigger disaster.

[PA Democrat]

2. I was under the impression that the bank bailouts were done by the Fed basically printing money.

The Fed made a "deposit" to the accounts that banks are required to hold at the Federal Reserve bank. I don't believe that the money for the bank bailouts was borrowed; it was "created".

[theboss]

4. And what is the end result of creating too much money too fast?

I feel like an Econ 205 Prof or something.

[PA Democrat]

6. I was merely pointing out how the bailout was done.

Actually, I have a degree in economics and worked in banking for many years, so you don't need to educate me.

[theboss]

9. Fair enough

Didn't mean to insult you.

[JackRiddler]

15. Not entirely...

Much of the money is being converted to debt on the sly.

The Fed is not forthcoming with how the money is generated (by printing or T-bills), or who is getting it. Recipients and manner of creation are actually being kept secret!

This is why Bloomberg has sued the Fed to demand a full accounting of the bailout measures to date. No kidding!

[Seldona]

7. Frontline did a great show on the bailout. "Inside The Meltdown."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meltdown/view/

Very informative imo.

[JackRiddler]

16. Apologies but I must disagree: It was pro-bailout propaganda.

Review of

INSIDE THE MELTDOWN, PBS "Frontline" Documentary

Watch hour online at
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meltdown/view/

Soviet-level propaganda on behalf of the TARP and FED bailouts.

The chronological framing is the primary device for skewing the story. We open breathlessly in March 2008, a point seven months after the crisis first manifested in Aug. 2007. Bear Stearns is going under and Timmy Geithner of the New York Federal Reserve rides to the rescue. The crisis is treated like some outbreak that hit the market from nowhere.

We are told that Bernanke and Paulson are both brilliant minds and brothers in arms, fighting to rescue the world from a meltdown. Bernanke has been studying all his life to prepare for exactly this crisis. A few origins and flaws of the system are detailed incidentally as we follow these heroes. The point is always that the world is burning and they must do something!

After Fannie/Freddie, Lehman Brothers (a terrible mistake not to bail it out causes all credit to freeze!) and AIG, the TARP finally appears as the only possible solution. None of its opponents are allowed to speak for themselves in interviews. The initial House rejection of TARP is a great disaster brought on by right-wing Republicans, who are granted only brief snippets of them speaking from the House floor. As for the 90 left-wing Democrats who voted against TARP, they are mentioned once and not one of them gets to speak at all. No critic of the TARP or of the banking system, and none of the many who warned of the inevitability of the crisis years in advance are acknowledged. All of the interviews are with top-level bankers, regime officials, except for the NYT's Nocera and Krugman, whose critical views are not covered. Commoners, such as the folk taking these ARM deals or even the mortgage selling scoundrels on the ground level, are indicated in the abstract by way of helicopter shots of suburban sprawlscapes.

In the final scenes, it absolutely kills Paulson to have to back away from his deep free market ideology and call in the nine presidents of the biggest banks presidents for a morning conference, to force the poor bastards to take hundreds of billions of dollars in direct cash injections from taxpayers. They do this only reluctantly, so as to save the world, since it's on fire. Let's hope it will be enough, the documentary concludes, but (by implication as Obama enters the scene) we must be ready to flood in some more taxpayer cash to save the precious banks!

Puh-lease.

CNBC - House of Cards
http://www.cnbc.com/id/28892719

Amazingly the CNBC 2-hour documentary was far, far superior. Had some key omissions (for example: the role of the media, such as CNBC!). But it started from 2002 with the Greenspan interest-rate cuts and the easy-credit housing boom, giving at least a partial history. This is not entirely satisfying, a more honest approach would start with the Clinton-Gramm-Rubin OTC deregulation of 1999-2000. (I'd want to start back at the fall of Bretton Woods I and the rise of financialization and neoliberalism, or perhaps with Das Kapital I, but never mind.) CNBC's documentary took a broad perspective on market and economy, with a number of house-buyer/suckers and a close look at some of the ground scammers like this one Russian mortgage-scheme seller who was clearing $5 million/week doing the dirt on scam loans. The key role of the ratings agencies was emphasized throughout -- NONE OF THIS IS POSSIBLE WITHOUT THE TRIPLE-A FROM STANDARD AND POOR -- and we got a good look at the defrauded investors too (like that now-famous town pension fund in Norway).

The commercial breaks with promotionals for Cramer made for a hilarious counterpoint, or else left me thirsting for blood on the guillotine. Greenspan got to rationalize on his own behalf, and the reporter treated him with too much deference.

[Mr. Black]

13. Free ride?

The current projection as of 10 April is over 1.75 trillion for the year, providing that no new stimulus packages or bailouts are enacted. I was against overspending by BushCo, but I wish the current administration would have better focused the funds on resolving the issues or at least put in the safe guards that corporate america won't strip a majority of the stimulus for profit instead of job creation. As I blamed Bush for numerous activities. We need to make sure we hold this administration accountable. As was mentioned, no one has started paying this debt. Eventually, we will all pay. I would gladly give up my $67 dollars a week to save my children from paying it back in the future.