Boy this pisses me off to no end.
Last week our government more or less gave $200,000,000,000 (that's billion) to the worlds largest banks - this was their reward for making loans where there was little to no chance they would be paid - so WE are paying for them.

Well that must not be enough - and the Feds are not the only ones ready to give your money to the richest companies in the nation - now the Congress is getting into the act - if you read the article the Democrats want you to believe it is "relief for the poor".....bullshit...follow the money.

Congress to Consider More Government Bailouts

__________________

The most serious threat to the United States is not someone hiding in a cave in Afghanistan or Pakistan, but our own fiscal irresponsibility 2008 - David Walker, Controller General of the United States

I have mixed feelings about this. I do think that in this case something should also be done to help those that actually lost their houses. I don't think it is a good idea to do either because it encourages risky behavior. Then again a really bad liquidity crisis would eventually filter down and be trouble for everybody. It's a case in which on principle I'm against this action but I know that things could be really bad if it isn't done. No good answer.

__________________
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Desperate times require desperate measures.
Bear Stearns stock was at 171 a year ago, the $2 price represented about a 99% loss to the owners of the company.
So it's not like we are making the fat cat owners whole.
The Fed is trying to prevent a panic which would destroy the entire banking system, and cost far more than the money they are throwing at the market now.
Unwinding the mortgage mess is going to be a messy costly affair, no matter how it is done, I would rather see the government take action rather than sit on the sidelines and watch the whole thing come tumbling down.
If they do it right, the taxpayer actually makes out.
When Clinton and Ruben stayed up til 4 am working out the Mexican bailout, the taxpayers actually made $100 million dollars.
Unfortunately, the caliber of people in those positions isn't what it used to be, but that is the cost of democracy.

__________________
“The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine.”

Senator Thad Cochran, Mississippi (R)
on McCain

“I decided I didn’t want this guy anywhere near a trigger.”
Senator Pete Domenici, New Mexico (R)
on McCain

“My anger did not help my campaign ... People don’t like angry candidates very much.”

McCain on McCain

Goob...I can't beleive that we agree on something. Global warming must be bullsh*t because hell must be freezing over. The mortgage mess is already a messy and costly affair. Ask anyone who has tried to refinance with good but not outstanding credit. And forget about the subprime people, that market no longer exists so no matter what the gov't does short of a loan guarantee, there is little or no help for them.

BTW to the OP.. Do you have a 401K that has lost 15% of it's value? Bet there is some Bear Sterns in one of those mutual funds you have. So welcome to the rich side.

__________________
American by birth.
Conservative by the grace of God.

Does anyone have any idea how messed up Chicago is? 11.5% sales tax OH and lets not forget they tax water as well. Along with every other damn thing they can think of. If there wouldnt be a public outrage they would tax air. I would bet if the liberals had contol they would tax that next.

someone should tell these fucks to hire accoutants.

If you want to feel fantastic about being liberal you can move your ass to Chicago and see how fantastic the liberal society is.

__________________
America’s political correctness is a disease that will bring down our once fine nation.

Why does America stand for such obscene sums being handed over in foreign 'aid' ? The home front is clearly desperate.
Is the government afraid that an end to handouts might cause war overseas or something ? Or even anti-Americanism, perish the thought.

__________________
668.....the neighbour of the beast.

No we are afraid the high end payouts will lead to crack smoking.

__________________
America’s political correctness is a disease that will bring down our once fine nation.

You mean Republicans?

__________________
Is our children learning? -George W. Bush

"I think—tide turning—see, as I remember—I was raised in the desert, but tides kind of—it's easy to see a tide turn—did I say those words?"—Washington, D.C., June 14, 2006

"[T]he illiteracy level of our children are appalling."—Washington, D.C., Jan. 23, 2004

What the fuck does this have to do with anything?

