Recession? We don' need no steenkeen recession!

i wonder if the stock market will go under 10,000...? i kinda doubt it, but if it did happen, it would be hugely symbolic.

(maybe mccain learned enough through his involvement in the S+L scandal to provide some wisdom here ha ha...)
 
The reason so many banks failed in 1929 is because banks were allowed to borrow from their consumer (savings, checking, etc.) divisions to pay debts incurred by their commercial divisions. Laws were enacted to prevent this from happening again. Guess what the federal government is allowing banks to do during the current "problem." Just sayin'...
 
this is bullshit.

so glad my tax dollars are going to prop up poorly run businesses.

hey, let's bail everyone out. i think i'll just go out and run up $50k on my credit card, and then let everybody else pay for it weeeeee!

you got that right.:mad4:
 
The reason so many banks failed in 1929 is because banks were allowed to borrow from their consumer (savings, checking, etc.) divisions to pay debts incurred by their commercial divisions. Laws were enacted to prevent this from happening again. Guess what the federal government is allowing banks to do during the current "problem." Just sayin'...
Classic Con views - deregulate.
 
yeah, that's what's so obvious it Really pisses me off.
'bout time to do some ousting. sombitches.
 
Don't worry guys, Jimbo will tell us a nice story about how this is not really a big deal.


It is a big deal. The problem is, although I am against these types of bailouts, they are necessary. Why? Because all of those banks out there holding paper for these idiots would go down as well. The shortsighted see only Frannie May and Freddie Mac but fail to see the downstream effect their collapse would cause and why the feds have to prop them up. They fail to figure on what a run on the banks would cause and they certainly have no conception of a monetary collapse. "Just let 'em fail." sounds so wonderful until they are saying "I have nowhere to live, nothing to eat, no job, and no prospects for a job. Why didn't someone do something?!?! Boo Hoo!"

Only one time has this type of bailout actually worked; and that was Chrysler. Chrysler paid back the bailout money seven years early.
 
The reason so many banks failed in 1929 is because banks were allowed to borrow from their consumer (savings, checking, etc.) divisions to pay debts incurred by their commercial divisions. Laws were enacted to prevent this from happening again. Guess what the federal government is allowing banks to do during the current "problem." Just sayin'...

They aren't just doing it "now". They have been doing it since Clinton repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass-Steagall_Act

The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in the United States and included banking reforms, some of which were designed to control speculation. Some provisions such as Regulation Q that allowed the Federal Reserve to regulate interest rates in savings accounts were repealed by the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980. Provisions that prohibit a bank holding company from owning other financial companies were repealed on November 12, 1999 by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act signed by William J. Clinton.[1][2]
 
It is a big deal. The problem is, although I am against these types of bailouts, they are necessary. Why? Because all of those banks out there holding paper for these idiots would go down as well. The shortsighted see only Frannie May and Freddie Mac but fail to see the downstream effect their collapse would cause and why the feds have to prop them up. They fail to figure on what a run on the banks would cause and they certainly have no conception of a monetary collapse. "Just let 'em fail." sounds so wonderful until they are saying "I have nowhere to live, nothing to eat, no job, and no prospects for a job. Why didn't someone do something?!?! Boo Hoo!"

Only one time has this type of bailout actually worked; and that was Chrysler. Chrysler paid back the bailout money seven years early.

I don't consider myself short sited at all.
I also apparently understand way more than you give me credit for.
You definitely wouldn't see me crying because I took a bet and lost.
 
One thing with Chrysler... the bailout money let the Caravan/Voyager minivans come to market, and that minivan product is a big reason why Mopar started making money. It combined most of the utility and room of a van with most of the fuel economy and driving characteristics of a compact car (since it was a Dodge Aries with different skin) and fit in most garages. It was the right product for its time and the sales numbers proved it, thus filling Chrysler's coffers and allowing them to pay off the loan early.

Does AIG have something waiting in the wings that will provide a new source of income?
 
