It's not a plan - it's corporate welfare!
Posted by: Archimedes on Sep 23, 2008 - 05:04 PM
Politics
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Oh, no! Oh, HELL, no! You have to be kidding me! Stop the madness and stop the inane babbling of the Bush administration saying and that idiot Paulson saying, "all we care about is the taxpayers". You lying fucktard! Watching this whole thing unfold on as CNN played the senate banking committee meeting live, I have never seen four more nervous people in my life. Bernanke looked like a deer in the headlights and Paulson was jumpier than a rabbit at a shotgun convention! As for the other two, they might as well stayed home as they were utterly useless considering the focus was on tweedle dumb and tweedle dumber, Barnanke and Paulson, the blind idiots who have led the financial industry to ruin and now expect the AMERICAN PEOPLE - the TAXPAYERS to bail their out asses and the asses of their corporate fat-cat friends on Wall Street out! I say, "let 'em bleed to death"!
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Here's a newsflash for you two idiots: You can have a socialist government in which the financial institution(s) is/are completely run by the government or you can have a capatilist society which touts and practices the edicts of free enterprise - you CAN'T have both! And you sure as HELL can't have it at MY EXPENSE!!! You espouse the value of the free market, which at present amounts to a steaming pile of dog doo, but at the same time, now you want to step in and provide government intervention in what is one of the worst fnancial catastrophies since the Great Depression that is as a direct result of the poor management and decisions of a bunch of corporate execs that turned a blind eye to what was going on since they were getting rich off it. More to the point, it wasn't THAT long ago when a plan was introduced to inject a paltry 4 Billion into the system to save PEOPLE - a REAL investment - and save THEIR mortgages. And what did the current administration do? They shot that down in flames - vetoed by our pinhead president saying, "I don't want to reward bad judgement". And this differs exactly how? I can tell you simply. It differs by 696 Billion dollars - that's how it differs, symantecs aside.
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I can't believe we're even insane plan by Paulson! This thing has more holes in it and is bound to sink faster than the Titanic. And you want to do this with MY money?! No...f*cking...way!!! Point of fact, in dealing with any other 'service provider', which is what the government is supposed to be by all accounts, at least in that regard you have a CHOICE and a GUARANTEE, usually a MONEY BACK guarantee! Given the current circumstances and looking back at the last eight years, I can safely say at this point that I want *MY* money back! I want every penny that's been invested in these two wars overseas! I want every penny that's been paid to ever worthless politician, INCLUDING Obama...Obama who ENDORSES this plan! Worthless - every one of them!
Just in the details, this plan stinks to high heavens of just another press for unlimited power at unlimited expense. A rubberstamped check for $700B dollars to the treasury secretary to apply as he sees fit without any kind of oversight? And to what end? To buy up a bunch of "illiquid" assets that basically subtracts the bad debt from the balance sheets of the corporate banking industry? And I use the term "assets" LOOSELY while my eyes bleed in looking at the word! Only in this economy could you consider "buying debt" an investment!!! As that's the case, I have a few thousand dollars of debt I'd like to sell to the government!!!
Some mention of a plan was put out that was drawn up by Senator Dodd that speaks to the ability to do a multitude of things including setting up a totally separate company to purchase the mortgages themselves, NOT "illiquid assets", which can be held and later sold and give the government, aka the taxpayers, a stake in something real and physical (the properties attached to the mortgages), providing assistance to those that were dumb enough to believe the banking industry that they could afford the kinds of loans that their now stuck with and strict oversight of the banking industry as a whole by CONGRESS. Of course, this sort of plan that at least gave the tax payers some kind of stake in this, even if we didn't want to be involved or invested in it, was immediately shot down from several directions.
No, they don't want anything that might be misconstrued as a guarantee to the taxpayers - that would be a promise that Bernanke and Paulson are not willing to keep. And yet they continue to harp on the statement that "to do nothing would be bad". Yeah, kinda reminds me of the same sort of rhetoric behind the creation and continued mismanagement of the "Department of Homeland inSecurity" - "We need to do something right now, right now, right now because something <unspecified> bad is going to happen somewhere, sometime, we don't know when or what, but we gotta stop it before it happens".
