“Whatever happened to creative destruction?” That’s the question Sean-Paul at The Agonist asks in response to news that Bear Stearns, the nation’s fifth largest securities firm, is getting an emergency bail-out from the Federal Reserve.
It really is socialism for the big boys but cutthroat capitalism for the little people in this country. In my opinion, Bear Stearns, more than any other firm on Wall Street should be allowed to fail. No handouts, or bailouts from the Fed. If this were 1998, well, we all know what happened when Bear declined to aid in the bailout package of LTCM. So, that’s one reason. But the other is this: the more the Feds prolong a real shakeout the worse it will be when it finally comes.
Democratic efforts to provide universal health care are decried from the right as “socialized medicine,” but for some reason we hear nary a whimper from the free market ideologues when banks and brokerage firms are propped up with billions of dollars of taxpayer money. Sign the dotted line on a predatory, sub-prime mortgage, and you’re told to live with the consequences of your mistake… but blow tens of billions of dollars buying high-yield — yet worthless — sub-prime loans, and the Fed rides to your rescue.
Huh. Who exactly are the socialists?
Agreed…It is not the governments job to pick winners and losers…Only facilitate a competitive environment.
We need to elect McCain-Romney in November 2008 so that we can bail out all of these poor banks and investors, who have been unfairly victimized by lazy, shiftless, deadbeat borrowers who refused to pay their lawfully contracted loans.
If John McCain chooses Mitt Romney as his running mate, he can also take a strong stand for meaningful tax reform. When Romney gave his withdrawal speech before the Conservative PAC on February 7, 2008, he condemned liberals for cutting taxes too much for the poor and middle class (for even making where a lot of poorer folks don’t have to pay income tax at all), while saying that income taxes needed to be reduced for wealthy Americans and corporations.
Goldy, weren’t you the guy who argued in a past post that the fed should lower interest rates on mortgages, and jump in and help home “owners” who agreed to bad loan terms? When I pointed out the fallacy of that argument…ie…that it would only cause the bailout of securities brokers(like Bear Stearns) to make more bad loans, your direct response to me was “fuck you”.
This bailout of Bear Stearns is exactly in line with the line of reasoning you took on that day, that the fed should do the things necessary to bolster the mortgage bond market.
Homeowners have the option of walking away from their house and mortgages, just as Bear Stearns can evaporate the bond market with by declaring themselves insolvent.
Now you argue the exact opposite position.
So what are you, Sybill? Are you saying “fuck you” to yourself now?
Yep, more corporate welfare – that’s the true platform of the Republican Party, has been for years. Even Barry Goldwater got sickened by it.
Most people who file bankruptcy are those who are over their heads due to medical debt. Yet the Repubicans pushed through “Bankruptcy Reform” legislation, which made sure these people “lived up to their responsibilities” by forcing them into multi-year repayment plans, rather than giving them the traditional “fresh start” provided by the bankruptcy code.
As for those with non-medical debt, banks which had justified their userious credit card interest rates by arguing that they were taking exceptional risks by lending to poor-credit borrowers, changed the bankruptcy laws to ensure that they not only collected the high interest rates, but also had very little risk.
And now after raking in billions in profits in making sub-prime loans, but now facing the collapse of their firms as a result of the risky nature of those tactics, CEO’s of banking and investment firms (such as WAMU) are still getting large bonuses and stock options re-sets.
Republican definition of Personal Responsibility: “You are responsible, you pay me, regardless of the facts”.
Will the Fed bail out the National Republican Congressional Committee next? The NRCC is really hurting, after its former treasurer embezzled at least a million dollars and obtained several million dollars more through fraudulent bank loans. A Fed bailout of the NRCC is imperative, since the collapse of the NRCC could result in disastrous consequences for the national economy, as well as our nation’s political governance.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....41_pf.html
it is painfully obvious that the the ‘pubs are delaying the crash until the dems take control.
I know one loud-mouthed asshole that labels himself a proud liberal socialist. Of course he hasn’t paid taxes or had an above the board job in years….that’s a shocker, I know.
