News:

Welcome to week4paug.net 2.1 - same as it ever was! Most features have been restored, but please keep us posted on ANY issues you may be having HERE:  https://week4paug.net/index.php/topic,23937

Main Menu

$$$700 billion right out of taxpayers pockets

Started by Ri©h, September 21, 2008, 07:25:13 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Ri©h

Thank you W.  Now get the FUCK out of the White House!!! 

The country's largest bailout. Nearly three quarters of a TRILLION dollars...?  :-o  Are you kidding me?  Why the hell should we have to foot the bill for irresponsible lenders and borrowers?  These companies are being treated like a crying baby...  getting a pat on the back and being told everything is okay while we pay for it.  WTF!!!?!??!?

Someone please tell how this is even justified.  These companies new what was happening and didn't take precautions to help themselves before dying for all the world to see.  Now that they're dead we have to empty our pockets to help resurrect them.  I'm sorry but my pockets aren't exactly full right now.  George Bush is such a fucking joke.  He's going out like the dumb rich frat boy he's always been.  Damn him to hell.

This is bullshit.  :x

wizard

What else would you expect from a fascist state?
Hang on... it's going to get much, much worse.

Poster Nutbag

yes indeed sir!!! thats 700 billion dollors...the f'n a-hole cost us on top of the 490 billion dollar deficit on top of spending the 230 billion dollar surplus that was in place after Clinton left the whithouse...
Control for smilers can't be bought...

"Your answer is silly. What'd do you want the song to do? End world hunger?
It's a fucking Phish song, some of them are very complex compositions, some are not.

This one with its complex vocal arrangement falls right in between.
But that and a hook aren't enough so I'll let Trey know his songs have to start giving out handys." RJ

Ri©h

If there is any case for NOT voting another republican to office... that is it!  Man alive! He's really pissed off a lot of folks with this one.

mattstick


Dude, you already wasted 1 Trillion in Iraq, what's another 3/4?

jephrey

It's just a plan.  If the dems do their job, this thing should easily be shot down if it ain't right.  I've always hated bailouts.  These companies probably didn't do a good job of telling their borrowers the possibilities of a downturn, and the borrowers weren't bright enough to realize that if things went south they'd be fukt.  So what do you do?  If you give those people that made the bad decision money, you're rewarding stupidity.  If you bailout the companies that gave the loans, you're bailing out an institution that didn't properly sell loans.  Again rewarding stupidity or at least shady practices.  If you let it go, more people get hurt because the financial institution may need to collect from more borrowers... 

I'm against any kind of government bailout, but if there is one, bailing out the companies is better because it'll allow the lenders to pinpoint problem areas and give those people with problems at least some kind of leeway in their next payments as opposed to putting money right into the borrowers pocket to put into a new HDTV or something else that won't help.  Unfortunately, as always, it hurts the taxpayer. 

What's the alternative to a bailout aside from doing nothing?
There are 10 types of people in this world.  Those who understand binary, and those who don't.

Ri©h

#6
Quote from: mattstick on September 21, 2008, 10:01:30 PM

Dude, you already wasted 1 Trillion in Iraq, what's another 3/4?

Bro, I am wholeheartedly opposed to that sham of a war in Iraq.  We don't belong there... period.


Quote from: jephrey on September 21, 2008, 10:26:48 PM
It's just a plan.  If the dems do their job, this thing should easily be shot down if it ain't right.  I've always hated bailouts.  These companies probably didn't do a good job of telling their borrowers the possibilities of a downturn, and the borrowers weren't bright enough to realize that if things went south they'd be fukt.  So what do you do?  If you give those people that made the bad decision money, you're rewarding stupidity.  If you bailout the companies that gave the loans, you're bailing out an institution that didn't properly sell loans.  Again rewarding stupidity or at least shady practices.  If you let it go, more people get hurt because the financial institution may need to collect from more borrowers... 

I'm against any kind of government bailout, but if there is one, bailing out the companies is better because it'll allow the lenders to pinpoint problem areas and give those people with problems at least some kind of leeway in their next payments as opposed to putting money right into the borrowers pocket to put into a new HDTV or something else that won't help.  Unfortunately, as always, it hurts the taxpayer. 

What's the alternative to a bailout aside from doing nothing?

Excellent points jephrey.  I especially like the "rewarding stupidity" reference.  As far as an alternative, that's up to Congress.  And since I'm not a congressman I can't offer a real opinion on it.  From what you said I kind of see it as we're damned if we do and damned if we don't.  A real catch 22.  Just the thought of all the money this country has wasted in the last 8 years and now this...  it makes my Irish blood boil. 

I need to figure out a way to not pay taxes anymore.  :lol:

gah

Unfortunately, I don't think the democrats have much of a choice but to allow this to go through because whats the alternative? Financial collapse of the global markets? I know they don't want that to happen. I don't know, I really don't know what to make of this anymore. I feel you though rich, I've been watching this all for the last week now, just getting more and more angry about it all! Maybe I should take that to the rant thread though!  :frustrated:
Sometimes we live no particular way but our own.

sophist

Food for thought on this bail out:

Taken from the Cato Institute (a libertarian think tank)
QuoteOne trillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000) is enough money:

To buy everybody living in Los Angeles at least one Lamborghini Gallardo. 
To buy 88,052, 394' custom mega yachts; enough to stretch around ¼ of the world. 
To buy everyone living in Belize and Malta a Manhattan apartment.
To get half of the Democratic Party into a fundraiser for Barack Obama at the $28,500 admission price. 
To give one out of every two men in the United States a Men's Presidential Rolex watch.
To buy every woman in the United States a Tiffany Diamond Starfish Pendant.
To get two Mitsubishi 73" HDTVs for every household in America.
To buy four copies of The Office: Season Four on DVD, to every person on earth.
To send everybody in America on an all-inclusive vacation to Tahiti (and some people can stay a few extra days).
AND...