So Mr. Paulson's plan, in a nutshell, is that we're going to buy a bunch of "bad loans" with taxpayer dollars, 700B taxpayer dollars to be exact. A corporate bailout of an unprecedented nature with no guarantees - this coming from the same administration that didn't want to "reward poor decisions" by the John Q. Publics that were dumb enough to believe the banks and allowed themselves to be talked into loans that they HAD to know they couldn't afford. But yet we're going to make up for the poor business practices and decisions of the likes of Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, AIG, etc...and this because the fallout would be worse if we did nothing. Yet, nobody asked the fundamental question, so I will.
Mr. Paulson, you mention that if we don't do anything, "then God help us all". Well, first of all, I find that you're about as Christian as Buddha, so you're appeal to "God" is lost on me. Second of all, you simply keep saying that doing nothing would be "bad". That it would have "really bad consequences". Well, since nobody ELSE asked, like what? And please don't tell me that its the 8 million jobs at stake. Hell, we're losing jobs at a rate of 80k per month so far. And what? No more houses will be built because builders won't get credit to build them? Look around in southern Florida, Mr. Paulson. It's littered with houses that were supposed to be up for sale, some completed, some that are unfinished, the companies that built them and overdeveloped - now busted and out of business. It's indicative across the entirety of the United States.
Mr. Paulson, you were the CEO of Goldman Sachs until 2006. Your job was to project the future of the financial markets, to understand the intricacies of the financial world, of Wall Street, of investment banking. And we, no, check that...our PINHEAD PRESIDENT, appointed you as Secretary of the Treasury because you were allegedly "knowledgeable in the ways of finance and the financial institutions". Personally, as I see it, Mr. Paulson, you are yet another failed CEO and this financial meltdown is very much in part your legacy. This is a problem that you greatly contributed to. Now you march in like some savior saying "something has to be done". But you wouldn't do it when it was proposed to save the homes of Americans which in turn would have made good on these very debts which are now turning sour in the stomaches of the giant financial entities that swallowed them. You'd have allowed the American people, the taxpayers, to fail, Mr. Paulson. Yet you can't see that happening to the financial institutions and the poor judgement of you and others like you that paved the way for this to happen. And you expect these same taxpayers to now correct these deficiencies, deficiencies that you, Mr. Paulson, helped to create and so narrowly avoided yourself by resigning your position as the CEO of Goldman Sachs to take the position as Treasury Secretary. Would that you hadn't taken this job, it'd be YOUR head on the chopping block today rather than one of your buddies in this incestuous little ring we call "investment banking".
And then there's Mr. Bernanke, the educated idiot. Having taken over for the aging tycoon Alan Greenspan, you've managed to accomplish even LESS than your predecessor. The inefficiency with which this has been handled, the lack of oversight on your part should be considered criminal neglegence. And to even propose that we should use OUR money as taxpayers to fix this, a problem that you and your predecessor also helped create, is beyond belief. Congress and Senate shouldn't be listening to you for answers - they should be firing both of you for your ineptitude. This market failed on your watch, Mr. Bernanke.
Let's review for a moment what the Federal Reserve was originally created for. The Federal Reserve was a quasi-govermental organization created in 1913 that was supposed to be the control mechanism in the financial system, aided by the United States Government (more like enslaving the United States Government), to ensure the solidity and surity of the markets. It was designed to head off investor and bank panics to keep the markets afloat. Yet in 1929, the single worst event in our financial history took place, an entire stock market crash. Resession again in the 80s, the bursting of the dot com bumble...I mean bubble in the 1990s, recession again around 2000, and now we are on the brink of the single worst financial event since the Great Depression and all of this AFTER the implimentation of the Federal Reserve - an organization designed to head off these kinds of things before they happen. So tell me, Mr. Bernanke. What happened? How did this occur on your watch...and that of Mr. Greenspan's as I know he controlled things for a long time as well and aided to bring us to this end.
Much as is the case with Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae, two MORE quasi-governmental organizations, we have seen dismal failure in these kinds of institutions. And much like the solutions that we've, no...check that...our CONGRESS has rushed into like the war on two fronts which has yet to yeild any kind of positive results, we're now pressed with a dire decision - "something must be done now or something bad will happen". And yet neither Mr. Paulson nor Mr. Bernanke or, saving back the fact that each of these gentlemen took their posts in 2006, but were still involved in the financial market prior to that, particularly Mr. Paulson, NEITHER of these two saw this coming and only now come to Congress begging for help to the tune of $700B dollars to bail out the banking industry whos mistakes have cost us so dearly and obviously are going to cost the taxpayers for years to come. These are the same two individuals under who, under their watch, they watched all right...watched as the banks capatilized on loopholes and lack of regulation and oversight until they shot themselves in their own dicks. And now while these entities bleed, you come back to us, the taxpayers, the same ones suffering at the pumps and every time the oil truck pulls up to our homes to fill our tanks...you turn back to us, the taxpayers, to bail your happy asses out.
