another $500 billion to be added to the deficit

[strmrdr]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080919/ap_on_bi_ge/financial_meltdown

To bail out the rich.

 

[joflier]

OMG!

 

[purrfectpear]

At this point it''s like Monopoly money anyway. The government just keeps those printing presses rolling

 

[icekid]

Date: 9/19/2008 9:06:25 PM
Author: purrfectpear
At this point it''s like Monopoly money anyway. The government just keeps those printing presses rolling

No kidding... THAT is the scary thing. Inflation anyone?

 

[movie zombie]

why is no once complaining about the socialism this represents?

America: A democratic-socialist state?
September 19, 2008 - 4:19am.
By DEROY MURDOCK

There''s no avoiding this conclusion: The federal government''s breathtaking economic interventionism has turned America into a democratic-socialist state. The fact that these drastic incursions are happening under an allegedly conservative administration leaves this right-winger oscillating between head-spinning disbelief and exhausted disenchantment.

The $200 billion federal bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has given Washington control of some $5 trillion in home-mortgage debt. Roughly half of Americans now live, essentially, in public housing.

The nationalization of American Insurance Group puts Uncle Sam in charge of 80 percent of the nation''s largest insurance company. Cost: $85 billion.

To finance this takeover, the Treasury Department will sell some $40 billion in bonds. After borrowing this money -- to be paid eventually by Americans not yet born, conceived, nor imagined -- Treasury officials will hand it to the Federal Reserve to help fund its seizure of AIG.

This month''s brutish government intrusions arrive atop July''s $300 billion bailout to refinance home mortgages up to $729,750 in value. This legislation has yielded a grotesque spectacle: the 34.7 percent of households that rent dwellings, and thus lack home equity, are subsidizing those who own homes that renters cannot afford. This program lifts the prices of those properties even more beyond reach, while further draining renters'' pockets. This makes down payments that much tougher to accumulate.

The feds coughed up $29 billion in March to unplug Bear Stearns and sell it to J.P Morgan Chase. Bear was deemed "too big to fail," thus paradoxically requiring its federal euthanasia. Nevertheless, much-larger Lehman Brothers ($59 billion in sales last year vs. Bear''s $16 billion) was allowed to declare bankruptcy and sell itself to Barclay''s Bank. Still, taxpayers are reimbursing Chase $87 billion for covering some dodgy Lehman transactions.

Washington also has racked up some $200 billion in outstanding loans to banks through the Fed''s Term Auction Facility.

And don''t forget January''s $168 billion "stimulus" package.

Beyond Wall Street, tax dollars are churning like storm surge from America''s roads to its farms to its medicine chests.

As high fuel prices have forced motorists to drive less, plunging gas-tax revenues have carved an $8 billion hole in the Federal Highway Trust Fund. Rep. Jeff Flake (R -- Arizona) has proposed filling this gap by rescinding unspent cash from among approximately 6,000 pork-barrel projects shoehorned into 2005''s $286 billion transportation bill. Instead of helping Flake transform this into a winning issue for Republicans before Election Day, President George W. Kucinich...er, Bush signed a bill Monday that simply grabs $8 billion from Treasury''s vault and shifts it to the highway fund, thus despicably leaving those earmarks intact.

Last May''s $307 billion agricultural bailout will pump taxpayer dollars into the pockets of farmers, many with multi-million-dollar incomes augmented by record high prices for many crops. These subsidies further fatten consumers'' grocery bills. In addition, 2002''s five-year farm fiasco cost $190 billion.

The 2003 Medicare Drug Plan will cost $783 billion through 2018 to airdrop pharmaceutical benefits on all Americans over 65, regardless of personal wealth, and even if they already have health insurance, including drug coverage.

GOP presidential nominee John McCain will benefit by reminding voters that he opposed nearly all of this government largesse. He should explain that his administration thus will not be "more of the same" as Obamacrats keep chanting. To the contrary, it will embody Washington''s liberation by the forces of limited government.

