I don't know if any of that is true and neither do you.

Uh, yeah, we do.

Comparing gathering intelligence on WMD to gathering intelligence on how markets are reacting, and how they will react if nothing is done are two completely different things.

The credit markets seized up last Thursday. It's not speculation that it happened, and it's not information based on some questionable source of intelligence.

The facts and information about exactly what's at stake, retirement savings, credit flow, etc,etc, are readibly accessible to the public.

Whether or not Bush's plan is exactly the right one, or if it will even fix the problem, may be debatable. The severity of the problems in the credit markets, and the danger those problems pose for the economy at large, aren't.

Old news:

(link...)

Sound familiar? Check the date. Why the sudden urgency?

If it's just a matter of banks having to prop up their thinly backed balance sheets by conserving capital they would otherwise loan, that could be fixed with a couple of temporary changes to accounting rules and ratios, along with some actual, you know, oversight to ensure they are making good loans and not getting in deeper and deeper. Just as one example. Etc. It's hard to believe that Paulson's proposal or even Dodd's counter-proposal are The Only Way Out.

Anyway, the point is that the Bush administration and specifically Paulson are using familiar scare tactics to ram an emergency "fix" through Congress, and the "fix" is for the benefit of Paulson and his pals on Wall Street. We don't know if it will indeed address the fundamental problem, or even necessarily what that is, or if it will just kick the can down the road for someone else to deal with after the shysters who perpetrated this get out with their shirts still on their backs.

And I am willing to bet that anyone with a Beacon/FICO of 600+ can buy a brand new car today and get it financed on the spot, and they can also get a new credit card to fill it up with gas.

Oh, and the other point is, every time Bush opens his mouth it seems to cost us $700 billion.

I don't think we should use the flaws in the plan as a reason to do nothing.

I don't think anyone, anywhere is suggesting that. Some are suggesting that we let the "free markets" work and allow some of these companies to fail, so I guess letting nature take its course could be considered doing nothing. But I'm not sure that's a good idea, either.

I don't think we should use the flaws in the plan as a reason to do nothing.

And here I thought that the Fed engineering the transfer of Bear Stearns to JP Morgan Chase was supposed to fix it all. No, wait. Taking on Fannie & Freddie was supposed to. No, wait. Converting Goldman & Morgan Stanley into banks was supposed to fix it. No, wait... now we need a $700 bn line of credit to inject into the economy at Henry Paulson's sole discretion.

I haven't heard anybody seriously saying that the plan consists of doing nothing. What I have heard is that we should take this opportunity to do some of the following other things as well:

* Re-implement Glass-Steagal
* Abolish the Commodity Futures Modernization Act
* Put more oversight into the proposal
* Introduce necessarily punitive measures to root out the bad actors
* Figure out some means to finance the $700 bn that amounts to more than printing money or forever kiting checks

As written, the plan sure looked a whole lot more like a vehicle to protect the ass(ets) of the same people who created this mess. (And no, Viriginia, it wasn't a bunch of darkies taking out loans they couldn't repay. It was a shitpot of greed in a horrifically inflated market for junk securities alleged to be worth more than the entire GDP of the planet.)

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the distance between black & white is much further than i would like until now i never noticed that fascism has many disguises -d. boon, 1981

Here's a good one. While Goldman Sachs was packaging sub-prime mortgages into "toxic" mortgage backed securites, a couple of sharp Goldman Sachs traders were shorting them:

Credit crunch: The $4bn killing - Business News, Business - The Independent

Mr Dodd said he was concerned because it appeared that Goldman Sachs was "aggressively pushing sub-prime mortgages that they knew to be of concern while simultaneously shorting "mortgage derivatives".

And he has turned his fire on Hank Paulson, President George Bush's Treasury Secretary, who was head of Goldman Sachs until being persuaded to join the administration last year. Mr Paulson is in the awkward position of seeing his Goldman Sachs shares rise in value while having to organise a bail-out for American homeowners who cannot afford their mortgages.

There's too much irony here for my tiny brain to process.

According to the article and some others on the subject, it was generally regarded as #1, and Goldman Sachs was applauded for navigating through the initial mortgage meltdown and coming out the other side making money.

(link...)

"There is a mushroom cloud over Wall Street and if we don't give the terrorists $700 billion dollars we'll be fighting them in our homes instead of in Iraq" as my otter called it.

This looks very much like another fabricated crisis designed to influence upcoming elections, and engineer the transfer of billions of taxpayer dollars to private enterprise. In short, it is pure Karl Rove. Note the press never mentions he is now in the McCain camp. And look at McCain's stunt this week.

These folks cannot be trusted under any circumstance. Whether or not there really is a crisis is actually quite far from certain. They are trying to bully and scare everyone into doing something (and right now!) that is not well considered. If it were a real crisis, we would need to make rational and well considered plans, and inform and involve all the stakeholders. Not some half-baked hurried-up nonsense. Folks, don't believe it!

Unfortunately, EVERYONE is again taking them seriously. So no matter how they change the "plan" they will still mostly get what they want. When will we learn?

My question is: Could this bail out not be structured as a loan with the taxpayers essentially "holding the note"?

Sure, that is if anybody besides the House of Faud and the Chinese had some cash on hand.

The problem is that nobody does. That's why we've been borrowing from the Chinese to maintain our lifestyle anyway.

I think there is almost complete ignorance as to how much everybody, including the government, is in debt right now.