__________________
When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

I understand what you are saying but I also think that the falling out from actions such as this will just make matters worst......Sooner or later the bottom will fall out, IMO, and we will experience another great depression.
We simply can't continue pumping tax dollars into a system that's being mishandled....I'd rather experience a small crisis now than a really bad one later.

__________________
Anyone who thinks freedom comes cheap, please put the blindfold on and stand against the wall.

Many times I believe Americans will have to take back the country and start a new government.

People bitch about foreign aid all the time, only no one making decisions on it is listening.

I don't agree with bailing out companies that got involved in bad practices with subprime loans. To loan money to inviduals with bad credit expecting them to pay the real loan later had to create negative results.
I'm not sure that bailing BS out is going to help anything long term, but did stop the panic. JPMC got the company at a super discount.

All this reminds me of the Savings and Loan scandels of past years. But the goverment should definitely not help people that will lose they're home they should've never bought to begin with.

__________________
I want to change the world but they won't give me the source code.

well its a mess, are we doing acting on our best interests in the long run? To soon to tell, but there has been a tectonic shift in how we are dealing with this.



Ten Days That Changed Capitalism
Officials Improvised To Rescue Markets;
Will It Be Enough?
March 27, 2008; Page A1

The past 10 days will be remembered as the time the U.S. government discarded a half-century of rules to save American financial capitalism from collapse.

On the Richter scale of government activism, the government's recent actions don't (yet) register at FDR levels. They are shrouded in technicalities and buried in a pile of new acronyms.


But something big just happened. It happened without an explicit vote by Congress. And, though the Treasury hasn't cut any checks for housing or Wall Street rescues, billions of dollars of taxpayer money were put at risk. A Republican administration, not eager to be viewed as the second coming of the Hoover administration, showed it no longer believes the market can sort out the mess.

"The Government of Last Resort is working with the Lender of Last Resort to shore up the housing and credit markets to avoid Great Depression II," economist Ed Yardeni wrote to clients.

First, over St. Patrick's Day weekend, the Fed (aka the Lender of Last Resort) and the Treasury forced the sale of Bear Stearns, the fifth-largest U.S. investment bank, to J.P. Morgan Chase at a price so low that a shareholder rebellion prompted J.P. Morgan to raise the price. To induce J.P. Morgan to do the deal, the Fed agreed to take losses or gains, if any, on up to $29 billion of securities in Bear Stearns's portfolio. The outcome will influence the sum the Fed turns over to the Treasury, so this is taxpayer money; that's why the Fed sought Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's OK.

DISCUSSION


Has the U.S. government done enough to save American financial capitalism, or has it crossed a line? Join a discussion.Then the Fed lent directly to Wall Street securities firms for the first time. Until now, the Fed has lent directly only to Main Street banks, those that take deposits from ordinary folks. That's because banks were viewed as playing a unique economic role and, supposedly, were more closely regulated than other types of lenders. In the first three days of this new era, securities firms borrowed an average of $31.3 billion a day from the Fed. That's not small change, and it's why Mr. Paulson, after the fact, is endorsing changes to give the Fed more access to these firms' books.

Increased Leverage

In the days that followed, the Republican Treasury secretary leaned on two shareholder-owned, though government-chartered, companies -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- to raise capital that their boards didn't want to raise. In exchange, their government regulator allowed them to increase their leverage so they can buy about $200 billion more in mortgage-backed securities.

So Fannie and Freddie will get bigger, a welcome development when mortgage markets are in trouble. Already, they have regained lost market share. They accounted for 76% of new mortgages in the fourth quarter of last year, up from 46% in the second quarter, Mr. Paulson said Wednesday. But everyone knows that if Fannie or Freddie stumble, taxpayers will get stuck with the tab.

And then, the federal regulator of the low-profile Federal Home Loan Banks, which are even less well capitalized than Fannie and Freddie, said they could buy twice as many Fannie and Freddie-blessed mortgage-backed securities as previously permitted -- more than $100 billion worth.

Was this necessary? It's messy, uncomfortable and undoubtedly flawed in many details. Like firefighters rushing to a five-alarm fire, policy makers are making mistakes that will be apparent only in retrospect.