The Bush Administration disgracefully has requested and or agreed to everything denounced here, save for 2008''s farm bill, which Bush vetoed, albeit too late to matter. Porcine Republicans -- 100 House members and 35 senators -- shamelessly overrode Bush''s objections.

Bush deserves applause for liberating Afghanistan and Iraq. Likewise, since 9/11, he has kept al-Qaeda and its bloodthirsty followers sufficiently under fire overseas, and under surveillance at home, to preempt a re-strike on the U.S. mainland. Back home, he appropriately slashed taxes, appointed constitutionalist judges, and approved the Washington, D.C. school voucher bill.

That aside, however, President Bush is ravaged by the same Big Government Republican bacterium that consumed his father''s costly, collectivist, and calamitous administration. Just four months before G.W. Bush mercifully takes that last flight to Crawford, it feels as if Ronald Reagan never lived and Lyndon Johnson never died.

(Deroy Murdock is a columnist with Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University. E-mail him at deroy.Murdock(at)gmail.com)

Technorati Tags: FUBAR government waste spending

 

[ksinger]

Date: 9/19/2008 11:30:53 PM
Author: movie zombie

why is no once complaining about the socialism this represents?

America: A democratic-socialist state?
September 19, 2008 - 4:19am.
By DEROY MURDOCK

There''s no avoiding this conclusion: The federal government''s breathtaking economic interventionism has turned America into a democratic-socialist state. The fact that these drastic incursions are happening under an allegedly conservative administration leaves this right-winger oscillating between head-spinning disbelief and exhausted disenchantment.

The $200 billion federal bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has given Washington control of some $5 trillion in home-mortgage debt. Roughly half of Americans now live, essentially, in public housing.

The nationalization of American Insurance Group puts Uncle Sam in charge of 80 percent of the nation''s largest insurance company. Cost: $85 billion.

To finance this takeover, the Treasury Department will sell some $40 billion in bonds. After borrowing this money -- to be paid eventually by Americans not yet born, conceived, nor imagined -- Treasury officials will hand it to the Federal Reserve to help fund its seizure of AIG.

This month''s brutish government intrusions arrive atop July''s $300 billion bailout to refinance home mortgages up to $729,750 in value. This legislation has yielded a grotesque spectacle: the 34.7 percent of households that rent dwellings, and thus lack home equity, are subsidizing those who own homes that renters cannot afford. This program lifts the prices of those properties even more beyond reach, while further draining renters'' pockets. This makes down payments that much tougher to accumulate.

The feds coughed up $29 billion in March to unplug Bear Stearns and sell it to J.P Morgan Chase. Bear was deemed ''too big to fail,'' thus paradoxically requiring its federal euthanasia. Nevertheless, much-larger Lehman Brothers ($59 billion in sales last year vs. Bear''s $16 billion) was allowed to declare bankruptcy and sell itself to Barclay''s Bank. Still, taxpayers are reimbursing Chase $87 billion for covering some dodgy Lehman transactions.

Washington also has racked up some $200 billion in outstanding loans to banks through the Fed''s Term Auction Facility.

And don''t forget January''s $168 billion ''stimulus'' package.

Beyond Wall Street, tax dollars are churning like storm surge from America''s roads to its farms to its medicine chests.

As high fuel prices have forced motorists to drive less, plunging gas-tax revenues have carved an $8 billion hole in the Federal Highway Trust Fund. Rep. Jeff Flake (R -- Arizona) has proposed filling this gap by rescinding unspent cash from among approximately 6,000 pork-barrel projects shoehorned into 2005''s $286 billion transportation bill. Instead of helping Flake transform this into a winning issue for Republicans before Election Day, President George W. Kucinich...er, Bush signed a bill Monday that simply grabs $8 billion from Treasury''s vault and shifts it to the highway fund, thus despicably leaving those earmarks intact.

Last May''s $307 billion agricultural bailout will pump taxpayer dollars into the pockets of farmers, many with multi-million-dollar incomes augmented by record high prices for many crops. These subsidies further fatten consumers'' grocery bills. In addition, 2002''s five-year farm fiasco cost $190 billion.