Why is it that the idiots who support war in Iraq are afraid to go fight it?
7 You’re right, Mark….he’s both disabled and retired. Lessee, he’s also an investor. Doesn’t that make him one of those people your beloved Rush lionizes for “putting their money at risk” to make our capitalist economy even possible?
I don’t know how old you are, or whether you’re working (hmmmm?) but sooner or later, if you’re lucky, you’ll live to a ripe old age, where you won’t be able to work or won’t want to, and/or if you’re even luckier, you won’t have to.
Of course, then you, like Roger, will be among those that were once referred to by the leader of a prominent nation as “useless eaters”.
The nation: Germany. The leader: Adolph Hitler.
Any questions?
We really need someone like Arthur Burns running the Fed right now.
Bernanke is a pushover, who cranks up the speed on the printing presses every time Wall Street whines and Bush cracks the whip. Even Greenspan would be grumbling now, even though he’d probably cave in and play the same game.
Burns, correctly, would have said, “hell no”. He would have pointed out that just pouring more good money after bad would not only stave off the inevitable, but make the inevitable even worse.
I believe that if you look at how much the Fed has dropped its lending rate (as a percentage of the rate itself) dince the housing bubble started to collapse, you’ll find that the value of the dollar, in terms of other currencies or commodities, has shrunken by just about the same percentage.
In other words, as the Fed lending rate approaches zero, so will the value of the dollar.
“What’s in your wallet”, and does it even matter?
@3 “Homeowners have the option of walking away from their house and mortgages”`
That’s the problem, and that’s why the Fed is riding to BS’s rescue. There’s an article in the current online edition of Newsweek magazine (or is it Business Week? I forget which, as I read both regularly) which says the current amount of “underwater” mortgages (i.e., the homeowner owes more than the house is worth) is “many times” the total capital of U.S. banks. And, the article noted, it’s relatively easy for beleaguered homeowners to hand the keys to the bank or simply walk away. If they do the mortgage crisis will snowball into a full-blown financial panic as banks and credit institutions across the country fall like dominoes. This possibility is what’s spooking the Fed and J.P. Morgan into bailing out Bear Stearns. Believe me, Wall Street and the administration and the Fed policymakers are a lot more scared than they’re letting the public see.
That said, I agree with letting Bear Stearns fail. What would be the consequence of that? The mortgage securities they own will still exist, as will the duty to pay of the mortgagors; BS executives will no longer collect their fat salaries and bonuses, and BS shareholders will lose their capital, that’s all. And not a few of those shareholders are speculators who bought beaten-down BS shares hoping to make a killing so it’s hard to feel sorry for them.
I say let BS bite the dust, not only as an example to others, but simply to remove one of Wall Street’s most reckless and irresponsible investment houses from the investment banking scene, which by itself will improve the securities market.
@9 Mark isn’t talking about me. He can’t be, because I’m not a “socialist”. I’m a capitalist bunny.
I don’t mind Mark calling me an “asshole” though. I certainly try to be. It takes an asshole to fight assholes. We liberals didn’t get anywhere by being polite to wingnut motherfuckers. I don’t do nice anymore. If that’s me who Mark is calling an “asshole,” all I’ll say about that is, is about time he noticed.
its
BREAKING NEWS! House passes Democratic version of surveillance bill. Big blow to right wing traitors who would try to steal our Constitutional protections.
Hey Markie, wanna know how you can get to be a useless eater like me? And I’m being honest here, that’s exactly what I am, because I don’t work or produce anything and I like to eat. Man, do I like to eat. But I digress … here’s how I got out of the rat race and it’ll work for you, too.
1. Pay off your debts and then stay out of debt, instead of going into debt to buy a lot of stuff.
2. Do without a lot of the things other people have. They may end up with nicer houses and cars, but you’ll end up with your freedom, owing no one and beholden to no boss.
3. Save and invest so you won’t have to keep working until you drop dead. You won’t be able to anyway, because after you reach a certain age, bosses don’t want you anymore and you won’t be allowed to work no matter how much you’d like to (or have to).