Too Great to Ignore

But, regardless of how we got here, the clear and present danger that the virus in the housing, mortgage and credit markets is infecting the overall economy is too great to ignore. The Great Depression was worsened because the initial government reaction was wrong-headed. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke spent an academic career learning how to avoid repeating those mistakes.

Is it working? It is helping. One key measure is the gap between interest rates on mortgages and safe Treasury securities. A wide gap means high mortgage rates, which hurt an already sickly housing market. A lot of recent activity, including Wednesday's previously planned auction in which the Fed is trading Treasurys for mortgage-backed securities, is aimed at increasing demand for those securities to drive down mortgage rates.

The gap remains enormous by historical standards, but has narrowed. On March 6, according to FTN Financial, 30-year fixed-rate mortgages were trading at 2.92 percentage points above the relevant Treasury rates; Wednesday the gap was down to 2.22. Normal is about 1.5 percentage points. Money markets are still under stress, as banks and others hoard cash and super-safe short-term Treasurys.

Is it enough? Probably not. Although it's hard to know, the downward tug on the overall economy from falling house prices persists. The next step, if one proves necessary, is almost sure to require the explicit use of taxpayer money.

Cushion the Blow

The case for doing more is twofold. One is to cushion the blow to families and communities, even if some are culpable. The other is to disrupt a dangerous downward spiral in which falling prices of houses and mortgage-backed securities lead lenders to pull back, hurting the economy and dragging asset prices down further, and so on.

In ordinary times, a capitalist economy lets prices -- such as those of homes, mortgage-backed securities and stocks -- fall to the point where the big-bucks crowd rushes in, hoping to make a killing. But if the big money remains on the sidelines, unpersuaded that a bottom is near, the wait for bargain hunters to take the plunge could be very long and very painful.

So the next step, no matter how it is dressed up, is likely to involve the government's moving in ways that put a floor under prices, hoping that will limit the downside risks enough so more Americans are willing to buy homes and deeper-pocketed investors are willing, in effect, to lend them the money to do so.

Capital - WSJ.com

__________________
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile....

We are way past the "small crisis" option.
The options facing the Treasury are "Huge mess if we do nothing" and "maybe not as big a mess if we do something".
So they are pulling out all the stops.


Bernanke wrote a paper back in the 90's about what the Fed should do if they lowered interest rates to zero and it still wasn't good enough, he is currently doing the stuff he suggested in that paper.
This crisis will get bigger before it goes away, and when it does the regulatory structure will look a lot more like the one Roosevelt put in place, because the lessons of 1929 have been reinforced.

__________________
“The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine.”

Senator Thad Cochran, Mississippi (R)
on McCain

“I decided I didn’t want this guy anywhere near a trigger.”
Senator Pete Domenici, New Mexico (R)
on McCain

“My anger did not help my campaign ... People don’t like angry candidates very much.”

McCain on McCain

tax dollars wasted? check this out- subsidiziing a 90k per year incme doesn't exactly do it for me...



BOUNTIFUL HARVEST
Farm Lobby Beats Back
Assault On Subsidies
By LAUREN ETTER and GREG HITT
March 27, 2008; Page A1

With grain prices soaring, farm income at record highs and the federal budget deficit widening, the subsidies and handouts given to American farmers would seem vulnerable to a serious pruning.
But it appears that farmers, at least so far, have succeeded in stopping the strongest effort in years to shrink the government safety net that doles out billions of dollars to them each year.

"At some point, you have to step back and ask, 'Does this make sense for the American taxpayer?'" says Rep. Ron Kind. The Democrat from Wisconsin sponsored a measure that would have slashed about $10 billion over five years in subsidies -- and saw it get crushed on the House floor.