The 2003 Medicare Drug Plan will cost $783 billion through 2018 to airdrop pharmaceutical benefits on all Americans over 65, regardless of personal wealth, and even if they already have health insurance, including drug coverage.

GOP presidential nominee John McCain will benefit by reminding voters that he opposed nearly all of this government largesse. He should explain that his administration thus will not be ''more of the same'' as Obamacrats keep chanting. To the contrary, it will embody Washington''s liberation by the forces of limited government.

The Bush Administration disgracefully has requested and or agreed to everything denounced here, save for 2008''s farm bill, which Bush vetoed, albeit too late to matter. Porcine Republicans -- 100 House members and 35 senators -- shamelessly overrode Bush''s objections.

Bush deserves applause for liberating Afghanistan and Iraq. Likewise, since 9/11, he has kept al-Qaeda and its bloodthirsty followers sufficiently under fire overseas, and under surveillance at home, to preempt a re-strike on the U.S. mainland. Back home, he appropriately slashed taxes, appointed constitutionalist judges, and approved the Washington, D.C. school voucher bill.

That aside, however, President Bush is ravaged by the same Big Government Republican bacterium that consumed his father''s costly, collectivist, and calamitous administration. Just four months before G.W. Bush mercifully takes that last flight to Crawford, it feels as if Ronald Reagan never lived and Lyndon Johnson never died.

(Deroy Murdock is a columnist with Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University. E-mail him at deroy.Murdock(at)gmail.com)

Technorati Tags: FUBAR government waste spending

Not complaining because maybe they''re finally seeing the damage that can be wrought by an entire system enshrining as an unmitigated societal good, the values of screw-you-I''m-getting-mine-greed and predatory capitalism? Damage is damage, regardless of what scary label you want to attach to it. They also probably aren''t complaining because everyone from the top to the bottom is completely mindless with fear right now. No one knows what to do, really. This is truly a crash of ''29 proportions, and to pretend it isn''t is beyond foolish. The only people who aren''t terrified are the ones who aren''t paying attention and/or have no idea what''s gone before in American history. I know a few and I almost envy them the calm that comes from being wilfully ignorant.

I always viewed those outrageous returns we got for a few years there, as suspicious, not because I knew much about the market, but because my mom told me over and over, if it seems to good to be true, it almost always is. That and lessons from biology told me that unfettered growth in any system eventually overwhelms the system. Like cancer. Looks like both observations have served me pretty well.

I hope those of us lucky enough to be raised by tight-fisted Depression-era parents (love ya Mom!), learned those lessons of penny pinching well. (We gardened too, another skill that might come in handy soon) Thank her training that I bought much less house than the bank said I could afford, and that was 10 years ago when they still had real commonsense guidelines as to how much you could be approved for. I looked at the top dollar I was approved for THEN, and thought they were nuts to tell me that. All I can say right now is , tough times ahead for sure...

Hard Truths About the Bailout

 

[Daydreamer7130]

Inflation... depression..... And I am afraid it will get worse before it gets better

 

[joflier]

I wonder if its just delaying the inevitable?

 

[strmrdr]

Date: 9/21/2008 10:06:55 AM
Author: joflier
I wonder if its just delaying the inevitable?

yes because they aren''t changing the law that allowed it to happen.

 

[ksinger]

Date: 9/21/2008 10:48:07 AM
Author: strmrdr

Date: 9/21/2008 10:06:55 AM
Author: joflier
I wonder if its just delaying the inevitable?

yes because they aren''t changing the law that allowed it to happen.

Yep. Kinda like shutting the barn about 2 weeks after the horse has bolted. And the infuriating thing is everybody in the finance world had more than a genuine clue that this thing was GONNA blow, but didn''t change their practices. Amoral greed greed greed, pure and simple. And those of us who would not be willing to screw over anyone for money will get to pay the price. It''s really the same old historical story played out over and over...

