Bailout package *passes* house

[paazin]

I'm sure you guys have all heard it by now and if you haven't, get out from under that rock

Here's a link of the news story

I'm curious as to thoughts? Perhaps our resident economists might lend a hand.

[Lusipher]

The plan was changed so many times it was just nuts. The Dems tried to tack on a dozen different things into the package that shouldnt have been there. This is just a mess. I hate to see what the foreign markets will be like overnight and then ours tomorrow.

[Grand Fromage]

Well, the last time we just left the banks to collapse was 1929, so the historical precedent clearly shows all will be well.

[bartleby]

So whens the next world war?

[Spider Jones]

So whens the next world war?

Soon enough.

[Mulu]

I guess we should be proud of those die hard fiscal conservatives for sticking to their guns and saying to heck with Wall Street, so long as they about face and prevent the next Great Depression before it's too late.

Of all the articles I've read on the subject, this one has been the most interesting.

The Fed did not yet exist, and for two decades, Morgan had been acting as the country's unofficial lender of last resort, quietly working to amass reserves and supply capital to the markets in periods of crisis.

Late that Sunday night, Treasury Secretary George Cortelyou sent word: The government would deposit $6 million in New York's banks. President Theodore Roosevelt was off shooting game in the Louisiana canebrakes. He told a reporter on Oct. 20: "We got three bears, six deer, one wild turkey, twelve squirrels, one duck, one opossum and one wildcat. We ate them all, except the wildcat."

/

On Thursday, the panic spread to the Stock Exchange. Financial institutions calling in loans were choking off the market's money supply. Stock prices plunged. At 1:30 p.m., the Exchange president told Morgan that he would have to suspend operations before the 3 p.m. close. Out of the question, said Morgan: He would find money to lend the brokers. He summoned the presidents of New York's major commercial banks to his office and quickly came up with $23.5 million. He sent word to the trading floor. "The rebound was instantaneous," reported the Times.

Saturday's newspapers reported that $5 million in gold would be sent from London, that confidence had returned to the French Bourse "owing to the belief that the strong men in American finance would succeed in their efforts to check the spirit of the panic," and that "J.P. Morgan has a cold."

The old man, who hadn't slept more than five hours a night all week, spent most of the weekend at home. Roosevelt had been on the sidelines while Morgan handled the crisis. On Sunday, the newspapers published a letter from the president saying that the fundamentals of the economy were sound.

Seriously, history really does repeat itself. That does include an inevitable bail out.

[fluffmonster]

My professional opinion?

Hold on to your butts.

[zicada]

I suggest invading a few countries for their oil and other goods. Nobody will know if you just tell them they've been very naughty and hate freedom. Freedom is really important after all...

Hmm, better be careful what I'm saying, you could end up invading Norway

[Swift]

Self interest always beats the national interest when your 6 weeks from an election

[Mulu]

Well, there is that. Surely the economy can hold on by its fingernails for another 6 weeks?

[HATEFACE]

Good. I'm glad it was killed. Obama stinks of Cloward and Piven and so, it seems, does the rest of the democratic congress merely by the way they voted prior to this crisis. The way the vote went was no suprise considering that this goes against the very principles of republicanism. - Of course this will only lead toward the inevitable election of Barack Hussien Obama. - But at least we did the right thing.

[davidcurtisjr]

The market needs to adjust. Values are inflated by unethical practices which these banks have used to inflate thier stock values so thier corporate execs can accrue bonuses. Self interested greed rears it's ugly head to bite them in the ass. Now we all have to suffer because our political leaders allowed deregulation for promises of cushy lobbying jobs and well paid speeches. It's basically a bunch of BS and the downturn in the markets was mostly due to the political panic which was fomented by irresponsible language dictated in the presidents, Paulson's and Bernanke's speech. All of which was geered toward giving them an inordinate and unregulated control over borrowed money loaned on the sweat of main street. Moreover, the outlays of this bail out would be handled with an exception to any judicial review. It's a last grab at power so outlandish that even the republican party couldn't stomach it. The vote of no on this package should have been much higher. Don't think that this money is some magic wand that will cure all ill's. It is price fixing of a housing market that is overinflated through speculation and bad loans. What you are witnessing is an adjustment. If the banks require liquidity, then I am sure they are in possession of enough foreclosed properties to provide it. They just aren't willing to take the loss and want to stick your american tax payer with the bill for thier failed foresight. Get out your checkbook. Thier asking you for the money.