Grain prices are on a tear this year. On Wednesday, corn prices closed at $5.52 a bushel, up from about $2.20 in 2006, and near the all-time high of $5.70 set earlier this month. U.S. farm income, buoyed by demand for grain from rising middle classes around the globe and the biofuels industry, is projected to reach a record $92.3 billion this year. Still, farmers are expected to collect $13 billion in federal subsidies this year, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department, including payments for commodities, land conservation and emergency assistance.

A little more than a year ago, the stars appeared to be aligned for significant changes to the complex piece of legislation known as the farm bill, which allots billions of dollars to farmers and landowners to help stabilize grain prices, make products more competitive abroad and provide a plentiful food supply.
FARM FIGHT

• Tilling the Ground: As farm income is rising, Congress is finishing a bill that will provide farmers billions in subsidies.
• Sowing Seeds: Critics want major changes in the decades-old safety net. But they've seen powerful push-back from farmers and allies who say measures are needed to protect during cyclical downturns.
• The Harvest: Absent scaling back of support, farm subsidies will add to budget deficit and hinder trade talks.
President Bush wanted to cut subsidies. California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who had backed a high-profile effort to reshape the system in 2002, had become House Speaker. And a broad coalition of advocacy groups was assembling to press lawmakers.
But now serious reform is likely to be left behind like corn husks flung from a combine. As Congress tries to finish writing the new farm bill, the final tab is likely to be larger than the 2002 bill, which totaled more than $260 billion.

How did it happen?

Influential interest groups -- which had toyed with supporting changes -- cut deals to get their own piece of the action. Lawmakers who supported an overhaul peeled off as the debate moved into the election year. Historical alliances between rural and urban lawmakers proved difficult to untie.

The agribusiness industry plowed more than $80 million into lobbying last year, according to the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks spending on lobbying. Much of that was focused on the farm bill.
"We got rolled," says Rep. Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who worked closely with Rep. Kind. "The agriculture community circled the wagons."

Farmers and their allies in Congress say a victory is all to the good because the bill, which is typically renewed every five years, is designed to provide farmers with a safety net through cycles of boom and bust. The heady times of the 1970s, when crop prices soared as the Soviet Union gobbled up American grain, devolved into the farm crisis of the 1980s, leaving farmers buried in debt.

"We all know with the good times will come times that are less fortunate than now," says Dale Hadden, a grain farmer in Jacksonville, Ill., who recently traveled to Washington to talk with lawmakers about farm policy.

The farm bill has its roots in the Great Depression, when about a quarter of the U.S. population lived on farms and endured extraordinary economic hardship. As first conceived in the 1930s, the bill was designed to be a temporary boost to farm income.
It has since evolved into a thicket of hard-to-cut programs, providing payments and special loans to farmers to counteract swings in commodity prices and ensure market stability, as well as income. Subsidies flow to growers of corn, wheat and cotton, among other commodities. The legislation has also become a vehicle for funding food stamps, land conservation and school lunches, to name a few things, attracting supporters whose constituents have little or nothing to do with farms.
That has helped create a powerful alliance that makes the farm bill difficult to challenge. The bloc helps ensure all programs in the legislation live on, when they might be vulnerable if considered separately. The 2002 farm bill tab was one of the most expensive ever, with a yearly payout that roughly totaled what the federal government appropriates annually for the Education Department.

Today, farmers make up less than 1% of the U.S. population, and agriculture production is dominated by large, industrial farms that have annual sales of $1 million or more. In 2006, average farm household income was $77,654, or about 17% more than average U.S. household income, according to the Department of Agriculture. Average farm household income is expected to be about $90,000 this year. Current law allows subsidies to farmers with annual adjusted gross income of as much as $2.5 million.

More here at-

Farm Lobby Beats Back Assault On Subsidies - WSJ.com

__________________
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile....

Sounds like someone is resentful of those who through thier hard work and perseverance have made thier lives better. Class envy is such an ugly thing. Remember, 99% of all taxes are paid by the top 1% of wage earners - if the feds need to bail them out they certainly deserve it. The rich in this nation have been persecuted and punished enough.