Anyone want to take a guess if we might have this? (excerpt from a report (April 200 on hyperinflation by Shadowstats.org)

Inflationary Recession Is in Place

Banking Solvency Crisis Has Opened First Phase of Monetary Inflation

Hyperinflationary Depression Remains Likely As Early As 2010

__________

Overview

The U.S. economy is in an intensifying inflationary recession that eventually will evolve into a hyperinflationary great depression. Hyperinflation could be experienced as early as 2010, if not before, and likely no more than a decade down the road. The U.S. government and Federal Reserve already have committed the system to this course through the easy politics of a bottomless pocketbook, the servicing of big-moneyed special interests, and gross mismanagement.

The U.S. has no way of avoiding a financial Armageddon. Bankrupt sovereign states most commonly use the currency printing press as a solution to not having enough money to cover their obligations. The alternative would be for the U.S. to renege on its existing debt and obligations, a solution for modern sovereign states rarely seen outside of governments overthrown in revolution, and a solution with no happier ending than simply printing the needed money. With the creation of massive amounts of new fiat (not backed by gold) dollars will come the eventual complete collapse of the value of the U.S. dollar and related dollar-denominated paper assets.

What lies ahead will be extremely difficult and unhappy times for many. Ralph T. Foster, in his "Fiat Paper Money" (see recommended further reading at the end of this issue), closes his book’s preface with a particularly poignant quote from a 1993 interview of Friedrich Kessler, a law professor at Harvard and University of California Berkeley, who experienced the Weimar Republic hyperinflation:

"It was horrible. Horrible! Like lightning it struck. No one was prepared. You cannot imagine the rapidity with which the whole thing happened. The shelves in the grocery stores were empty. You could buy nothing with your paper money."

This Special Report updates and expands upon the three-part Hyperinflation Series that began with the December 2006 SGS Newsletter, exploring: (1) the causes and background of the evolving hyperinflation and great depression; (2) why circumstances will differ from the deflationary Great Depression of the 1930s; (3) implications for politics and the financial markets; (4) considerations for individuals and businesses.

For the entire piece click here.

 

[Dancing Fire]

i hate it when our government spends taxpayer''s money to bail out anybody or Co''s, just a big Band Aid.

 

[Beacon]

So, which way do we go? Take all the money out of the failing bank and stuff it in the safe box or take all the money out of the failing bank and spend it quick on diamonds?

I say if the govt can blow 160 bill on the "stimulus" handout that they paid away earlier this year, heck what's a little more? They'll make money on the AIG deal. Not sure if they'll make a dime on the mortgage buy-in though.

Great article from Deroy Murdock though.

 

[ksinger]

Date: 9/23/2008 1:24:01 AM
Author: Beacon
So, which way do we go? Take all the money out of the failing bank and stuff it in the safe box or take all the money out of the failing bank and spend it quick on diamonds?

I say if the govt can blow 160 bill on the ''stimulus'' handout that they paid away earlier this year, heck what''s a little more? They''ll make money on the AIG deal. Not sure if they''ll make a dime on the mortgage buy-in though.

Great article from Deroy Murdock though.

Well, for those of us outside the financial world, and who have no time to monitor our retirement accounts from minute to minute, and/or never had enough to risk playing the market as "an investor", it matters not: Leave it in the market and watch it evaporate. Take it out of the market and the banks, and watch it evaporate from inflation. And as long as the serious structural problems in our economy as it is today, are addressed, all this will be nothing more than a stopgap measure, and will not stop us from running into the dirt. Unlike previous eras, when we actually had a manufacturing base to fall back on - when we actually MADE something other than bad loans - now pretty much our entire economy is based on consuming other countries goods, and thrashing money, and when the money can''t thrash, and we can''t consume, consume, consume, well... As has been said before (who''s law it is I don''t recall...) bad money drives out good. And so it has.

 

[MoonWater]

Ron Paul on the Bailouts

I can''t seem to disagree with anything he has said.

 

[mrssalvo]

Date: 9/23/2008 12:55:25 PM
Author: MoonWater
Ron Paul on the Bailouts


I can''t seem to disagree with anything he has said.

ditto...

 

[MoonWater]

Did I just hear the news correctly? The FBI are investigating Fannie and Freddie for mortgage fraud?!?