"Without immediate action by Congress, American could slip into a financial panic and a distressing scenario would unfold,"
Ultimately, our country could experience a long and painful recession."
risk a cascade of wiped-out retirement savings, rising home foreclosures, lost jobs and closed businesses if they fail to act on a massive financial rescue plan
banks could fail, the stock market could plummet and erase retirement accounts, businesses could find it hard to get credit and be forced to close, wiping out jobs for millions of Americans
"financial calamity."
Obama and McCain: "The plan that has been submitted to Congress by the Bush administration is flawed, but the effort to protect the American economy must not fail," they said. "This is a time to rise above politics for the good of the country. We cannot risk an economic catastrophe."
Obviously politics are still in play. If this is a "financial crisis", then let's hope the Republic of Washington and our elected representatives represent all of us.
In five months Obama or McCain is going to be the new President of these United States. It seems very appropriate for them to be involved in plans to prevent financial calamity, financial panic, a long and painful recession. They are both currently U.S. Senators and will, I presume, have to vote on this $700bn proposal. They have been chosen as the next possible leaders of this country. What are Rep. Barney Frank (Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee) and Senator Harry Reid (Senate Majority Leader) afraid of? It's not like they have been doing a great job of leading.
The Bush brand of bum's rush has been used for the "Patriot Act", the FISA Act, and now the "Bail Out My Base" Bill.
Puaulsen's Bush Bill isn't the only solution.
Galbraith offers some sane advice:
A Bailout We Don't Need
By James K. Galbraith
Thursday, September 25, 2008; Page A19
Now that all five big investment banks -- Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley -- have disappeared or morphed into regular banks, a question arises.
Is this bailout still necessary?
The point of the bailout is to buy assets that are illiquid but not worthless. But regular banks hold assets like that all the time. They're called "loans."
With banks, runs occur only when depositors panic, because they fear the loan book is bad. Deposit insurance takes care of that. So why not eliminate the pointless $100,000 cap on federal deposit insurance and go take inventory? If a bank is solvent, money market funds would flow in, eliminating the need to insure those separately. If it isn't, the FDIC has the bridge bank facility to take care of that.
Next, put half a trillion dollars into the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. fund -- a cosmetic gesture -- and as much money into that agency and the FBI as is needed for examiners, auditors and investigators. Keep $200 billion or more in reserve, so the Treasury can recapitalize banks by buying preferred shares if necessary -- as Warren Buffett did this week with Goldman Sachs. Review the situation in three months, when Congress comes back. Hedge funds should be left on their own. You can't save everyone, and those investors aren't poor.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."
Hunter S. Thompson
Submitted by RayCapps on Fri, 2008/09/26 - 10:16am.
The United States Senate and the Democratic Leadership of the House of Representatives appear to be ready to accept some version of the bailout. Right now, the only thing standing between where we are now and a modified version of the Bush bailout are a bunch of obstinate Republican Conservatives in the House.
I don't know if it's necessary, warranted, wise, or well put together. At this point, using authorative resources, I can't even put together a cogent explanation of exactly what the problem is, how bad it is, or what brought us to this juncture. Everyone is speaking in contradictory terms or hiding behind nonspecifics.
The closest thing I've gotten to something that makes any sense is this: Financial institutions have been betting heavily on real estate values increasing more rapidly than interest rates. As a consequence, these institutions have been unconcerned (compared to historical measures) about the applicant's ability to manage their loan payments beyond a fairly short time windown (5 years or less). If the loan goes into default, the institution would simply foreclose and sell the property at an adusted profit (year on year) equal to or greater than what would have been realized had the loan not gone into default. This forecast suggested a "no lose" scenario to lenders in real estate.
I've got two issues with this:
First, this would have required that the major financial institutions didn't anticipate a "bubble" in the real estate market resulting from this artificially inflated demand (lower standards for making a loan encouraged people to assume more debt than they could handle, artificially inflating real estate prices). This would mean no one had paid any attention to the real estate bubble that burst in Japan only a little over a decade before. If a real estste bubble can occur in a nation with a much larger footprint of population per square foot of usable real estate, why wouldn't happen here?
