In the last Big Crash (1929) Daddy Warbucks survived. The little guy is the one who got hurt.

[Stinky The Clown]

(Pure Rant Follows)

Just keep that in mind as you tell us how great it is that the bailout didn't pass.

Daddy Warbucks (and all the rich) were just fine.

I will also admit *very quickly* that **I** have NO FUCKING CLUE if the bailout will work or not. But I have to trust in *something*. My choices right now are to trust the Republicans or the Democrats. Guess where I come down on **that** score.

And if you're cheering and hoping for a crash, fuck you. Just FUCK YOU. We *average schmucks* will be eating the shit sandwich, not the rich. You will be eating it and I will be eating it.

This crisis is the result of 40 years of essentially UNFETTERED REPUBLICANISM.

If you wanna cheer for something, cheer for a GENERATIONAL SHIFT in American power. Choose the 'we' party over the 'me' party. How about that?

We simply can NOT survive another year of UNFETTERED REPUBLICANISM, let alone a whole McPalin term.

If not this bailout, then what? So far, no one has a better plan. I see/hear lots of financial thinkers jerking off, but no one has a clue.

NO ONE. It seems to me that in the absence of actual credible ideas, we kinda have no choice but to go along. I don't like it, but there it is.

Besides, what a few jerk-offs actually think (for the purpose of this rant, I am including myself in the category of 'jerk-off') doesn't mean diddly squat. The herd is running and us yelling at the moon won't stop them. This bailout was what they wanted.

It is also pretty much what they wanted and didn't get in 1929.

For those of you too young to know The Great Depression either first hand or through the eyes of their parents, do a little research. IT WAS FUCKING AWFUL. Those who survived it were changed for their lifetimes. And not because it was fun.

Feh ..... go ahead. Cheer For Disaster. Just today you got The Worst Point Drop In Stock Market History.

Maybe tomorrow we can see .... what would make you happy?

[Old and In the Way]

1. Root cause is Republicanism

Also know as greed, corruption, deregulation, opportunism, etc.

[johnaries]

2. Thank you. WE are the ones who will get screwed.

The Fat Cat will lose a lot more than us, but they will still have plenty. I don't have photobucket, but if I did I would love to post some pictures of Hoovervilles with the post "Here's your new homes!".

[avaistheone1]

8. Total Bullshit. Paulson after saying it would mean financial meltdown - corrected himself and said

it would not to CBS's Bob Schaeffer. Congress' own Budget Office says this bailout could make things worse.

Bailout Could Deepen Crisis, CBO Chief Says - Asset Sales May Lead to Write-Downs, Insolvencies
By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer


The director of the Congressional Budget Office said yesterday that the proposed Wall Street bailout could actually worsen the current financial crisis.

During testimony before the House Budget Committee, Peter R. Orszag -- Congress's top bookkeeper -- said the bailout could expose the way companies are stowing toxic assets on their books, leading to greater problems.

"Ironically, the intervention could even trigger additional failures of large institutions, because some institutions may be carrying troubled assets on their books at inflated values," Orszag said in his testimony. "Establishing clearer prices might reveal those institutions to be insolvent."

In an interview later yesterday, Orszag explained using the following example: Suppose a company has Asset X, whose value is recorded on the books as $100. Because of the current economic decline, Asset X's real value has dropped to $50. If the company takes part in the government bailout and sells Asset X for $50, the company has to report a $50 loss on its books. On a scale of millions of dollars, such write-downs could ruin a company.

Such companies "look solvent today only because it's kind of hidden," Orszag said. "They actually are insolvent" already, he said.

In hearings on Capitol Hill so far this week, criticism of the bailout plan put forward by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke has largely been restricted to the shape of the $700 billion proposal, how the money will be spent and what sort of oversight Treasury should have.

But Orszag yesterday questioned the wisdom of the plan itself, testifying that "it therefore remains uncertain whether the program will be sufficient to restore trust."

In yesterday's interview, Orszag said, "The key question is: What are we buying and what are we paying for it?"

Orszag offered alternatives, such as equity injections into particularly troubled companies, but allowed that those could lead to further problems, as well. In the end, he said, Congress must pass some sort of relief, if only because Wall Street is expecting it.

