The madness continues unabated.

I seriously wonder what kind of brain damage our leaders have. It seems that bailout fever is short-circuiting otherwise intelligent brains and causing a complete loss of higher functions like logic….

The banks are being asked the wrong question by newsies. What we need to know is more specific, how is the bank spending its budget? How are the employees, stock holders, and most important executives being fed money? How are they paying off their own loans issued by other institutions? Then we need to vet this and suggest to the banks that some of the expenditures may look questionable leading to extreme parsimony for future funds grants.

But, really, if I have a dollar bill in my wallet and I spend it at the market does it matter whether that dollar came from change for a gasoline purchase last week or from a shoe box underneath the bed where it’s been gathering mold for two decades? Either way, I had one dollar, received another, spent one, and ended up with one. Does it matter which one? And how would I track this?

{^_^}

Another nail in the coffin to free market ideology. It’s been so lovely to see this system completely crash to the ground. Capitalisms brief period of stablity from WW2-70s was guaranteed by what? That’s right, marxist reforms that kept things under control. But it only took one generation after those reforms were stripped away by Reagan, Clinton and Bush II for us to officially return to the 1880s. Boom, bust, boom, bust, oligarchs control government, boom bust. Looks like another progressive will have to step in and put checks and balances back in place.

Thank you, that was excellent satire and I definitely chuckled. But I warn you, there actually are people who think like this, or, if not quite this outlandishly, pretty close.

It will be a very cold day in hell before our family every buys a vehicle from and automaker required to survive on our tax dollars.

Yes, far better to buy a vehicle from a Japanese company, receiving government assistance from Japanese taxpayers and from incentives from Southern state governments using funds made available by the IRS’ looting of the industrial midwest.

Retired USAF

Thank you for your service. Enjoying your pension? Can anyone in the private sector retire on a full pension after 20 years?

Hah. I practice lender side creditor’s rights law and trust me when I say, developers suck. I’m foreclosing on a ton of them right now…

Another paper pushing parasite. Of course if the banks didn’t get the TARP funds, you wouldn’t be able to charge them $300/hr.

Lawyers are the main reason why the economy is so messed up. They control the legislatures and Congress, passing all sorts of laws with arcane language that benefit lawyers more than anyone else. Litigation drives the cost of everything up. Since your fellow lawyers established the precedent in the tobacco litigation, I say that there should be a 50% special tax on lawyers’ fees, with criminal penalties if they pass it along to clients, and that money should be used to fund a national health care program to offset how much lawyers have driven up the cost of medical care.

First thing we do, let’s tax all the lawyers.

When pulled over in a traffic stop, have you ever handed the cop your Bar card with your license?

The only difference between bankers and automakers is that the latter wants a second serving at the taxpayer trough.

Bovine Excrement. Citigroup has already gotten a second serving – with no hearings, no grandstanding about corporate jets, no oversight.

Speaking of corporate jets, for what does a bank need a corporate jet? Everything banks do, short of signing actual documents, can be done electronically or via videoconferencing. When an assembly line is down, you need engineers and troubleshooters there now and every hour of standing in line at the airport can mean literally millions of dollars of lost production. But, hey, running a call center makes someone an expert about manufacturing.

When we don’t have a supplier base left for what remains of our manufacturing sector we can always buy weapons from China, right?

They designed this catastrophe, propped it up, kept it running, and have milked it for everything they can.

They should be rotting in jail.

So what happens, they become the “spokemen” of the solution.

It is truly Bizarro world.

What our country has become is EXACTLY what the Founding Fathers sought to prevent.

IBD on Subprime

History of the Crisis

Myth of Laissez-Faire

There are numerous editorials on IBD explaining exactly how the Feds created the conditions (though they don’t talk much about the Federal Reserve monkeying with interest rates and the money supply) that led the present situation.

Contrary to your assertion, it is not the purpose of the Federal Government to regulate the markets. They have a valid role to play in preventing fraud, as in the Madoff case (or any other). But the Constitution does not empower them to create Fannie Mae, HUD, the SEC, nor pass Sarbanes-Oxley, etc, etc.

I’ve no doubt none of this will change your view, but if you at least want to read a solid case for the other side, you might look at some of these references.

Why not call it what it is? Fascism, plain and simple

Yep.

- Congress moves to give away huge amounts of cash with no accountability under cover of the failed housing market. Which they created.

- Politically important businesses being paid off with Billions of taxpayer dollars.

- CEO’s collecting large sums of money as a reward for helping to elect Obama and their assistance in creating this current “economical crisis”.

- Congress moves in to nationalize Banking.

- Congress moves to nationalize the Auto industry.

- Congress moves to nationalize health care.

- congress moves to nationalize ………………….

Everything goes as planned Comrade …..

So hopefully in 5 years we’ll get a good 70-80% of the TARP money back. Let’s just hope that little secret stays out of the public limelight when Obama spends his $1 trillion on economy-stimulating pork and then asks for another $500 ……

Try to download the Federal Register in less than a month on a T1 line.