Second, this is a purely domestic explanation. The problem, however, is quite plainly global in scope. Are U.S. financial institutions just so large that their failure drug everyone else down, too? Unlikely. Were foriegn institutions so heavily invested in U.S. real estate that they got busted as well? Also unlikely. Again, the real estate bubble scenario also played out in Japan and the problem remained largely internal to that nation. If anything, the U.S. and European economies took advantage of the sudden weakness of the Japenese economy to improve their own condition. Is this some sort of weird side effect of being a net importer rather than net exporter?
There's more to the this story than I've been able to piece together. I just don't really know what's happening or why. Either I'm more dense than even my wife suspects or no one is perfectly clear on what is happening and why.
I think you've hit on the root cause pretty accurately, but finding a hole and knowing how deep it is are different problems. The derivatives and securities built on top of the mortgages allowed Wall St to dig deeper, and Christopher Cox's 2004 decision to let the five largest financial institutions triple their capital leverage was a bit like saying, "Keep digging boys, we're almost to China!"
Or, as the wonderful, sadly late, Molly Ivins once put it, "the only President we have."
The Bush brand of bum's rush has been used for the "Patriot Act", the FISA Act, and now the "Bail Out My Base" Bill.
Puaulsen's Bush Bill isn't the only solution.
Galbraith offers some sane advice:
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."
Hunter S. Thompson
An ex-executive for AIG just took advantage of the government bailout and is selling $1 BILLION in stock. Nice parachute, paid for by you and me.
I'm becoming more and more convinced this bailout is an attempt at pure theft. I want a LOT more oversight.
The United States Senate and the Democratic Leadership of the House of Representatives appear to be ready to accept some version of the bailout. Right now, the only thing standing between where we are now and a modified version of the Bush bailout are a bunch of obstinate Republican Conservatives in the House.
I don't know if it's necessary, warranted, wise, or well put together. At this point, using authorative resources, I can't even put together a cogent explanation of exactly what the problem is, how bad it is, or what brought us to this juncture. Everyone is speaking in contradictory terms or hiding behind nonspecifics.
The closest thing I've gotten to something that makes any sense is this: Financial institutions have been betting heavily on real estate values increasing more rapidly than interest rates. As a consequence, these institutions have been unconcerned (compared to historical measures) about the applicant's ability to manage their loan payments beyond a fairly short time windown (5 years or less). If the loan goes into default, the institution would simply foreclose and sell the property at an adusted profit (year on year) equal to or greater than what would have been realized had the loan not gone into default. This forecast suggested a "no lose" scenario to lenders in real estate.
I've got two issues with this:
First, this would have required that the major financial institutions didn't anticipate a "bubble" in the real estate market resulting from this artificially inflated demand (lower standards for making a loan encouraged people to assume more debt than they could handle, artificially inflating real estate prices). This would mean no one had paid any attention to the real estate bubble that burst in Japan only a little over a decade before. If a real estste bubble can occur in a nation with a much larger footprint of population per square foot of usable real estate, why wouldn't happen here?
Second, this is a purely domestic explanation. The problem, however, is quite plainly global in scope. Are U.S. financial institutions just so large that their failure drug everyone else down, too? Unlikely. Were foriegn institutions so heavily invested in U.S. real estate that they got busted as well? Also unlikely. Again, the real estate bubble scenario also played out in Japan and the problem remained largely internal to that nation. If anything, the U.S. and European economies took advantage of the sudden weakness of the Japenese economy to improve their own condition. Is this some sort of weird side effect of being a net importer rather than net exporter?
There's more to the this story than I've been able to piece together. I just don't really know what's happening or why. Either I'm more dense than even my wife suspects or no one is perfectly clear on what is happening and why.
I think you've hit on the root cause pretty accurately, but finding a hole and knowing how deep it is are different problems. The derivatives and securities built on top of the mortgages allowed Wall St to dig deeper, and Christopher Cox's 2004 decision to let the five largest financial institutions triple their capital leverage was a bit like saying, "Keep digging boys, we're almost to China!"
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