From Investor's Business Daily (Yeah, yeah, its just an op-ed yada,yada. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. Pay no attention to the truth.)

http://ibdeditorial.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=306370789279709

The Real Culprits In This Meltdown
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, September 15, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Big Government: Barack Obama and Democrats blame the historic financial turmoil on the market. But if it's dysfunctional, Democrats during the Clinton years are a prime reason for it

Obama in a statement yesterday blamed the shocking new round of subprime-related bankruptcies on the free-market system, and specifically the "trickle-down" economics of the Bush administration, which he tried to gig opponent John McCain for wanting to extend.

But it was the Clinton administration, obsessed with multiculturalism, that dictated where mortgage lenders could lend, and originally helped create the market for the high-risk subprime loans now infecting like a retrovirus the balance sheets of many of Wall Street's most revered institutions.

Tough new regulations forced lenders into high-risk areas where they had no choice but to lower lending standards to make the loans that sound business practices had previously guarded against making. It was either that or face stiff government penalties.

The untold story in this whole national crisis is that President Clinton put on steroids the Community Redevelopment Act, a well-intended Carter-era law designed to encourage minority homeownership. And in so doing, he helped create the market for the risky subprime loans that he and Democrats now decry as not only greedy but "predatory."

Yes, the market was fueled by greed and overleveraging in the secondary market for subprimes, vis-a-vis mortgaged-backed securities traded on Wall Street. But the seed was planted in the '90s by Clinton and his social engineers. They were the political catalyst behind this slow-motion financial train wreck.

And it was the Clinton administration that mismanaged the quasi-governmental agencies that over the decades have come to manage the real estate market in America.

As soon as Clinton crony Franklin Delano Raines took the helm in 1999 at Fannie Mae, for example, he used it as his personal piggy bank, looting it for a total of almost $100 million in compensation by the time he left in early 2005 under an ethical cloud.

Other Clinton cronies, including Janet Reno aide Jamie Gorelick, padded their pockets to the tune of another $75 million.

Raines was accused of overstating earnings and shifting losses so he and other senior executives could earn big bonuses.

In the end, Fannie had to pay a record $400 million civil fine for SEC and other violations, while also agreeing as part of a settlement to make changes in its accounting procedures and ways of managing risk.

But it was too little, too late. Raines had reportedly steered Fannie Mae business to subprime giant Countrywide Financial, which was saved from bankruptcy by Bank of America.

At the same time, the Clinton administration was pushing Fannie and her brother Freddie Mac to buy more mortgages from low-income households.

The Clinton-era corruption, combined with unprecedented catering to affordable-housing lobbyists, resulted in today's nationalization of both Fannie and Freddie, a move that is expected to cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.

And the worst is far from over. By the time it is, we'll all be paying for Clinton's social experiment, one that Obama hopes to trump with a whole new round of meddling in the housing and jobs markets. In fact, the social experiment Obama has planned could dwarf both the Great Society and New Deal in size and scope.

There's a political root cause to this mess that we ignore at our peril. If we blame the wrong culprits, we'll learn the wrong lessons. And taxpayers will be on the hook for even larger bailouts down the road.

But the government-can-do-no-wrong crowd just doesn't get it. They won't acknowledge the law of unintended consequences from well-meaning, if misguided, acts.

Obama and Democrats on the Hill think even more regulation and more interference in the market will solve the problem their policies helped cause. For now, unarmed by the historic record, conventional wisdom is buying into their blame-business-first rhetoric and bigger-government solutions.

While government arguably has a role in helping low-income folks buy a home, Clinton went overboard by strong-arming lenders with tougher and tougher regulations, which only led to lenders taking on hundreds of billions in subprime bilge.

Market failure? Hardly. Once again, this crisis has government's fingerprints all over it.
 