"If we did nothing, there is a significant risk of another collapse of confidence in the financial markets," he said.

Then, there is the paperwork cost of the bailout.

The budget office "expects that the administrative costs of operating the program could amount to a few billion dollars per year, as long as the government held all or most of the purchased assets," he testified, without defining what he meant by "a few."

Even as the financial markets rallied Thursday and Friday, Orszag said, the credit situation was so dire that "short-term lending was virtually shut down."

He said that the Treasury was acting as a go-between in short-term lending between banks. Instead of Bank A lending directly to Bank B, as is customary, Bank A no longer had confidence that Bank B could repay the loan.

So Bank A would give the money to the Treasury, which issued a security that was put into the Federal Reserve, which then issued the cash to Bank B.

If the government is forced to intermediate such ordinary transactions, commerce slows, credit confidence remains low, and operational strain is placed on the Treasury and the Fed.

"You don't want them in the middle of every short-term financial transaction," Orszag said.
During questioning before the Joint Economic Committee earlier yesterday, Bernanke acknowledged concerns about the bailout's effect on the budget.

"I think those concerns are very serious," he said. "But it's really a question of alternatives."


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...

[SammyWinstonJack]

3. I wouldn't trust a republican as far as I could throw one, which isn't very far.

And who is cheering for disaster? I think there must be some way to fix this mess without the taxpayers footing the bill. Why not let cooler heads prevail? Why the rush? Seems like with bush maladministration, rushing to solve an immediate problem, always screws us, big time!

[NNN0LHI]

4. Both my parents lived through the Great Depression

They both swear things improved for them mightily around the time that the Depression began.

They said before the Depression began their families with their meager incomes (Whatever they could scratch up.) were trying to compete in a marketplace where most people had plenty of money which kept prices for food and other necessities high. Higher than they could afford. For a treat they would have the electricity turned on for a few days around Christmas if they were really lucky. They were literally starving.

It wasn't until a lot more people found themselves in my parents families shape that things improved for them. The jobs programs like WPA and other help began because almost everyone found themselves in the same boat as my parents.

Right now we have a number of people are really hurting in this country. Probably close to the same shape as my parents were in before the Great Depression. But right now the majority of people can still afford to pay the high food and energy prices which tends to keep those prices high. Supply and Demand.

Just thought I would throw that in.

Don

[Not the Only One]

5. No, not all rich, just the ones that were illegally tipped off about it

That's how those people got rich, they got out at the very beginning and then bought a ton of stocks and assets after the bloodbath and watched them appreciate in value.

The stock market is a mob-run casino. It's ridiculous that we even considered bailing these thugs out.

[Bonhomme Richard]

6. Actually maybe Daddy W did survive but a lot of his buddies...

did not, thus creating the middle class and greater equality of income.
And that's the rest of the story.

[Stinky The Clown]

7. Nobody's arguing for saving the rich .......

.......... which your post seems to imply.

[bvar22]

9. EXACTLY ...."The little guy is the one who got hurt."

..and THAT is why I don't support bailing out Wall St with money borrowed (stolen?) from our children.

ANY rescue efforts should be spent on helping "The Little Guys" and NOT throwing $Billions down the black hole of Wall Street without a single guarantee that this would solve our problems.

The PROBLEM is systemic.
There is a hole in the boat.
It is sinking.
If we don't fix the boat FIRST, we are wasting our time and our children's money trying to bail it out.

For a boat repair manual, SEE:
Franklin Roosevelt (New Deal)
&
Teddy Roosevelt (Trust Buster)

[closeupready]

10. Please! Would you finance people stop SPAMMING DU!

:mad:

[girl gone mad]

14. I'd love to see the server log.

They usually go home by 7 CST.

[closeupready]

16. I know, right?

They start early, too.

[Stinky The Clown]

21. What the fuck are you talking about?

"Finance People"

Define that and tell me how it applies to me.

That is not a rhetorical question.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

11. Yeah, well...

back then 700 billion dollars was a lot of money.

[girl gone mad]

12. It's great that this bailout plan didn't pass.

It was a bad deal for us, with no transparency, no oversight, no equity stake, no limits on executive compensation and no guarantee that we will get anything for 700 Billion, which could devalue our dollar and saddle future generations with even more debt.