Two words come to mind for both of you, Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Paulson...and to all of the banking investment banking industry - "piss off"! You guys were the same one that said, "let them eat cake" when anyone else even thought about some kind of rescue plan for the people! So in MY mind, I have even LESS sympathy for you and your greedy cohorts - let 'em bleed!
"But the stockmarkets will crash, the sky is falling, the sky is falling".
News for you...as a rule, most people aren't INVESTED in the stock market. And as cold as this might sound, you keep coming back to our 401k plans and money market accounts that are out there that are now taking a thrashing as a result of your collective poor judgement. You know what's going to happen when those of us that have such plans watch them go back up on smoke? We're going to grumble. We're going to gripe. We're going to call all of you assholes all kinds of nasty names. We're going to wonder how we're going to retire or if we ever will be able to. But we, the American people, the taxpayers, are going to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, wait until the dust settles and we're going to persevere. Maybe it will take a collective effort on all of our parts to extend a helping hand to those around us, and believe me - I'm NOT a social person. But in looking at the situation, I'd MUCH rather invest my tax dollars in the PEOPLE that got slammed by your poor judgement then to reinvest in the same people that brought us here to begin with!
And to Congress as a whole - don't think you can simply skip out on YOUR part in this. Let's review for a second shall we? The Chinese Trade Agreement, which China is having great fun holding us over a barrel for now! Our dependency on the OPEC nations. NAFTA. All of these are government monsters gone awry which have undermined our own economy. I don't pretend to know everything with regards to economics. But I can tell you that, at least as I see it, the fundamentals are pretty simple. You can't do business with someone that's not on equal terms with you. If you do, their going to get the better end of the stick every single swingin' time. Our businesses have gone overseas. Our jobs have gone overseas. And you sat and nodded your collective heads like a bunch of bobbleheads as this current administration and administrations past paved the way for it to happen. And now you want to collaborate with the very criminals on Wall Street, because that's what they are, to create a "solution".
C'mon guys...you're a democratically controlled congress and senate. The one thing that democrats are noted for is the ability to tax us into oblivion for social programs. But what you're contemplating is taxing us into oblivion for something that is being sold as a plan but amounts to nothing more than CORPORATE WELFARE!!! Stop the madness, folks! It's time you started getting back to your roots. I'd MUCH rather see $700B spent on Social Security and Medicare. At least we might have SOMETHING when we reach retirement age! Yet, this congress and congress pass has instead used the Social Security Trust Fund as your own personal little piggy banks. Much to my surprise, for as often as I've heard that the Social Security program is in dire jeopardy, the research I've done says it's actually operating at a SURPLUS. Not sure how something that actually is making more money than it spends is in a dangerous position...except for the fact that all surplus, rather than being held onto in a TRUST FUND (that's a misnomer if ever there was one, 'cause I certainly don't trust it) such that it collects modest interest and grows is being skimmed off and put back into the GENERAL FUND!!!
So don't dislocate your shoulders patting yourselves on the back. You've had a part to play in this, too. People might not NEED 401k plans and such if the Government, for all of their "good intentions", actually followed through with doing what they know to be right!
But then, it's always been said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And nothing could be closer to the truth. Our financial industries are over their heads in a shitstorm of their own making. Social Security is broken - well, not really, but it's become a buzzword to artificially create a new crisis that will be the groundwork to extract more blood from those of us who really ARE bleeding to death here, the American taxpayers.
Under any other circumstances, in a court of law, these financial giants wouldn't be offered a chance for rescue. Much like Tyco, MCI Worldcom, Enron, etc., their executives would be facing charges of misappropriation of funds. Yet we're allowing for a governmental bailout of these institutions under the premise of "their too big to fail". I put it to you that their not. The failure of MCI, of Enron, of all of the other companies, the scandal that was produced, etc., all of that led to the bursting of the dot com bubble. Hell, the company I worked for went bust as a result of it and I was out of a job. But since then, new technology companies have come up providing better services and they aren't trading against phantom "assets" that nobody can place a value on. No, that particular type of business has been taken up by the investment banking industry. In the truest sense of capatilism, the "law of the land" states that these companies because of their poor business practices should fail. And that in their failing, much like MCI Worldcom, Enron, etc., a dozen other companies will be able to grow up in their absence, learn from the mistakes of the giants and provide better, sounder business and services. That's the nature of capatilism, ladies and gentlemen.