$1 trillion is enough money for everyone in Buffalo, NY to buy their own 65-acre island in Panama. 

This is how much the government is going to cost you (roughly $3,278 for every man, woman and child in the United States). 

Can we talk about the Dead?  I'd love to talk about the fucking Grateful Dead, for once, can we please discuss the Grateful FUCKING Dead!?!?!?!

rowjimmy

This here is what we should really be doing:

QuoteTo buy four copies of The Office: Season Four on DVD, to every person on earth.

Laughter being the best medicine and all; it'd remove the need for health care.

Ri©h

That and I want my two 73" Mitsubishi HDTVs so I can watch said Office DVDs.  :-D


Oh yeah and I'll take a trip to Tahiti as well, please.

tet

"We want you to be happy"
-Phish

sophist

Ron Paul's thoughts on the bail out
Quote(CNN) -- Many Americans today are asking themselves how the economy got to be in such a bad spot.

For years they thought the economy was booming, growth was up, job numbers and productivity were increasing. Yet now we find ourselves in what is shaping up to be one of the most severe economic downturns since the Great Depression.

Unfortunately, the government's preferred solution to the crisis is the very thing that got us into this mess in the first place: government intervention.

Ever since the 1930s, the federal government has involved itself deeply in housing policy and developed numerous programs to encourage homebuilding and homeownership.

Government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were able to obtain a monopoly position in the mortgage market, especially the mortgage-backed securities market, because of the advantages bestowed upon them by the federal government.

Laws passed by Congress such as the Community Reinvestment Act required banks to make loans to previously underserved segments of their communities, thus forcing banks to lend to people who normally would be rejected as bad credit risks.

These governmental measures, combined with the Federal Reserve's loose monetary policy, led to an unsustainable housing boom. The key measure by which the Fed caused this boom was through the manipulation of interest rates, and the open market operations that accompany this lowering.

When interest rates are lowered to below what the market rate would normally be, as the Federal Reserve has done numerous times throughout this decade, it becomes much cheaper to borrow money. Longer-term and more capital-intensive projects, projects that would be unprofitable at a high interest rate, suddenly become profitable.

Because the boom comes about from an increase in the supply of money and not from demand from consumers, the result is malinvestment, a misallocation of resources into sectors in which there is insufficient demand.

In this case, this manifested itself in overbuilding in real estate. When builders realize they have overbuilt and have too many houses to sell, too many apartments to rent, or too much commercial real estate to lease, they seek to recoup as much of their money as possible, even if it means lowering prices drastically.

This lowering of prices brings the economy back into balance, equalizing supply and demand. This economic adjustment means, however that there are some winners -- in this case, those who can again find affordable housing without the need for creative mortgage products, and some losers -- builders and other sectors connected to real estate that suffer setbacks.

The government doesn't like this, however, and undertakes measures to keep prices artificially inflated. This was why the Great Depression was as long and drawn out in this country as it was.

I am afraid that policymakers today have not learned the lesson that prices must adjust to economic reality. The bailout of Fannie and Freddie, the purchase of AIG, and the latest multi-hundred billion dollar Treasury scheme all have one thing in common: They seek to prevent the liquidation of bad debt and worthless assets at market prices, and instead try to prop up those markets and keep those assets trading at prices far in excess of what any buyer would be willing to pay.

Additionally, the government's actions encourage moral hazard of the worst sort. Now that the precedent has been set, the likelihood of financial institutions to engage in riskier investment schemes is increased, because they now know that an investment position so overextended as to threaten the stability of the financial system will result in a government bailout and purchase of worthless, illiquid assets.

Using trillions of dollars of taxpayer money to purchase illusory short-term security, the government is actually ensuring even greater instability in the financial system in the long term.

The solution to the problem is to end government meddling in the market. Government intervention leads to distortions in the market, and government reacts to each distortion by enacting new laws and regulations, which create their own distortions, and so on ad infinitum.

It is time this process is put to an end. But the government cannot just sit back idly and let the bust occur. It must actively roll back stifling laws and regulations that allowed the boom to form in the first place.

The government must divorce itself of the albatross of Fannie and Freddie, balance and drastically decrease the size of the federal budget, and reduce onerous regulations on banks and credit unions that lead to structural rigidity in the financial sector.

Until the big-government apologists realize the error of their ways, and until vocal free-market advocates act in a manner which buttresses their rhetoric, I am afraid we are headed for a rough ride.


pretty weak arguments by him, but I thought it was worth sharing. 
Can we talk about the Dead?  I'd love to talk about the fucking Grateful Dead, for once, can we please discuss the Grateful FUCKING Dead!?!?!?!

gah

New poll today shows that 55% of Americans don't feel we should be footing the bill on this $700 billion dollar bailout. I wonder if that will stir up any response from those developing the bill. Not likely, I'm sure if there were alternate options, we would be exploring them already.
Sometimes we live no particular way but our own.

rowjimmy