[cube]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('lorenzo', 'S')o any right wing loonie explain this to me:

-if I start up my own business, invest my own cash in it, and I go bankrupt. Will the state give me money to save my a$$? Will it give me your money? Will it give me enough of your money so I can just continue my business as if nothing happened?

-and if not, then why does it bail out Northern Rock, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, to name but a few capitalists - private companies like all other private companies - who should have gone bankrupt.

-why are these losers more important than me?

-and why should I give bankrupt capitalists a single one of my hard earned greenbacks?

Capitalism is fake. It doesn't work. It's bankrupt. The system is one big scam.


So capitalists, neoliberal market fundamentalists, and other right wing ayatollahs, I want some answers to these questions. Now.

[Cashmere]

Seldom seen, as usual, is right.

He/she could write the f----ing script that is going to be read, shortly, by Benjamin Shalom Bernanke and Henry Merritt Paulson.

[Daniel_Plainview]

Practical question: how can the US afford to bailout all these banks, mortgage lenders, and investment houses while simultaneously running several wars in the Middle East ?

[lorenzo]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cube', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('lorenzo', 'S')o any right wing loonie explain this to me:

-if I start up my own business, invest my own cash in it, and I go bankrupt. Will the state give me money to save my a$$? Will it give me your money? Will it give me enough of your money so I can just continue my business as if nothing happened?

-and if not, then why does it bail out Northern Rock, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, to name but a few capitalists - private companies like all other private companies - who should have gone bankrupt.

-why are these losers more important than me?

-and why should I give bankrupt capitalists a single one of my hard earned greenbacks?

Capitalism is fake. It doesn't work. It's bankrupt. The system is one big scam.


So capitalists, neoliberal market fundamentalists, and other right wing ayatollahs, I want some answers to these questions. Now.

[lorenzo]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DoomWarrior', '[')b]Practical question: how can the US afford to bailout all these banks, mortgage lenders, and investment houses while simultaneously running several wars in the Middle East ?

[smallpoxgirl]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('lorenzo', '-')if I start up my own business, invest my own cash in it, and I go bankrupt. Will the state give me money to save my a$$? Will it give me your money? Will it give me enough of your money so I can just continue my business as if nothing happened?

[Peleg]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('lentilsmine', 'O')h, BTW:

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/art ... a997fa.htm

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. shares continued to slide Friday, at one point falling more than 15 percent amid speculation the investment bank is struggling financially.

Lehman shares slid $1.83 or 10.6 percent, to $15.47 in late afternoon trading. Earlier in the session, shares hit a nine-year low of $13.29.

Shares had already declined more than 24 percent this week.

"There is concern and speculation that Freddie, Fannie and Lehman won't be around on Monday," said Phil Orlando, chief equity market strategist at Federated Investors, referring to problems at the nation's largest mortgage purchasers Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which both were rocked again Friday, along with Lehman, the fourth-largest investment bank in the U.S. [...]

[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('lorenzo', 'S')o any right wing loonie explain this to me:

-if I start up my own business, invest my own cash in it, and I go bankrupt. Will the state give me money to save my a$$? Will it give me your money? Will it give me enough of your money so I can just continue my business as if nothing happened?

[7-Zark-7]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cube', 'Y')ou have a better economic system you want to share with us?

[cube]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('lorenzo', '.')..
Sure: state-owned capitalism.

You allow the free market to do its work, but the State makes all the orders. So you make an order, and let the bidding begin. The state only buys from the best producer. Consumers buy from the state, whose representatives they elect.

Trials show that this works very well.

In Hoboken, a community over here in Flanders, local marxists came to power with this idea (can you imagine? In this day and age, a group of marxists actually comes to power in one of the world's most highly developed regions).

They immediately tried things out, in particular in the sector of health care and energy. The state makes an order ("we need the cheapest generic antibioticum"), and the manufacturers bid. The winning product is then sold to consumers, via partly state-owned farmacies and doctors. The consumers pay 500% less for a drug that is twice as good and thrice as universally available, and twenty times less frequently proscribed and only if there is a real need. Society wins, wins, wins and wins.

They're now trying to do the same with energy.

In any case, the role of the State must be stressed much more once again.

In current free market maniacal capitalism, it is the other way around: the State only gets to act when it's too late, or when consumers lose everything, actually die (as in the U.S., where people are dieing on the street because they can't afford a house or basic healthcare), or ruin their children's future (not to speak of the planet's future).

Clearly, neoliberal free market capitalism has had it's day. It is totally passe. The future has something very different in store. That much can be said.

[CarlosFerreira]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('seldom_seen', 'A') stern looking Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke will appear before the Senate to underline the importance of "capitalizing" the FDIC. Due to unforeseen economic events that "never could have been predicted." The government working with the fed must "step in" to "support the important role of the FDIC during this correction in the market." Thus an unlimited credit line will be extended to the FDIC backed by the good faith of the US government.

[Twilight]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('seldom_seen', 'T')hus an unlimited credit line will be extended to the FDIC backed by the good faith of the US government.