[davidcurtisjr]

The more money you print and the more money that floods the market will cause a devaluation of the dollar. Prices will rise in accordance. The magic of this is that dollarwise your portfolio will increase but in real dollars you will lose big. We all will. So enjoy the smoke and mirrors. Your being sold on a bad deal.

[davidcurtisjr]

I’m not holding my breath, but I would like to see the self-proclaimed conservative, small government, anti-regulation, free-market zealots step up and take responsibility for wrecking the American economy and bringing about the worst financial crisis since the Depression.

Even now, with the house on fire, the most extreme among them won’t pick up the fire hoses and try to put it out.

With the fate of the Bush administration’s desperate $700 billion bailout of the financial industry hanging in the balance, Representative Darrell Issa, a Republican from California, stuck to his political playbook like a man covered in Krazy Glue. He pronounced himself “resolute” in his opposition to the bailout because to be otherwise would amount to a betrayal of party principles.

To deviate from those principles, in Mr. Issa’s view, would be like placing “a coffin on top of Ronald Reagan’s coffin.”

We are in very strange territory here.

George H.W. Bush warned us about “voodoo economics” in 1980, but the ideologues clamped a gag on him and put him on the Gipper’s ticket. For much of the time since then, the madmen of the right have carried the day. They were freed of their remaining few restraints with the ascendance of George W. Bush in 2000.

These were the reckless clowns who led us into the foolish multitrillion-dollar debacle in Iraq and who crafted tax policies that enormously benefited millionaires and billionaires while at the same time ran up staggering amounts of government debt. This is the crowd that contributed mightily to the greatest disparities in wealth in the U.S. since the gilded age.

This was the crowd that cut the cords of corporate and financial regulations and in myriad other ways gleefully hacked away at the best interests of the United States.

Now we’re looking into the abyss.

When President Bush went on television last week to drum up support for the bailout package, he looked almost dazed, like someone who’d just climbed out of an auto wreck.

“Our entire economy is in danger,” he said.

He should have said that he, along with his irresponsible Republican colleagues and their running buddies in the corporate and financial sectors, put the entire economy in danger. John McCain and his economic main man, Phil (“this is a mental recession”) Gramm, were right there running with them.

Credit markets have frozen almost solid, banks are toppling like dominoes and brokerage houses are vanishing like props in a magic act. And who was one of the paramount leaders of the manic anti-regulatory charge that led to this sorry state of affairs? None other than Mr. Gramm himself, a former chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.

Where is Mr. Gramm now? Would you believe that he’s the vice chairman of UBS Securities, the investment banking arm of the Swiss bank UBS? Of course you would. A New York Times article last spring noted that the “elite private bankers” of UBS “built a lucrative business in recent years by discreetly tending the fortunes of American millionaires and billionaires.”

Toadying to the rich while sabotaging the interests of working people was always Mr. Gramm’s specialty. He was considered a likely choice to be treasury secretary in a McCain administration until he made his impolitic “mental recession” comment. He also said the U.S. was a “nation of whiners.”

The tone-deaf remarks in the midst of severe economic hard times undermined Senator McCain’s convoluted efforts to reinvent himself as some kind of populist. But they were wholly in keeping with the economic worldview of conservative Republicans.

The inescapable disconnect between rhetoric and reality is often stark. Senator McCain has been ranting recently about the excessive pay and “bloated golden parachutes” of failed corporate executives. And yet one of his closest advisers on economic matters is Carly Fiorina, who was forced out as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard. Her golden parachute was an estimated $42 million.

Voters have to shoulder a great deal of the blame for the economic mess the country is in. Too many were willing, for whatever reasons, to support politicians who spat in the eye of economic common sense. Now the voodoo that permeated conservative economic policies for so many years has come back to haunt us big-time.

The question voters should be asking John McCain is whether he has stopped serving his party’s economic Kool-Aid, which has taken such a toll on working families, and is ready to change his ways. Is his sudden populist transformation the real thing or just a mirage?

In the gale force winds of a full-fledged economic hurricane, it’s fair to ask Senator McCain whether he still considers himself a conservative, small government, anti-regulation, free-market zealot. Or whether he’s seen the light.

[Kest]

Good. I'm glad it was killed. Obama stinks of Cloward and Piven and so, it seems, does the rest of the democratic congress merely by the way they voted prior to this crisis. The way the vote went was no suprise considering that this goes against the very principles of republicanism. - Of course this will only lead toward the inevitable election of Barack Hussien Obama. - But at least we did the right thing.