4. Don’t buy the biggest house you can afford; buy the smallest house you can live in, because the mortgage payments and taxes and utilities will all be less, enabling you to save and invest more.
5. Be a fucking capitalist! It pays a lot better than socialism, believe me. Every dollar I put into the stock market 20 years ago is worth about $12 today. Beats working for it, and when Republicans write the tax laws, the taxes on it are a lot less too.
6. It’s not my fault I pay only 1/3rd the tax rate of wage earners. I didn’t enact that stupid law — Republicans did. I would repeal it tomorrow if I could.
7. I don’t see why Mark should begrudge my tax deductions. I don’t get any tax break at all on the first 7.5% of my household’s gross income that goes to medical expenses. Despite that, I still get a hefty medical expense deduction that helps keep my taxes down, thanks to our broken health care system. Meanwhile, some guy who never worked a day in his life but inherits a trainload of money from his dad who also never worked a day in his life because granddad started a successful business gets a $2 million exemption right up front. My upfront exemption is less than $10,000 and you’re bitching about my tax breaks?
8. If you want to pay my taxes, then live on my income. The two go together.
One more thing … I worked 45 years … and fought in a war … whatsamatter Markie isn’t that enough for you? Don’t you think after 45 years I’m entitled to take a rest if, by scaling down my consumption and saving money, I can afford to?
And guess what happened. Your stupid fucking lying Republican president put a $2 trillion war on a government credit card, and hundreds of billions in billionaire tax breaks on the same credit card, and enabled and encouraged massive corruption and waste of taxpayer money, and now my pension and savings are being destroyed by your goddamned Republican Inflation.
I would go back to work if I could, but I can’t, and one (of several) reason I can’t is because your fucking Republican bosses refuse to hire old guys. Well, fuck you, Mark, if I can’t work then I’m going to live off the land.
@10 Actually, the guy you want is Volcker. Burns was rather clueless. The economy has been so sorely abused during the Bush years that it’s going to take a gut-wrenching recession to wring the excesses out. We’re better off to eat it now, because the pump priming by Bernanke and Congress will make it worse and more prolonged, and might even tip us into dreaded Stagflation, but this is an election year so don’t expect any common sense to happen.
Mark is a fucking moron.
Jeez, you people are morons. Even though I know Roger is a worthless loli-gagger, the person I was referring to was not him. Your usual false assumptions I see….turns out there is more than one non-taxpaying, unemployed loud-mouthed liberal socialist out there.
And Rodent: Like I’ve said before, what you post here is completely subjective (and that also goes for all posters here), and I could really care less what you think or “claim” to have done. You’re dismissed back to your fairy-tale world bunny.
Isn’t Mark the coward who cheated on a bet in complete GOP style?
@23:
Nope. Wrong Mark there sport.
If the NRCC wanted honest people to handle their money, they should have hired Democrats.
16 BB
The House passing Democratic legislation does not qualify as news. When the Senate does, let me know.
Yeah, but that Reagan Recession hurt. And the 21.5% interest rates killed the timber and housing industries.
I think we need to much more tightly regulate the financial services industries, and provide strong enforcement mechanisms for idiot companies to fail to meet their reserve requirements. They won’t do it if there’s no meaningful penalty.
DL @ 27: It killed more than the timber and housing industries (although you could make a case for environmental regulations also affecting the timber industries).
The Reagan rescession & accompanying interest rates prevented steel and heavy manufacturing companis from investing in new equipment, at exactly the time they needed to do so because of foreign competition. The steel and heavy equipment industries which remain in the U.S. now are just a shadow of their former self.
BTW, the Republican mantra is: “Privatize profits, socialize risk.”
#7
Are you talking about Neil Bush?
Mike Timmons@3 Better watch it.
Perfesser Darryl will start erasing your posts.
Philaburb Lee will publish your IP Address.
Pelletizer will rant how ignorant you are of the real world.
Delusional Don Joe will chastise you on economics.
Clueless Idiot… well, need I say more?
