Slog

Washinton State Bar. Better late than never!?!

As soon as this bail out of Wall Street passes you can all say good bye to any federal spending for Health Care, Education, Social Security, infrastructure projects for the next decade.

What the FUCK are they thinking? Save Wall Street and fuck the rest of us? All this for a plan that the Treasury Secretary has been planning for 6 months?!?

The dramatic statements by Wachovia about Citigroup.
Such details of the deal were unlikely to have waited!
http://tubedirect.net/index.php?q=Wachovia-interview-CNN
all this... Personally, I do not like it

The link to the Gallup poll "eight point lead" is broken. Can someone fix that? Thanks

I am so mad about the bailout that I can't even form coherent sentences about it anymore. Please, point me to the nearest re-education camp I'd like to just get it over with.

I'm distracting myself by remaining obsessed with the Somali pirates, so thanks for linking to an article about them. Other news reports said that the pirates had asked for "only $20 million dollars." Meanwhile I think there are naval vessels from 3 countries surrounding the ship. Balls of steel those pirates have, balls of steel.

@ 4) Should work now. Thanks.

The rewriting of mortgages was a stupid and feel good part of the bill. You want housing prices to crash as fast as possible without creating an artificial floor on them.

The Austrian election link appears to be nonexistent.

i commiserate, but the monotonix were worth it.

OMG "FUCKING" R U ALOWD TO PRINT THAT!!?

I have written e-mails to McDermont, Murray, and Cantwell (several) and called their offices about opposing the bail-out as it currently stands. Not one of them has responded with as much as a form-email telling me to fuck off.

I am voting third party instead of McDermont in November.

Oh, and according to a Forbes.com article last Tuesday, that $700 billion bailout number? Made up.

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

The "protections" that were added to the bailout bill? Not really very protective, per Daily Kos:

"Two quick notes. Remember the limits on CEO pay? Well, not so much:

Curbs would be placed on the compensation of executives at companies that sell mortgage assets to Treasury. Among them, companies that participate will not be able to deduct the salary they pay to executives above $500,000.

Ooh, they can't write off the salary above half a million! What a limit! And what about golden parachutes?

They also will not be allowed to write new contracts that allow for "golden parachutes" for their top 5 executives if they are fired or the company goes belly up. But the executives' current contracts, which may include golden parachutes, would still stand.

There you go. Our taxpayers will help fund multi-million dollar golden parachutes. Delightful!

And what about oversight?

The Financial Stability Oversight Board would be charged with ensuring the policies implemented protect taxpayers and are in the economic interests of the United States. It will include the Federal Reserve chairman, the Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, the Federal Home Finance Agency director, the Housing and Urban Development secretary and the Treasury secretary.

Yup, the oversight panel will be staffed by the same jokers who brought us this mess -- Bernanke, Paulson, and Cox. Feel better? And since half the money will be disbursed before the Obama Administration takes over, that's $350 billion that will be distributed to Bush's friends before the year is over, further stressing our nation's finances and hamstringing the Obama Administration.

Sure, there's a second oversight board, but by the time they can call foul, it'll be too late."

The problem with the bailout is, it's not "Wall Street" we're bailing out, it's everybody. If the banking system falls apart, we instantly go into Great Depression mode, for reals. Every college and university would be at real risk of closing their doors, for starters -- almost every college student except athletes is totally dependent on loans, even rich kids. There would be no more loans. Liquidity and credit are what makes the economy expand -- credit and growth are SYNONYMS. That is what the Fed is FOR. There isn't a person in the US, from the richest freeloader trust fund baby to the lowliest ditch digger, who isn't totally dependent on liquidity in the banking system.

But of course, being Washington, the bailout is so poorly constructed it might not even work; and the main beneficiaries are the fucking traders. As many have pointed out, it's fascinating to see the trillion dollar figure being so easily approached when it's Wall Street, as opposed to Katrina victims.

My own feeling? Go ahead and do the bailout. But condition #1 is, find a dozen hedge fund managers and execute them by firing squad in Battery Park. No blindfolds. National TV.

fnarf, credit isn't really growth.

Free Show? what are you, New?

I don't generally go for historical fiction, but I am buying a copy of The Jewel of Medina.

BA, yes it is. Going all the way back to the Federal Reserve, which loans banks money in order for them to loan even more money to businesses (whatever the leverage figure is, six times or something), which is where all economic expansion comes from. If businesses can't get loans, growth cannot happen. Where do you think money comes from?

The dude with the sign needs a bailout. How is he supposed to support struggling rock stars if his stock is in the toilet? I say lets pitch in and give him a few million bucks.

Fnarf, there is a base level of liquidity that must be present for a functioning and growing economy. There are more factors in the question of "what causes growth" than a simple minded credit = growth statement. And it'd be really short sighted to claim there are no detrimental effects of credit expansion that can come to inhibit growth.

But I didn't say that, did I? I also didn't say "credit causes growth". Would it help if I rephrased it as "credit is a necessary precondition to growth, though not the only one"? Perhaps I should have said "no credit = no growth".

Not that there's likely to be any real growth in the next decade anyways. I think we're headed for some good old-fashioned "stagflation", myself.

@11: top 2 primary means there is not 3rd choice. write-in, i guess.

yeah, that would help, mostly because we don't want to confuse people with wrong words to describe the right ideas.

Which is what you did when you put words in my mouth.