[efarmer]

We have had some extremely clear and simple wake up calls since the 1970's.

1. Petroleum is finite and we should segway from it in an organized and timeline driven manner.
We responded to this by an unprecedented explosion of
SUV serviced suburban asteroid belts with strip mall amenities.

2. Developers and financiers have bought the government and are doing crazy things with all the little people paying for the insurance policy they will collect on and we will all find depleted if we need it afterwards.

We responded to this by getting that jet ski we needed to survive
and the hot tub by tapping our home equity while we helped
little Johnny flip his first time share for his 21st birthday party.

This is more of the old saw, if you owe the bank $10,000 and you cannot pay, you have a terrible problem, if you owe them $10 million and cannot pay, we all have a terrible problem.

Before it is all said and done, wheat and corn for oil and minerals are going to get reestablished and the rest of the system fleshed out. Much of the abstract wealth on paper in this world is j money, (with j being an imaginary number.) Even so I think I will go to the FDIC and ask for the square root of negative one dollars back that I lost in the big bank debacle of 2008.

1 j$ unspent is 5 j$ unearned

[Peleg]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('CarlosFerreira', 'S')omeone said the Fed couldn't lower the rates to 0%. Why? The Japanese did it for some time during the 90's.

[lorenzo]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', 'C')ommunists will also screw you up.

[Peleg]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('CarlosFerreira', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('seldom_seen', '
')A stern looking Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke will appear before the Senate to underline the importance of "capitalizing" the FDIC. Due to unforeseen economic events that "never could have been predicted." The government working with the fed must "step in" to "support the important role of the FDIC during this correction in the market." Thus an unlimited credit line will be extended to the FDIC backed by the good faith of the US government.

[DantesPeak]

Peleg - Being a part of the US government, essentially the FDIC can borrow an unlimted amount of money to pay debts (if authorized by Congress, which it would).

But your point gets to the meat of the argument - how can you create wealth by issuing paper money when real wealth, in fact real money, is based on the use/value of energy.

US history shows that even in the so called 'deflationary' 1930s, the US government resorted to highly inflationary monetary policies that lead to a major devaluation of the dollar in 1932/1933. But that devaluation did not change the economy much, and may have even made it worse.

I expect the same to happen now, only that the ability to inflate, based upon new Fed procedures used just since November 2007, is be tremendously more.


On another topic, I am angry that the FDIC & FHLBB let IndyMac accumulate such a huge loss ($8 billion). The balance sheet reflected $1 in capital on March 31, so what they are saying is that the value of IndyMac's assets - mortgages and mortgage backed securities - have dropped about 30% in value since then.

If there are many other banks/thrifts out there that have assets really worth 30% less, then the cost to the government eventually may be near $1 trillion.

[Peleg]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DantesPeak', 'P')eleg - Being a part of the US government, essentially the FDIC can borrow an unlimted amount of money to pay debts (if authorized by Congress, which it would).
But your point gets to the meat of the argument - how can you create wealth by issuing paper money when real wealth, in fact real money, is based on the use/value of energy.

US history shows that even in the so called 'deflationary' 1930s, the US government resorted to highly inflationary monetary policies that lead to a major devaluation of the dollar in 1932/1933. But that devaluation did not change the economy much, and may have even made it worse.
I expect the same to happen now, only that the ability to inflate, based upon new Fed procedures used just since November 2007, is be tremendously more.

On another topic, I am angry that the FDIC & FHLBB let IndyMac accumulate such a huge loss ($8 billion). The balance sheet reflected $1 in capital on March 31, so what they are saying is that the value of IndyMac's assets - mortgages and mortgage backed securities - have dropped about 30% in value since then.
If there are many other banks/thrifts out there that have assets really worth 30% less, then the cost to the government eventually may be near $1 trillion.

[something_awfull]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he federal government took control of Pasadena-based IndyMac Bank on Friday in what regulators called the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history.

Citing a massive run on deposits, regulators shut its main branch three hours early, leaving customers stunned and upset. One woman leaned on the locked doors, pleading with an employee inside: "Please, please, I want to take out a portion." All she could do was read a two-page notice taped to the door.
L.A Times

[CarlosFerreira]

OK, let's get this straight. I've heard the news, and there has been a public speech by Bernanke and Paulson, they went to the Congress to ask for a You-are-free-from-jail card to hold these guys, plus Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Nice. Pretty much what you said.

So, coupled with the mounting cost of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus the whole economic turmoil and the mounting pressure from Peak Oil, the US Govt. might run the printers to essentially create money out of nothing. Inflation follows.

Thing is, Asian countries with dollar reserves are already dumping dollars worth less and less in the market. So, even more money than the one being created artificially to supress the need for imaginary money.

Dollar loses more and more value, so dropping the rates will evidently won't help. Somewhere ahead, they will have to face the grim reality (after the elections, do you think), and raise the rates. That will essentially paralyze an economy that's already in life support. Will kill it to reset.

So, if my thinking is right, do you think the US Govt might be giving itself a bailout by postponing the tough decisions and giving the problem to the next one?

As we say here in Portugal, last man out please turn off the lights...