Rujax! will want to screw you with one of is FY rants!
Correctnotright will tell you how wrong you are over and over without many facts.
rhp6033 will find some facts but they will br irrelevant.
And the beat goes on – Pelula Clark or Sonny & Cher.
Capitalist profit and socialized risk. But only for a select few large and favored corporations. This isn’t anything new, but it certainly isn’t fair.
@21 Care to tell us who the shiftless socialist is?
@22 I’d be disappointed if you didn’t attack me, Markie! You had me worried there for a minute after I read #21. I’m glad to see things are back to normal.
@23 No, that was Mark the Welshing Redneck Liar. The one who married a dead crack whore and got hit up for half a million dollars in vagimony and child support. (snicker)
@29 “environmental regulations also affecting the timber industries”
During the 1970s logging boom, the Pacific Northwest’s forests were being cut 5 times as fast as they could grow new trees. This wasn’t sustainable. Eventually, all the trees would have been cut and then there would have been no logging at all. It’s almost academic that other factors intervened to slow down the rate of tree cutting before the industry ran out of trees.
The most important factor was industry economics. The Pacific N.W. is not the nation’s low-cost timber producer and hasn’t been for a long time, the South Eastern U.S. is. Regardless of environmental regulations or anything else, the big timber companies would have shifted their operations to that part of the country anyway, and were already in the process of doing so, for economic reasons.
Mechanization of the industry also eliminated a lot of timber harvesting jobs, and would have continued to do so regardless of environmental restrictions on harvest. This is also a major factor in the loss of N.W. timber jobs from 1970s employment levels.
The environmental regulations primarily have to do with protecting salmon streams in western Washington’s steep and densely forested topography. Since most of Washington’s timber is in western Washington, this affects most of the state’s timber industry. The problem here was silt from logging roads and slash from harvesting operations getting into the streams and suffocating the salmon smolt. The purpose of the regulations was to protect the streams from logging pollution by requiring buffers. In the steepest terrain, where timber acreage is more vertical than horizontal, these buffers could tie up as much as 90% of the land area. The spotted owl was a separate issue that also put some timberland out of bounds for logging, but nowadays it’s really the stream buffers that have the most impact on landowners’ ability to take trees off their property.
Mark is weak in mind and body – WIMP!
You have no arguments and nothing to back up anything you write – I get tired of kicking republican sorry-ass butt.
@32: And Puddy – well, schizophrenia is a disease where a person THINKS he is right all the time – but fails to prove it.
Thanks for giving us a demonstation of how to ignore republican corruption and malfeasance.
when you have to go back to the 60’s to call the democratic party racist – ignoring the present day republican party racism – well “nuff said.
when you ignore the record deficits by republican presidents (where is the veto now?) or the budgets Bush has proposed that are record deficits….well, nuff said.
when you ignore the corruption (Abramoff, Gonzalez, safavian, Vitter, Craig, Stevens, alaska, Murkowski) but harp on the few Democratic versions – nuff said.
when you ignore the lack of science and the political agenda that is put above science in the EPA, the FEC, FCC, FDA, Agriculture….nuff said.
You don’t want facts – you want people to see you as brilliant and right. I just see someone who looks at tiny facts (from right wing websites) and draws the wrong conclusions by ignoring the bigger picture.
Lou guzzo thinks he is an expert on global warming because he has talked to a few scientists who think global warming doesn’t exist.
He is a fool and ignores the preponderance of evidence. You are smarter than that Puddy – but you seek above all to prove you are right and compromise your objectivity.
If we continue to socialize all risk and privatize all profit, then it logically follows that the tax on profits should 100%.
Judging by what the Dow did today, the Fed’s tapping some emergency shoring underneath yet another collapsing financial institution didn’t do much to reassure anyone else.
Meanwhile, the partners in the Carlyle Group, which just (shudder) happens to own the company I work for, are trying to do about a European financial subsidiary that’s circling the drain with more uncovered liability than their collective net worth.
Trying to figure out what to do, that is….I need to stop typing faster than I think.