And it applies to all levels. To those developers that overdeveloped...it's a simple matter of supply and demand. Business was booming. You built house after house and aimed to sell them at extraordinarily high prices. And you were aided by the extension of credit in a fashion that was unsustainable by the banks and by poor choices on the part of both the buyer and the lender. But you didn't care - you kept building and you HAD to know that it was bad business. Now that it's all gone bust, you have found yourself with a glut of houses on the market that you couldn't move. It's called supply and demand. The demand has gone down because the property values took a dive and those of us in a mortgage presently are stuck in it, at least those that didn't buy wisely (I did, thankfully - my property is still appreciating, believe it or not). And for those that are trying to unload their house, they can't because their not buying, no one is. There's a greater supply of homes than there are available buyers - that's the fact.
In the end, for all the "we only care about the taxpayers" rhetoric, to me, it's apparent that little heed has been paid to what the taxpayers want or need. This is one time when perhaps you might want to ASK us! Because if you don't - if you don't listen, you are on the edge of a revolt. I've said before on this very site that the giant that is the American people is waking from its slumber. Following through with this plan to "save the banking industry or something bad will happen"...you follow through with this, something bad WILL happen. You will earn the ire of the people of this country, the people you are supposedly elected to represent.
I'm sorry, but my interests don't involve Wall Street. And this trickle down effect that has been around since the days of Reagan are bullshit! Yeah, we've followed the trickledown effect. And where are we now. The only thing that has come down are the values of our home and the quality of our life. In short, shit rolls downhill, and that's what's happened. So to say that throwing money at this to save the banking industry is in our best interest amounts to a big pile of steaming dogshit. The only thing that's trickled down from Wall Street has been bad news for us on Main Street. Higher gas prices, higher oil prices, higher grocery prices...and now you're saying that we should take on about $3600 of debt for every man, woman and child living in the country. We're ALREADY under pressure. And your best answer is to add to that misery, to "share the pain". I'm in enough pain. And last I checked, I don't have ANYTHING invested in Wall Street, not one dime. But you want me to help save it. More to the point, you want to TAKE my money, offer me NO assurance of its return, invest it into intangible assets which amount to little more than junk bonds, and IF there's any profit (which I sincerely doubt will happen since you're not taking ownership of actual property, just junk bonds), the profit goes back to the Government coffers...and you want me to pay for it. As I said at the top of the page. Oh, no. Oh, HELL no!!
You want help? Make the program voluntary. Go out and ask the American people for donations. Let's see how many of them want to pony up some $3600 for each member of their family to bail out the financial institutions. Ask them that specifically. And when you come back with your answer, then go back out and ask how many of them might be willing to give up that much money to put in a fund to help the poor Joe on Mainstreet that got fucked by these assholes and who now have worthless 401k plans and such because of the poor judgement on the part of investment banking. My guess is you'd find a lot more people willing to help poor Joe than those that you'll find in support of helping Joe CEO of Large Investment Bank, Inc. I can almost promise you that.
I don't want to part with any more money than I already am. But if I *have* to, then at least put it where it counts - help the average Joe like myself that's struggling to make ends meet. ***** the banking industry. Let the CEOs put their own personal millions back into the company and try to save it. It was their poor judgement that got them here; let 'em bleed! And for every one of them that says, "we couldn't have seen this coming", lemme give you guys a hint. You're a CEO. It's your JOB to predict the future of the markets. It's your JOB to make sound business practices, which, by the way, don't include allowing your subsidiaries to make $500k loans to people making $30k per year, DUH! It's your JOB to make your company efficient and a moneymaker. That's what you're PAID to do by your stockholders, by your investers and by the company that YOU run. That's why you earn multimillions of dollars, not including your expense accounts, travel accounts, dividends, etc.
I can tell you this, Joe CEO...while all of the above might be YOUR job, one thing that is NOT my job is to bail your sorry ass out when you make poor decisions on the part of your company. Too bad, so sad, sucks to be you!
And for all of Congress, the Chair of the Federal Reserve, the Chair of the SEC, the Treasury Secretary, etc...for all of you to even contemplate using MY money to bail these organizations out is beyond absurd. You do this and I can almost promise you that there's going to be a class revolt. These institutions made their own bed - let them lie in it!</unspecified>
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