There are many better plans around. Here's just one:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=114x44442

The little guy has already been devastated by years of unfettered capitalism, and now you are asking the little guy to bail out the Daddy Warbucks' who shipped his job overseas, cut his pension, gouges him for health care and created a financial market based almost entirely on speculation.

No thanks.

[paparush]

13. We'll need something. Just not this thing.

I didn't want something Bush, Cheney, and Paulson drew up. No fucking way. Even after the original 3 page POS was reworked, it still stank.

Bush hasn't done shit for the middle class and working poor, and the original Paulson plan was more of the same. A great big Fuck You to the middle class and working poor.

Fuck Bush and his Disaster Capitalism. Fuck Him.

I know our lives may change dramatically, but I still see this as a victory.

And besides, Congress will probably work through the night and pass the same POS on a voice vote.

[crispini]

15. All kinds of credible ideas and good research here.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/29/wallstreet.useconomy

I don't know what to think of this thingy myself but I just keep remembering the old saying: "Measure twice, cut once."

[SammyWinstonJack]

19. !!!

:thumbsup:

[Greyhound]

17. In 1930, Daddy Warbucks got a great big fat bailout, and just like this failed turd,

it only eased the trauma they were going through. Daddy Warbucks will not end up in the street by any means, but not giving him a huge payday for fucking everybody will preserve some strength for dealing with the fallout.

[gollygee]

18. A lot of the Daddy Warbucks types jumped out the window the day of the crash

No, they weren't all fine.

My family was all middle class and all did OK.

Of course, as usual, the poor suffered the worst. That seems to be the one constant. :(

[dkofos]

20. No one has a plan? That's bullshit. Kucinich has a plan, Sanders has a plan.

True, they don't give the treasury away to the fucking CROOKS that caused the problem
to begin with, but that plan was destined to fail from the beginning.

[Hydra]

22. If we need a system crash to deal with the people draining the Treasury, so be it

Letting Paulson "fix" the problem is about as smart as giving Bush another IWR.

The base problem here is jobs- we need more high paying ones. All of the financial voodoo from the Bush Admin ignored the fact that people need to work and be paid what they're worth for $700,000+ houses to be affordable.

The prices have to come down or the wages and job numbers need to go up. It's that simple. $700 Billion to Paulson's friends won't do that.

[sarcasmo]

23. Giving Paulson who received millions from his stint as CEO and bowing to the fear monger

Who has not been right on anything for the last 8 years, does this makes sense? No blank checks and no bail outs for Corporate GREED.

[OmahaBlueDog]

24. Why this plan, and why right freaking now?

That's what I'm asking.

The majority of Congressmen in the President's party didn't support this plan -- that should tell everyone a lot right there.

The election is 5 weeks from tomorrow. Why can't action on this wait until we see who is going to be elected -- both in Congress and to the WH? What is the rush?

We (America) need three things from any plan

1. We need the causes of the problem identified and sufficient regulation and oversight set in place to avoid a repeat
2. We need the burden of funding the plan placed on Wall Street. If that means raising cap gains on stock sales, so be it. If that means taxing sales on options and securities, so be it. If that means forcing Wall Street to put up valuable assets as collateral so we can bail them out of their involvement with crappy assets, so be it.
3. We need to ensure that this problem is solved with as little financial outlay as possible.


This is meant as a joke, but check out this post -- it's the best plan I've seen ;-)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4122547

[Romulox]

25. The America that emerged from the Great Depression was a lot more just than the one that preceded it

[bhikkhu]

26. That's actually not quite true

If you study the history of social stratification (as I had to in college some years back), just looking at the percentage of wealth held by the top 1%, it spiked to 36% just before the 1929 crash. That is, 36% of all wealth in the US was held by 1% of the population. By 1945 this percentage had declined to 21%.

The current situation began under Nixon, where the top 1% still only held 20% of the country's assets, but disparities were rising. I think the number is currently about 40%. Or, again, 1% of our population holds 40% of our wealth.

[jberryhill]

27. And Annie got a dog, a big house to live in, and the sun came out tomorrow, but...

what happens if we throw 700 billion into this chipper/shredder and it still breaks?

Arf!

[madrchsod]

28. daddy warbucks and his friends

tried to overthrow our elected president in the 30`s