And then there's this:

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/09/16/whose-policies-led-to-the-credit-crisis/

Whose policies led to the credit crisis?
posted at 9:40 am on September 16, 2008 by Ed Morrissey

The credit crisis and the lack of oversight over government-subsidized lenders like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac occurred on the watch of George Bush, and many blame his economic team for their lack of oversight in the collapse. Barack Obama has made this point one of his major campaign themes, arguing that John McCain would provide more of the same failures that Bush did. However, what many do not recall is that Bush wanted to tighten oversight with a new regulatory board for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and other government recipients for the express purpose of addressing bad loan practices — and Democrats blocked it.

The New York Times reported this five years ago:

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.

The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt — is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates.​

This should have been a no-brainer, right? With hindsight, we can see that the Bush administration had accurately diagnosed the problem in the lending market and had a plan to address it. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reluctantly supported the plan. However, Democrats objected (emphases mine):

Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.

”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ” The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.

”I don’t see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,” Mr. Watt said.​

Sounds a little like the Democratic denial of problems in Social Security, doesn’t it? Nothing to see here, no crisis on the horizon. Everybody just move along, now. The Democrats had forced lenders to assume more risk at lower interest rates in the 1990s, as IBD points out today, and they didn’t want to countenance an end to their populist policies:

But it was the Clinton administration, obsessed with multiculturalism, that dictated where mortgage lenders could lend, and originally helped create the market for the high-risk subprime loans now infecting like a retrovirus the balance sheets of many of Wall Street’s most revered institutions.

Tough new regulations forced lenders into high-risk areas where they had no choice but to lower lending standards to make the loans that sound business practices had previously guarded against making. It was either that or face stiff government penalties.

The untold story in this whole national crisis is that President Clinton put on steroids the Community Redevelopment Act, a well-intended Carter-era law designed to encourage minority homeownership. And in so doing, he helped create the market for the risky subprime loans that he and Democrats now decry as not only greedy but “predatory.”

Yes, the market was fueled by greed and overleveraging in the secondary market for subprimes, vis-a-vis mortgaged-backed securities traded on Wall Street. But the seed was planted in the ’90s by Clinton and his social engineers. They were the political catalyst behind this slow-motion financial train wreck.

And it was the Clinton administration that mismanaged the quasi-governmental agencies that over the decades have come to manage the real estate market in America.​

It was the Bush administration that wanted to rein in the madness in the credit markets, and the Democrats who wanted to extend the Clinton policies that created the crisis we have now. After the fit hit the shan, as Michelle says, these same Democrats want to shift blame back to the administration that wanted to increase oversight and curtail risk in lending practices while reducing patronage at the giant GSEs.

The Bush administration isn’t blameless in letting this get out of hand, but clearly the origins of the disaster and the efforts to keep bad policies in place fall on the Democrats in this case.

Update: John Lott points me to a March column he wrote at Fox News explaining the underlying causes of the debacle. Forcing lenders to make questionable loans and blocking tougher regulation of the government-supported entities was a recipe for collapse, and Lott explained it six months before it happened.
 
No, the meltdown was because both sides let illegal immigrants take out loans.
Now they've pulled out because of pressure.

Why won't anybody else say this? It's so apparent.
 
One thing with Chrysler... the bailout money let the Caravan/Voyager minivans come to market, and that minivan product is a big reason why Mopar started making money. It combined most of the utility and room of a van with most of the fuel economy and driving characteristics of a compact car (since it was a Dodge Aries with different skin) and fit in most garages. It was the right product for its time and the sales numbers proved it, thus filling Chrysler's coffers and allowing them to pay off the loan early.

Does AIG have something waiting in the wings that will provide a new source of income?

Apparently they will be selling off a good portion of their assets pursuant to the bailout.

Also, don't forget the K car and the resurgence of the convertible. Chrysler led that charge and it was a marketing coup. Chrysler was the only company with a convertible for two model years and the sales went through the roof.
 
I don't consider myself short sited at all.
I also apparently understand way more than you give me credit for.
You definitely wouldn't see me crying because I took a bet and lost.

I wasn't pointing fingers or stating names.
 
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