Government is big. That isn’t evidence that government “controls the economy” forgive me for demanding specificity.

Got a question for ya- tell me everything you know about the mohair subsidy. How’s ethanol working out there in the non-government controlled economy? Search out some images for those new oil refineries for me, will ya? If I were an orange grower and you saw an orange in my orchard, on one of my trees that you wanted to buy, and that orange were 3.25″ in diameter and I sold and you bought it, which one of us just broke a federal law?

These are new regulations? And these are the regulations that led to an over speculated housing market? This caused naked short selling? This led to the end of our manufacturing economy as corporations sought out cheap labor overseas? How odd. I don’t see those huge structural explanations for our current economic state lying in silly subsidies and orange growth regulations.

I think you have a point about ethanol subsidies. I’d much prefer we think about sugar rather than corn.

Madoff? People were warning the SEC in 1999 about Madoff. SEC took a decade long coffee break.

That’s my point. SEC didn’t do shit, i.e. regulate the economy as is their job.

Notice you didn’t mention the CRA, Freddie and Fannie BTW.

Yes I discussed the bundling of mortgage securities, the elimination of credit standards and wall street deregulation.

What government controlled economy? Where have you been man? The SEC has been watching porn on the internet instead of monitoring folks like Bernie Madoff. Republicans and free market people pushed through a massive deregulation of wall street under Clinton that allowed these credit agencies to do whatever the hell they wanted. Naked short selling, bundling securities, massive unregulated speculation, ponzi schemes, and you’re claiming there were massive government controls? Wake up!

DeathToMediaHacks on December 22, 2008 at 10:31 AM

I’m claiming that we have a government controlled economy?
Damn right I am!
Try to download the Federal Register in less than a month on a T1 line.
Got a question for ya- tell me everything you know about the mohair subsidy. How’s ethanol working out there in the non-government controlled economy? Search out some images for those new oil refineries for me, will ya? If I were an orange grower and you saw an orange in my orchard, on one of my trees that you wanted to buy, and that orange were 3.25″ in diameter and I sold and you bought it, which one of us just broke a federal law?
Madoff? People were warning the SEC in 1999 about Madoff. SEC took a decade long coffee break.
Notice you didn’t mention the CRA, Freddie and Fannie BTW.

replacing capitalism with a strange politiconomy

Why not call it what it is? Fascism, plain and simple. There isn’t a hairs breadth of difference between what the Feds are now doing and Mussolini’s governance in the late 1920s. And who should be surprised? If the basic driving ideas are that spending/credit creates wealth (which is nonsense) and that wealth is illegitimate unless it “serves the people” (which is worse than nonsense) it could not have turned out otherwise.

Jeff Perren

I welcome the coming collapse of capitalism as a result of this irresponsible bailout scam, thanks for all the memories America.

Viper1 on December 22, 2008 at 8:13 AM

It won’t be capitalism that will collapse. It will be the government controlled economy that will collapse.
You put the 500 pounds of pig iron on a thoroughbred and then are amazed that he collapses at the clubhouse turn? I’m amazed that he was able to even get close to the first turn!

The gov’t is frantically trying to re-inflate the economy. To do this, they’re printing as much money as possible and trying to flood the economy with it. My expectation is that the price we’ll pay will be huge inflation down the line and a further devalued currency. *** Hold on to your hats. Buy gold.
JiangxiDad on December 22, 2008 at 9:50 AM

It’s going to be the late 1970s all over again, and I’m positively terrified of it. “Stagflation.” The sad thing is that it will largely be Bush’s fault. I think the only thing preventing massive inflation right now is the staggering loss of value in the stock market (which does not directly affect the money supply, but I believe does have an indirect effect). But yes, I expect to see huge inflation in 2009 and 2010. It’s why I’m looking to actually buy some real estate come around March… Buy low, get a good interest rate, and hunker down for the next 5 years.

Fortunately for us taxpayers, the bailout money is a loan, and theoretically the banks have to pay it back with interest. So hopefully in 5 years we’ll get a good 70-80% of the TARP money back. Let’s just hope that little secret stays out of the public limelight when Obama spends his $1 trillion on economy-stimulating pork and then asks for another $500 billion a year to nationalize health care and retirement plans… We can say “we’ve already spent trillions, we have to stop!!!”

Outlander on December 22, 2008 at 9:05 AM

The gov’t is frantically trying to re-inflate the economy. To do this, they’re printing as much money as possible and trying to flood the economy with it. My expectation is that the price we’ll pay will be huge inflation down the line and a further devalued currency. When inflation hits, we may be repaid these loans, but they will be in greatly devalued dollars with much less purchasing power. Somehow I think this is part of the plan of the many massive new debtor companies, and the fed. gov’t as well. Hold on to your hats. Buy gold.